HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF WHEN YOU START YOUR NEW JOB
Comments (0) All your efforts to land the right job paid off. You start next week and are raring to go. You have ideas, plans and enthusiasm. You are ready to hit the ground running. But wait. Before you plunge into the deep end, here’s a check list to protect yourself so you don’t drown.
- Do you know what is expected of you? Your job description was a clue, but do you know exactly what you will be chartered to accomplish? Ask your boss to state exactly the first three priorities and the metrics by which you will be judged. These are your marching orders and tell you how to spend your time.
- You will be working with other departments; do you know what they need to give you and your department the best support? If you are, for instance, the new Director of Development, talk to the QA manager to learn the form and process he needs in order to test and release your projects quickly. Ask him to show you examples of projects that made it through his department without glitches. Let him know you will use that as a template.
- If you are in Marketing, check with Sales to hear what their customers are saying. And if you are in Sales, get to know Customer Services well. You get the picture.
- Be leery of the first people to offer unsolicited advice. Don’t engage in debate; just acknowledge their comments and move on. It is too soon to know their agenda so acting on their advice may not be in your best interest.
- Avoid making comparisons with your former employers. A serious mistake a new employee can make is to begin sentences with, “When I was with HP, we did it this way,” or “We saw this same problem at Seascape. The solution was easy, what we need to do is …” Forget you ever had a former employer. Each company and certainly each team member likes to believe their company, problems and therefore solutions are unique.
- Before attempting change, interview all departments and people who might be affected. Listen without comment, but be sure to invite ideas and criticism. This simple action can help you avoid road blocks in the future.
- Starting a new job is always a stressor. Manage your health before you start and double your vigilance once you begin. Many people fall ill in the first three weeks of starting a new job. Stress plus a new germ environment make you vulnerable. Take your vitamins, get your rest and do whatever you do to reduce stress. Use hand sanitizers frequently and also wipe down the phone, door handles and keyboard in your new office. Wash your hands more often than normal and avoid shaking hands with people who are coughing and sneezing.
- Set a good example to your team. If you want to encourage people to have a life beyond work, don’t put in a 70 hour week. Make your expectations clear about deliverables and then keep to a 50 hour week (or whatever you expect from the team) yourself. The hours you put in during your first week of work will determine the pattern for your tenure. There is absolutely no advantage to the old-school dictum of arriving before your boss and leaving after. You are the role model for your team from day one.
- Most companies have a 90 day trial period, stated or not because it is easier for a company to recover by dismissing an executive sooner rather than later. Don’t be paranoid, but in a very real sense, your first months on the job are just one more aspect of the interview process. Be mindful of what you say and how you behave and try to chart out one significant success during your first three months.
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