The exciting moment for any job hunter is getting the first call or email announcing their success in an interview! All the hard work and toil has finally paid off. You are so proud of yourself considering the difficulty in getting a job nowadays.
You tell family, friends and bae of course. They all congratulate you and wish you well. You are told the day to report to work and as it fast approaches, it dawns on you, how am I going to do this again? How am I going to survive the first day? Endless questions keep roaming in your head and before you know it you drift to sleep and its D-Day. The day has come for you to begin your journey at this unfamiliar place you have no other clue about apart from what you read on their website.
Surviving the first day: First Impressions count
This is the important day of your journey with the organization/company so hell yeah you better make it count. People are different but I believe most of them will remember or forget you after the first encounter. When am talking about remembering you I don’t mean by name but at least something about this new person who has joined their firm. One thing to note is that you may not have much control over how awkward or weird your first day will be so you better just let it sink in. However, you can decide how you want to make your first mark at an organization. I have always tried to be 15-30 minutes early, have a notebook with me to take notes, put my phone on vibration and of course where my best outfit and smile. I do this with the hope that this coupled with my nods and questions during the orientation sessions for that day makes me seem like a cool addition to the club, which I am but they are yet to find out.
Bottom-line is first days are unpredictable so don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t do your best, you have the rest of your employment period to prove them otherwise. However, how you are going to do this may not be covered in one of your orientation sessions during your first week. Well at least in my experience. While the orientation may cover what the organization is about, how you are going to do what’s expected for your position and take you through the required documentation before joining, little may be done to tell you what to do too well on your job. However, this has led to many new job entrants to underdeliver or fail to utilize their potential as they may not have prepared well about how to stand out and perform on their job.
One of my mentees asked me to share some of the things that worked out for me over lunch but we ended up just eating and taking photos so I thought it wise to compile something which she can also refer to from time to time. So herewith some 5 tips for adapting and shining at your new job:
1.Understand your assignment
I know you may be thinking this maybe common sense but I thought I should still re-emphasize the importance of understanding your expectations. Before a soldier is sent on a mission they make sure that they have understood the mission. This is done I believe to ensure that they don’t come back without completing what they were supposed to do. I believe this is the same for a job. Make sure that you read the job description again to get a sense of what you are supposed to do and start conceptualizing how you are going to execute your small tasks which shall contribute achieving your big outputs.
Set your own small goals or expectations for the role. Many are the times when people finish an internship or fellowship and state that they never learned anything. I somehow find this to be absurd, you are telling me that for the 2-6 months you were at a place you didn’t gain anything? I feel that this always happens to be the case when you don’t also didn’t make any personal goals. Jobs should be about professional and personal gain.
2. Establish work relationships creatively
Work settings are very different, there are some places where you are going to meet people who will just embrace you and do whatever it takes to make you feel at home and then there exist other places where you will have to do some work to establish working relationships. Unless teamwork is not among the values of the organization then you can ignore this, which is highly unlikely. If you happen to end up at a place where everybody seems to like to be about their business, then this is where the creativity has to come in. In most cases, people haven’t warmed up enough to you because you are new and they think you need some time to find your feet or maybe they are just not in your face type of people. However, when you creatively reach out to them you may be surprised at how nice they are.
I can tell of a time in 2017 when I had the opportunity to do a 6 weeks professional development experience at Atlas Corps in Washington DC, US, as part of my Mandela Washington Fellowship. So this was an American institution full of Americans and interns as well as fellows from all over the world and there I was a girl from Malawi trying to find a way to adapt in the littlest time as much as I could. The team was not in your face people so I had to think of creative ways to make them warm up to me.
Let’s take for example the interns, these were mostly about my age or younger and doing the same tasks as me to support Atlas Corps fellows and volunteers. One of the funny ways I did this was going early to the office most of the times. There was no key to give to interns or short stay staff so when one got to the entrance of the building they had to ask on the GroupMe (like a Whatsapp group) if someone was already inside the office to come with the elevator key to open. I would always be grateful when somebody did that for me, which made me realize I could also do the same for the interns and while waiting for the elevator to reach our floor we can spark a short conversation. Before we knew it, they were inviting me for lunch and we were exchanging tips on how to use the printer and execute other tasks. This was very important for my happiness at the workplace, as they say, happy employees entail quality work outputs too (I might have just coined that! lol).
3. Be proactive
I feel like we were not taught enough how being proactive is very pertinent to excelling in life. Remember all those nice kinds of stuff you out on your CV or say in your interviews like am a self-motivated’ person, or someone who is a real ‘go-getter’? Well chances are you may not be asked to show what you said but if you want to increase your prospects of being hired after the internship or getting renewed after your contract you need to find a way to showcase this. I read in one article (https://bit.ly/2MKlKRP) that a proactive employee seeks out opportunities to get work done, whether or not it was asked of them. Going out of your way to complete projects and get work done is a great way to be recognized by your superiors.
So, don’t wait to be asked the progress of something before you check how the task is progressing, ensure that you are completing your tasks and even taking on other follow-up ones related to your position.
4. Use your other non-work related talents any opportunity you get to do
Related to being proactive, I found that what also worked out for me in adapting to most teams at my new workplaces is my other non-work related talents. We always think about excelling in work to be determined by using our completing the tasks on the job description. However, for every job or volunteer role I did, I found adapting to the environment and being part of the team as a very determinant factor in a role’s success.
Key to this is utilizing other inborn or learned talents where I needed. I remember working with UNICEF, in the first few months I ended up being a Mistress of ceremonies or photographer for staff association events like a farewell lunch for staff and children’s day as well as facilitating the staff meeting when it was our section’s turn. Did I have an option to say NO? I did but NO wouldn’t have taken me anywhere, it would have been easy to say no am new or shy hence I can’t do that. However, I knew this was an opportunity to get to know more members of the big UNICEF team. This entailed that even if people wouldn’t remember my name it was easy for me to approach them when I had questions or there was a need for collaboration. They would remember the jokes I cracked or the task I was doing and that made it easy for them to embrace me.
5. Be observant and open minded
Every organization has a culture and system which keeps them going. The sooner you are able to learn the easier it will be for you to adapt and perform the expectations of your role. You are trained about this during orientation but I believe most of this is done through observing. How do most people in your section or team activities, how do they present themselves at meetings, the list goes on? You should be open-minded that work environments are different and what you expected may not be the case on the ground.
Also, important to consider is executing with finesse any task that you are given no matter how small. We tend to focus mostly on executing big tasks on our job description forgetting to do the same for those that fall within the AOB realm.
Be unforgettable
All in all, I urge you to strive to be unforgettable. I believe that by ensuring that you understand the assignment you start orienting yourself towards accomplishing your goals and you will be remembered as a top performer. By establishing work relationships, you will be embraced as part of the team and if it’s an internship they will still remember you as part of the team such that if an opportunity comes they can recommend you also based on your performance of course. Being proactive will set you apart from the group of interns or newbies as you will reach out for opportunities to perform well and execute even other tasks outside your role. Reaching out for opportunities to mix with the team using your talents will help you adapt well to the team. Being observant and open-minded will also enable you to embrace faster the work environment and many setbacks you are going to meet along the way.
I hope these 5 tips were helpful, you can also add some tips in the comment.
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