Once You Have the Job

Once You Have the Job

Salary Survey

Starting your new job is exciting and often a little overwhelming. You need to not only learn about the specific responsibilities of the job for which you were hired for, you also need to begin learning about the organization, the culture and the formal and informal rules. The pace of change and technology is so fast today that new employees have less time than in the past to settle into their new job.

Below are some guidelines that will help you get started quickly and be successful in your new position:

1. Get to know the people with whom will be working. Begin networking on the first day of your job. You'll have to take the initiative to get to know your fellow co-workers who will be an invaluable asset in helping you learn about the hidden rules of success in your new workplace. Plan to spend 1-2 days each week having lunch with your new coworkers. These lunches are the places to listen to what is being said and discover how your new workplace works. Some questions to listen for include how do your co-workers interact with management? What is the culture of the company really like? What things are acceptable and what things are unacceptable? Which employees are considered experts in certain areas? This networking is critical not only in your first few weeks of employment but throughout your career. You should establish a regular routine of networking and add reminders in your weekly lists of things to do. After you have established a good network within your company, expand your network to the industry in which you work by using the same recommendations listed above.
2. Meet with your manager within the first month of employment. This meeting should focus on the work that you are doing to ensure it is meeting the expectations of your manager. You should also use this time to ask questions that you have about the work. (It is a good idea to keep a running list of your questions beginning on Day 1.) Remember that your manager wants you to succeed because your success makes him/her look good.
3. Write your job description. This should be written as a draft and used as a discussion point with your manager. You want to ensure that you are working on the items that are important for the success of your department. Ask you manager to share the overall strategy of the function and the organization and how your function's success contributes to the organization's success. Make sure you know the organization and ask for organization charts and copies of any relevant strategic plans of which it is important for you to be aware.
4. Talk to your manager about your personal development. Remember that you are responsible for your own development, not your manager. A term that has been used to reflect the importance of career management is Career Self-Reliance (CSR). Characteristics of a career self-reliant employee include:
   1. Future focused and networked: You look ahead and consider the impact of customer, business, and technical trends on your work and your development plan. You actively network to learn and share ideas.
   2. Self-aware and values-driven: You know your strengths, what gives you satisfaction, and what values give direction and meaning to your work.
   3. Flexible and dedicated to lifelong learning: You anticipate and adapt to change. You monitor your current skills against business trends and create a professional development plan to improve your skills accordingly.
5. What can I do to show that I am career self-reliant?
   1. Take ownership of your own performance and development
   2. Continually improve performance
   3. Become a lifelong learner
   4. Build a network of professional contacts
   5. Ensure management accountability in the career development process

Most managers want to support development in their employees, but expect the employee to take the initiative. Make a list of opportunities within your department that you are interested in working on in the future. If your organization has a new hire orientation program, make sure you are enrolled. This type of orientation is a wonderful way to meet other new employees who may become good friends as well as key networking contacts. Often people make lifelong friends that they first met in their new employee orientation programs.

Also ask if funding is provided for development opportunities such as employee workshops, classes to keep technical skills current and/or to learn important new programs.

To check if you are doing the correct things to manage your career, take the Career Self-Reliance Checklist below.

6) Learn about the corporate culture. The corporate culture is a set of unwritten rules that determine how the organization runs. You will need to observe and watch social interactions of your workers to see how things are done. Some items to look for include:

How do your co-workers interact with each other?

How do co-workers complete their assignments?

How do co-workers interact within meetings?

How is information communicated within your department?

What are your co-worker's attitudes towards management?

What type of office politics exist?

Is teamwork emphasized or is work carried out independently?

7) Your new employer will have expectations from you as an employee. Below are some of the top expectations that most employers have:

Initiative: Your employer will expect you to take the initiative to complete your own job. If you are not sure what to do, ask your manager. Also, take initiative to look around to see what needs to be done and do it.

Flexibility: You need to be flexible and accept assignments that may not fall under your specified duties. Since change occurs so rapidly in today's organization, you need to be flexible and put projects aside as new projects take priority.

Willingness to learn: You will be expected to learn the way things are done in the company and adapt to possibly new ways to doing things.

Dependability: You should be on time for your job and let your supervisor know if you are going to be late or absent. This also applies to any meetings that you attend. Projects should also be turned in on time or your supervisor notified if you are going to be late on a deadline.

Honesty: Employers will expect you to be honest and tell the truth. Some forms of honesty include starting and leaving work on time.

Enthusiasm: Employees who show enthusiasm for their work are usually the most successful.

Acceptance of Feedback: Feedback (and criticism) is a good way to learn and you should expect regular feedback (both good and constructive) from your supervisor. Listen and learn from the feedback you receive and find ways to improve. If you feel that feedback is unfair, do not loose your temper.

Observe and respect the chain of command: Learn what position your co-workers hold in the office and how your position relates to theirs.

8) The Ten Hottest Transferable Skills: Some skills are more equal than others. You should be seeking to identify your most powerful talents, with the implied assumption that every skill can find a home somewhere. While you can expect all functional and adaptive skills to have definite value, you must recognize that certain skills are universally greeted with enthusiasm by almost every employer because these skills occur with some regularity in every job having responsibility and requiring decision making and good judgement. You should pay special attention to them in the work you are now doing.

Technology Skills: Jobs nationwide now require a moderate, if not keen, knowledge of computer systems and functions, with a special emphasis on Internet know-how.

Budget Management: Get your hands on any budget you can find, no matter how small and take responsibility for it. Manage how the funds are dispensed, keep control of the budget, learn what fiscal control is all about.

Leadership: Take responsibility for the work of others in a situation in which some accountability is called for. Have direct contact with the work of others; expose yourself to the difficulty of giving orders, delegating tasks, taking guff, understanding the other person's viewpoint. Here is where listening can become a real feat of skill.

Time Management: Search for opportunities to demonstrate that you can produce good work when it is required by external deadlines. Prove to yourself and anyone else that you can function on someone else's schedule, even when the time frame is notably hurried.

Interpersonal: Discover and cultivate the fine art of dealing openly and effectively with people in ambiguous situations. Learn how to bring warring factions together, resolve differences between groups or individuals, and make demands on behalf of one constituency to those in positions of power.

Verbal Communication: Take a leadership role in an organization, so that you are forced to talk publicly, prepare remarks, get across ideas, and even motivate people with out feeling terribly self-conscious. Good public speaking is little more than the art of dramatized conversation, but it must be practiced so you can discover your own personal style.

Written Communication: Go public with your writing skills, or even the lack of them. There is nothing quite so energizing as seeing your own words in print; exhilarating if they look good to you, and a spur improvement if they look awful. Practice putting pen to paper. Write letters to the editors of every publication you read routinely. Write a newsletter, however informal, for a club or organization to which you belong.

Interviewing: Learn how to acquire information from other people by questioning them directly. Start by interviewing the neighbors, your friends, and other people easily available. It doesn't matter what you ask them, but imagine you are a newspaper reporter who needs the information for a story. Discover the fine art of helping people feel comfortable in your presence, even though you are asking them difficult or touchy questions.

Teaching/instructing: Refine your ability to explain things to other people. Since most teaching takes place not in the classroom, but in ordinary everyday exchanges between people, you should become familiar and comfortable with passing information and understanding to others. Any position of leadership or responsibility gives you many changes to teach ideas and methods to others.

Change Management: The pace of change is so rapid today, that you must learn to adapt and welcome change. It is not unusual to have several management changes or strategy changes within one year. Some organizations, such as high-technology, experience more change than others. The most successful employees are those who can thrive on changes!

9) Volunteer to participate on special teams or activities within your organization. Teams focusing on United Way, company picnics, or holiday activities are a great way to earn additional recognition as well as meet new co-workers.

10) Prepare monthly accomplishment reports. These reports will help you keep track of what you have accomplished during the month and are a great way to captured unplanned work activity. Activity reports are also a good way to help you document your accomplishments for a year and are especially valuable when you are updating your resume!

11) Benchmark your skills to ensure they are current and competitive. You should compare your skills with the skills of not only coworkers, but other people in the industry in which you work. Technical skills change so quickly today such as when new computer applications are introduced or new and innovative ways to complete work are introduced. By checking that your skills are current and competitive, this helps you to be career self-reliant.

It takes time to learn about your new organization and job. Be patient with yourself. Since this probably is your first real job, don't be surprised if it doesn't entirely meet your expectations. Use this position as a way to develop career related skills, explore where you want to go in your career, develop new friends and networks, and learn how a business operates. Also, the best time to start thinking about your next job is the first day of your new job!