Being the best ‘new’ guy your boss has ever had
So a new job is always fraught with anxiety and fear. While you hope you get a good feel for the job during an interview you never quite know what to expect when your actually doing the work. And there is a perception by new employees and managers that the first few weeks are slow going for a new hire. Here are some tips to be the best ‘new’ guy your boss has ever had.
Get your required stuff done quickly
Doing your W2, or 401k, or benefits enrollments won’t really impress your boss. Everyone can do that stuff so get your required stuff done as soon as possible so your boss doesn’t have to hassle you to get it done. These mundane tasks are not why your boss hired you.
Ask questions
Make sure you know everything you need to know about doing a task or working on a system to be effective. As soon as your trainer or peer who just trained you walks away it’s too late. Your boss will assume you know as soon as your trainer stop doing their job.
Don’t be afraid to jump into projects and tasks you know little about
I know this is hard to do, but the best way to learn how a company does it’s operations is to jump in with both feet and get on a project. Listen intently and find something you know at least something about and offer to assist or perform a specific duty without being asked to. Your boss will be impressed you took the initiative to take on a task.
Perform your tasks to over completion
Unfortunately you don’t know how everything works quite yet. So do an overly good job on your task. If you need to write out a document, build the table of contents, summary page, glossary, and appendixes to go with it.
Show off what you do know
Being at a new job there are more unknowns to knowns. But pick your battles obviously you were hired for a specific job role so when you find something you know a lot about run with it and show you can do that task well.
Communicate!
When you start a new job your being told probably more of what you should be doing rather than actually doing. If you are being trained, take breaks every once and a while and restate what the trainer told you. Talk to people your working with and try to expand your circle of contacts to other people on outside teams who you may interface with.
Ask for feedback
Depending upon how busy your boss is he/she probably lined up a bunch of training and meetings for you to do. However, your boss probably doesn’t know how well you’ve done those things and how much of the business you understand. Email your boss a status report two weeks into your job stating what you have done and ask for feedback on how you can do a better job. In many companies they only do at best go through quarterly reviews. As a new employee you need to make sure your on track to get the best possible rating right out of the gate. So ask for feedback early, and make this a regular habit, your boss may get tired of this over time but I can guarantee you that they will be impressed the first time, and that leaves a lasting impression.
Perform work better than your peers
Sure this is a very difficult thing to do being the ‘new’ guy. However, you need to show off why they picked you over the other people who applied for your position. It may take twice as much effort to get things done, than your peers but this will show determination and over time you’ll be an old pro and can do it without killing yourself so much. Just be careful to not give the impression you are willing to work all hours, just a few more than expected.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 5:10 pm and is filed under biz, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.