Your First Job

Your First Job

How to make a success of starting work and ensure your first years are the launch of a successful career

Why you and why this book?

Managing first impressions

Managing yourself

Managing your time and work

Managing your co-workers and your boss, and working in a team

Managing to say no

Managing communication

Managing your career

Managing people and emotions

Managing stress (don’t read this chapter)

Key points summary

Afterword

1 Why you and why this book?

Congratulations on starting your first job.

You’ll probably experience a honeymoon period for your first few days where everybody will be nice and friendly as they show you around, introduce you to people and welcome you on board.

Even so it’s going to feel a bit odd. After all you’ve just left a place, whether it’s school, college or university where not only did you know your way around since you’d been there for a number of years, but where (leaving aside the teaching staff) you’d been in a relatively senior position, and surrounded by people that you’ve grown to know over a prolonged period. Whereas now you’re starting somewhere completely new, with its own rules and networks that you’re going to need to get used to, as probably the most junior member of staff, knowing precisely no one.

By the end of week two, with piles of work landing on you apparently at random, from people who seem demanding and who expect you to just know what to do with it all, and the phone going all the time, you might feel yourself drowning as you wonder how you are ever going to handle it all.

Well the first thing to say is that you’re not alone in going through this.

Schools or colleges are great at getting you the qualifications you need to land a job and guiding you in how to apply and land it. But given the many different career paths for students, it can be difficult for them to fully prepare you for the range of practical issues you will run into at work and how to make a success of it once you’ve started.

And that’s a pity, because it’s an important formative experience. Your first ‘proper’ job is potentially the foundation for what you are going to be doing for the next 40 or 50 years, and how far you are going to get, so if you want to have a great career it’s important to make a great start, and it’s never too early to begin either.

If you learn just one lesson from this book, please let it be about taking charge of your own working future: Don’t just work in your job, work on it.

As you go through the book hopefully the second will be: It’s all about having successful respectful relationships with people.

And if you learn a third, Your boss is your customer, find out what your boss really wants, and then give it to them, then you will really be on your way to a successful working life.

Work is a complex place and a complex set of relationships

Becoming employed for the first time, particularly in a large organisation, whether in the private or public sector, you may have an expectation that the world of work is going to operate something like this:

What you probably imagine

Unfortunately, it’s a lot more complicated than that. This is real life; you are mingling with real people and they will all have their own real interests and priorities; you are actually in the centre of a net of interlocking interests and priorities.

What you’ll actually find is probably more like this:

What you are really in

Yes, corporate headquarters somewhere may have a grand plan, but your local branch, division or department will have its own interests and agenda which may or may not interlock well with the corporate strategy (anything from Hey, let’s organise things so the big boys can’t suddenly decide to off-shore our jobs, to sales hating production, and vice versa, or ‘suits’ and ‘support staff’ living in seemingly different worlds).

In all this your boss (and theirs) will also have their own agenda, whether it’s an ambitious desire to climb the greasy pole, or a simple desire to keep their head down and serve out their time to retirement without rocking the boat.

And then there are all the people you work with, each with their own desires, demands, dreams and agendas, none of which they park at the door when they arrive in the morning.

And in the middle of all this?

You.

Yep, sorry, life at work is complicated. Get used to it.

And that goes for whether you are in the public or private sector. My career has been in business so when writing I’ll tend to be assuming that you have joined a commercial organisation and most of my examples will come from this type of environment. But as I hope you’ll already see, the issues you need to deal with in the world of work are first and foremost about people, so the chapters in this book will apply wherever you are going to work.

Oh, and by the way, all those company rules and that handbook and organisation chart they gave you on induction day?

They don’t tell you half the story. The way any organisation runs is actually down to its culture which is the way people think, and act, the acceptable norms of behaviour and the way ‘we do things here’, little of which is ever written down and all of which you are going to need to pick up and learn on the job, pretty quickly, if you are to be accepted and make a success of things.

The good news? This book is here to help.

Chapter 2 is a crash course on a few essentials intended to ensure you get off on the right foot so I suggest you concentrate on these key things in your first month or so.

The rest of the book is your guide to managing.

You didn’t realise you were being recruited as a manager?

Well you were. Whatever level you start at, very soon you’re going to be expected to manage yourself, your time and your work, your communications, your relationships with those around you, and even your boss.

At the same time, for your own sake you are going to have to look to manage both your career and the sorts of emotional and stress issues you come across in the world of work.

So your management training starts here.

And good luck, wherever you take your career.

2 Managing first impressions

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression (actually if you think about it that’s complete rubbish, you just have to make it on someone else, somewhere else), so this chapter is focused on making those crucial first impressions in those critical first few weeks at work.

It’s therefore a bit of a catch-all of some basic information and survival tips, a mix of Dos and Don’ts to get you started.

Many of these things are a foretaste of subjects we’ll be coming back to and looking at in more depth in later chapters so don’t worry too much at this stage if you find yourself thinking, Fine but how do I actually do that?

Key behaviours – the Dos

There are a limited number of things you probably need to concentrate on in your first month or so as summarised below.

Be there and be there on time – one of the simplest steps you can take, but one which is entirely within your control and which is very visible and gets noticed, is to be punctual. Downstream in your career you may need to deal with the cultural problems of presenteeism but don’t worry about this now.

At this stage of your career you want to be building social capital and this is one of the quickest first steps to doing so.

So you should always arrive early (on time is late, some say) and crucially stay on for as long as there seems to be work to do (never be the first to leave).

You will probably come across people at some point in your career who always spend the last quarter of an hour before the end of the official working day packing up so they can get away on the dot every time. Clock-watcher is the term and it’s not a description you want to pick up.

One tip I’ve seen is if asked why you are there you can say; I just want to be available to help out with anything that needs doing and learn as much as I can.

Get your game face on, give a good impression from the moment you walk in – if you’ve seen the film Pulp Fiction, think about how Vincent and Jules go about getting into character outside the door of the flat they are about to hit. They are heading into their own particular work environment so they deliberately adopt their work personas before starting.

One of my colleagues on a turnaround had a checklist he kept in his car and went through every morning before he walked into the office; reminding himself he was there as a director, staff would be looking to him for leadership, and he had to conduct himself confidently, smile and be upbeat.

So, develop something similar for yourself. Don’t just walk in to your work in the morning. Before you get there deliberately make a little time every morning to think about how to give the best impression from the moment you arrive, and if nothing else, before you walk in the door, smile!

Dress appropriately – this could reasonably fit as part of giving a good impression but it’s important that you and your appearance fit in with the organisation’s culture and values. A professional firm will have certain standards of professional dress code which can either be quite proscriptive (one financial organisation I’m told issued a formal dress code notice stating in effect, ‘No cleavage, anywhere, from anyone’) or simply enforced through the cultural norms. Look around at what everyone else is wearing and check that your dress is appropriate.

Not being too slack (you have flip flops on while everyone else around you in your law office is in a suit and tie) is the obvious failing, but sometimes being overdressed (everyone else in your software firm is in beachwear while you have a three-piece suit and gleamingly polished shoes) can be a problem in achieving a cultural fit with your colleagues.

Of course, dress can also vary depending on the role people have to fulfil, so while the coders at that software firm might work in very casual clothes, the sales staff who are out selling services into big corporates will have to dress formally to give the right professional image to the clients, ie fit in with that culture.

Listen and take notes – quite simply write everything down.

Your work is going to be overwhelming to start with and people will be telling you lots of different things, which you’ll be expected to remember.

If you don’t write it down, you won’t remember. There’ll just be too much to absorb too quickly.

So, write it down!

Get yourself a notebook (or the App you prefer) and carry it with you everywhere you go at work. Use it to note down everything: work to do, names (and contact details), deadlines, ideas, everything. It’s important to realise how much you are in learning mode in these early days and how much you are therefore going to need to take notes to be able to refer back.

Immediately this will help you keep yourself organised and avoid forgetting things that need doing, people you need to deal with and so on (at one UK business I’ve heard about, being seen without a notebook is regarded as a disciplinary offence!).

Longer term it will help you as well. People are usually very willing to help someone new and show them the ropes, but there are few things more irritating than finding they have to be told again and again. No one wants to have to go through telling you the same stuff twice or three times and this will quickly infuriate them, not least because it shows a lack of respect for their time and the effort they’ve already made for you.

Whereas if you can acquire the reputation that you only have to be told once (because you write it down and learn it) then you will be earning credibility and a good reputation.

Plan – a properly organised and prioritised To Do list is your best friend. It’s the way you order and organise your world and turn the stream of work heading your way into something manageable (a subject covered in more detail in Chapter 4).

The truth is, if you don’t plan, others will plan for you and you will simply end up reacting to and running around after their priorities, not yours.

To begin with you simply need to start daily planning for yourself. For the moment, at the end of each day sit back for a moment and take the time to put together an outline plan of what’s expected of you tomorrow. In your notebook, you’ll be keeping a schedule of all the dates when projects are due or expected so you can keep track of them and pull them into your To Do list for the next day. If having a structured format for writing down notes, planning your day and prioritising your projects would help then use a copy of My Time and Project Manager (see the section on further reading and resources).

As part of this process go through today’s list to make sure you’ve done what you were supposed to do and to carry over anything that didn’t get finished today into tomorrow’s list.

Work to make everyone else around you look good – forget about yourself for the moment and instead work on the basis that your job is simply to make your boss (and your team of co-workers) look good (much more on this in Chapter 5).

Try to think about what their goals are and how you can support them. Ask yourself:

What does your boss want and why?

And so, what you can do to help them so you become their, and your team’s, go to person for getting things done.

Be proactive and always look for chances to help and be useful. This will make you stand out and in due course you’ll start to be seen as indispensable.

If you focus on serving others what you are actually doing is investing in your social capital, while at the same time helping yourself to learn and develop. Do this throughout your career and it will pay back handsomely, believe me.

Always be ready to learn – start off by being honest and embracing the fact you are new. No one expects you to have all the answers so don’t pretend you do because it’s not going to fool anyone.

Instead treat your job as a chance to learn, but don’t simply expect to sit back and be taught.

You need to be proactive and self-starting. So, if you find a problem, don’t just go running for help immediately or ask someone to show you what to do. Instead think about the issue to see if you can come up with answers or options yourself, and then if you need to, go and check you have got the right answer.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Yes, as we’ve covered above you don’t want to be bothering people for the same instruction time after time, but if you have a problem you can’t solve or aren’t sure you have the right answer for, then ask.

I’ll let you into a secret, people generally like to be asked for help. It makes them feel good about themselves (I’m seen and respected as an expert) and what they’re doing (I’m being nice and helpful, how great am I?) and if they’re passionate about what they do they will positively want to share their knowledge with you. Some of them will even write a book about it...

And while we’re on the subject of learning, learn through errors. Cock-ups and errors happen to us all, it’s part of life. When you make a mistake admit it, don’t hide it. Take it to your boss (yes, you read that right) and show them what you’ve done and why. Work out together what needs to be done to fix it and how you can avoid it in future.

Trust me, it’s a better way than them finding out for themselves down the line.

Think about what you are doing and why. Your firm is employing your brain as well as your hands. Early on in my career I had to prepare what were known as Section 48 reports on companies, which I did the way everyone else did in my department. I found an old one to use as a template, and in those days actually cut and pasted the details of the current company onto it to be typed up.

Or I did until I got a new boss who called me into his office, threw my report at me and chewed me out asking me why my Section 48 report didn’t meet the requirements of Section 48 of the relevant law? To which the answer was, although I didn’t say so at the time, because:

I’d never read Section 48 of the relevant act, even though I knew it existed; because

It had never even occurred to me that I ought to so as to check I knew what I was doing!

Instead I’d simply had my brain parked in a bucket by the side of my desk while I got on with pushing my papers.

And as your career develops make sure you continue to learn. Take responsibility for your own development. After the bollocking I got from my boss for that report I realised I needed technical