Changing Careers: New Job

Being the new kid is not fun. Whatever the shiny new employee may stir up, it’s often not on the happy side. You may have inadvertently beat out an office favorite for the position or be a decade (or two) younger than your direct reports who’ve been at the company for 10 years. You may be the only woman, or POC, or person who is simply “other” than the current employees...all of which can lead to difficulties in trying to adjust to your new work environment. There are times, of course, when the overworked staff is so exceedingly grateful to have another set of hands on the team that none of these issues may pop up at first, but this does not mean they never will.

Onboarding and adjusting to a new job role isn’t a task achieved in a matter of days, but truly a matter of months through your first year. How can you or anyone else expect otherwise until you have served time in this seat in this space in this business with this group of people from season to season of ebb and flow, events and sales, roadshows and factory outlets, through the building of your first annual report?

Asking questions, being humble, and being grateful for the time your trainers take with you will go a long way to easing out the kinks in your onboarding process.

• If you are not clear on a procedure, ask, don’t just assume. It saves a lot of time to clarify at the top rather than have to rework it.
• Thank your trainers and acknowledge the extra energy and effort that goes into helping you while holding down their own daily task load.
• Take notes that you can refer to later to buff up your repetitive tasks.
• Refer to your job description and tasking regularly to assure you aren’t leaving processes out.
• Get to know your employee handbook, don’t just sign that you received a copy, and throw it in the bottom of your desk.
• Get to know your teammates’ names as soon as possible. Start chats with them at coffee breaks to get to know them a bit more.
• Understand that you could be the “expert” in the field, but you are not the expert of “here.”
• How does this organization do the ins and outs of the things your department is in charge of? How can you best fold into this naturally and support your department or team?
• If you are here to shake up and realign the way things are done, getting to know the “how” and “why” of the status quo will feed you a lot of helpful info to help you align your team’s natural talents without leveling the entire department to the ground.
• “Decimate and rebuild” is rarely the best way to earn trust from your team or allies of your peers.
• When you make a misstep, own it. It’s ok to be a human and make a mistake, and being the kind of person who can own it also brings trust and support from your team members.