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Start into Work – your First Days at a New Job

Definition, Explanation	Tips, Checklist
Articles

Definition, Explanation

You have got there: After extensive job seeking and successful applying you have got an employment contract signed and you start into your new job. It may be your first job ever. Your daily business changes a lot: regular working hours, over-hours, business travels, projects, team work, and last but not least, a fixed monthly income. Your daily scheduling is constrained somewhat, and your time with friends and family may get sparse.

Just the first day can bear great consequences for your further career. Already the first impression, being the first seconds of meeting, channel the relationships with people and your integration in the team and in the company. Your behaviour and outer appearance play their part in it.

Naturally, a fresh jobber’s goal is giving a good impression as possible. Failing might mean risking to be cancelled during your probation period, which would make you a job-seeker again.

Tips, Checklist

• Get to know about employers even before you start being employed. Internships are a good way to gather experience, and so is a master, bachelor, or diploma thesis that you write embedded in a company supporting you. On such excursions, contacts are well made, and on either side one explores the other’s competences of the professional kind as well as of the social
• Prepare well for the first day by getting informed about your new employer
• Be sure to be dressed seriously enough (see business apparel)
• Enter your new environment with some advertence
• If you are not introduced to people by the boss, say hello to every single one, introduce yourself and give a brief compendium of the work you are expecting
• Be prepared for idle in the beginning if the workplace has not been installed yet. You can take related literature to read, or ask a colleague for allowance to sit in
• Interact circumspectively, be mostly listening and ask what you would like to know. Show interest and openness
• Do not use the informal address address of “Du” unless you are explicitly invited to do so, and be careful with any pally ways of acting. Also you should avoid negative talk about previous employers of yours
• Do not let yourself be questioned about former employer of yours
• Be attentive towards unwritten rules such as smoking breaks, coffee brewing, depositing habits. Get to know the company culture and adjust your behaviour accordingly
• Semi-private invitations, especially in the beginning, are a great thing to accept, such as going eating in the lunchroom, or internal parties, to get to know new colleagues and bosses
• Get yourself the feedback from your boss, best-timed about 6 to 8 weeks after your starting. Then, you will still have the time to change things and have a second feedback talk after 3 months, such that a cancellation within the probation period can be prevented
• Participate in introductory meetings, education or workshops for new employees
• Ensure the quality of your work. Control your results yourself, or have a colleague looking at them. If you are not certain, ask a colleague or your boss
• Observe how others are behaving and presenting themselves. Adapt to their behaviour without self-abandonment. You may well state your own opinion as long as you explain it and answer the arguments of colleagues and bosses
• Have small talk
• Show your competences and your readiness to actively participate and to take your share of the work to be done. The earlier you can work independently, the better you will be integrated in the team
• Do not put yourself under pressure! In the beginning, there is lenience and tolerance regarding mistakes. But learn from them
• Pick yourself a mentor who is willing to support you, especially in your starting phase, and who stands by you in critical situations
• Accept feedback and critique. Observe how others react to you
• And finally: become indispensable by
  • sharing your knowledge and informing others
  • proving your reliability
  • being a problem solver of the flexible kind, and not the bearer of concerns
  • involving others in your successes and being loyal

• Presumption, arrogance, condescension, know-it-all attitude, unfriendliness, competence quarrelling are no good manners for the start. Rather be quite modest
• Do not keep others from working by overly questioning. Rather save your questions for asking them in the right moments. Suitable are coffee-, cigarette- or lunch-breaks
• Do not ask the same person about everything. Even the most patient become impatient after a while. You can find out much by just observing attentively
• Stick to appointed ways of doing the work and to official channels of communication
• Be on time for appointments, also for delivering your work. Once you anticipate you will not be able to comply with appointments, inform the involved or your boss inclusive the reasons, and ask for support
• Avoid advances to anybody, or affairs
• Do not participate in gossip or bullying

Articles

• Personalities Accurately Judged by Physical Appearance Alone; ScienceDaily, December 11, 2009

Last update: 01/09/2010