Your First Job

Study Materials and Workbook

Mark Blayney

Contents

These study materials and workbook are intended to provide ideas to assist students in preparing for the transition to working life, together with the development of their ‘soft’ employability skills to help them manage in this new environment.

They are set out as pages which can be photocopied and provided to students for use as exercises and discussion topics.

These are followed on the reverse by a commentary for session leaders. These comments are not intended to be comprehensive answers as in most cases there is no clear right or wrong answer. Instead they are designed as guidance to assist in running exercises and managing a discussion of the points students may make in response to the questions.

It also includes the text of First Job? which provides a checklist guide to getting off on the right foot in their first month with a new employer. This can also be provided to students in photocopied form.

1 Quick Discussion Topics

2 Managing Yourself

3 Managing Your Time and Work

4 Managing Your Co-workers, Your Boss, and Working in a Team

5 Managing To Say No

6 Managing Communication

7 First Job? Coping with starting work, your first month survival guide

IMPORTANT NOTE

The publisher gives permission for this work to be copied and distributed in either printed or electronic form for educational purposes, on condition that each page used is copied in full with no amendments or deletions, and no charge is made to recipients.

Copyright Mark Blayney 2018

I, Mark Blayney, hereby assert and give notice of my rights under section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted at any time by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

IMPORTANT NOTE

The publisher does give permission for this work to be copied and distributed in either printed or electronic form for educational purposes on condition that each page used is copied in full with no amendments or deletions, and no charge is made to recipients.

Cover photograph adapted from image © paikong

Sourced via Shutterstock

ISBN 978-0-9956170-2-5

1      Quick Discussion Topics

1 If your career is the Business of You, what is it worth? And why?

2 What are three things employers look for in hiring staff, ranked in importance for:

1 Experienced staff? and

2 Inexperienced staff?

1

If your career is the ‘Business of You’, what is it worth? And why?

The philosophical answer to this is What is it worth to an individual?

This can be across a range of criteria, the importance of which will vary from individual to individual, including:

- Satisfaction

- Success

- Achievement

- Creativity

- Work/life balance

- What can be done for others

- Security and/or

- Financial rewards.

How many students automatically assume the question is asking about financial worth?

Do students have views on which criteria are the most important?

An interesting follow up exercise can be to ask students to try and put a specific number on it.

How many would like to earn a million?

The April 2014 ASHE report gives median gross annual earnings of £27,195 for full-time employees. Over say a 40-year working life this equates to expected lifetime earnings of c£1.1m so the average student’s ‘Business of You’ is actually a £1m turnover affair.

2 What are three things employers look for in hiring staff, ranked in importance for:

1 Experienced staff? and

2 Inexperienced staff?

For inexperienced staff, employers will be looking at aptitude and attitude, while skills tend to be less important as the job specific skills are likely to be taught (see the last part of the First Job? section).

For experienced employees, skills become more important. Part of the premium an employer is paying for more experienced staff is that they already have the skills required.

3 List three attributes or behaviours an employer:

1 Will want to see from a new employee? and

2 Won’t want to see from an employee?

4 List four things or people you will need to manage at work?

3

List three attributes or behaviours an employer:

1 Will want to see from a new employee? And

2 Won’t want to see from an employee?

The First Job? section contains a wide list of Dos and Don’ts.

How many of these came up? Did students identify any others?

Some Key Dos

Some Key Don’ts

- Be there and be there on time

- Get your game face on, give a good impression from the moment you walk in – Smile

- Dress appropriately

- Listen and take notes – quite simply write everything down.

- Plan – a properly organised and prioritised To Do list is your best friend.

- Work to make everyone else around you look good – forget about yourself and work on the basis that your job is simply to make your boss (and your team of co-workers) look good.

- Always be ready to learn – embrace the fact you are new. No one expects you to have all the answers so don’t pretend you do

- Think about what you are doing and why. Your firm is employing your brain as well as your hands.

- Seek feedback – check in with your manager to find out how you are doing.

- Participate – your work is a social environment, so dive on in and become part of the team.

- Work out the social rules, quickly – every workplace has its own customs and practises which you will be expected to follow.

- Don’t burnout in month one

The opposite of the Dos, and:

- Get drunk when socialising

- Gossip/over confide

- Grandstand your personal views

- Forget you are now representing your organisation

- Use social media/gaming at work

4 List four things or people you will need to manage at work?

Use the list of topics in the contents, as well as their careers, and possibly stress and their work / life balance. Do students come up with other items which don’t fit into any of these categories?

5 What are three things an employer will be expecting in any piece of work you are asked to deliver?

6 Draw a diagram of how a business is organised.

Where would you would fit into it as a new starter?

5

What are three things an employer will be expecting in any piece of work you are asked to deliver?

As discussed in more detail in Chapter 4 of Your First Job, three key things expected of any piece of work are fundamentally that it will be delivered:

- On time, work will often have to be managed to meet deadlines,

- Complete, and

- Correct.

Often, other people in the organisation will be relying on whatever is produced being there on time, in full, and correctly so they use it to do what they need to do. Failing to meet these standards means letting other members of staff down.

Additionally the employer or boss may have expectations that it is done in particular ways, for example as defined by the organisation’s standard procedures and processes, or preferences in terms of format or presentation.

6 Draw a diagram of how a business is organised.

Where would you would fit into it as a new starter?

Students may well come up with a formal organisation chart or organogram and this is an entirely valid answer.

Over and above this in terms of formal organisation they may go on to mention how the business is organised in terms or rules and procedures, and processes such as budgets.

The point to draw out is that a business is also a complex social organisation comprised of people with individual attitudes and agendas and this interacts with the formal structure.

7 List some factors that determine how people behave at work

8 What approaches can help you in making a success of working with people?

7 List some factors that determine how people behave at work

This topic should draw out a number of strands:

- The individual factors of personality traits, motivations and interpersonal relationships,

- The organisational factors, both:

- The formal in terms of the organisation’s structure, rules and processes, and

- The informal but highly powerful influences of norms and culture; ‘the way we do things here’

- And the situational factors affecting the position at any particular time such as particular stresses or strains.

For more material on this and the question below see Chapters 5 and 9 of Your First Job.

8 What approaches can help you in making a success of working with people?

The key point of this question is around treating other people as people with their own personal and business interests, desires, and preferences that you want to serve.

So taking an interest in them, finding out what they want and need from you, and delivering it reliably in the ways that they prefer to receive it (consider for example their preferred learning and communication styles) are key.

9 How will the people you work with differ from the people you know now?

10 How do you think the work environment will differ from your educational one?

9 How will the people you work with differ from the people you know now?

Students will tend to know and hang out with a group of people of roughly the same age, from the same area. They will choose a set of friends to socialise with both while at school or college and outside that they like and share outlooks, social norms and interests with.

At work employees will be dealing with, and have to spend substantial amounts of time with, people of a wide range of ages, from a wide variety of locations and backgrounds, whose views and interests will differ substantially from those they may be used to.

The employer will expect new employees to fit in and not be a source of friction, while new employees will need to quickly learn the social norms of their new environment (whose turn is it to make the drinks?) so as to be able to establish working relationships with their colleagues.

10 How do you think the work environment will differ from your educational one?

Students moving from school, college or university into a work environment will be going:

From:

To:

- A familiar environment, where

- An unfamiliar environment

- They know the ropes, the rules and what’s required of them,

- Where they need to learn what’s needed from scratch

- May be relatively senior, and

- Are likely to be the most junior people

- Are likely to both have a group of friends, and know and be known to a wide number of people.

- With few or no contacts or familiar faces to begin with.

The scope for a degree of disorientation needs to be appreciated and prepared for as a natural reaction.

Students will also need to appreciate that while some training and instruction will be provided by the employer, the roles and expectations involved are fundamentally reversed in that:

- Educational environments are places where students are served – they are intended to be enablers for the student, providing them with resources and support to achieve their learning outcomes; while

- Employment environments are places where employees serve – they are intended to be places where employees deliver their services to enable the organisation to achieve its aims.

Success in work and the Business of You lies in understanding what others (the Business of You’s customers) want, and serving them well by delivering them what they want, how they want it.

11 What is your career ambition?

12 What is your plan to achieve it?

13 How will you know if you have been successful?

Commentary

These are questions which are open for students to consider.

The objective is to ask students to consider what they want to achieve and to think about their plan to do so.

Follow up questions can be based around:

- Why do you want to achieve this, what does it mean to you?

- What practical steps does their plan involve? Are there particular qualifications or experiences they will need to obtain in order to achieve their objective?

2      Managing Yourself

Individuals differ in their personality types and preferences, so the first step to managing yourself and your career is understanding yourself, how you prefer to work and what motivates you.

For example people will have different roles they naturally want to take in a team, from the leader, the ideas person through to the completer/finisher who makes sure the job is actually done. Businesses will often use the Belbin Team Role Inventory or Belbin test to assess these preferences to help ensure teams are balanced.

They will also have different approaches about how they go about gathering and using information and the Myers Briggs tests (and other ‘16-Factor’ tests) assesses these across four scales to give a profile which seeks to explain your preferences and how you are likely to act and interact with people (see www.16personalities.com for an online self-test example).

Then bear in mind that everyone you deal with at work will also differ on all these points.

Questions

What would happen if a team was made up completely of shapers?

How would a team made up purely of ideas people differ?

Which team would get more of a set task done?

Task

What motivates you?

You have 100 points available, allocate these across the following 10 descriptions based on your personal priorities and what’s most important to you:

- Fame / recognition

- Security / order

- Variety

- A sense of achievement

- Creativity / self expression

- Altruism / doing the right thing

- Family

- Freedom

- Financial worth

- A sense of belonging

100

Commentary

Questions

In practice neither group would get much done.

A group made only of leaders would spend all its time fighting about who was going to be in charge.

A group made only of ideas people would be continually dreaming up solutions but never get round to implementing any of them, as there would always be a new off the wall idea to discuss.

To make things happen teams need to have a balanced mix of attributes.

In practice people tend to have a number of preferred roles and so will eventually adopt the available roles in a group which need filling, eg once a leader emerges, the other people with leadership preferences may migrate to filling their second or third preference roles.

Task

Collect in the scores. Plot them (anonymously) on a chart:

Respondent

Criteria

A

B

C

etc

Total

Fame / recognition

Security / order

Etc

Discuss with the group:

How easily and rapidly did students find it to allocate their scores?

How varied are the answers? Where are the biggest variations?

Which items score the highest? Which the lowest?

Are there any clusters of responses? Which seem to be correlated? Why do students think that might be?

3      Managing Your Time and Work

One of your most precious resources at work will be time, so learning good time management can help you go a long way and your two main tools to start with here are:

1 Prioritisation – any piece of work can be urgent or not and/or important or not which allows you to prioritise your work:

2 Organisation – maintaining well-structured To do lists are the cornerstone of then delivering work as they help you to keep your priorities clear, plan your work and focus.

Task

Choose something you are currently working on which you want to achieve.

Turn this into a SMART objective:

Specific

What exactly do you want to do?

Measurable

How much is to be done?

Achievable

Can it be done?

Relevant

Does it really matter?

Time bounded

When is it to be done by?

Commentary

- Specific – what is to be done – having a definition of the specific task, area or action involved. The goal involved needs to be unambiguous so everyone involved will know exactly what’s expected as a result. Ask students: What they want to do and why.

- Measurable – how much is to be done – having a quantifiable way of assessing performance or achievement. The criteria for monitoring progress, keeping on track and motivating the team, and judging eventual success or failure need to be concrete. Ask students: How many? How much? How will they know when they’ve done enough?

- Achievable – can it be done – ensuring something is a realistic target. The goal needs to be set at a level which will stretch the team to ensure performance, but not be so far out of reach as to be demotivating as unobtainable, and simply seen as providing a stick they will be beaten with. Ask students: How realistic is the target level?

- Relevant – does it matter – focusing on things that make a difference, both to you, and those whose support you will need. Goals should be things that help drive you and your organisation forward. Ask students: What will this achieve and does it seem worthwhile? Is it the best use of their time and resources right now?

- Time bounded – when is it to be done by – having a clearly specified timescale. Individual projects can tend to fall by the wayside, drowned out in managing the day to day, so having a clearly set (and realistic) deadline for completion can help prevent drift and create a sense of urgency to deliver on time to achieve the goal. Ask students: When do they need this to happen, are they on track to complete on time and what should they do today?

4      Managing Your Co-workers, Your Boss and

Working in a Team

Do you want to be a success at work? Well it’s simple:

- Take an interest in and understand the people you are working with

- Find out what they want

- Deliver it to them

- In the way they want it (their preferences, learning styles etc)

One of the most important people you’ll need to deal with is your boss who may give you high or low levels of support and challenge. This will depend on their natural style and ideally on your level of development, eg as a new starter you are generally going to need substantially more support than later when you are experienced in the job.

Task

At work you will often need to negotiate and your approach should vary depending on how relatively important it is to achieve a successful outcome and to maintain a relationship.

Which factors and hence style of negotiation are most important when you are buying a second hand car from a small ad? How about when agreeing who is due to make the tea?

Commentary

In this model the two driving factors are the importance to you of:

- achieving the outcome; and

- maintaining your relationship.

So, by assessing where you (and the other party) sit on this table you can work out which negotiation strategy is probably going to best suit you (and them). Observing their approach will give you clues as to how they see the position, which can help you manage the negotiation.

- Avoiding (described as Postpone to Win) – if neither the outcome, nor the relationship mean that much to you, why are you getting into a negotiation or conflict about it in the first place? You may therefore want to simply avoid the issue or negotiating on it altogether.

- Accommodating (described as Lose to Win) – if the subject of discussion and the specific outcome don’t mean that much to you, but relatively speaking the person does, then how far are you willing to trade losing in terms of material outcome, for the win in terms of social capital or an advantage in a future negotiation. (I let you have X last time, so now I think it’s fair I have Y?) Think about how explicitly you may want to make this trade; in order to appreciate what you are doing the other person needs to be aware of it.

- Competing (described as Win-Lose) – conversely, if the outcome really matters to you but you are not concerned about the relationship (think haggling in a market) then your negotiation style can be very competitive. Being successful with this style requires a clear understanding at the outset of what you are looking to achieve and what concessions you could make (as discussed below), and strong assertion skills to see your way through to achieving it. Questioning the other party as much as possible can help to get an understanding of their needs to help you with your bargaining; and funnily enough, despite it not being an objective, so long as you are fair and honest in your approach you can usually maintain a good respectful relationship with the other party.

- Collaboration (described as Win-Win) – if both the outcome and the relationship are important to you then you need to be looking to achieve a win-win solution where both parties achieve the goals which are most important to them (and this approach is also very useful if both sides face highly undesirable outcomes). Achieving successful collaboration requires a strong degree of trust between the parties, so open and honest communication of your goals are key, as are your reputation and your ability to come up with creative problem solving solutions.

- Compromise (described as Split the Difference) – is the middle ground where you and the other party can’t manage to fully collaborate but still want to work together and each achieve some of your goals. When working towards a compromise you may want to use elements of the other negotiating styles in respect of specific issues and accept that you will have to make trade-offs, so it’s vital you have a clear understanding of your goals and priorities.

5      Managing To Say No

In your working life you will be bombarded with requests and if you want to deliver your work properly you can’t say yes to them all.

Saying yes too often just ends up with you:

- mismanaging your priorities to deal with the latest request

- failing to deliver your core tasks reliably, and worse, getting a reputation for it

- spending your time doing things you don’t actually want to do or worse, you don’t enjoy

- losing your work life balance and feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

In short, the inability to say no is a ticket to underperformance and burn out.

Taking on too much doesn’t actually help anyone as it never ends up being done properly.

But saying No can be difficult for a variety of reasons, which mostly come down to concerns about wanting to build and strengthen relationships, hurting the other person’s feelings by rejecting their request, and your self-image and what people might think of you.

Discussion question

On a score of 1 (not at all) to 10 (perfectly happy) how comfortable are you at saying No?

List some factors which would affect how easily you could say No.

Roleplay exercise

1 Select roles as asker / respondent

2 Select sets of relationships, eg: boss / employee, work colleagues, brother/ sister, relative strangers etc

3 Select requests eg: large loan, small charity donation, loan of car, cover at work, swap days off, donation of a kidney

4 Run once and then swap roles (using different relationships / requests as you prefer), and then discuss.

Which requests are easier / more difficult to say no to?

Why?

Discuss how you could structure a way of saying No in a structured way to deal with the problems you have identified.

5 Run again using the form you have come up with and then discuss.

Was it easier to say no?

Why and how?

Commentary

Not all Nos will feel the same. Different people can ask you to do things, in work and outside, for differing reasons, with differing degrees of reasonableness. So how you will feel about the request, and saying no if that’s what you want, need or decide that’s your answer, will depend on the circumstances and a range of factors:

- Who is asking? – Are they a close friend, your boss, or a complete stranger?

- What are they asking for? – How serious an issue is it?

- Why and how much do they want it? – How important is it for them?

- What does it mean to you? – How much do you care?

- What impact does it have on you? – How much of your resources is this going to take?

- Have they the ‘right’ to ask you? – Different people have the right to ask you different things in different situations.

- Why are they asking you? – How personal is the approach? Have they asked you specifically as the right person to help with the problem, or are they asking everybody? Are you just being asked because you’re the line of least resistance, someone who they think will always say yes?

An outline way to say No

A basic structure for saying No could be as simple as this:

- Greeting – don’t forget to use their name.

- Personal note – optional, but in relation building terms it’s always worthwhile including something personal and positive in correspondence whenever you can as a reinforcement that you have a personal relationship over and above this particular transaction. This could be something specific about them or their family, or their news, to the generic such as, It’s been ages since we’ve spoken.

- Your thanks for being asked – show why you are grateful they have thought of and asked you and be very positive about what they are doing (What I like is…).

- What the issues are – this is your chance to explain how this impacts on you or what the problems are which would prevent you delivering (What I don’t like is…).

- Your No – don’t forget you do need to clearly state that this is the decision you have reached: As a result, I’m afraid I need to say no (What I want is…) which can reference the issues above.

- An offer of other support if you can – wherever possible you should always try to offer something by way of a contribution if you can, whether it’s something else you can do yourself, or by way of pointing them to other resources or people who may be able to help them with what they need.

- A positive sign off – just because you can’t help this time you want to retain the relationship, so it’s worth making the effort to do so. Even if you can’t help you can hope their project goes well and is a success, can’t you? You can also try repeating your thanks for being thought of, or ask to be kept up to date with their progress to show your interest.

6      Managing Communication

Everyone has their preferred communication styles. If you want to be effective match your communication to the needs and preferences of your audience, not your preferred broadcasting style.

Task

You are in charge of washing up services and need to train new recruits in what’s required in the job.

Discuss how you would best train people with the following preferred learning styles:

- Visual?

- Auditory?

- Written?

- Kinaesthetic?

Create a Standard Operating Procedure for the task in a format which will help as many staff as possible understand what’s required in the learning style which best suits them.

Can you always provide everything in the form they prefer? What compromises might you have to make?

Commentary

This is the first page of a Standard Operating Procedure from one of my businesses for washing rubber wads:

On display on the wall above the washing machine it is written by the operators for other operators to follow and has:

- a numbered sequence of steps from start to finish, so it is clear what order things need to be done in, with

- pictures as a visual aid as to what to do,

- clear written descriptions of each step, and

- gives the main reasons and rationale for each step so people can understand both what to do and why it’s required.

7      First Job? Coping with starting work,

your first month survival guide

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.

Do you remember your first day at big school? Well in many ways you’re back there again.

By the end of week two, with piles of work landing on you apparently at random, from people who seem demanding and to 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 all this.

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

Schools or colleges are often 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.

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 short guide is focused on making those crucial first impressions in those critical first few weeks at work.

Think of it as a crash course on a few essentials intended to ensure you get off on the right foot in your first month or so.

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.

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 prescriptive (one financial organisation I’m told issued a formal dress code notice stating in effect ‘no cleavage’) or simply enforced through the cultural norms. So, 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 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).

So, 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. So, 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 training in the area I was working in, so I signed up for a professional training course which eventually gave me my next business qualification.

- Seek feedback – check in with your manager on a regular basis to get their view on how you are doing. Your job is to make them look good, so don’t you want to know if they feel you have?

Share your To Do list with them at the start of each day, is it covering everything they need or is there anything else they want? This helps you ensure you get off on the right track and shows them you are being proactive in planning your work.

Check in with them before you go home to ensure everything’s been covered off that’s needed today.

Show them your notes on a regular basis (that in itself is likely to impress them). Ask them whether they feel things have gone right and whether there’s anything you could have done better?

If there is, then look to make sure you do it next day.

Depending on how formal your workplace is, you might seek a regular feedback session, say on a monthly basis (particularly while you are working towards the end of your probation period). If you can get this agreed pull together a short summary from your notes about what you’ve been doing, what you’ve learnt, and what you see the key tasks and areas for development are for the next month.

In essence this is some of the material a decent appraisal and development system should be requiring on a six-monthly or annual basis for all staff, you are just engaging in the same sort of process on an accelerated basis during your first few months when your need for development is likely to be most acute.

- Participate – your work is a social environment and to be successful you need to understand the culture and build relationships. There is something to learn from each of the people around you, so dive on in and become part of the team.

What’s the coffee making rota? (Probably you as the newbie, but you never know.)

Where do people go for lunch? Go with them and talk to people.

Same again after work if people socialise.

- Work out the social rules, quickly – every workplace will have its own little customs and practises which are the social norms everybody knows, works by and unconsciously expects everybody else to follow. So, if you don’t, because nobody told you or showed you, then people will see you (probably unfairly but there you go) as acting anti-socially.

Just getting a cup of coffee can be a minefield. What’s the fridge and milk etiquette? Do people make a round of hot drinks, or get their own? Do people have their own mugs or is it a free for all? If you’ve used the last of the water in the kettle are you expected to fill it up again? What happens to dirty cups? Are you expected to wash up after yourself, put them in a dishwasher or leave them for a cleaner?

Get this wrong and you’ll be seen as the one who took my mug (and my milk), didn’t make a round of drinks for everyone, left the kettle empty for the next person and left your dirty cups in the sink as a mess for someone else to have to wash up and put away.

- Don’t burnout in month one – the first point on this list was about being in early and staying on while there’s work to do. But this needs to be tempered with looking after yourself, since taken to extremes there’s always more work to do and you could then get sucked into working longer and longer hours.

Unfortunately, in the work environment there’s always more work, and there’ll always be some people who will be happy to let you put in all the hours (even though in the long run this will lead to stress and lower productivity), the only person you can really trust to look out for you, is you.

So, you need to take responsibility for your own work-life balance right from the start.

You need to decide what your boundaries are. You need to ensure that you keep a life outside of work and you need to make sure you work hours you are comfortable with and take the holidays and breaks you need.

The Don’ts

If those are the Dos, then there are also clearly some Don’ts that you want to avoid.

Some of these are obviously the flip side of the Dos. If looking business-like and presentable is a Do, then turning up looking like a slacker or a tramp (in either UK or US meanings) are obviously a no-no.

The other key Don’ts are probably also pretty obvious if you stop to think, the only problem being that sometimes people don’t:

- Getting drunk when socialising – if there are social activities organised at or around work then you ought to be taking advantage of these to meet your colleagues outside the work environment. It can be a great shortcut towards getting to know them and building good relationships. But remember, this is now work and you’re an employee and not a student anymore so don’t let a free bar go to your head.

Enjoy yourself. Yes, you want to get on with people and make a good impression. Fun, good company and sensible is good, beneficial even, given that as you get on in your career socialising is likely to become an ever more important part of it at senior levels (see Chapter 8) and these skills are seen as an asset.

But whether there’s actually a manager there or not, be careful in what you do and how you behave so don’t overdo it, as stories about you will get around and get back to the office quicker than you can ever imagine. An outrageous drunken clown is not an asset, they’re a business liability.

- Gossip/over confide – neither your manager, nor your co-worker are your best friend (certainly not yet anyway).

So, don’t gossip about what you think about other people in the workplace, who you like and who you don’t, or over confide about issues at home. All that’s going to do is lead to trouble as it gets around the grapevine and you don’t want to be seen to be a source of trouble, do you? Thought not.

- Grandstanding your personal views – following on from above, you will probably share a range of views amongst your friends where there’s a degree of consensus or acceptance of differing points of view on anything from politics to football teams. But that’s amongst a self-selecting group of people (as anyone with, say, political views that were completely unacceptable to the rest of the group is, in practise, unlikely to stay a member of that group for long).

But the people you work with aren’t brought together because they like each other’s company and share each other’s outlooks and opinions. They are all there simply because they were hired to do jobs which needed doing, so you need to appreciate:

- there is likely to be a wide range of deeply held views in your workplace, some of which you may fundamentally disagree with; and

- the last thing your employer wants is someone starting arguments with other employees, particularly over non-work-related issues.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying remember you are there to work, not debate or campaign, so park your politics or whatever at the door and don’t bring up contentious subjects at work, certainly not until you have a thorough understanding of the culture, and have established strong and respected relationships that can take the weight of your opinions.

Starting conflict in the workplace is not the way to give your boss what they want.

- Never forget you are now representing your organisation – your employer is hiring you and certain of your attributes to do a job. Your private life is your private life and while it’s up to you how you live it, it’s not unreasonable for your employer to expect that what you make publicly available shouldn’t bring the organisation into disrepute.

This is an area where I’d expect quite a lot of potential conflict to arise in employer/employee relationships, particularly as social norms change. (How many years back would it have been when there could have been concerns about employees coming out as gay, for example?)

However, without getting into a debate about the rights and wrongs of it, the advice simply needs to be, in these days of ubiquitous social media, think very carefully about what image you are conveying. These days what happens in Vegas stays on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram…

- Use social media/gaming at work – your employer is likely to have the old-fashioned idea that they’ve actually hired you to work. So, unless that work is to create a viral social media buzz, then you are not there to chat to your mates, work on your high score, scroll your Facebook feed, download pirated movies, or curate your blog. That’s all personal stuff so keep it for personal time (apart from pirating stuff aka the theft of copyright material that someone has slaved over creating – just don’t do that at all).

Some practicalities

It’s also worth covering some practicalities that should be sorted out in your first few days on the job, and if not you might want to speak to your Human Resources (HR) or Personnel Department to ensure these are organised:

- Employment contract and terms and conditions – you will need to be issued with and sign a written contract of employment specifying the key terms of your employment such as your job title, who you report to, your rate of pay, hours, place of work, and holiday entitlement.

It should also specify the details of any initial probation period so you are clear on the length and review date. You should also make sure you understand as far as possible what your probationary period will be judged on (and if there any formal targets, for example) so you can focus on what you need in order to ensure success at that stage.

- Employee handbook – the employment contract is usually quite a short agreement and it will often include a reference to an employee handbook which is a much larger set of documents, which may be annotated and updated over time. The handbook is where details of the organisation’s policies, rules, codes of conduct, and key employment processes such as appraisal systems, grievance procedures and disciplinary processes are set out.

While almost all organisations have one of these, they vary widely in how it is used and viewed. Broadly the larger and more formally organised the organisation, the more this will be used and referred to as a day to day management tool and so you need to be aware of it and its key provisions.

At the other end of the scale smaller and less formally managed organisations may have compiled one once (or had their solicitors write one when they last updated their employment contracts) but it’s sitting gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere as no one ever looks at it, much less updates it. In which case the advice is probably leave well alone.

- Job specification – as you’ve been hired to do a job, it’s useful if it’s spelled out what that job is as a first step in giving you a fighting chance of understanding it and doing it.

However, please never, ever, think that your job description is the be all and end all of what you are there to do. Think of it as the minimum core of what you must do, and then start looking at what else you can do on top of it.

Never even think, let alone say, That’s not in my job description. No one likes a jobsworth.

- Induction – most organisations of any size should have some form of induction process as a way of bringing new staff on board. The degree of formality will vary enormously and can range from a simple tour and introductory checklists, through to formal training and issuing of copies of mission statements and charters of How we work with each other.

At the very least you should expect briefings on some basics such as Health and Safety policies and procedures and usually IT and security; as well as a process for issuing you with things like a security pass, any IT or PPE (personal protection equipment) you need and so on.

Some organisations have either formal or informal guides where someone is your key point of contact for an initial period with responsibility for showing you round and how things work.

- Occupational health – in some workplaces, particularly those where there are any identified health risks you may need to have health tests. One of my businesses operates metal presses so ear defenders are compulsory on the shop floor and all staff have to have their hearing tested when they join and then again on a regular cycle.

- Skills training – there may be specific skills you need in order to be able to work (when I joined an accountancy firm after university the first two weeks were straight onto a residential course on double entry bookkeeping before I even saw the office), or there may be work specific processes and procedures that you need to learn (Here’s our Standard Operating Procedure for quality checking our widgets).

In either case, you will need to establish what training you are expected to have and how this is being organised.

- Any choices you need to make – your organisation may offer employees a range of benefits as part of their remuneration packages. The range of benefits on offer usually increases as you get more senior, but you may still need to make choices about whether to join a pension scheme, for example, so you need to be clear about this as such benefits will normally be trade-offs against salary.

- Organisation chart – it’s very useful to get a copy of an organisation chart (or organigram) if you can. This is a diagram showing how the organisation is structured and who reports to whom. It will help you see how the part you are working in fits into the whole.

- Expenses policy and process – if you are going into a job which involves travel (such as sales) inevitably you are going to incur expenses for which you will want to be reimbursed. Organisations’ policies will vary, and this is an area which can be very strictly policed, so make sure you understand what is and is not claimable, keep receipts to back up any claims, and know how to fill in and get your claims properly authorised.

Employers have to rely heavily on the honesty and discretion of their employees in respect of expenses, since by definition this type of expenditure often cannot be pre-approved. Employers are therefore very sensitive to any suspicions that their expenses system is being abused. So, filing any claim for dodgy or padded expenses is a very quick way to severely damage your reputation for honesty and get yourself into real trouble. Just don’t do it.

- IT equipment, access, training and support – if you are taking a job which involves use of IT equipment then make sure you know who’s responsible for sourcing this and setting you up, that you have all the passwords you need, training is arranged in any new or specialist software you are going to need to use, and crucially, who do you call for support when it stops working. Write that number down now somewhere you can find it easily.

- IT policies – on a related note ensure you are familiar with your organisation’s policies on use of IT at work, both the organisation’s and your personal devices. This isn’t just about whether you can use your computer to surf the web at lunchtime but it will be about IT security. Being responsible for introducing a virus into your organisation’s IT system because you’ve not complied with rules governing security, and plugged in that old memory stick of yours, or clicked on a dodgy website, could be a severely limiting career move.

These threats are real. Whilst finishing this book one of my businesses suffered a ransom ware attack, which encrypted all our files, meaning we lost a whole week’s transactions and had to do a full restore from our back-up.

- Time recording – many organisations will want you to record your time as this forms part of their process of assessing costs on projects or billing services to clients. So, if you don’t want accounts breathing down your, and worse at this stage, your boss’s neck, about missing timesheets, ensure you understand what you need to do when about recording and reporting your time.

Why have they employed you?

But before we get into more detail in the following chapters about how to manage your working life, it’s not uncommon to develop some nagging doubts during those early weeks and months about whether you can cope, so here’s a couple of things to think about by way of a bit of reassurance.

Remember, they hired you – that’s important

You have been hired. The organisation which has employed you spent time, effort, and cold hard cash, often quite a lot of all three, in looking to find, interview, select and engage someone; and out of all the people who went into the find part of the process (and believe me, there’s likely to have been a lot), they chose you.

So always remember:

- they’ve not hired you for the fun of it, they’ve done so because they have work that needs doing (probably lots of it as you are possibly finding out)

- they have picked you to do it; and

- they (particularly the individuals involved in the recruiting process) are invested in you and you making a go of it.

After all, having spent all that time, effort and money, don’t you think the people who were involved in hiring you are going to want the process to be seen to be successful? If it goes well they’ve got bragging rights about what a good choice they made in you haven’t they? But if you don’t do well, or even leave, then that’s a pain for them; not only might they look bad in front of their colleagues for having got it wrong, but the likelihood is they are going to have to go through the process all over again.

The bottom line? Once you have been hired, whatever it feels like, people will be wanting to make the job work for you so they will be motivated to help and be supportive. All you have to do is manage this the right way.

But what if I don’t know how to do the job?

If this is troubling you as a question it’s worth asking yourself what they hired you for (and spoiler alert), it’s not usually your skills or experience.

There are broadly three things that employers can be looking for in a potential employee and these are:

- Skills – your technical ability at the task.

- Aptitude – your natural ability for the task.

- Attitude – your behaviour towards the task.

A well-used recruitment mantra is Hire for attitude, train for skills.

This reflects a view that your attitude towards the work will be driven by your personality, which is something that will be really hard to change (for more on this see Chapter 3); whereas particular skills can be taught (and for some entry level positions there may be no assumptions about you having any previously acquired technical skills at all).

In some rare cases employers who want to train people in their own particular approach can deliberately look for people with little or no technical skills or prior experience in an area so that they can start with a clean sheet.

Whilst Hire for attitude, train for skills seems a sensible approach, it is however a little simplistic as training someone with aptitude is easier than training someone without.

I personally have the hand-eye coordination of a sack of cement with the athletic physique to match. However much I might want to, be keen to learn and be prepared to put the effort in, my aptitude for developing the skills required to become a world class ping pong player is therefore abysmal. So, if an organisation wanted to hire someone to train for this role, whatever my attitude, I should quite rightly come last on the list of possible candidates.

So, in taking you on your employer will have taken a view on your skills, or even lack of them, and will have decided to hire you taking these into account, usually because they felt your attitude and your aptitude were actually what they were looking for.

And if they are happy about your attitude and aptitude, given that they know what they were looking for in respect of your job, then really, who are you to argue?

The above guide is an extract from Your First Job: How to make a success of starting work and make your first year the launch of a successful career by Mark Blayney.