First Impressions, Last Impressions: Making A Mark In The First Few Days

This post is part of a bi-monthly series bought to you by Ayushi Mona for InsideIIM called 'Headstart'. This is the fourth post in the early career series. Read the third post here. Making the first impression is hard for anyone starting out. For one, you may still have a theoretical view carried over from academia. For another, you may feel underconfident in making a mark when you are just 'learning' and trying to feel your way through. Alternatively, organizations have great expectations from new joiners, who they expect to be very hungry and go all guns out blazing. Hence, inevitably the organization is disappointed because they find highly educated folk entitled but not competent, and the freshers/early career professionals are confused because they are exposed to the stars and not ground reality. This gap may be hard for an absolute fresher to fulfill with no experience. However, for those with internships, projects, previous job experiences, and exposures under their belt, the first 100 days can be a great way to ace their experience. A lot of people take it easy in their first few days believing that their only job is to learn and imbibe and they do not know enough. The urge to make a difference and drive organizational goals is something that you should try to build into your mindset from Day 1! So here's a list of recommendations:

1. Create a 3-month plan with your manager in the first week itself. If it is only operational or only strategic or the manager discourages you to not be driven so early in the game - it gives you a very good view into how things run at the company. Your first 3 months should help you know everything there is to know. Understand how will your success be measured in the first few months. It may not be achieving the annual sales target in one shot. But what metric (performance ideally, behaviorally as a bonus) will get your manager and skip manager to say, "this was a good investment."
2. Meet as many people as possible! Try and get introduced by email - sent out by your manager to all stakeholders. Set up 1-1s. A lot of people detest the small talk that comes with moving to a new place yet it is the glue that binds professional experiences. Try and gauge what all stakeholders want to understand about you, and make notes to see if you can go back and add value to them in a few weeks/months. Then follow through on that!
3. Waiting for things to come to you, waiting to be trained, waiting for clarity, and for your job to be told to you. Welcome to the knowledge economy - irrespective of where you work and what you do, the tendency is to always have things dumbed down and made easier for you. Yet, anecdotally all the best people I know are the ones who were thrown in the deep end, learned on the job, and came swimming through. Walk up to people, read policies, connect, learn things, talk to customers. Don't wait for things. Make them happen or figure out where they exist in the system if they have happened.
4. Be conscious of the reputation you build in the first few days because that will carry - if you appear underconfident just because you are clueless it will become the perception (however unfair that is).
5. ALWAYS UNDERSTAND WHY THINGS ARE DONE THE WAY THEY ARE BEFORE YOU RECOMMEND CHANGES. Google 'Chesterton's fence' to understand the mental model behind this. A friend who works at Google told me that there are so many smart people in her team over the years that most iterations have been tried and not implemented due to certain reasons. In large organizations, small changes have massive second-order effects so coming in with a critical approach without knowing the back story helps no one.
6. Even if you did something in way X at your past company. That may not be applicable to your current way Y at your current company. The best process from your last job might not be the right process in your current job. Definitely bring in learnings (without compromising on secrecy and employee contracts) but don't throw around brands. Many people get one good internship or job and never get over it.
7. Only work at functional and processes in your first few months, never culture. Don't suddenly try to introduce Friday beer nights in a culture where they have never done it before because it was a cool way to brainstorm at your previous job.
8. Mass emails are a struggle and you don't know where they exist in the system but try to get added to Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook Workplace, intranet, distribution lists, generic emails - all of it. A communication overload is just the blessing you need.
9. Formats, brand guidelines, internal guidelines, approval guidelines. make sure you understand this. If you are a Product manager, understand how documentation is done. If you are a recruiting manager, understand policies. If you are a Marketing manager, crosscheck guidelines. Small, mid, or large organizations - you should know the rules even if everyone around you is least interested in rules!
10. Always understand the working priorities and culture of the team. Understand team and stakeholder culture. An escalation email can be absolutely normal in a customer excellence role but a big issue in the human resource function.

Hope this post helped you out. Watch out for the 5th article in the Headstart series on 15th March. Share these posts and leave feedback, requests, and suggestions in the comments below! Connect with me on LinkedIn here. Disclaimers: All views expressed are personal. All information copyright with author. Protected under Creative Commons.

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Recommended Reading For You:

• All Your Tomorrows Begin Today - An MBA Alumna's Advice For You
• Work, Worship & Other Myths Of The Corporate Temple | Part 2
• People, Relationships & Workplace Truths | Part 3