| Topic Name: |
New Grad venturing into Real World |
| Message Name: |
followup . . . to First job response |
| Date Posted: |
05/04/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
1. Be friendly to everyone.
2. Don't get caught up in political BS'ing about how bad others are behind their back. You won't know who has power and who's really an ally with others until your there a while.
3. Find allies that are successful and form loyal friendships with them. If they are stepping on others to get ahead, they won't be a good mentor or friend for you, unless your looking to join a club of vipers.
4. Work hard, but don't take work to seriously and decide to give up your entire life for it, because in the end chances are you'll end up screwed by some jerk of a manager and your life shouldn't be defined by your workplace only.
5. Leave you bad habits at home if possible.
6. Decide on the corporate lifestyle there and dress appropriately. Don't overdress to long as a crutch to offset your lack of knowledge with the job, but dressing up rarely hurt anyone.
7. Decide how many core values of honesty and morality that you have that are not negotiable for MONEY up front. Decide this ahead of time, because there is a GREAT cultural pressure eventually in many workplaces that will reward:
lying, cheating and other forms of deception and theft. These things are not productive overall, but some industries almost thrive on these traits and some people climb ladders by these. If your up front from the start with these values, you'll know what to do ahead of time.
8. Don't be overly honest. In other words, hold your tongue and don't speak out the truth always or even most of the time. You can still be honest and say NOTHING and keep a strong value system (if you choose to live this way) with silence. If there is a lot of lying and "corporate" politics where you are, you can still survive and may not get ahead by "rolling with the punches". This means you aren't necessarily confronting evey lie that you see, but you aren't helping it either.
9., Know when to move on. Once you have enough experience, really look at the career and earnings path there. Decide where you could next go where there's a better more fullfilling job, that pays more, rewards hard work (or your skills) and has room for growth. Don't get stuck in a job to long, but don't jump for empty promises and leave a decent job either.
That's some quick times I can think of for now.
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| Message: |
also I want to clarify a bit on my first two points.
How can one be friendly to everyone and yet not get involved in the "talking behind others backs". Well at times its a balancing act.
I suggest not being "friendly" to the point of joining a club of gossips and joining that club by talking others down. What you might do is chat a bit and disarm that talk a bit with humor or some unrelated comment and move on to work that you have to do. This takes some practice, but some of the nicest people I've worked with could listen to some venom or complaint and put out a joke or some other funny remark that didn't necessarily agree or get into the complain mode, yet left the group chuckling to themselves.
Such humor would be along the lines of a story where something bad happened (elsewhere) or something trivial yet funny. Some people who are without any sense of humor will not be able to take this and these should be avoided as much as possible.
The vipors, who look to hurt and bite and backstab are best left alone and avoided. There are some who you need to avoid.
So in a sense with some climates, you can't be nice to "everyone" but need to avoid some of the more damaging personalities at the office. (This might be labeled, "being invisible" or "flying under the radar") Some people are troublemakers and try to create trouble for you, even as they appear to be your friends.
These can be often spotted because they will cut down others behind their backs and try to be overly friendly to you. Beware they may cut you down, so it's best to avoid those who are overly negative and experts (especially at cutting others down).
These are basic office and job survival skills in my opinion.
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