10 Takeaways From Your First Job Experience

When you pass out of engineering, it is a great moment to have spent 4 years of college life with classes, friends, professors and a lot of peer pressure. Some of it does continue in your first job, after college, while some practices don’t as you emotionally and physically mature for the next stage of your life. Here are a few pointers that you can pick up, while waiting to join your first company

a)      Paying Attention to Orientation- The Orientation sessions that are conducted by the Human resources team are very important to know the company’s structure, meet some of the company’s top management and understand what are the key attributes of being a successful person in that company. These sessions help you understand the levels in your company and how they reward success. You need to sharply observe people and the company’s attitude towards work and enjoyment. This session is similar to understanding the environment and the boundaries of enjoyment.

b)      Respecting Opinion- Throughout our engineering career, I am sure all of us have engaged in debated or got involved in conversations where we tend to get biased based on emotions. At work, your primary objective is to analyse, what it takes to get the job done, rather than emotionally get involved in a discussion and meander around the topic. The corporate world requires some focus and clarity to succeed This is your first step to succeeding, which is possible solely by respecting the opinion of your colleagues and creating a healthy environment for discussions leading to a solution

c)       First Impression-Best Impression- This adage holds good in the corporate world, where if you are working for an employer that employs many people, its tough to get noticed. So in the limited oppurtunities that one gets, we need to be at our best to get noticed and grow up in our careers. Make sure that Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility never strikes you at work. Its easy doing a job for the first, second and third time. By the time you do the task for the 23^rd time, you may feel bored and may not have the same enthusiasm levels as you had when you did the first task. So you need to maintain the same energy throughout to be a standout performer.

d)      Set Goals and Focus on the Right Things- When we set foot into a company, we start focusing on a bunch of things that are non core activties. At work, you should define goals for your tasks with the objective of getting better at the task, and slowly growing in terms of the value you add to the company by doing these tasks.

e)      The Growth Path- When you get assigned to a task, start asking questions to the the people who assigned you on the task. Your objective should be on knowing who is impacted by the work you do. Lets say you write software to build an application for a railway booking system, you need to know what would happen if your module fails and how it affects the overall system. That will help you ascertain how you can add value to your project and subsequently your company.Your inquisitive nature on wanting to know things will be of great help to your boss, who is looking at a person to fall in his shoes and lead.

f)        Meet the Stakeholders- There is nothing more exciting than connecting with the stakeholders or top management in your company. If you feel something is amiss, make it a point to connect with the required business leader and let him know of the problem. That way your visibility with the business leader is high and at the same time your image is that of someone who cares to make a difference to the way work should be done.

g)      Never Spread Negative Energy at Work-  If you can manage to alienate professional and personal commitments, that is half the job done. Never mix both these priorities as this will affect your equanimity and composure required to complete the task in the most optimum manner. So this also means never use personal email, phone calls to distract yourself from work, as it sends the wrong vibes to your co workers who are trying to put in their best to create a compelling product/service.

h)      The Ear Processor- Your Ear is the gateway to information coming in, so be very careful of how you process what comes in. Make it a point to have office conversations and gossips hover around your ear, but never get in. Make sure you are sharp when someone talks, so that you are able to do full justice to listening to a person’s complete view, before passing over your comments. That will earn the respect of your peers as you would be someone who is intent on understanding technology and somebody who maturely listens to all sides in a conversation before passing a judgement.

i)        Communication- Unfortunately Business Communication is one of the least focused subjects during our education. This is an area that differentiates between talent and smarter talent. To succeed in the corporate world, one important trait is the power to communicate.

a.       Communicating on email- Do make sure you read email etiquette policy before you start sending emails

b.       When you communicate with a person from a different nationality, make sure you understand cultural sensitivities between both the countries, so that both parties are at ease.

c.       Communicating business requirements or technical requirements will be the majority of your work, so you need to ask yourself these things before you communicate with your colleague

                                                              i.      What is it that is required to be done?

                                                            ii.        What are the amount of resources required to get this done?

                                                          iii.       What are the timelines I have to work?

                                                           iv.       Who are the people I am to work with?

                                                             v.       What is the strategy I need to adopt to get the job done?

j)        Get Yourself a Nice Hobby and Develop Your Personality at Work- Somebody rightly said “ All Work and No Play makes Jack a dull boy”. If you just concentrated on work, and had no hobbies to pursue, then you are creating stress points within your system, which could cause health problems later on. Its good to have a hobby that you can mingle your office work with and showcase yourself better.

a.       I have managed the quiz committee of my office, where I prepare weekly questions on a domain which makes people get to know facts that they earlier didn’t know and makes work sound so much like fun.

b.       I have managed to create communities within office where we cheer together during cricket matches. Now that the Champions League is about to start, me and my colleagues prepared a small Video to show how much we support the RCB. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEuUffP06Ho) . I got to know some people who are incredibly talented and with whom working is a pleasure and a high source of positive vibes.

So those were some tidbits from my experience working in corporate India. It would be a pleasure to listen to any queries or doubts that your may have with regards to readying yourself for your first job.

Kartik Kannan is an alumnus of the Great Lakes Institute of Management, and works as a Product Manager for an e-commerce firm in Chennai. Kartik's chief hobbies include making videos on youtube(www.youtube.com/katchu21) and doing un-reserved train journeys that helps him connect to people.

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