In this article, we will explore tips for starting a new job: one of the biggest challenges we can face as employees. Routines, friendships, experiences gained in the same position or the same company can make us feel lazy when looking for a new job or when there is no other choice and we have to join a new company we hardly know.
If this happens, it is time to learn new processes and get used to new colleagues, who already have a common history and have built their work methodology based on a company culture they have integrated and you have yet to discover.
If right now, or soon, you are facing the challenge of starting a new job, here are 5 tips that may be useful to ensure the success of your onboarding.
How to get started in a new job
1. Process mindset
No one knows it all on their first day, or the second when starting a new job.
Set short, medium, and long-term goals for your productivity and the way you deal with different responsibilities, tasks, and functions. Don’t try to run before you walk.
Set aside the first phase of a few weeks to settle in, get to know your colleagues, familiarize yourself with your team, and have the overview of your new position fairly clear in your mind. That is to say, to be able to manage a plan that allows you to work in an orderly manner but also according to your capabilities when you arrive in the organization.
2. Listen, observe and be open
It’s what will allow you to integrate well with your colleagues, learn from them and get a feel for the company culture and procedures when you start a new job. You will learn what it’s like to be a new member of the team.
Don’t go into the company trying to impose your views or showing disinterest in the methodology that has been followed in the company up to the moment of your arrival, as you will generate distrust among your colleagues and it will be harder for you to settle in.
When in doubt, a low profile, or at least a discreet one, will help you look good and shouldn’t prevent you from expressing your views as long as you do so respectfully.
3. Be patient with your performance
And with your ability to process information. You have just arrived and lack all the information in the world about how your job is done, what is expected of you, what results you can deliver in the short, medium and long term, who are the people you work with, and how it works, at all levels, in the company you are now part of.
When we have to start in a new job it is good to have a proactive and energetic attitude, but beginners need time to get started and tend to make mistakes, so don’t be too self-demanding.
4. Tolerate your frustration, effort, and boredom
Starting a job, whatever the position, is not easy and often represents a challenge at different levels. As we have just arrived and are not yet very clear about the who’s who and what’s what of every issue, we tend to make mistakes more often than we would like or to go slower than what (we think) is expected of us.
Other times the first days mainly consist of reading, skimming, reviewing, and taking notes but performing few heavy tasks until we have become familiar enough with the theory.
This is necessary but, let’s face it, very tedious. Other times, however, we are released in front of the lions as soon as we arrive and we start right away. Starting a new job requires tolerance with our responses and pace.
5. Enjoy the journey of starting a new job
You’ll eventually get somewhere, so don’t worry. But, while you’re getting there, many things can come up that will be very useful both to further your experience as an employee and to increase your maturity as a worker.
Unless the beginning is getting too demanding and the stress of starting a new job is getting the better of you, think that the first days in a new company are an important but not eternal moment. Before you know it you will have woven your first alliances and bonds, you will have established your work routines, you will have got the hang of your new schedule, e-mail, desk, and office. The days when everything was new and unknown will have become a handful of anecdotes in your memory.
Make the most of the beginnings and let the company you work for now also “take advantage” of your freshness and your lack of acquired vices. Learn as much as you can and don’t worry: for better or worse, seniority always comes and you will enjoy it when it’s your turn.
Get support from the beginning
Ifeel has created an emotional well-being program for companies, designed by its team of professional psychologists, which helps companies put the care of their employees’ psychological well-being at the heart of their company culture, from the moment they first contact the company and join the team until the end of their employee journey.
Thanks to this partnership, HR managers can receive personalized, data-driven advice on how to take care of human capital, including those people who are in the middle of their onboarding process and need special attention, following some of the tips for starting a new job. Therefore, workers’ mental health is supported while maintaining good conditions for maximum productivity.
Additionally, ifeel‘s emotional well-being program for companies offers employees a mental health care service structured at different levels according to their needs. They can access different mental health care tools with ifeel‘s app. They can also receive emotional support through a chat with one of the licensed psychologists on our platform. If additional help is needed, they can access the third level of the program: online psychological therapy with a psychologist who specializes in cases such as theirs.
Get in touch today and request more information about how our emotional well-being program for companies can help you, your team, and your organization.
