Must Read! 6 Things New Graduates Should Do In Their First Job

6 years ago

Must Read! 6 Things New Graduates Should Do In Their First Job

New graduates starting out in their first jobs are filled with energy and fresh perspective on things. They have so much opportunity for progression and growth.

There are so much expectations for them to potentially make a very valuable contribution to their new organization, while their lack of experience combined regrettably often with over-confidence can easily get in their way

Yes, as new graduates , you may have been accepted to your job and you’ve worked hard to get there; but corporate life is a whole different ball game.

Here are some of the most important things that new graduates must always do so as to be successful in their first job:

1. Learn to always ask questions.

The best way to learn is to ask questions, and the first few weeks and months present the perfect opportunity to do so. It’s completely natural that a new hire fresh out of university doesn’t know everything. However, the only way they’ll fill those gaps is by asking. The reasons why new graduates tend not to ask questions include either worrying that they will look stupid, or simply being too arrogant to ask for help when they need it… but it’s much better to bite the bullet now than to risk not knowing later down the line .

2. Always take care of yourself.

Failing to eat well, not doing any exercise and not getting enough sleep will not only have an effect on a young professional’s health but will also reflect poorly on them in the office and their image will likely suffer, as will their performance. Since you are young and full of energy, it’s likely that you are able to more stress, alcohol and less sleep. That fact becomes that as you grow older , all those things would start having effects on you.

3. Look at things from a larger context.

New graduates take their work very seriously, and it can be easy for them to get caught up in their own projects, thinking that this is all that matters. The symptoms of this include harassing other team members to deliver on the specific project, or disregarding broader organizational factors that may have an impact. Understanding the larger context will help you to get the support of other people and make sure that you are not blind to the environment in which you’re operating.

4. Always ask for feedback.

Another way of learning is to ask for feedback. Ideally the manager and possibly senior colleagues should be giving this to a new hire, but that may or may not be the case. They need to be taking responsibility for their own development, asking for feedback on an on-going basis and especially after a big presentation or project. Again, new hires are often either too confident about their own work to ask for feedback, or else ignorant of the fact that they’ll improve faster if they do so.

5. Learn to simplify things.

The simplest solutions are often the best, but new hires tend to get lost in the details. They try to incorporate every possible fact and cover all the different scenarios, producing long PowerPoint decks or paragraphs of text that merely confuse the audience. Learning to filter out the noise, to highlight the key points, and to put those points forward in a clear and succinct way is a skill that comes with experience. If you find yourself getting lost, it’s helpful to talk it through with someone who has that experience, to help you sort through all the data and identify what’s really important.

6. Learn from the successes of others.

The truth is that there are plenty of lessons to be learned from other companies, other brands, other projects. It’s a mistake not to look at these examples and reapply the insights they can learn from them. This will allow them to make better assumptions and more robust decisions than if they’re trying to create everything from scratch.