First Month On The Job: 10 Things You Shouldn’t Do

Starting a new job can be stressful. On the one hand, you have to learn the ropes and adapt to an unfamiliar work culture; on the other, you strive to make a good impression with your colleagues and bosses. It can be tough trying to balance being an eager learner and being likeable as a co-worker.

Every action or move you make has a consequence, especially when you are new. In the quest to fit in, try to steer clear from the following ten things you should not do in your first month at work.

1. Being Late For Work

When you’re trying to make a good impression with the bosses and co-workers, it all starts from the first hours of the working day. Being late never sits well with people in the office. That’s why you should always factor in the extra time you might need in case of a traffic jam, an item accidentally left at home, parking woes, or at least until you are familiar with the route (an its alternatives) to the office. This way, you can turn up early for work when your travels are smooth and when you get into unforeseen circumstances, you can still make it to work on time.

2. Being Arrogant Or Cocky

Even if you hold a high position in your new job or wish to exert certain influence on your subordinates or peers, the first few months on your job isn’t the right time to appear bossy. Take the time to learn and understand the work processes and culture of the new working environment, while giving your co-workers and subordinates to warm up to you. Besides, you will need this crucial and limited amount of time to figure out the norms of this office before implementing an appropriate management or work style you find suitable in the organization.

3. Posting About Work On Social Networking Sites

In this modern age, information spreads very easily, and yours could spread fairly quickly, and usually without you knowing about it. When you’re at one of the more critical stages of your job, such information could make or break your career. There will always be differences in the working cultures and acceptable norms between the new working environment and the previous working environment. Refrain from posting any comments, positive or negative, on any of your social networking sites for fear of having the wrong person catch whiff of it.

4. Holding Your Silence And Feigning Ignorant

As the new person at your new workplace, you get more leeway when it comes to making silly mistakes or asking ‘stupid questions’. You are expected to rummage around in the dark for a bit before you can find your way out of the chaos. So, go ahead and ask your colleagues even the most basic of questions, e.g. how to use the Photostat machine. Making assumptions about how things work is always a risk, even if you already know how certain things work. There may be other procedures you need to complete first before moving on to the task ahead. Clear your doubts as you get to them to prevent them accumulating. People are not as helpful when they expect you to already know your way around the office.

5. Getting Involved In Gossip

Gossip is frowned upon in the workplace for good reasons: they carry incomplete, or sometimes completely wrong, information, also known as rumors. Gossip-peddlers sometimes spread these bits of info with personal agendas, which almost always implicate company morale, relationships across the office and vertically up the corporate ladder. One common characteristic of gossip and rumours are that they are hard to control. We’ll never know how or when the simplest of a bit of rumor could escalate into something totally uncontrollable. Refrain from joining the rumour-monger crew before you become a victim yourself.

6. Being Judgmental Or Close-Minded

Every organization has its own issues and bottom-necks that may appear to be trivial or preposterous to you when you first learn of it. The solution may seem rather straightforward, and you may wonder out loud why no one is doing anything about it. Well, one common reason is that people are generally averse to change, so they would rather stick with their old, conservative methods out of sheer comfort.

Pointing out their erroneous thinking or stupidity is the best way to get you noticed — and detested.

Also, the problems in your new company may be more than meets the eyes. You have yet to see the big picture of things in the organization and hence fail to take into account the office politics, culture and other work processes before you jump into that conclusion that the system is flawed, but with reason. Therefore, being a newbie withhold your judgments and understand everything better before you jump the gun and crusade for change.

7. Taking Sides

In any kind of environment, you’ll discover that there will be cliques or groups that move together, think together, and ‘play together’. Such is the core of office politics that exists in pretty much every workplace you could ever find yourself in. ‘Representatives’ from one of those parties may try to befriend you and offer to orientate you in the office. On the outside they may be nice and friendly but soon enough you will find that they come with ulterior motives. They are recruiting.

Take sides with certain co-workers is fine, if you find that their values, ethics, working styles etc align with yours. It will be a risk nonetheless; taking sides means drawing up an invisible boundary, which makes asking favors from the other groups or cliques more difficult. This would seriously reduce the opportunities for you to learn as much as you can from as many people as you can find. The best way forward is to gather as much as you can from all of those groups but stay neutral and objective

8. Working The Floor Like A Casanova

When you are new to the job, people have the tendency to judge you based on the kind of behaviors you show at the initial stage. Making the move on your co-workers during your probationary month may not be helpful with your ‘report card’, especially if someone already has an eye on your target first. You can be charming, or smooth, but be respectful to the ladies, don’t be too stuck up with the men, and try not to be so aggressive with start-up relationships. Focus on making a good impression with the people who decides if you can keep your job first. There will be time for office romances if you think you are up to it later on.

9. Spoiling The ‘Market’

I know most of you would be trying to impress your new bosses and colleagues, showcasing your skills, and exhibiting your passion and commitment to the organization’s vision. However, sometimes it’s best to just go with the norm. If you go the extra mile for every task that you do, you set the precedence that will be expected of for the other employees; this ‘upsets the market’, so to speak. It’s best to not overdo things. Withhold your enthusiasm enough to not be seen as a threat but show enough to be a keeper.

10. Reveal Too Much About Yourself

Don’t judge a book by its cover. As the new person in the workplace, you have no idea who you can trust until you spend more time mingling around. This means that it is not advisable for you to reveal too much about yourself no matter how likable or sociable your colleagues may be. You never know if he or she may use that information against you. Information is fodder for gossip. Nevertheless, be friendly and polite to everyone.

Keep an open mind and avoid being judgmental when it comes to people you’ve just met. Some people take a longer time to warm up to you, so don’t take it personally when they appear distant at first. Have casual conversations with them. In time, you’ll see who’s trustworthy enough for you to share more about yourself, your strategies and your future plans.

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Top 5 Reasons You Never Hear Back After Applying For A Job

People often wonder why they never hear anything back after they hit ‘send’ on the email with a resume attached or on the on-line job application. If you’re very lucky, you might have a preliminary email exchange with a recruiter and then never hear from them again. It’s a depressing experience, and one which also casts a shadow on the hiring company’s reputation. So why does it happen? Is it you, is it them, or is it just something every candidate must prepare for in the hiring process?

There’s no question job seekers face an uphill climb. High unemployment nationally means more competition for every position; according to a January 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks “… attracted 7.6 million job applicants over the past 12 months for about 65,000 corporate and retail job openings…”

An oft-cited recruiter’s complaint is that as many as 50 percent of people applying for a given job simply aren’t qualified. Adding to the challenge, most large companies-= and many smaller ones – use talent-management software to screen resumes, weeding out up to 50 percent of applicants before a human even looks at a resume or cover letter. The deck is definitely stacked against the job seeker. So how do you break through?

Here are my top 5 reasons you’re not hearing back after applying for a job, with five suggestions for ways to avoid the Resume Black Hole.

Why You Never Hear Back:

1.     You really aren’t qualified. If a job description specifies a software developer with 3-5 years of experience and you’re a recent graduate with one internship, it’s unlikely you’ll get a call. Avoid disappointment – don’t apply for jobs for which you lack qualifications. Most job descriptions are written with very specific requirements. Yes, the company is trying to find the most qualified candidate; yes, they are trying to weed people out. It’s not personal, it’s business.

2.     You haven’t keyword-optimized your resume or application. Job descriptions are salted with keywords specific to the skills or attributes the company seeks in applicants. A close read of the job description is a necessity, as is keyword-optimizing your resume and cover letter, if you’re using one, or email. If the job description lists words in a certain order, e.g. a list of programming languages required, use the same order in your resume.

3.     Your resume isn’t formatted properly. You might think distinctive formatting will set your resume apart, but automated programs don’t care if a document is pretty. Help a machine out. Be consistent in formatting – consider using separate lines for former employer, job title, and years worked.

4.     Your resume is substantially different from your online profile. LinkedIn, Dice and other online profile sites can be useful tools, so it‘s important to make sure they match what’s on your resume. This may seem to be a contradiction – in #1 I advised keyword optimization – but it’s really common sense. Jobs worked, employers, years on the job and other details should match. The subtext here is always “telling the truth”.

5.     The company received 500 resumes for one job posting, and yours was 499^th in. Looking for a job is a job. Do your research – know which companies you want to work for, organizations where you sense culture fit. Every morning scour the job postings and jump on anything for which you’re qualified (and in which you’re interested.) Being early with your resume or application does matter. Check back often in the first few days to make sure the listing hasn’t changed. Often a company will post a job and halfway through the process change the description.

It’s hard to game the system. Your best bet is still a personal referral, and even that may not be enough to get a call. A guy I know gave his resume to a woman who worked at a company where a good job had been posted. He received an automated email noting his resume had been received but never heard another word. After a month he asked his friend to check with the recruiter. It turned out the job description had changed, but the recruiter never bothered to let the referring employee – or the applicant – know. This isn’t unusual, unfortunately. So what can you do?

How You Can Get Noticed:

1.     Research interesting companies on social media. Find out who the recruiters are and follow them. Many will tweet new postings, so watch their streams and jump on anything for which you are qualified. And if they tweet news saying the company’s had a great quarter, retweet the news with a positive comment.

2.     Consider starting a blog in your area of interest or expertise. It’s a social world; time to build a trail of breadcrumbs leading to you. Include the blog, and links to any especially relevant posts, in your emails to recruiters with whom you’re working.

3.     Get professional help with your resume. Either a resume writer or an SEO expert can help you increase your odds of getting through the talent management software. If you can’t afford this step, read the top career blogs for advice.

4.     If at all possible, don’t wait until you’re out of work to find your next job. I realize for many people this isn’t possible or might even be offensive, but your chances of finding the next job are best when you’re still employed.

5.     Network. Old advice, but still true. Be visible, be upbeat, be informed about industry trends and news in your area of expertise.

Finding a job is tough, no question. I’ve talked to other recruiters who say they only respond to 30 percent of applicants. The odds are good you’ll be in the 60+ percent who hears nothing a lot of the time. Don’t take it personally – it’s not a rejection of you, it’s a reflection of the times. If you don’t hear back, know you’re not alone.

Lost Your Creativity? Find out Why!

8 Reasons Why You Have Lost Your Creativity

In a fast paced innovative world where attention spans are shrinking by the minute, we are becoming more and more ‘under the pump’ to think and be creative. We tend to hit a block and stay frustrated and impatient in hopes of a creative flow to come our way again.

This article may help you to regain your creativity and able to pin point your vice and get the creative juices pumping out again.

Why You Have Lost Your Creativity

1.    You Grew Up!

All young kids have creative ideas. They make up imaginary playmates, play with dolls and action figures, bake cookies in imaginary ovens, solve imaginary mysteries when they play detective with the other kids in the neighborhood, they sing songs they make up, they dance in free form, and when they draw pictures it doesn’t matter that horses aren’t purple in real life.

Somewhere along the way, we become more rational, even jaded sometimes, about the world. Those few among us who stay creative as adults often exhibit a child-like spirit. If you walk into the office of creative types like graphic artists, website designers, engineers, and programmers, it is very likely that you find toys around. Think about Google, a company known for hiring creative individuals. They turn their their workspace into a playground of sorts with large shiny slides to carry you in kid-like fashion from one floor to the next and they have bean bags for chairs in some of their boardrooms.

2.    Your Need To ‘Make Money’ May Have Put Your Creative Side

 

As we near adulthood, our parents, teachers, school counsellors, and even our peers start talking to us about the practical side of life. Our parents might say, “You need to have a way to support yourself.” Our guidance counsellors may steer us toward a certain college degree program or specialized training program because it pays well and we have an aptitude for it, not because we enjoy it. Our need to make money and take care of ourselves often squelches our creative side.

Those young adults who rebel and become musicians and artists may hear things like, “When are you going to get a real job?” even if they are working 60 hours a week! If you follow these same people into their thirties and forties, most of the time you’ll find that they finally give in too and go and get a “real job” to support themselves and their family.

3.    Pharmaceuticals Are Zapping Our Creativity

 

According to the United States Centers For Disease and Prevention (CDC), more than 5.2 million children are diagnosed each year with attention deficient disorder (ADD). These kids tend to be harder to manage in the classroom so schools and doctors have been pushing Ritalin, a pharmaceutical that calms them down and also zaps their creativity! In fact, according to the CDC, as many as 70 percent of all children in some areas are given Ritalin.

Creativity altering and behavior modifying pharmaceuticals are also given to those individuals who are considered bi-polar, manic, or depressed. Then there are those individuals who have Asperger’s Syndrome or so called “personality disorders” who are given pharmaceuticals that crush creativity too. Some of the most famous creative individuals that have ever lived are thought to have had Asperger’s Syndrome, bouts of depression, mania, ADD, and bi-polarism. Think what we would have lost if Mozart or Van Gogh would have been given pharmaceuticals to subdue their creativity!

4.    You May Not Be Getting Enough Sleep or the Right Kind Of Sleep

 

When we sleep, there are two basic phases: REM sleep and deep sleep. REM sleep is a light form of sleep named after the fact that we often have “rapid eye movements” during REM sleep. It takes about a hour and a half to move out of REM sleep into deep sleep. Deep sleep is when our brains sort out and catalog all the information we have taken in during the day. If we don’t get enough of this type of sleep, we lose our ability to be creative and imaginative.

5.    You May Be Vegging Out In Front Of the TV Too Much

 

There is a famous TV viewing experiment conducted by Herbert Krugman dating back to 1969. Herbert found that in less than one minute of TV viewing, our dominant brain waves switch from beta waves to alpha waves. It puts us in a vegetative state where our conscious mind goes on autopilot. While this can be good in small quantities to relieve stress, most Americans are watching on average more hours of TV than any other country.

Too much TV stifles creativity.

6.    You May Be Just Too Darn Tired!

In our modern day society, we are on the go all the time. We are racing the clock trying to get our work done, get to meetings, fit in time with the kids and our spouse so we don’t feel guilty, and generally we sacrifice sleep to make more hours in the waking day. Over time, this raises our cortisol levels and puts us in a chronic state of stress and anxiety which depletes our energy.

Under these circumstances, most people find it very difficult to even think about being creative.

7.    May be you haven’t got any opportunity

You may wonder, but yes! Maybe you have not got any opportunity to prove yourself. This may be the reason that the creativity has been dumped from your mind. Even many of us now days are into wrong jobs but unlikely continuing for many reasons. This will definitely lead into being idle in the work which may stop your creative thinking.

8.    Standardized Tests, Stereotyping, and One Correct Answer

 

Our educational systems, including K-12 and advanced matriculation, have by and large resorted to standardized tests. These tests have one right answer. In school and college, we are given multiple choice tests designed to have one right answer. We are given true and false tests where we have to pick one or the other with no room for exceptions or creative thinking. The images and common examples used are stereotyped. Even as older adults, we have to take driver’s license tests and other tests that have only one correct answer for each question.

We have created a society that is taught from a young age to zero in on one way of thinking about each issue and topic. This squelches creative ideas.

 

Important Lessons from Mark Zukerberg

Important Lessons from Mark Zukerberg

You don’t get to 600 million friends without doing something spectacular. Mark Zuckerberg knows this more than anyone. But I wonder: do we have any hope of achieving similar success?

Facebook’s story begins, like most businesses, with a single idea and an ambitious person that executes it. Zuckerberg wasn’t a world-class genius, and Facebook was hardly a revolutionary idea. Yet here we stand: Facebook is one of the most valuable websites on the Internet, Zuckerberg is one of the world’s youngest billionaires, and MySpace… let’s not pick on them.

There wasn’t any magic, fate, or destiny at play here — anyone could’ve been in Zuckerberg’s position. However, just because anyone on this planet has the potential to achieve success, doesn’t mean that anyone else actually will.

There are factors at play: things like leadership, experience, timing, funding, and execution play their roles. But some things will always stand out above the rest, and many of the factors that really make a difference will never be taught at an ordinary business school. So let’s steal a few pages from Mark Zuckerberg’s school of business.

Lesson 1: Be passionate about what you do

If there is any way to create something that hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people will eventually use on a daily basis, you better be sure to create something that you would have passion and dedication in creating.

The aforementioned isn’t exactly a revelation to anyone, but if you are not genuinely interested in what you are creating, why would anyone else be? They wouldn’t. It’s a serious problem for many entrepreneurs of both young and old.

Lately we have seen entrepreneurs creating this businesses that some have little interest in actually investing their heart and soul into. Some of these startups look great on paper, but, in the end, the whole intention is to quickly flip these businesses to a company that has plenty of cash on hand. The investors, founders, and, if they’re lucky, employees get rich and everyone goes out for drinks to celebrate. If this is the measure of success, it is no wonder why we hear so much discussion about a potential tech bubble.

Mark Zuckerberg, however, is one of the most prominent examples in recent history of someone who has the passion. Not only did he care about his project, but he also turned down billions of dollars in order to let his company thrive. Turning away billions of dollars, and the opportunity to never have to work again, can’t be that difficult. Can it?

But the reality is that you, me, everyone needs to be reminded every once in a while that having a dedication and passion for what we do in life is key to happiness.

Lesson 2: Constant evaluation

There are generally two types of people in business: those who prefer to play it by gut instinct and those who analyze every little measurable detail. Both have their pros and cons; having a mix of both couldn’t hurt. Generally a person gravitates towards one or the other.

Mark Zuckerberg is the analyzer.

Zuckerberg always insisted that his employees create powerful analytics dashboards. Their purpose was simple: allow him and fellow employees to gauge the interest in newly released features to coordinate their global domination. While other companies were still figuring out which advertisements could be placed at which spot and generate the most return, Facebook focused on optimizing the performance of the user experience. He wanted to know which features worked and which did not.

Those who can gather enough data to garner an understanding of their users, while also being able to determine which features work and which do not, will ultimately be in a better position to achieve success.

The takeaway: do anything in your power (within reason, of course) to find ways to measure success and failure across the board, but don’t get so caught up in the data that you are unwilling to explore new avenues.

Lesson 3: Be willing to experiment

In Facebook’s infancy, its founder preferred to push out enhancements and never look back. This is, admittedly, easy to do when you have a few thousand users; they expect things to change at a rapid clip. But Facebook was different. People relied on Facebook in more ways than most other websites — it was a service that connected people to each other. At this point, failure is unacceptable.

Still, Zuckerberg preferred the gung ho method of development. He would regularly introduce new features — adding the “Wall,” introducing chat functionality, allowing third-party development, and changing the site’s layout (which I have had numerous complaints about before).

One has to admire the company’s insistence on pushing out features in a world where critical services tend to iterate slowly and safely (think Microsoft Windows). This insured that Facebook was a step ahead of the competition while also appearing innovative amidst growing competition.

Sure, there were those who didn’t appreciate these drastic changes (especially those dealing with privacy settings and layout), but when you have a vision, sometimes it pays to put in the extra effort and take the risk; explore it through to the end.

Lesson 4: Be aware of opportunity

Before Facebook, there was CourseMatch, an application that allowed students at Harvard University to compare their course selections for that semester. With this, Zuckerberg indulged students’ desires to know which classes their friends were joining. He exploited an opportunity.

Facemash was a similar expereince. It was Harvard’s Hot or Not for students. These students were interested in knowing where they stood socially — in some ways, we all do. And Zuckerberg, once again, saw an opportunity to exploit this as well.

Facebook was simply a culmination of all these previous opportunities into a single useful package.

It isn’t magic. But it does require looking at things in a different way — to see things for what they could be, as opposed to only what they have been or currently are. Zuckerberg’s ability to notice these opportunities and execute on them gave him the edge in creating and maintaining products that people believed in.

Opportunity exists everywhere — especially with the Internet, where the ability to reach millions is easier than ever. Perhaps there is so much opportunity out there that, perhaps, we have become ignorant to spot the most obvious of opportunities. But being able to spot opportunity is an invaluable skill.

Lesson 5: Make something useful

Facebook isn’t simply another interesting website to visit every once in a while. It is a tool that millions of people use to connect to each other. People use it for sharing experiences and creating new ones. Most importantly, Facebook does something that no other website has been able to do as efficiently, effectively, and with such impressive scale: it creates a virtual environment to interact with your real friends.

I don’t think it is necessary for me to explain how useful something like this is; the 600 million plus members does that well enough. Yet it is this usefulness that makes the company a success. It is a recurring theme that all successful companies build upon. It is also something that many startups don’t seem to comprehend.

If you want the best business advice out there, here it is: create something useful.

Explaining what makes a product or service useful is simple: it is something that people are using repeatedly and on a regular basis. Make something that you and others could use on a regular basis, and make this thing unique. If you do this, along with everything else mentioned here, you will have an opportunity to create and maintain a successful business.

And who knows? Maybe you will be the one creating the next Facebook killer.