Start A New Job By Learning The Business Instead Of Making Changes

You’ve just landed a new job and that’s good news! So now you have a few precious weeks to make a great impression, prove your competency, and make sure everyone who hired you agrees they made a good decision to bring you on. One good way is to spend your time learning the business and observing your colleagues before you jump in and start making aggressive changes.

Photo by Korn (Shutterstock).

It’s often said that the best leaders are the ones who jump into a new job and don’t make any changes until they’ve had time to learn how everyone does their job first. It can be difficult to take this kind of time to ramp up, especially in industries where people get hired and are expected to “hit the ground running” or need to make an impact right away — usually by lightening their colleagues’ load. Still, over at Software Advice, writer Jennifer King makes a great case for watching and waiting before trying to shake things up.

You might be eager to start contributing right away and fixing everything wrong you see with the organisation. That intention is good, but tread lightly. As a new hire, you won’t have the historical context about why a policy or process may or may not need fixing.

She brings the point home by citing some career counselors who point out that a new person coming in with guns blazing may wind up suggesting ideas that have been tried (and failed) in the past, or ruffling the feathers of coworkers who will need to help implement those ideas. King suggests your time is better spend taking time to learn how everyone does their job and finding out whether they do what they do because it’s the best way to do it or just the way it’s always been done.

She also suggests you take the time in your first 30 days to be proactive about your onboarding — meet with your manager as often as possible to make sure you’re learning everything you need to and talking to everyone you need to. You’re also better off learning how you’ll be evaluated and what criteria your new manager has for your success than trying to crash the gates and make sweeping changes. There are some more suggestions at the link below, but what do you think? In the last job you landed, were you expected to make changes right away, or would you have alienated yourself if you tried? Let us know in the discussions below.

6 Things New Hires Should Do in the First 30 Days [Software Advice]