By : Brian D Lawrence
Your first year in the Corporate World can be challenging and exciting. This article focuses on four guiding principles that I use on a daily basis.
My background:
I started working in the corporate world as an intern in 2002. I had a 6 month internship (co-op). After my 6 month period was over I was asked to continue working on a part time basis. I then spent a lovely 2 years or so working mornings while attending school in the afternoon and nights. Before graduating in 2005 I had already received a job offer. Over the years I have had several different positions and worked in several different areas. From IT lab administration, software technical feasibility prototyping, demo extensive development, production code development, unit test framework & automation development to technical project management. My role now is a Scrum Master.
Through-out my time in the corporate world, I have consistently relied on these principles. This has also led to other opportunities such as participating in elite corporate training programs, participating in several management/leader trainings, to taking part in the launch of two different employee-run organizations. These principles are as follows:
Trust is Key
Earn your managers trust immediately.
Do this by getting assignments done before they are due. Ideally your manager will learn to have a fire & forget mentality. They give you task and forget about it because they know it will be done.
Earn your peers/team members trust.
You need to be known as the person that gets the job done. Do not ever say, It is NOT my job. That type of thinking will leads to failure. It IS your job, if you do not know how to solve the problem, find someone who does.
Attitude Is Everything
I have had interns work for me in the past and the interns that make the long lasting impression, the ones who get that position before they graduate are the ones that have that winning, passionate attitude.
If you take interviews as an example. The people who leave an impression on me during an interview are the ones that have that twinkle in their eye. If I have a choice between two people, both have relatively the same skill set, the person who has the passion will always get the job. In certain cases, it is possible that the person with weaker skill set will beat someone with better skill set if there passion and attitude sells them.
Gary Vaynerchuk often speaks about attitude and passion. A great quote from his book Crush It is: "Skills are cheap, Passion is priceless."
Involvement is Essential
The reality is that it is not WHAT you know, it is WHO you know. Networking is extremely important.
Get involved with as many employee run organizations or niche focused organizations as you can. Attend as many educational lunch & learns or networking events as you possibly can fit into your schedule. These types of activities will often give you more ROI than you can imagine.
Think back to high school, it was those people who were involved in extra curricular activities that generally got into a better school and received the scholarships. The same is true in the working world, the more you get involved the better.
Involvement also adds that extra moral booster to your day. Even if you have the best job in the world and you absolutely love what you do.. everyone needs something more to keep that boost going.
Learn or Lose
A quote from Donald Trump's book Think Like a Champion is: "I learn something new every day".
That must be your approach. Make this a habit, stop watching just one hour of television and instead learn. Read a self help book, read blogs related to your domain, spent that hour learning something that you can use to benefit yourself or your work.
Learn from your mistakes. It is said that Benjamin Franklin failed 10,000 times before he finally had one of his greatest successes in his life, the invention of the light bulb.
Look at a failure as an opportunity to learn. How can you do it better the next time.
Some other good habits to get into is performing a monthly SWOT analysis of yourself every month.
A monthly retrospective is also helpful. Look back on your month, what went well for you that month? What didn't go so well? Identify some action items that you can use to continuously improve your performance.
Remember TAIL
Trust is Key
Attitude is Everything
Involvement is Essential
Learn or Lose
Job Vacancy , Indonesia Job , Job Indonesia
Your first year in the Corporate World can be challenging and exciting. This article focuses on four guiding principles that I use on a daily basis.
My background:
I started working in the corporate world as an intern in 2002. I had a 6 month internship (co-op). After my 6 month period was over I was asked to continue working on a part time basis. I then spent a lovely 2 years or so working mornings while attending school in the afternoon and nights. Before graduating in 2005 I had already received a job offer. Over the years I have had several different positions and worked in several different areas. From IT lab administration, software technical feasibility prototyping, demo extensive development, production code development, unit test framework & automation development to technical project management. My role now is a Scrum Master.
Through-out my time in the corporate world, I have consistently relied on these principles. This has also led to other opportunities such as participating in elite corporate training programs, participating in several management/leader trainings, to taking part in the launch of two different employee-run organizations. These principles are as follows:
Trust is Key
Earn your managers trust immediately.
Do this by getting assignments done before they are due. Ideally your manager will learn to have a fire & forget mentality. They give you task and forget about it because they know it will be done.
Earn your peers/team members trust.
You need to be known as the person that gets the job done. Do not ever say, It is NOT my job. That type of thinking will leads to failure. It IS your job, if you do not know how to solve the problem, find someone who does.
Attitude Is Everything
I have had interns work for me in the past and the interns that make the long lasting impression, the ones who get that position before they graduate are the ones that have that winning, passionate attitude.
If you take interviews as an example. The people who leave an impression on me during an interview are the ones that have that twinkle in their eye. If I have a choice between two people, both have relatively the same skill set, the person who has the passion will always get the job. In certain cases, it is possible that the person with weaker skill set will beat someone with better skill set if there passion and attitude sells them.
Gary Vaynerchuk often speaks about attitude and passion. A great quote from his book Crush It is: "Skills are cheap, Passion is priceless."
Involvement is Essential
The reality is that it is not WHAT you know, it is WHO you know. Networking is extremely important.
Get involved with as many employee run organizations or niche focused organizations as you can. Attend as many educational lunch & learns or networking events as you possibly can fit into your schedule. These types of activities will often give you more ROI than you can imagine.
Think back to high school, it was those people who were involved in extra curricular activities that generally got into a better school and received the scholarships. The same is true in the working world, the more you get involved the better.
Involvement also adds that extra moral booster to your day. Even if you have the best job in the world and you absolutely love what you do.. everyone needs something more to keep that boost going.
Learn or Lose
A quote from Donald Trump's book Think Like a Champion is: "I learn something new every day".
That must be your approach. Make this a habit, stop watching just one hour of television and instead learn. Read a self help book, read blogs related to your domain, spent that hour learning something that you can use to benefit yourself or your work.
Learn from your mistakes. It is said that Benjamin Franklin failed 10,000 times before he finally had one of his greatest successes in his life, the invention of the light bulb.
Look at a failure as an opportunity to learn. How can you do it better the next time.
Some other good habits to get into is performing a monthly SWOT analysis of yourself every month.
A monthly retrospective is also helpful. Look back on your month, what went well for you that month? What didn't go so well? Identify some action items that you can use to continuously improve your performance.
Remember TAIL
Trust is Key
Attitude is Everything
Involvement is Essential
Learn or Lose
Job Vacancy , Indonesia Job , Job Indonesia
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