Real-World Advice Over Eager New Employees Will Be Put In Their Place - And Other Helpful Tips For The Uninitiated
There are things about the world of work that you just don’t learn in school.
“A lot of things,” said Mark Williams, whose field is energy management in commercial buildings.
And people skills are high on his list. “You just can’t assume that someone will intuitively understand the nuances of dealing with others,” he said.
David Ritter, a home mortgage specialist, agreed. There’s a simple reason people say there is no substitute for experience, he said. They say it because, often, it’s true.
Which is not to imply that all rookies are dense or annoying. It’s just that, well, we all live and learn.
The real-world specifics vary, from person to person and from job to job. Getting clued in that nobody wants to hear excuses might be the big realization for one newcomer to the work force. Someone else might be surprised by the extent to which personalities can outweigh productivity in determining workplace pecking orders.
But these eye-openers aren’t some deep, dark secrets. All you’ve got to do is ask around.
Basing his observations on years in the trenches, Spokane advertising executive Ed Clark has a list of tips for newcomers to the world of making a living:
Don’t be late.
Don’t debate everything. (Just do what you’re supposed to do.)
Always be courteous to everybody, not just to peers and higher-ups.
Be interested in your business.
Think again if your view of good grammar’s importance is that “It don’t matter.” It does.
Remember that customers and clients make your job possible.
If you work for someone, support him or her - don’t back-stab or gossip about that person.
Of course, the list of lessons is endless.
Ed Knoles, a logger who lives in Priest River, Idaho, is 40. But he can still remember when he first went to work in the woods. “It was sort of an awakening,” he said. “I had to come to the realization that no matter how bad the weather, I still had to go out there.”
Steve Cozzetto, whose business sells laundry equipment, came out of college with a civil engineering degree. But he soon discovered that he preferred the people-contact aspect of sales to purely technical work.
Greg Gulliford owns a sign and banner business in Spokane. He learned that it is a mistake to assume people will automatically recognize his right to take a lunch break or have a day off.
Sandy Singh, a massage therapist, described one of the first things she learned about the paying customer’s expectations this way: “Some people expect miracles.”
Sometimes people start work and only then realize they never took a class in an area that suddenly looms large.
“You need to know how to write, how to put a letter together,” said Dave Nelson, a landscape architect.
Some say the big thing is to not act like a know-it-all. And there are those who contend that the key to surviving in the office environment is to never let anyone else know you can fix the photocopier.
Still others suggest that one of the most common mistakes fresh-out-of-school types make is failing to learn how an organization really operates before proposing some reinvention of the wheel.
When you’re brand new, you don’t always know what sorts of approaches to problem-solving usually work and which don’t. So the line between brilliant/innovative and “We tried that before and it almost sank us” can be thin.
And a rookie’s vow to steer totally clear of office politics, while perhaps well-intentioned, can be naive, according to some observers of the workplace.
Take Pamella Luders, for example. She used to be a locomotive mechanic, a job she described as being pretty straightforward. Today she is a white-collar contract coordinator at Washington Water Power. And in order to do her job, which she enjoys, she had to learn through trial and error how to play company politics.
That’s neither good nor bad, she said. It’s just the way things are. “It’s just part of doing your job,” she said.
Her tips for successfully navigating those choppy waters?
“Be honest and consistent,” said Luders. “And don’t surprise people. Nobody likes to be blind-sided. So give people a heads-up, and they’ll return the favor.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by A. Heitner
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