18 Ways to Impress a New Employer
It can take four to 14 months to find the right job... and fewer than 90 days to lose it. According to executive coach Linda Seale, most professional and managerial dismissals are due to failure to understand and fit into a company’s culture.
It is during these first weeks on the job that your boss and colleagues form the most lasting impressions about you. But remember, they don’t expect you to be perfect. As long as you show intelligence, versatility and a willingness to work and learn, people will be happy to have you aboard and rooting for you to succeed.
Here are 18 ways to make sure you get off on the right foot:
1. Take a break. Take a week’s break between jobs to clear your head. At the very least, get a good night’s sleep before your first day so you’ll be at your best.
2. Check your interview notes. Recall the names and titles of everyone you met and interviewed with so you will be able to greet them and pronounce their names correctly.
3. Study up. Collect back issues of the company’s newsletters, annual reports and press clippings. Check out your competitors’ literature, too, to get a better handle on the "big picture."
4. Work full days. Know where and when to report on day one. Get there 30 minutes early and leave when or after most of your co–workers do. Notice people’s schedules and work habits, so that you’ll know the optimal times and means to connect with others.
5. Project positive energy. Look and act as if you’re happy to be joining the team.
6. Look good. All eyes are on you, so pay attention to your grooming. Dress tastefully and slightly above dress code.
7. Keep a journal. Write down procedures, names of key people and contact numbers, so that you’ll look like a quick study.
8. Be flexible. Expect and embrace the inevitable challenges of your position. A flexible attitude will decrease stress for you and others.
9. Show appreciation. Be kind and appreciative to everyone who helps you learn the ropes.
10. Listen 80 percent; Talk 20 percent. Resist offering opinions or assessments –– that road is full of land mines. You’ll get more respect by listening and absorbing what your co–workers have to teach rather than by showing off how much you know.
11. Get to know your boss. Observe your boss’ personality and work style, and tailor your interactions to his or her preferences.
12. Clarify expectations. Make sure you and your boss are on the same page. Find out:
o What priorities and issues need to be immediately addressed.
o How often and in what format you should provide project updates.
o How your performance will be evaluated.
13. Connect with colleagues. Get to know as many people as you can especially your teammates and those with whom you will work regularly. Establish the foundation for a relationship, and trust and information will follow.
14. Identify key players. Find out who the decision–makers, influencers, stars and up–and–comers are. Notice the traits they have in common and try to emulate them.
15. Uncover hidden agendas. Identify any political forces at work. While you want to avoid getting involved in politically charged situations, it’s helpful to be aware of undercurrents.
16. Take initiative. As you finish assignments and are ready to handle a bigger workload, ask for more. Pick projects that have support from upper management and buy–in from your staff.
17. Don’t make major changes. Even if your interviewer told you the company was looking for fresh ideas, proceed carefully. Show respect for those who have invested energy in a project or system before trying to change it. There may be obstacles you aren’t aware of. Ask why things are done the way they are and seek feedback from people whose support you need. Applaud what is being done right and frame changes as enhancements.
18. Be a team player. Don’t engage in gossip. Always make your boss look good. Share credit with your workmates.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
How to ask your boss to work flextime?
How to ask your boss to work flextime
By Anne Fisher www.cnnmoney.com
Dear Annie: I hope you and your readers have some suggestions for me, because I'm just about at the end of my rope. My 89-year-old mother, who has what her doctor calls "moderate" Alzheimer's disease, came to live with us a few months ago and needs constant supervision. We are lucky enough to have a licensed practical nurse who comes in on weekdays to be with her, but the nurse leaves at 3 p.m., which is right around the time my two teenaged kids get home from school. They've been great about pitching in, but I don't feel it's fair to ask them to give up extracurricular activities in order to keep an eye on my mom. The long and short of it is I really would like to be able to work from home in the late afternoons and early evenings.
The problem is my company expects everyone to be at his or her desk from 9 to 5 (or later), no exceptions. With the technology we have now, I could work more flexible hours without any problem, but my boss says there is no policy allowing this and that it would be "disruptive" to the office routine. How can I convince him otherwise? -Frazzled
Responds from Anne Fisher:
You surmise correctly that many other people share this dilemma, or a similar one. According to a raft of recent surveys, the so-called sandwich generation -- made up of people like you who are trying to care for children and parents at the same time -- is under more pressure than ever these days, partly due to ever-lengthening workdays brought on by the recession.
A whopping 89% of Americans say that balancing work and the rest of life is a problem, and more than a third (38%) say it has gotten worse because of the economic downturn, according to a new poll by research firm StrategyOne (www.strategyone.net).
More than 80% of Baby Boomers ages 45 to 54 are experiencing "high levels of stress" from juggling responsibilities at work and at home, says another survey, this one by the Hartford Financial Services Group and consulting firm ComPsych. Nearly half (46.6%) said that they were worried about how care giving is affecting their job performance.
The good news here is that many employers are aware of the struggle: About one-third of employees that responded to a recent global workforce study by the human resources consulting firm Towers Watson said that they were permitted to work from home either full-time or part-time, and an additional 50% said that they have the green light to do so "occasionally."
Moreover, new research by a nonprofit called WorldatWork suggests that -- partly in hopes of keeping their best people from quitting when hiring finally picks up again -- employers are showing more interest in offering their workers help with work-life balance, including flextime.
Elder care programs in particular are on the rise. Jamie Ladge, a management and organizational development professor at Northeastern University in Boston, notes that about 33% of large employers in the U.S. now offer elder care assistance of some kind, up from about 15% just 10 years ago.
By Anne Fisher www.cnnmoney.com
Dear Annie: I hope you and your readers have some suggestions for me, because I'm just about at the end of my rope. My 89-year-old mother, who has what her doctor calls "moderate" Alzheimer's disease, came to live with us a few months ago and needs constant supervision. We are lucky enough to have a licensed practical nurse who comes in on weekdays to be with her, but the nurse leaves at 3 p.m., which is right around the time my two teenaged kids get home from school. They've been great about pitching in, but I don't feel it's fair to ask them to give up extracurricular activities in order to keep an eye on my mom. The long and short of it is I really would like to be able to work from home in the late afternoons and early evenings.
The problem is my company expects everyone to be at his or her desk from 9 to 5 (or later), no exceptions. With the technology we have now, I could work more flexible hours without any problem, but my boss says there is no policy allowing this and that it would be "disruptive" to the office routine. How can I convince him otherwise? -Frazzled
Responds from Anne Fisher:
You surmise correctly that many other people share this dilemma, or a similar one. According to a raft of recent surveys, the so-called sandwich generation -- made up of people like you who are trying to care for children and parents at the same time -- is under more pressure than ever these days, partly due to ever-lengthening workdays brought on by the recession.
A whopping 89% of Americans say that balancing work and the rest of life is a problem, and more than a third (38%) say it has gotten worse because of the economic downturn, according to a new poll by research firm StrategyOne (www.strategyone.net).
More than 80% of Baby Boomers ages 45 to 54 are experiencing "high levels of stress" from juggling responsibilities at work and at home, says another survey, this one by the Hartford Financial Services Group and consulting firm ComPsych. Nearly half (46.6%) said that they were worried about how care giving is affecting their job performance.
The good news here is that many employers are aware of the struggle: About one-third of employees that responded to a recent global workforce study by the human resources consulting firm Towers Watson said that they were permitted to work from home either full-time or part-time, and an additional 50% said that they have the green light to do so "occasionally."
Moreover, new research by a nonprofit called WorldatWork suggests that -- partly in hopes of keeping their best people from quitting when hiring finally picks up again -- employers are showing more interest in offering their workers help with work-life balance, including flextime.
Elder care programs in particular are on the rise. Jamie Ladge, a management and organizational development professor at Northeastern University in Boston, notes that about 33% of large employers in the U.S. now offer elder care assistance of some kind, up from about 15% just 10 years ago.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
How Are We Going to Put Americans Back to Work?
How Are We Going to Put Americans Back to Work?
By James P. Pinkerton
Published September 13, 2010
OK, nearly one ten American workers is unemployed. The jobless rate, to be exact, is 9.6 percent; that’s the highest level in 27 years. Indeed, if unemployment stays above nine percent for another four months, that will mean the longest spell of nine-percent-plus unemployment since 1941. President Obama’s much touted “recovery summer,” in other words, seems destined to join “prosperity is just around the corner” in the forlorn annals of misplaced presidential optimism.
So how will we put America back to work? Where will the new jobs come from? Those are serious questions in America today. After all, whenever corporate outsourcers hear the words, “good jobs at good wages,” they ask themselves: Could those good jobs be done for “bad wages” overseas?
Let’s review three categories of jobs for the 21st century, and see how they stack up--because one day, we’re going to have a president who is serious about reducing unemployment.
The first category is “green jobs”-- you know, the jobs touted by Obama and his ex-aide, Van Jones. We don’t hear so much from Jones anymore, but as the president himself said in June 2010, “The transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs.” Well, sure it does--the potential is there, even if the reality is much trickier. After all, it was this administration that made it possible for 79 percent of “stimulus” money for wind-energy projects to end up overseas, employing foreigners. OK, that was 2009. Could we say that perhaps the Obama administration has learned anything since about funding domestic jobs--as opposed to foreign jobs?
Well, not really. As The Washington Post reports, some 200 workers at the GE lightbulb factory in Winchester, Va., are losing their jobs, thanks to Green legislation.
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How so? Back in 2007, one of the first actions of the newly elected Democratic Congress was to pass requirements effectively prohibiting the familiar incandescent light bulb by 2014, in favor of the new energy-saving compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. But as The Post put it, the legislation had “unintended consequences, because the new bulbs could be made cheaper in China: “Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.” Oops. And yet of course, it never seems to have occurred to the Obama administration, nor Congress, to change the 2007 law. “Green” by itself, it would seem, is much more important to top Democrats than “green jobs.”
As one Winchester plant worker told The Post, “Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon. . . . We’ve been sold out.” Even more perversely, the CFL bulbs are dangerous. As Scientific American magazine--not in any way a right-wing publication--explains, the mercury inside the fragile bulbs is “highly toxic . . . especially harmful to the brains of both fetuses and children.” So we can also see that “green” is also more important than “health.”
So now we can see the full idiocy of the new policy: Uncle Sam passed a rule shutting down American factories, so that we can spend good money importing billions of little “hazmat” globes from China. And the Obamans see nothing wrong with this picture.
But if Democrats are kidding themselves--and us--about the reality of “green jobs,” others are also in denial about future sources of employment. Let’s take high-tech as a second possible source. We might consider this headline in The New York Times: “Once a Dynamo, the Tech Sector Is Slow to Hire.” Uh oh.
For years, both parties have put their emphasis on high-tech jobs in cool industries such as information technology (IT). Yes, it’s fun to think about Google and Apple, but in reality, they are small fish, employment-wise. Google might be a $150 billion company, but it has just 20,000 employees, while the vast bulk of Apple employees--in the form of contractors, held at arm’s length from America (and from the EPA, OSHA, unions, etc.)--are over in China.
As The Times notes, high tech profits have been “soaring,” and yet those same companies have been “slow to hire, a sign of just how difficult it will be to address persistently high joblessness.” Indeed, domestic employment in such IT fields as data processing and software publishing has actually fallen. As The Times explains, the issue is offshoring and outsourcing to countries that not only pay lower wages but also might have superior skills: “Emerging economies have been harvesting their long-term investments in math and science education and attracting high-tech firms...to their shores.” Obviously it’s important, as a matter of national strategy, not to give up on high-tech computing jobs, but since the U.S. workforce is expanding by 1.5 million or so every year, we have to consider all possible avenues for pumping up employment.
So if not green jobs, and if maybe not IT, what’s left, job-wise? A third promising area is health care. Health care jobs are labor-intensive, few of them can be outsourced, and their number will naturally expand as the population ages; senior citizens, now 12 percent of the population, will be 19 percent of the population in just two decades. So job growth in the health care sector is inevitable--unless, as we might add, the government does something drastic to crimp it.
As Fortune magazine notes, “The number of registered nurses is expected to swell to 3.2 million by 2018, accounting for approximately 581,500 new jobs. . . . That's up from 2.6 million today, and it represents the largest overall growth projection out of all occupations in the U.S. economy.” Sounds pretty good.
But wait--the Obamans do indeed want to do something drastic to crimp health care, and thus to crimp health care employment: They want to shrink that sector, too. As the president said back in July 2009, he had two goals for Obamacare: To cover everybody and to reduce costs: “My bottom lines will remain: Does this bill cover all Americans? Does it drive down costs both in the public sector and the private sector?”
But how can that be? How can the health care sector be shrunk, even as demand is expanding?
Answer: It can’t. It won’t happen. The Obamans might wish to apply their British National Health Service-admiring, ration-everything, small-is-beautiful approach to yours and my health and medicine, but after the November elections, they won’t have the power to do it.
Indeed, the reality of the upward march of health care costs is obvious: As the headline in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal: “Health Outlays Still Seen Rising.” So much for all the those Obamacare promises about “bending the curve” downward on health care costs. Continued cost-escalation might be bad from a fiscal point of view, but it’s good from an employment point of view, to say nothing of a health care point of view.
Right now, Americans agree, creating jobs and restarting the economy is a higher priority than reducing the deficit and debt. And people always care about their health, and the health of their loved ones, which is why, say, Medicare rarely takes so much as a nick.
Of course, some might argue that the real goal should be to deliver cures, not just health care, so that we can save money and have a healthier population. But let’s not hope for too much, all at once. First we have to get the Obama administration to stop poisoning us in the name of green jobs, and then we have to stop kidding ourselves about the millions of new jobs to be found in IT. We’ve dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole, here, and it will take a while to dig ourselves out. And as we have seen, one place to start is health care.
By James P. Pinkerton
Published September 13, 2010
OK, nearly one ten American workers is unemployed. The jobless rate, to be exact, is 9.6 percent; that’s the highest level in 27 years. Indeed, if unemployment stays above nine percent for another four months, that will mean the longest spell of nine-percent-plus unemployment since 1941. President Obama’s much touted “recovery summer,” in other words, seems destined to join “prosperity is just around the corner” in the forlorn annals of misplaced presidential optimism.
So how will we put America back to work? Where will the new jobs come from? Those are serious questions in America today. After all, whenever corporate outsourcers hear the words, “good jobs at good wages,” they ask themselves: Could those good jobs be done for “bad wages” overseas?
Let’s review three categories of jobs for the 21st century, and see how they stack up--because one day, we’re going to have a president who is serious about reducing unemployment.
The first category is “green jobs”-- you know, the jobs touted by Obama and his ex-aide, Van Jones. We don’t hear so much from Jones anymore, but as the president himself said in June 2010, “The transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs.” Well, sure it does--the potential is there, even if the reality is much trickier. After all, it was this administration that made it possible for 79 percent of “stimulus” money for wind-energy projects to end up overseas, employing foreigners. OK, that was 2009. Could we say that perhaps the Obama administration has learned anything since about funding domestic jobs--as opposed to foreign jobs?
Well, not really. As The Washington Post reports, some 200 workers at the GE lightbulb factory in Winchester, Va., are losing their jobs, thanks to Green legislation.
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Ten Worst Places to Live
President Changes Tune on Health-Care Costs
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Filling your car's tires with nitrogen not worth the added cost
How so? Back in 2007, one of the first actions of the newly elected Democratic Congress was to pass requirements effectively prohibiting the familiar incandescent light bulb by 2014, in favor of the new energy-saving compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. But as The Post put it, the legislation had “unintended consequences, because the new bulbs could be made cheaper in China: “Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.” Oops. And yet of course, it never seems to have occurred to the Obama administration, nor Congress, to change the 2007 law. “Green” by itself, it would seem, is much more important to top Democrats than “green jobs.”
As one Winchester plant worker told The Post, “Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon. . . . We’ve been sold out.” Even more perversely, the CFL bulbs are dangerous. As Scientific American magazine--not in any way a right-wing publication--explains, the mercury inside the fragile bulbs is “highly toxic . . . especially harmful to the brains of both fetuses and children.” So we can also see that “green” is also more important than “health.”
So now we can see the full idiocy of the new policy: Uncle Sam passed a rule shutting down American factories, so that we can spend good money importing billions of little “hazmat” globes from China. And the Obamans see nothing wrong with this picture.
But if Democrats are kidding themselves--and us--about the reality of “green jobs,” others are also in denial about future sources of employment. Let’s take high-tech as a second possible source. We might consider this headline in The New York Times: “Once a Dynamo, the Tech Sector Is Slow to Hire.” Uh oh.
For years, both parties have put their emphasis on high-tech jobs in cool industries such as information technology (IT). Yes, it’s fun to think about Google and Apple, but in reality, they are small fish, employment-wise. Google might be a $150 billion company, but it has just 20,000 employees, while the vast bulk of Apple employees--in the form of contractors, held at arm’s length from America (and from the EPA, OSHA, unions, etc.)--are over in China.
As The Times notes, high tech profits have been “soaring,” and yet those same companies have been “slow to hire, a sign of just how difficult it will be to address persistently high joblessness.” Indeed, domestic employment in such IT fields as data processing and software publishing has actually fallen. As The Times explains, the issue is offshoring and outsourcing to countries that not only pay lower wages but also might have superior skills: “Emerging economies have been harvesting their long-term investments in math and science education and attracting high-tech firms...to their shores.” Obviously it’s important, as a matter of national strategy, not to give up on high-tech computing jobs, but since the U.S. workforce is expanding by 1.5 million or so every year, we have to consider all possible avenues for pumping up employment.
So if not green jobs, and if maybe not IT, what’s left, job-wise? A third promising area is health care. Health care jobs are labor-intensive, few of them can be outsourced, and their number will naturally expand as the population ages; senior citizens, now 12 percent of the population, will be 19 percent of the population in just two decades. So job growth in the health care sector is inevitable--unless, as we might add, the government does something drastic to crimp it.
As Fortune magazine notes, “The number of registered nurses is expected to swell to 3.2 million by 2018, accounting for approximately 581,500 new jobs. . . . That's up from 2.6 million today, and it represents the largest overall growth projection out of all occupations in the U.S. economy.” Sounds pretty good.
But wait--the Obamans do indeed want to do something drastic to crimp health care, and thus to crimp health care employment: They want to shrink that sector, too. As the president said back in July 2009, he had two goals for Obamacare: To cover everybody and to reduce costs: “My bottom lines will remain: Does this bill cover all Americans? Does it drive down costs both in the public sector and the private sector?”
But how can that be? How can the health care sector be shrunk, even as demand is expanding?
Answer: It can’t. It won’t happen. The Obamans might wish to apply their British National Health Service-admiring, ration-everything, small-is-beautiful approach to yours and my health and medicine, but after the November elections, they won’t have the power to do it.
Indeed, the reality of the upward march of health care costs is obvious: As the headline in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal: “Health Outlays Still Seen Rising.” So much for all the those Obamacare promises about “bending the curve” downward on health care costs. Continued cost-escalation might be bad from a fiscal point of view, but it’s good from an employment point of view, to say nothing of a health care point of view.
Right now, Americans agree, creating jobs and restarting the economy is a higher priority than reducing the deficit and debt. And people always care about their health, and the health of their loved ones, which is why, say, Medicare rarely takes so much as a nick.
Of course, some might argue that the real goal should be to deliver cures, not just health care, so that we can save money and have a healthier population. But let’s not hope for too much, all at once. First we have to get the Obama administration to stop poisoning us in the name of green jobs, and then we have to stop kidding ourselves about the millions of new jobs to be found in IT. We’ve dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole, here, and it will take a while to dig ourselves out. And as we have seen, one place to start is health care.
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