Ensuring New Job Success

Learn Your Environment

Starting a new job is a great opportunity to absorb everything around you. Even if you held the same job at a similar company for 10 years, your new job will be different. Begin each day at your new job with an open mind ready to learn everything you can—and start with the office politics.

“You want to make sure you understand the power structure as quickly as possible,” says Sunny Bates, president and CEO of Sunny Bates Associates, an executive search firm, and author of How to Earn What You’re Worth: Leveraging Your Goals and Talents to Land Your Dream Job. “Try to be Switzerland. Listen to everyone, be pleasant and you’ll quickly be able to pull together the structure.”

Your greatest allies here are your co-workers. Go ahead and chat them up. Setting up informal meetings for lunch or coffee is a good way to get started. Understand what each person does and where he or she sits in the overall company structure. And, don’t forget to use your co-workers as a resource and find out the other key people you should meet.

“From day one, begin building 360-degree relationships. You want people to be saying ‘that was a good hire. She really fits in here,’” says Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D. Frankel is president of Corporate Coaching International, a firm specializing in executive coaching and organizational development, and author of numerous job-success books, including See Jane Lead: 99 Ways for Women to Take Charge at Work and Stop Sabotaging Your Career: 8 Proven Strategies to Succeed—in Spite of Yourself. “Ask lots of questions related to how things are done in the company. Don’t assume how you did it in your last job is how you will do it here.”

It’s also important to get some insight from people who have worked for the company for a long time. They will have some great insights into the politics of your new office. This helped Jennifer Neilsson, who recently landed her dream job at a top-notch law firm in Boston as an associate in the tax-and-benefits group. “Both of my legal assistants have been with the firm for a long time,” she says. “It was helpful to come to them with a sense of humility because they really do know more about life at the firm than I do, even if I may know more about the tax code.”