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What to do the Night Before to Have an Amazing First Day at Your New Job

I’m delighted to share the news with you that I just started a coaching role on the Career Services team at 2U. It’s the perfect next step for me to deepen my industry-specific skillset and increase my impact as a coach.

As I’ve been thinking about how I ensure I hit the ground running and become an all-star at work (because, I mean, who doesn’t want to kick serious ass in their new job?), I came up with some ideas that I wanted to share with you on how to prep the night before to have a killer first day.

Preparing the night before is actually part of the trick. Top performers don’t show up blind to anything — and your first day is a crucial time to make a good impression, start learning the landscape, and understand exactly how your work will make a difference to the company.

Figure Out Your Learning Style.

I can guarantee you that your first days at work are going to be full of learning — like, a “drinking from a firehose” spigot of non-stop information learning. And since you know you’re going to get bombarded with tons of information, you should walk in prepared to absorb and retain as much as humanly possible. So, learn your learning style. Rapid learning is the key to making an impact and a great impression in a new job.

Don’t know how you tend to process information best? Take this test (and don’t mind the slightly spammy-looking website.) Your result will be auditory (like to process via listening and hearing), visual (like to process via seeing), or kinesthetic (like to process by physical motion and “doing”).

If you’re visual, try to get your supervisor to draw things and show flowcharts to demonstrate your comprehension of processes. If you’re auditory, consider bringing a tape recorder with you to capture details to review later. And if you’re kinesthetic, write down every important note or detail you see or hear so you can recall them more quickly later.

Note: very few people are completely and only visual, audio, or kinesthetic leaners. Most people are a blend, with one being your dominant or primary processing style. So, think about how you can combine processing style to really ramp up your retention: take notes as well as repeat back key principles. Draw a mind map of a process.

Figure Out Your Impact in the Organization

The more thought you put into how you from your seat can contribute to the company’s bottom line, the better.

What’s the bottom line? Likely either social impact from services or $$ profit from sales, depending on whether you’re at a nonprofit or a for-profit.

You’ll spend lots of time learning the ins-and-outs of your tasks, but if you don’t connect them to the benefit to the organization, you will hamper your ability to grow and be promoted quickly.

Now, before you start, your ideas about your role’s impact will be hypothetical, and you’ll want to use your first few weeks to vet and confirm whether your assumptions about impact are accurate, or if there are other/different ways you’re contributing to the company’s success.

Don’t be afraid to ask direct questions about how your role ties to the bottom line. The more you ask questions about how to make an impact, the more your supervisors have to articulate the value of your (and their) work…meaning they’re verbalizing exactly how valuable and important you are to the company. Pretty sweet, right?

Wishing you luck on your first day! 

About the Author Lisa Lewis

Lisa is a career change coach helping individuals feeling stuck to find work that fits. She helps people clarify who they are, what they want most, and what a great job for them looks like so they can make their transition as easily as possible. Lisa completed coaching training in Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method, Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions, Kate Swoboda's Courageous Living Coaching Certification, and the World Coaches Institute. In addition to that, she apprenticed with the top career coaches in the country so she can do the best possible work with — and for — you. She's helped more than 500 individuals move into more fulfilling, yummy careers and would be honored to get to serve you next!

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