What do I do when I start a new job?
What do I do when I start a new job?
What do I do when I start a new job?
Starting a new job can be tough for anyone. It’s especially tough for student affairs professionals who are often coming into the position after a very long and drawn out search. But what are you supposed to do when you first stop a new job? Where are your priorities? Who should you speak with? What questions should you ask?
This article will answer all of these questions and more for student affairs professionals who are starting new positions. Demonstrating enthusiasm for this job is covered in this article as well as defining and outlining your responsibilities. Standards and expectations for your work should be established early on. This article will explain how to do so in addition to prioritizing your first orientation meeting with human resources and your manager.
Establishing agency and taking ownership of the position are critical for new student affairs professionals, but so is setting boundaries and definitions for your role. It’s also important to prioritize establishing a professional network and contacts in your new position.
Lastly, this article closes on your personal views on your role and how you can use it as leverage for moving your career forward. Practice and preparation are necessary for excelling in you new student affairs position. This article closes with some action items to undertake when you first start out.
Enthusiasm
It’s important to demonstrate enthusiasm for your new role when you first start out.
However, some student affairs professionals believe that this should be skipped in favor of jumping directly into the responsibilities of the position. That is important, but it’s also critical that you thank and share your appreciation for landing this position to your mentor, references, and colleagues, who helped you get where you are today.
Likewise, reflect on this as a new and humble opportunity for you to make your mark in this position, your career, and the entire institution. This might be a tough sell for yourself if you didn’t land the position in the location, institution, or functional area that you wanted. However, your role provides you the opportunity to make of this position what you’d like; despite whatever title is printed on your business card.
Many student affairs professionals come to the field with enthusiasm. Make this opportunity your first step into exploring and engaging in this larger world.
Responsibilities
One of the first things that you’ll establish when starting a new position are your responsibilities. You should closely examine and stick to the job description shared with you upon hiring. Unless you are a manager or supervisor, your work is the only work that you’re responsible for.
This is important to note because student affairs work tends to grow and get piled onto new professionals at will. That volume of work can be daunting – even for experienced higher education administrators. So make sure to engage and focus on the work that is specifically outlined and detailed in your job description. This is especially true if you are a new student affairs professional.
Don’t assume that the responsibilities of your new environment will be the same as your last one. This is especially important if you’re coming into this role from another position in the field or from a completely different industry. You can best mitigate this by setting aside time to discuss and confirm with your manager both the pace and scope of your work.
Standards and expectations
Likewise, you should also establish the standards and expectations of your workplace whenever starting a new position. The professional dress code is one of the first things considered for individuals working on site. Often this means that what you wore for the interview may or may not be what you’ll wear on a regular basis for the job.
A good rule of thumb here is to take cues from what your other colleagues are wearing / were wearing when you met them. Dressing the same or similar to what they are wearing can help appease some new job jitters. Especially since your first day attire sets your first impression for your colleagues and manager.
Additionally, understanding the work culture is critical for succeeding in this position and in your career. This is where you’ll need to understand and establish the hours of your work as well as any start; break; or end times.
While many of these questions can be answered by human resources; your colleagues; and your manager you’ll also want to spend some time speaking with students. Students can often provide an outside perspective on your job, the office, and your position that is both unique and distinctive compared to professionals who already work in the office.
Orientation & information
New jobs often require that you spend some time with human resources. This is because the institution has a vested interest in getting you started on the right foot. However, sometimes their help can be a hindrance since you’ll often be inundated with information.
This is okay. The process of “on boarding” is one that helps welcome new employees start at the institution and gets them settled into their new position. While information may come flying at you from many different people, places, and directions, know that not all of it is immediately important or relevant as soon as you get it. Instead, spend some time documenting and saving information during the on boarding process so that you can revisit it all at a later date and time.
During your on boarding process you will also want to take advantage of any offered tours of campus; trainings; and networking and introduction opportunities with others at the institution. Such opportunities provide you with the outlet to ask more pointed and incisive questions about your role and how it may impact your workplace as a whole.
Managing your manager
One of the most proactive steps to take is to ask your manager directly what things you can do to prepare prior to starting the work. Often this will include a one-on-one meeting with your manager during the first hours of the first day of your new position. However, don’t be alarmed if this doesn’t occur immediately upon arriving in your new role. If this is the case, then be proactive in finding and sourcing information that you feel will be relevant to starting your new position ahead of meeting with your manager.
If you are working with a more proactive manager, then follow their lead. They may have a schedule for what you may need to do immediately upon starting. Some of this may relate to some of your professional responsibilities. Some of it may relate to on-boarding or other duties.
No matter what your first interaction is with your manager, always seek the answer to this critical question: “How do you like to communicate?” Establishing clear, consistent, and regular communication with your manage can often alleviate some of the stresses associated with starting a new position. Knowing that your manager prefers meeting in person over sending emails will go along way towards ensuring you create a more fruitful and effective relationship.
Likewise, never assume that your manager likes to communicate in the same way as your previous manager. Always establish a baseline for how the communication process will work with your new manager directly and immediately.
Agency and ownership
Taking on a new role is going to be challenging, unnerving, and sometimes exhausting. However, the goal of your first few weeks and months in the position is to take ownership of your new role. You may not always know what you have to do. However, treating this part of your career as a learning process will help you develop perspective on your future and involvement in student affairs.
No one masters a job within the first week weeks of being there. Instead, mastery takes months and years in order to become effective and indispensible in your position. Therefore, patience is one of the most powerful virtues you can have when starting your new position.
It’s often the best course to observe and study the office, organization, and your colleagues when starting a new job. However, always be wary and on the lookout for any unethical or unsafe activities that may occur during your first few days in your new position. Such activities can make your job difficult, dangerous, and contribute to a toxic work environment.
Boundary setting and definition
Boundaries are often hard to set for student affairs professionals as they work closely with students often outside of traditional work hours. Therefore, your first few month in the position serve as a critical testing phase for how you set and enforce boundaries in your life and work.
Remember: you cannot pour from an empty cup. If you don’t take the time to take care of your own personal, physical and mental health then you won’t be prepared to take care of, challenge, and support your students. Therefore, pacing yourself and making sure that you enact a healthy work life balance is paramount to success.
Likewise, also spend time discovering and exploring how your role interacts with other colleagues in the office as well as other departments at the institution. Asking questions early and often helps you ascertain this information within the first few critical weeks of starting a new job.
Higher education is unique in that roles and responsibilities ebb and flow in cadence with the academic year. As such, your role and relationships with others may change as the year progresses. Usually fulfilling one full calendar year in your position provides you with good insight on how your role changes based on the pulse of the institution.
Connections and networking
Making sure that you spend time connecting and networking with other professionals in your job is important as well. While it’s good to have a quiet lunch on your own – it’s also important to also share this critical time with fellow colleagues and coworkers. Doing this helps you forge connections and develop insight into the inner workings of the institution.
Of course each workplace is going to have its own unique social structure. It’s important that you identify what that structure is and how to best navigate it throughout your work in your role. You can best mitigate any negative impact that this social structure has on your position by connecting and learning from other colleagues in informal settings such as lunch and meal times.
Personal view
It’s okay to be scared and anxious going into a new position. Starting a new job is a very difficult and unnerving process to undergo. This I s especially true if this is your first full time position working in student affairs.
One thought that might provide you some valuable perspective is that this position won’t be your last position in student affairs. Look at this opportunity as a stepping stone in your career in order to accomplish something greater. No one expects someone to be in an entry level job forever. So, take solace in the fact that this is one step of many that you’ll take over your career.
Therefore, remember to take your needs into account with the demands of the role. You have much to offer the office, the institution, and the field. Use your new position as an opportunity to make your mark.
However, this doesn’t give your license to start bad work / life habits like staying late and not taking care of yourself. Students look to you for guidance and direction. However, you must look inward first and fulfill your individual needs before helping others.
Practice & Prepare
One of the best ways to assuage your anxiety when staring a new job is to practice and prepare beforehand. This means making sure that you’re on time and ready to go during your first day. Student affairs professionals who must commute to their roles must also take into account schedules and traffic when getting to and from the workplace.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to run a “trial run” between your home and your workplace so that you’ll know where you need to go and what you need to do in order to ensure that you arrive at work on time.
Take time in the days leading up to the job to read and review any materials that were shared with you. This could include on-boarding documents as well as some more significant items such as an employee handbook or other relevant institutional policies.
Also, don’t forget to turn to students for some much needed insight and advice. Speaking to current students about their experiences with the institution, administrators, faculty, and other students can provide some really relevant insight and information in the time leading up to your first day.
Action Items
It often helps to have a list of things to do when you first start a new job. Sometimes this is given to you. Sometimes it’s up to you to create it on your own.
One of the first things that you can add to it is making sure that you have a comfortable and accessible place to work. When working at home, take the time to setup your own home office or workspace with things that you’d need throughout the workday. In the workplace ensure that your equipment (i.e. phone, laptop, computer, etc…) are setup and ready to use.
Ask and examine other colleagues’ workspaces to determine if there is anything that you should inquire about or acquire prior to starting. This could include keys or access to spaces on campus that you are in charge of administering. Knowing how to navigate campus services such as printing, copying, and mailing are also good to know prior to starting your new job.
Finally, remember that there is a lot to do and remember when beginning a new position. No one starts a new job knowing everything. Commit yourself to doing the best that you can when you start in order to ensure a brighter future for tomorrow.
Takeaways
This article reviewed what you should do when you start a new job. Specific focus was placed on enthusiasm and making sure that you are ready to go on the first day. Responsibilities were covered as a means of outlining what you should do and focus on. Standards and expectations are often addressed during the on-boarding and orientation activities of human resources. These topics can also be covered during your first meeting with your manager. It’s important that you establish agency when you first start your job as well as ownership over your core responsibilities.
Student affairs work can be demanding; so it’s important that you also establish and stick to clear boundaries during your first few days. However, getting ahead in the field and in this position requires that you connect with and network with your new colleagues and coworkers. Finally, this article closed on practicing and preparing to start your first position as well as covered an action list for what to do during your first days in the new role.
I hope that you found this article useful! If you need some additional help on your student affairs job search, then check out the eBook The Student Affairs Job Search: A Comprehensive Guide available here.
Happy searching,
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Cite this Article
Eng, D. (2021, May 10). What do I do when I start a new job? Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2021/5/10/what-do-i-do-when-i-start-a-new-job
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