How to Start a New Job The Right Way

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Finding and getting a new job/role or joining a new company is an exciting opportunity. But how can you be sure to start right and ensure that you can exceed expectations, and how can you as a manager ensure that your new hire is set up for success?  

As someone who has coached and advised hundreds of employees seeking new jobs, and managers onboarding new employees, this is a question I get often, especially now amidst all of the people who are making job and career transitions. 

From my experience, people who fail or succeed, do so not because of what they do, but because of what they choose not to do – most people understand that to succeed, you need to get off to the right foot, but how do you know what to focus on and what to prioritize, especially when it seems like there is so much to learn and do?

I’ve been studying this question for years, and after talking with hundreds of hiring managers and employees, I’ve come up with 8 lessons that any new job seeker or hiring manager can use to onboard and accelerate impact and performance in starting a new job, along with some ways to put these lessons into action, so you can succeed quickly in a new role.

Lesson 1: Define Your Role

Many new employees want to succeed and want to jump into delivering value. But before you can take action, you must understand what you are working towards. Understanding what your projects, responsibilities, tasks, and outputs are for the role and job, as well as expectations for how you will be measured and evaluated is the first step to success.

Lesson 2: Build a Small Amount of The Right Relationships

Inevitably, you will want to build relationships with key people in the organization. But meeting people for the sake of meeting people takes a lot of time and effort. This is all about taking time to focus on building relationships with the right people. Taking time to build trust, credibility and rapport with your most important colleagues and teammates in the company, and focusing your efforts and time on those people, to start. 

Lesson 3: Immerse Yourself in The Company Culture

You got to know the company culture in the interview process by listening to what people said, and told you about the culture. Now that you work here, this is about learning not only what is said, but how things get done, what behaviors get rewarded, and what actions people take. This lesson is all about learning about the values, behaviors, and actions that are championed, rewarded and respected within the company. It’s also about watching how rituals, and communications are done in the company, and identifying the specific individuals who embody (and are rewarded and respected) for exhibiting those behaviors and actions.

Lesson 4: Understand How The Organization Works

It normally doesn’t take too much effort to figure out who the formal leaders are within the organization. But how do you find the informal leaders, the people who have influence, how decisions are made, and the key metrics and KPIs that people optimize for? Taking the time to learn how the organization “works” is focused on these key activities. 

Lesson 5: Learn About Performance Management

Each company has their own approach to the performance management lifecycle, and set of activities, requirements, processes, and standards for managing their talent and people. Your job is to get a definitive understanding for how the performance management, performance evaluation, and promotion processes work and the responsibilities that you have in these processes. 

Lesson 6: Develop Your Personal Brand

As a new employee, you have an opportunity to introduce who you are, what you do, and how you make an impact to all your new teammates and colleagues. To do this effectively, it requires you having a keen sense of what that is, and how it resonates within the new company. Making sure that you understand the key teams and stakeholders as well as how you can talk about yourself and what you want to be known for is a critical element of setting yourself up for opportunities and success in a new environment.

Lesson 7: Articulate Your Communication Style

Companies and teams have their own communication preferences and methods. Your job is to understand your own unique communication style, the communication style of others, and how you can effectively communicate within a diverse team and organization.

Lesson 8: Manage Your Career

Each new job is a chance to learn, grow, and work toward your career goals. One of the best times to work on this growth is when you start in a new role. This is all about proactively defining and articulating your own career goals and aspirations for the role, and then collaborating and communicating with your manager to work on these goals over time.

How to Put This Into Action

  • Review the Lessons: Review each of the onboarding lessons, and determine which ones are relevant for your role
  • Review with your manager and peers: Review this document with your manager and peers, and determine which ones are relevant based on their feedback
  • Turn Lessons into Action: Identify the actions you can try to implement what you learned from the lessons into your onboarding plan
  • Measure and Evaluate: Observe the impact of your actions, iterate and refine as needed

Additional Materials