There is a handful of common experiences that come along with starting a new job. Your first day is spent filling out paperwork with HR, learning how the coffee machine works, locating the nearest restroom, and getting your desk chair adjusted just right. Then you have learning how to use the company’s email software and how to use the product you’re selling. Plus, learning how to transfer a call without accidentally hanging up, and learning the language of your new industry. You find yourself immersed in facts and best practices to become an expert as fast as humanly possible so that you can begin making productive contributions to your team, all the while juggling the various sources of knowledge and struggling to not go brain-dead with information overload. Even for fast learners, this can take time, and it can be stressful until you get up to speed.
Learning Culture
Learning the culture is generally what takes the longest, even for socially savvy people. It’s not easy to get an instant read on the company as a whole, as a community. Navigating the minutia of day-to-day coworker interactions can be daunting and emotionally exhausting. As if the anxiety of learning all of the facts wasn’t enough, you need to learn the feeling of the company—what makes people tick, how they interact, how you should interact. Who sits where at lunch? How much do people socialize outside of work? What kind of sense of humor does your boss have? Does he or she have one at all?
If you’re like me (read: mild social anxiety bubbling below a friendly and outgoing exterior), this aspect of the 8-hour work day is even more important and intimidating than learning the exact definitions of RETS feeds or what a dynamic wrapper is. You’re going to be spending the majority of your waking hours with these people; hopefully you like them (or are at least comfortable around them)!
Starting Work at IDX Broker
The incredible thing about my first weeks at IDX Broker was that this process, this “learning” of the company culture, came so naturally to me. I didn’t even notice it had happened until I paused to reflect. I felt welcomed into the fold the instant I stepped through the door. I felt integrated automatically, just by being present at that first Monday morning rally. Management, my team, and others around me have been so naturally welcoming and supportive that, given the description of the process above, it doesn’t feel like a “new job” at all. Rather, it’s helping me craft a new definition for “new job”—one that makes you feel excited to show up every day, one that makes you unafraid to ask questions or take risks because you know you’ll be supported and appreciated along the way.
Positive Change
For me a new job has meant so much more than new desk, new chair, new product, and new parking lot. It’s meant new confidence in the face of challenges. A new environment of motivated and fun individuals who play as hard as they work. It’s meant bacon, bagels, and donuts every Monday morning and applause for the hard work employees do every single day. Most importantly of all, it’s meant not just a positive career change, but a positive life change.
Mastering the coffee machine, unfortunately, is still a work in progress.
