Your New Job May be Hazardous to Your Career!

So, heed these 10 tips to avoid this hazard!

In my career and life coaching practice about 10% of my active client pool is in transition searching for a new job or a career. The remaining 90% engage with me to keep their career on track; deal with the ongoing issues with their boss, peers, and company; or just to use me as a sounding board when they have something that they want to bounce off me to get a fresh perspective.

In almost all cases of landing a job I ask my clients to touch base within a month of planting their feet in their new company. This is where I give them my template for a 100-Day plan and walk them through how to set themselves up for a rewarding first year and beyond at the end of that 30-day period. Although some do this with diligence many do not, going on their own until they land into trouble down the line. This takes about six months to a year in their new job.

Why does it take them so long to realize that they’re facing a career hazard and that they need help?

For one, many think that they are on track and nothing is really of concern that warrants an objective, expert perspective to warn them of impending doom. Secondly, they think that if someone (typically their boss) alerts them of their errant ways they can remedy the situation and get back on track on their own. My own view is that most of them are often wrong on both counts. Before long, they are again looking for a change and yet another job to go after. Sadly, this pattern continues unless they learn how to break it. If they do not make a concerted effort to break it each next job creates a new hazard to their rsum in their career evolution.

But that requires a gift of pattern recognition and knowing some countermeasures and tools to stop that from happening to break the cycle. During my years of coaching and working with clients who are not able to descry this pattern and to do something about it I have cataloged and codified these patterns and developed countermeasures so that reasonably alert employees can prevent mishaps and career setbacks to keep their career on track on their own.

So, what are some of the common mistakes employees make in their new jobs and what are some tips to avoid them? Here is a list:

1. Unload your baggage: Almost everyone leaves their old job with some baggage that they need to deal with. This may include stagnant wages, being underpaid, lack of promotion for a long time, not enough team members reporting to them commensurate with their job title, and many other such iniquities. What many promise themselves entering their new job is that they would disabuse their past inequities by aggressively pursuing ways to get them what should have been theirs all along. With such an approach they make themselves vulnerable to all kinds of perceptions others form of them that vitiate their very pursuits. This makes it more difficult for them to get what they are after despite their hard work and positive contributions to their new work group.Remedy: Forget all your past inequities and start your new job with a new set of objectives for yourself based on what your boss, your workgroup, and your company want from you. Set your own pace of progress supported by the opportunities available and your ability to deliver on them. Let your past be your past and create a new future based on what lies ahead. In this analysis do not bring comparisons with your friends, who have galloped ahead and left you eating dust. This is where a diligent and realistic 100-Day plan can reset your expectations based on todays reality, not on yesterdays inequities or your own invidious comparisons with your show-off friends.
2. Establish a Reset: Often, during interviews promises are made, pictures are painted, and expectations created. Once you are on the ground in touch with what is happening in your new job you have a much better sense of what is now your reality and what you must deal with it make your job a success. As a part of that 100-Day plan discussion with your boss bring up the gaps between the interview discussions and the reality that you see and ask for their help in reconciling the two. Once you both come to terms with your reality you have a much better chance of a favorable first-year review than if you martyr yourself over false interview promises.
3. Build Relationships: Almost at any level of a job a new employee is consumed by action anxiety. They want to jump right in, quickly assess the problem, and then start solving it. Although this is understandable a better, more strategic approach to success is to focus on building relationships with those immediately involved in your job and your work group. Before assessing the nature of the problem you are given and then jumping in headlong first to solve it to show how smart you are in what you do, take a step back and talk to people around you. This is only possible if you build trusted relationships with those who can help you in improving your understanding of what lies ahead and politics of what you are taking on. No amount of hard or smart work can be a proxy to the insights gleaned from talking to people who know much about the history of what you are about to tackle.
4. Haste Makes Waste: In many instances my clients who land executive positions (Sr. Director and above) usually inherit a mess on many fronts. So, to turnaround a bad situation they need to take a holistic view of their situation, provide a short-term and a long-term solution, and then execute their plan. The challenges they face are multi-faceted that involve people, organizations, products, customer relationships, and other functional groups within their ecosystem and stakeholders. What they inherit is typically a complex, systems problem. Unless they take the trouble to understand the system and find the high leverage pivots that can deliver a sustainable solution they would be tilting at the windmills, not really solving problems that will make them a hero!
   In one such instance, recently, when my client landed an executive role to shepherd a product that was behind, with a demoralized team, disillusioned customers, and embarrassed sales folks, his temptation was to jump in and start dealing with the daily customer ire and start fire-fighting, while trying to recover the product timeline, which was already behind by almost a year.Instead, we decided to baseline the product, develop a recovery plan based on customer priorities and what the sales team could build its pipeline on, then go back to the irate customers to get their buy-in by showing them how this plan would actually give them the real relief that they were looking for than fighting fires every day. It took some work, but once everyone was on board the team felt relieved because it now spent its entire focus on creating the new product based on the recovery roadmap, than on fighting daily fires raging from irate customers. Within the next six months product started being shipped with incremental features to conform to the agreed-to roadmap. My client got accolades of a hero when things got back on track that year!

   The same approach can work for any task one inherits in their new job; they are not obligated to perpetuate the status quothey can break that mold, start on a new path, and get away with it, especially when they come through!

5. Listen More; Speak Less: At your new job it is tempting to impress your peers, boss, and others with your feats from the past, often embellishing themand even exaggerating themto earn the respect of those who matter to your survival or to your success. They are more likely to be impressed not by what you brag about, but by what you deliver to them. Also, remember that people talk among themselves, so if someone from your past refutes your audacious claims and feats of success, it wont be long before it diffuses back to your team. Remember, too, that rumors spread faster than the news. So, learn to listen more, talk lessmuch lessand learn how establish your credibility by delivering meaningful action, rather than meaningless brags!
6. Under promise, Over deliver: An extension of #5 is learning how to manage your temptation to underestimate a task and then take longer to complete that task than what you promised. So, learn how to make a realistic estimate of the scope of what is assigned to you and then deliver above and beyond, initially and always.
7. Ask, not Assume: This is yet another trap most new hires fall into as they get going in their new job. As a newbie you are in a much better position to act dumb by asking questions to seemingly obvious answers. It is much better to ask questions and get clarity on something that may be obvious to others. In many cases what is obvious is often wrong.
8. Respect Politics: Every place has its own politics. Learn how to respect the politics of your new place by refusing to undertake rash initiatives. It is tempting for a new person to attack what looks obvious as wrong to them and then realize that there are forces not so obvious that make it hard to change things. So, before you sign up for a change understand the politics and then decide if you want to waste your valuable energies fighting these invisible forces.
9. Manage Your Stress: Any new job brings with it its own level of stress (cortisol). Many do not fully appreciate how much extra stress they create for themselves with their own impetuous actions. They will routinely underestimate a job and commit themselves to certain dates and deadlines that take tremendous effort and focus to honor. All these tasks create unnecessary stress and require you to spend inordinate amounts of time at work. Once people around you see how you work, that becomes a norm for them. So, when you scale back your work to 12-hour days, they think you are slacking off in your new job! Dont let this happen to you because of what you did to impress others and to yourself.
10. Dont Badmouth: From the get-go learn how to avoid being negative about anything you observe, comment, or opine on about your new workplace. Same thing applies about your previous place of work when it comes up for discussion in your new place of work. Always stay positive and learn how to fashion your language about critical items so that you come across as a positive influence.

Slipping into your new job takes special effort and knowing how to use these 10 tips above so that you have a good shot at making your new job a success, without posing it as a hazard to your career or to yourself. Once you break your past pattern and learn the new ones you can interrupt the cycle of job-hopping.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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