Six months seems to be the magic number after graduation. By now, all of our friends are mostly settled in their jobs, grad school, or next endeavors. But it really did take six months to get there... Here is my view of the first 6 months post-grad and working (the unfiltered and un-instagramable version).
REMEMBER SYLLABUS WEEK? WORK HAS THAT TOO.
I had interned at my company the summer before my senior year. So when I returned full-time I was familiar with the team, scope of work, and even had friends to eat lunch with... but I realized that interning is very different than working full-time. I was working on larger projects, and I felt like I was constantly discovering new things that I didn't know, which made me feel like I didn't have the knowledge or skillset to do my job.Finally, my Dad told me that it was normal, it was just my first job out of college and I was still supposed to be learning a lot. He said companies hiring new college grads are hiring them for potential to grow in the company, not because they're experts.
What helped me get over feeling inexperienced:
- Treat your first few weeks at your new company like learning time, and meet with as many people as possible to put your work into perspective. I met with about 30 people formally and informally in my first few weeks, to ask them to explain their roles, and for their opinion of what they thought I could do in my role. I took detailed notes in my notebook, and it helped me get a better understanding of what people do and what my part is in the grand scheme of things. Just say you're new and want to learn, people are always willing to give you at least 15min for that!
- Set up 30day-60day-90day goals. When I started it was hard to know if I was "on-track", because I had no baseline of what on-track was... I made a plan for every 30 days of things I wanted to have done, and checked-in with my manager and team. It helped me feel like I was on track, and had built-in times for feedback.
"AWW YOU HAD YOUR FIRST WORK CRY?"
Almost every girl I knew cried or felt like crying within their first few months at work (I'm sure the guys did too- they just didn't tell me). Everyone reaches a breaking point at the beginning, whether its imposter syndrome, homesickness, wondering if you made the right choice of career, missing the best friends who normally support you, or just adjusting to all of the change happening in your life at once. My roommate and I were both in the same professional business fraternity in college (shout-out to all the Deltasigs). One of the older extremely successful girls from our fraternity came to visit us, and we told her how we've been struggling and that's when she said "Aww you had your first work cry" and we realized that what we were feeling was normal.
How I got over feeling imposter syndrome and missing my best friends:
- Women can be more prone to imposture syndrome. It's something that I have to remember about myself. Sometimes I feel like I'm contributing at work, and other times I think they'll realize that I'm not good enough for whatever project I'm working on.Whenever I feel that way, I write down three things I think I need to do to feel like I'm succeeding and then I start working on those things (I almost always feel better and it usually actually helps me decide what I should work on next!).
- I'm lucky to have a lot of amazing friends, most of which now live very far away... It was hard to talk with them consistently in our new busy lives, so then I started scheduling "call-times" in my calendar with them every so often to help us stay in-touch.
STOP THINKING SEMESTERS...TIME TO START THINKING YEARS...
In college, my thinking was what do I have to accomplish in a semester to get an "A'? For work, I had to stretch my thinking. I realized that some of the projects I was working on weren't going to accomplish it in a few months A.K.A a semester. Choosing work that fit within that semester time frame was causing me to not think about the bigger picture-- something that was larger and more complex with a beginning, middle, and end. It also made me feel like I wasn't making progress (when I was) because I was trying to set the same timeline that I did for college and midterms to measure my success.
How I changed my timeline for work:
I have long-term goals, and short-term goals. When I think about my work, I think what is my short term goal (something that I can deliver in 1-3 months), and a long term goal (something that could span multiple business quarters). Then I divide up my time to work on things for both goals. This gives me the instant gratification I need from time-to-time, and keeps me working towards a long term vision.
IT'S OKAY TO REALIZE IT'S NOT THE RIGHT FIT
I have been really lucky to love my job, company, and the people I work with. However, with a lot of people that I know, that is not the case- and it's okay. I have friends who had a manager that was overtly mean to her and others on her team, so she left after a year. Another friend moved to New York City to work for a tech company in Time Square and switched teams internally after 9 months. Others who just realized that this wasn't the exact job they liked, or the company wasn't the fit they thought it was... So now at the 6month point they are starting to look for another job. One of my friends was scared to quit her job so soon, because she thought it would make her seem like a failure. FALSE! It's your first job.... it's still a learning experience for your career. It's kinda like college. There are people that transfer in and out after freshman year- it's completely normal because everyone's still figuring it out.
The advice I gave my friends who wanted to leave their companies:
- Look at the LinkedIn profile of people you want to be like. First, if you're nervous to leave because you think it will look bad, you'll see there is a lot of successful people who left their first jobs after a year to pursue something else. It's also helpful to see the path that others took before you, so you can see where to transition to get there too.
- Do some soul searching to make sure the job is really the problem. Make sure that it is the job that is not full filling you, and not just your mindset towards it. Read this article I wrote about how I figured out what I needed out of work.
And if all else fails- just fake it till you make it, because sometimes your biggest enemy is yourself. Remember your are smart, strategic, compassionate, and it's just the start of this chapter in your story!
CHEERS,
KELLY