Want to make a great first impression on day 1?
Are they friendly? Will they have time to show me around? And can they tell how clueless I am?
You may have all these questions. But actually, your focus should be on controlling your controllables. And this starts days/weeks before your first day.
Advice 1 – Confirm your admins prior to day 1
No one wants to arrive at the office building with uncertainties on what you are supposed to do. Therefore, ensure to clarify on the below:
- What time to arrive at the office on day 1: Whilst many offices are open from around 8am, employees tend to prefer new joiners arriving a bit later on day 1, at around 10 or 11am. This allows for the staff responsible for new joiner to finalise any preparations in the morning, and get ahead of emails, prior to spending a huge chunk of their day with the new joiner. This will differ for everyone, therefore, it’s imperative that you confirm timings prior to day 1 arrival.
- Who to ask for at reception.
- Parking and process of entering office building.
- Dress code: Long are the days of full professional attire for lots of jobs, but you should confirm with your contact on expected dress code.
Advice 2 – Approach for the day
There is so much outside your control, and therefore not worth worrying about. Key policy for success is to always concentrate on your controllables. So these should be your main areas of focus on day 1:
- Balance between being polite and confident: No one wants a new joiner that’s too shy to speak to people. Equally, no one want a new joiner walking around on day 1 as if they own the place. So do engage with people and also ensure that you are respectable with everyone. Comments that existing employees will make on new joiners can be such as – ‘they are really nice’, ‘they seem pretty switched on, so hopefully they will pick on tasks quickly’. That’s what you are looking for! You don’t want – ‘a bit unsure of this one, it’s day one and they are already talking down to people’.
- Questions to ask people: You will most likely be introduced to a number of people. They may give a brief introduction on their roles. Likewise, your contact might go around and also introduce you and explain the role that you will be doing. Keep it simple on your side, with ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘looking forward to working with you’. Before your contact starts the introductions, its worth knowing if those are teams that you will be interacting with often. Not a lot is expected of you here other that a quick summary of yourself (e.g., what uni you are joining from), and most likely, it will be the existing staff members asking you the questions. Simple conversation topics for the win here.
Advice 3 – The rest of the day
Other than introductions and getting IT set up, the day is likely to be slow. This is totally normal! In addition, there will be parts of the day where your contact will either need to attend meetings or have to spend a bit of time on their day job. Your are also likely to have a number of training sessions to go through – e.g., e-modules depending on company and industry. Best to spend your quiet time now going through these, instead of leaving them for later when time is tight.
And that’s it for day 1. And ensure to clarify on timings for the rest of the week. Whilst you may have arrived later in the morning for day 1, expectations would normally be for you to now align timings with other team members from day 2 onwards.
Also given that a large number of people are still operating in a hybrid environment, ensure that your office days are agreed with the manager/contact.