Graduate Development Programs

You have secured a graduate position and now it’s the first day at work. If you haven’t interned before, you are likely to find it to be rather novel. While you should the experience of the first few days, start making sense of the new environment and what it requires of you. Understand the demands of your graduate role and begin understanding the differences between work and college. This may sound quite silly, but the differences are what they are for good reason.

The workplace is a coordinated and structured effort to create economic value. Technological advances are making these structures more flexible, sometimes non-existent.

For the most part however, they are still adhered to. The main components of this structure include the following:

- Physical attendance
- Core working hours
- Dependence on others to perform
- Accountability

Physical Attendance and Core Working Hours/Days
Unlike University, where some continue the great tradition of only turning up to the first and last lectures; work requires you to show up and leave each day at a time that is within a small variance to what is acceptable to the prevailing corporate culture. If you are not a customer interfacing staff member, you will quickly realise how pointless this can be.

Unless something is urgent, what difference does it make if you arrive at 7.30am or 8.30am or whether you leave at 5.30pm or 7.30pm? So long as you complete your work in a timely manner and it is of a high standard, then it really shouldn’t. Except it does, at least to begin with.

You will also have days that simply don’t have enough hours in them and most probably have the occasional weekend of work too (more than occasional for lawyers, investment bankers and others who work on corporate transactions or deadline driven businesses!). However, that’s not the point here. You have to do what you have to do, though when there isn’t anything to do, it’s not as easy as just leaving.

People soon develop routines for getting to work in the morning, so they choose a time, a route to the office and it works for them. However, so many people also refer to the last hour of work as “face time”, as in you are hanging in there to be seen, to give the impression that you are an eager beaver. Laugh now, but you will be thanking your lucky stars the internet has been invented! Best way to waste an hour.  Guaranteed! ?

More on this in Managing Perceptions.  But just remember, the nearer you are to the beginning of your career (as you are in the graduate program), the more it influences perceptions of your work ethic and productivity.  Just accept it for now and be aware.  You can change the world later….

In the next few posts, we will continue discussing the makeup of the office.  Be sure you don’t miss out! Remember to subscribe by clicking here.

Tags: new job, Office Rules, structure at work, work & study, work rules