Six months before I graduated from college with a Bachelor's Degree, I had to spend hours making cold calls to companies and send resume to couple hundred places. It was a great challenge me because only experience I had was being a night security in a dormitory (who checks id for underage drunk girls) and a visual basic programming tutor. Most companies were looking for someone who at least have internship experience, and not an alien resident. But finally I did get an offer as a software developer couple days before I graduated. In this post, I want to share three things I had done right in the first six month in my new job:
I Worked My Ass Off
When you are new and inexperienced, you can easily be replaced by someone else better and cheaper than you. You really do not have the luxury to be as comfortable as your experienced coworker who leaves at 5 PM sharp. If you work your ass off in the first six months (I pretty much spend 50-60 hours per week), you would probably prove yourself to the company that you are a valuable assest which would be hard to get rid of. Another advantage is you will gain much more experience in a very short period of time. Nowadays, I try to get my job done within 45 hours a week, but I do thank myself to be diligent in my first 6 months to be a hard worker.
I Asked Lots of Stupid/Idiotic Questions
I was quite new to the technology industry. In my first in the company, it actually meant a world to me to have very minute portion of my code rolled to production environment used by thousands of customers. I also didn't know much technology jargon, and many things I listened to staffs meeting sounded so foreign (like Chinese). So most of the time I felt stupid to ask questions, such as, what is <insert any technology terms>? how can I deal with this?
I Solved Lots of Problems
When first started, my employer just asked me to feel comfortable with the code, and keep myself busy. I wasn't provide much specific directions. I guess they thought it's my training phase since this is my first job after college. However, my mentor (who has been in the industry for over 10 years) advise me to focus on solving problems. And I am glad I took that advice word for word. I ended up fixing over hundred bugs/faulty code with our softwares in my first year. That really helped me to be a better developer, and have me understand the business much better than reading a book
There you go. I am not sure what industry you are but I am sure the same rules apply for you too. You definitely need to be very comfortable being very stupid (even annoying sometimes because you bug a lots of coworkers), and you would alway be solving problems. Unless you work for a big company, you manager would really appreciate for your strong work ethics to spend extra hours in your job. I even got couple hundred dollar gift cards from my manager few months ago for being so deliberate at my work. Well, if you have any more better ideas for a new college graduate, then feel free to share in the comment section below!
Thank you!
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