February 16, 2021

The first month – Tips for settling into a new IT role

10 min read

Securing a new job is exciting and worth celebrating. You’ve been chosen out of many candidates as the best fit for the role. Once the start date is lined up and contract signed, you’ll likely start to think about that first day, week and month.

While we might not consciously acknowledge it, the stress of learning new skills, meeting people, and working out dynamics of a workplace can be draining – even if we’re ultimately positive about our new position.

In this article we’ll look at the first month settling into a tech role in NZ. We’ve pulled together some advice to help you reduce stress and feel more comfortable in this new workplace.

Learn about the workplace and people ahead of starting

Often you’ll have a lead up to your first day – it might be a week or even a few months. In any case, we’d suggest you do some homework before starting. It’s likely you’ll have learned a few things during the interview process, but now you’re a future employee you should be able to get more detailed info such as the organisation structure, who your immediate team is, and the company vision.

Don’t be afraid to ask your future manager for any reading that might help you get up to speed. Beyond this, you may want to try and meet up with future team mates for a coffee ahead of starting. Team mates can give you the inside scoop on how the business runs and provide invaluable tips for settling in easier. Many businesses have teamwide comms via email, so getting sent these can also help you build a picture of what’s going on.

Just remember that you’re not getting paid for any of this time, so you won’t be expected to do anything, and certainly not get onboarded to work you will be doing. This familiarisation should be for your benefit to reduce stress when you do start.

Get plenty of sleep

That first day and first week can feel a bit like information overload. The mental strain to think about new work and new people is going to take it out of you. That’s why full nights of sleep are essential – your brain will struggle to retain information and cope with stress if you’re not properly rested.

If you’re the social outing type, you may wish to ensure late nights are kept to a minimum. Of course going out with friends can be a great way to relieve some stress of a new job, but the last thing you want is to be hungover and tired in unfamiliar surroundings – so just go easy!

You might wish to keep weeknights relatively calm, especially in week one. As you settle into things more you will find it less tiring to maintain socialising and the role.

Set expectations and ask questions

As the new person, you are not just allowed to ask ‘dumb’ questions, but it’ll be expected. The truth is, questions in the workplace are always encouraged – it’s how businesses help their people learn and improve. As a new recruit, you should ask questions about work, company, people and operational processes.

Having information about these things will help you settle in much faster than waiting to figure it out on your own. You don’t have to wait to ask your manager either – for some topics, coworkers can actually give you more insight than management may be able to.

Setting expectations is one of the best ways to ensure you don’t get overworked. It may be tempting to show willing and say ‘yes’ to everything, but you need to be honest with yourself and the business as to what you’re able to take on. If you have knowledge gaps make sure you identify this – the hiring manager will know about these from the interview process, but others in the business may not.

It’s totally okay for you to ask for breathing room to properly learn the ropes. Push back on the business if you feel your workload isn’t allowing you to settle in and be your best. Employers will often appreciate feedback and adjust things accordingly.

Introduce yourself to as many workmates as possible

This can be a bit tough for the introverts among us, but making an effort to introduce yourself to everyone you meet at work is perhaps one of the best ways to fast track your comfort within the new business. Remember, there may be some people at your new work who themselves are shy – if you initiate a friendly greeting and handshake, you will avoid awkward silences in the staff room.

You shouldn’t be short of small talk – your name, role and where you’ve come from should be sufficient to start. If you make the effort now, your interaction when working together eventually will be much more relaxed.

The more people you have had conversations with, the better understanding of the company dynamics you’ll have. You never know the tidbits you could gather during these introductions.

Watch and listen

This part isn’t so tough for introverts – but may be for extroverts! Sometimes it can be tempting to make sure everyone knows you are a valuable new addition to the team by sharing past work history and achievements. This is okay, to a point. But remember in a New Zealand workplace, most will be reserved and respond better to humility.

To help connect with your new team and workplace, we’d suggest consciously observing in meetings, team wide activities, work habits and other business functions in action. Don’t feel bad about staying quiet and learning for the first few months. If you’re worried about being perceived as too quiet, just have a few questions at the ready to ask.

Look to find out:

How are meetings usually run?
What are the biggest challenges facing the business?
How are decisions made?
What’s the company culture and social life like?
Who can I go to with questions – who will I click with?
How is work conducted – do I understand the processes?
Are there concepts I don’t understand and need training on?

Keep a notebook handy and jot down observations and questions. Even if you don’t raise all of these, it will be useful to reflect on throughout the first 30 days.

Put in some realistic goals with your manager

KPIs and goals are often part of a job role, but the specifics of these will likely be something you dive into properly after starting. Performance in a role is something that you as the staff member should take an active role in. Don’t wait for your manager to do all the evaluation. Straight away you want to begin an open-ended, productive discussion about your work goals, targets and career roadmap. This makes sure that you are invested and capable of achieving in your role. If you feel your manager has not considered factors that could make achieving KPIs tricky, it’s important you raise this and work together on alternatives.

You will have been hired based on your abilities so you will likely be adding value from day one. But until you’ve got a handle on the business and done your observation, you won’t be flying at 100% straight away.

End of month 1 goals should usually be associated with settling in, familiarisation, onboarding to work. Discuss with your manager how you can break larger goals down into achievable actions.

The main thing to remember with KPIs and goals is to not let the conversation go quiet for months – otherwise you could end up with unrealistic expectations from your manager when it comes to performance reviews.

Don’t put pressure on yourself to be amazing straight away

Many new employees put high expectations on themselves to prove their hiring was a good decision. This can lead to working ourselves into the ground and burning out – which is a serious issue. Taking on too much work or trying to solve complex business issues alone can actually prevent you from settling into a company in the right way.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t look to add value from day one – but rather a warning to not pile more stress onto your already full plate.

Setting expectations as we’ve discussed isn’t just for the company but for your own stress management. Focus on connecting with people and understanding the business first, then gradually build up your workload.

The pressure we put on ourselves also impacts how we handle making mistakes. Your new employer has hired you knowing what you bring to the table. If you make a mistake or don’t know something, this is not a reflection on your ability to do the job as a whole. Thinking otherwise is just unhelpful – stay positive and treat any gaps in knowledge as learning opportunities!

Participate in company social activity

Much like introducing yourself to everyone helps break the ice, company social activities are a great way for you to learn more about your workmates, and vice versa.

Social activities that companies will often have include:

After work drinks
Corporate sports teams (indoor football)
Gym/running/walking clubs
Lunch time (out or in the staff room)
Team building activity
Team away days
Cultural events

You don’t need to necessarily attend and join everything, but in that first month showing some willing to be part of the team will go a long way to making work friends. The better we get along with our workmates outside of our actual job, the easier we collaborate on work.

Find some work buddies

Having friends at work makes an incredible difference to how we enjoy our job. In this first month of observing and learning, you’ll figure out some of the people that you may click with the best. Having a few people who have your back can make you feel less alone in that first month or so of starting the job.

You spend at least 40 hours a week travelling to/from and working at a job. So we strongly believe that enjoying going to work is something everyone should aim for. If you look forward to seeing your workmates at a job, it’s much easier to get through any stressful periods. Employers love tight-knit teams as they typically do better work, and stay there for a long tenure.

Keep talking to family and friends outside of work

While a new job can feel all-encompassing, you should make the effort to keep up communication with those close to you. They will be there to support you with challenges or take your mind off the job altogether. Nothing like our loved ones to give us some perspective.

If you have friends from your old job, it can be a good idea to catch up and hear how things are getting on. A common reaction straight after starting a new job can be regret in moving – after all we were likely settled into a groove in our old workplace. Catching up with old workmates can be a useful reminder on why you moved in the first place – chances are they’re still dealing with issues that you were happy to leave behind. And know that the alien feeling of your new job will go away with time!

Want to chat about finding a new job?

Are you in the process of looking for a new job? Our team can help you with the job hunt but also provide valuable advice on how to get settled into a new role. Why not get in touch now or browse our IT jobs currently live on the website.

What does it take to be a leader in NZ’s technology industry?

8 min read

Leadership as a concept, a bit like tech, has evolved drastically over the last 100 years. Where previously the role of a ‘boss’ took on almost military-like connotations of orders given and followed (often referred to as ‘Autocratic’ leadership), the practice of leading has grown far more nuanced than this over the years.

You may have heard or read about the idea of ‘Servant Leadership’ where a manager’s main goal is to support their employees to be their best selves – and it is the employees’ commitment and engagement that drives the organisation forward. Or, perhaps you’ve come across the ‘Coaching Leadership’ style, where a manager fosters and supports their people to realise their talent by supporting them through a personal development journey driven by the individual.

With technology, these leadership styles all exist in the industry, but we also demand a number of other skills specific to the field. In this article we’ll look at some of these traits, which we know our clients are looking for in the next wave of tech leaders.

The ability to motivate and inspire people

A good leader in technology shouldn’t just give directions. Their communication, manner and guidance should all have a positive impact on the team around them. This doesn’t mean regurgitating the company’s values or purpose statement, but is a broader practice of consistently reinforcing the meaningful work being done and the great potential that lies ahead of the team.

The motivating tech leader will make sure to motivate the team as a collective, as well as drill down into each individual’s personal motivators to get the most out of them. Some team members may be motivated by the importance of the work such as social good. Others may be driven by financial incentives. These motivators can all co-exist with careful leadership.

Inspiring others goes a step further – it’s not just about encouraging hard work, but showing employees that they’ve got the freedom and ability to solve challenges, try new things and develop their careers. An inspiring tech leader will advocate for their people, and help show staff their potential.

An understanding of the technology itself

In some industries, a great leader doesn’t necessarily need to have the hard, technical knowledge; with delegation and people skills enough to drive results.

In the IT world, many of the challenges faced by teams are technical in nature. Leaders, while not necessarily having to be an expert, do need to understand the platform or discipline well in order to provide guidance for their team. In many cases a leader will have formerly worked in a technical role and can draw upon this experience, combined with good mentoring to help a team perform better. Some tech leaders have a ‘T’ model of knowledge – expert in one programming language or discipline such as Front End Design, with a broader understanding of other areas such infrastructure, web services and data management.

The leader will be an escalation point when things don’t go as planned – for this reason alone, it’s important that they have knowledge about the area their team is responsible for. This will allow better negotiation, and more ways of finding solutions.

Adaptable to big changes

Does any industry change quite as fast as technology? It’s hard to find a field that evolves almost daily. Changes to software, languages, laws, protocols, best practices… the list really goes on. Change doesn’t just come out of industry advancements, however, with digital transformation and changing project requirements two big factors that all tech teams have to deal with.

The tech leader needs to be able to adapt their own direction and their team. This is why motivation and inspiration are key – if a team suddenly needs to pivot away from one approach to another, there’s a risk the team can be left feeling dispirited. It’s the tech leader’s job to reinforce the good work the team is doing and coach them through big changes, be it project scope, services or technologies. The leader needs to try and lessen the impact of changes on their team’s workloads and happiness at work, ensuring they still feel stable through turbulence.

Change is scary for many, so a leader needs to outwardly display a willingness and even enthusiasm about adapting to change – lead by example and celebrate the positive aspects of a constantly-evolving industry.

Resilience in the face of adversity

Adversity comes in many forms – change being one. Other common adversity a team faces includes client relationships, internal company pressure, project overages, lost work, mistakes made by the team, large workloads and restructures.

As a tech leader, others will look to your character as an indication of how to navigate through adversity themselves. Panic, frustration or hostility in a leader can permeate rapidly through a team causing heightened levels of anxiety. Instead, the leader needs to be the calming, stable voice of reason, offering perspective to the wider team during difficult periods. This isn’t to say leaders should downplay situations, but rather guide the team through them.

Adversity in work can stick around for a while, wearing down a team without the right measures in place. As a leader, you’ll need to take care of your own health and wellbeing outside of work in order to remain resilient through the other side of challenges. Expect to support at least some of your team during these patches with matters beyond simply the task at hand – mental and physical wellbeing being just a few examples.

A ‘future’ mindset

With all this talk about change, it makes sense that a forward-facing view on things would be useful. While tech leaders don’t necessarily have to become ‘futurists’, they do need to keep an eye on where their discipline is going and how this might affect the business or its clients. A leader will stay on top of industry and technological changes and ensure their team is across these as needed.

Imagine a scenario in which software critical to a client was reaching its end of life (EOL) per the vendor. An entire business’ operation can be at risk due to things like this happening. While a business and its vendors will often have agreements around supporting this scenario, the tech leader should stay on top of big changes, even if just to reassure clients or their business.

It’s not just risk mitigation that makes forward-thinking important, it’s opportunity as well. As new technologies are developed, a leader can bring these to a business and help inform planning. Is there market disruption on the table? Can we get ahead of the competition by adopting new technology first? Remember, ‘leadership’ is more than leading people, it’s leading conversations, too.

Organisation

Whether you’re a CTO, Lead or Project Manager, organisational skills are essential. Being organised doesn’t just mean managing the team’s workflow through disciplines like Agile, but organising your work day, week and month as well. Supporting the team, navigating challenges, staying on top of industry changes…that’s all time consuming work. You should also expect to be meeting with more than just your own team regularly – your peers and those you report to (even a CEO will report to a board in many cases). Planning out as much of your work as possible is the best way to avoid something falling through the cracks.

A leader’s organisation skills will trickle down into their team’s own time management skills – you’ll be looked to when someone needs help improving their efficiency. What are your strategies for delivering work on time, managing expectations and balancing work/life? Make sure you have this mastered before becoming a leader to others.

Soft skills

Your role as a leader is to support others. That’s not possible without a range of soft skills that you’re constantly improving upon. Often, the difference between a good and great tech leader is in the soft skills. Think about your current abilities in:

Empathy – How well do you relate to others’ challenges? Can you connect and support someone when they’re going through a hard patch? Do you understand others’ perspectives easily?

Listening – Leading is as much about how good we are at not talking as we are at giving direction. Are you an active, engaged listener?

Conflict Resolution – Are you good at resolving disputes, either personally with another person, or as a mediator? Disagreements are normal at work, how they’re dealt with makes all the difference.

Patience – Will you be happy to go at a slower pace for someone still learning? Can you remain calm when someone’s approach or attitude isn’t quite aligned with yours?

Collaboration – Can you facilitate a group of people, all with different viewpoints, to collaborate on a piece of work with great outcomes?

These are just a handful of dozens of soft skills. Honing and building these into your arsenal will make you a more effective, respected leader.

The learning never stops

You might find yourself teaching others a lot as a leader. But the only way to stay current and effective is to become a lifelong student yourself. A good tech leader will sharpen their tools technically, as a manager, as a negotiator and a host of other ways. Expect to do lots of reading and listening to podcasts as part of your ongoing education!

You might wish to enlist the help of a mentor outside the organisation you work in. Or perhaps there’s someone inside the business that you can get coaching from. Having a variety of education sources will keep you sharp and engaged in your own personal development journey.

Finally, remember that one of the strongest traits a good leader has is wisdom. This is only gained through experience. Don’t put pressure on yourself to be a perfect leader at the start of your career in management. You will find as you encounter new problems and solve them, your leadership toolbelt will grow. Our personal experiences will be readily applied to future challenges that present in similar ways, helping your business and your team navigate through the adventures of working in the tech industry.

Are you the next successful leader in IT?

If you’re looking for a leadership position, or indeed a new leader to join your business in the IT industry, then chat to our team about opportunities in the New Zealand market. We consistently have new jobs available, and keep close relationships with our employer clients about their needs.

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