In your early career, whether as an intern, apprentice, Graduate entrant or just as a new starter, you’ll be building a reputation, based upon the first impressions that you make, on a whole range of people in the business.
You’ll be ‘branding’ yourself with your peers, your colleagues, Supervisors, business leaders, HR, clients, suppliers and hundreds of other people all around you, every second you’re in and out of the workplace. First impressions aren’t everything, but they’re something, and first impressions count.
In the absence of real knowledge of people, we tend to ‘fill in the gaps’ about ‘the new person with the small impressions that people make on us. Impressions based on-
- How they look
- How they dress
- How they behave
- What other people say about them
- Their ‘apparent’ confidence
- Their social skill
- The way they make us feel about ourselves
- The quality of the work they do for us and others
Be aware of that and don’t do the following-
- Don’t do nothing and sink into the background, hoping people won’t notice you- they will and not for the right reasons
- Try too hard- To be funny, friendly, driven, wacky, successful- it’ll look and be false
But do, do the following 10 things to give yourself a real chance.