Plan for your new job

- Congratulations, you got the job. When do you start? Your first day of work is the Monday after next. Well, that may be your first day at the office but your job started when you accepted the offer. Start preparing now. The company presumably gave you some onboarding documents including an employee manual. The first thing you want to do is read them. Make notes where you have questions. Your next step is to go the company's website. Presumably, you visited before you interviewed for the job but now you'll be looking at it from a different perspective. Notice the new initiatives and plans for the future. Review the press releases. Who are the key players? Who's moving up and who else is joining the company? Are bios available for your teammates and other people you may be working with? You want to be looking for what I call points of resonance meaning what do you have in common with the people you're researching, your future coworkers? Did you attend the same school? Are you from the same city? Maybe you both used to work at the same company. Because you will soon be meeting them in person, you want to try and really connect with them when you do. For example, Beth, good to meet you, I did a little research and noticed we both have degrees in sociology from The City College of New York. In other words, you and Beth have something in common, an affinity. I recently worked with a college I was referred to by a colleague. David was the man at the college who did the hiring and as soon as he agreed to meet with me, I began my research. I learned a couple of pieces of very useful information. One was that he had attended San Francisco State University and the other was that he had produced music specials for television. I knew we would bond. I hold a master's degree in radio and television from you guessed it, San Francisco State University and had in a prior career worked for Dick Clark Productions on various music programs. David and I really did connect. Our first meeting lasted well over an hour and most of our time was spent talking about the TV shows we'd worked on and the artists we'd met. We had an affinity bordering on kinship. David already knew what I could do for his college so by the end of the meeting, there was nothing left but to agree on what date I would start work. Something else you want to be sure to do is to expand your research to include news about the company. This may come as a shock but things may not be as rosy in your new workplace as it says in the company's press releases. Look for the dirt. Workplaces are perfect only in the movies. glassdoor.com and similar sites can give you a sense of what it's really like to work at the company you're joining and what employees have said they don't like about it and remember to get a consensus. One ex-employee's complaints may simply be the result of a bad experience he or she had with a particular boss. Notice when you start seeing a pattern. Finally, check the online profiles of the people you'll be working with on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. Remember, the relationships you build will have a big impact on how successful you'll be at your new job. You can get details on people's backgrounds and interests via social media. That's their public face. Use that information to make friends.