7 Things You Must Never Do When You Start a New Job

If you’re starting out a new job soon you’re probably feeling a few mixed emotions like excitement and nervousness. You want to get started on the right foot by making a great first impression to both your coworkers and boss. You should be careful, however, not to make any career-ending mistakes before you have a chance to make a positive difference. So, we’ve created a list of the seven things you should absolutely never do when starting a new job:

1. Don’t make assumptions about job details

Obviously, one of the biggest mistakes you can make on your first day is show up late – but you should also be sure you don’t make any assumptions about your job’s details, including work hours, lunch time, break time and responsibilities. Your immediate boss or someone from human resources should spend some time going over all of these details before you actually start your work, so listen up and take notes. Be sure to ask several questions if you’re unclear about anything you hear at orientation.

2. Don’t ignore a co-workers’ advice or help

Your first couple of days – and certainly your first – will seem a little rough. It’ll be easy to forget things or do things incorrectly. When any co-worker offers some advice or help, don’t ignore or push it away. It’s more important to learn how to do something correctly than to do it wrong for several weeks thereafter. In the worst case scenarios you might cause others to work harder to fix your mistakes and this could lead to some lingering resentment and possible mistrust that can turn many against you.

3. Don’t turn down a lunch with a co-worker

It’s important to establish as many positive relationships with your co-workers as possible and those first few days can make or break your time at your new job, depending on how you handle invitations from one or a group of co-workers wanting to get to know you. You’re advised to cancel any other personal plans you might have for those first few days, to ensure you can accept any invitation as it comes up.

4. Don’t join in on any office gossip or talk

Whether this occurs in a break room, around the water cooler or over lunch with a co-worker, don’t get caught up with any office gossip or talk. Some level of gossip happens in every place of work, but it can be really toxic and in some cases, can lead to interoffice distrust. We advise you stay out of this altogether or at least wait until you’ve been there for a few weeks before you get involved.

5. Don’t shy away from learning a new method

Without a doubt, one of the best things about starting a new job is that you will get to learn new things. However, sometimes you might assume that your method of doing something is the absolute best. This might very well be the case, but you should at least try to learn this new way until you’ve established yourself in your new position. Most places of work are always open towards improvement, but you should wait for the right time to make those recommendations.

6. Don’t complain about your former job or boss

When you are trying to make a positive first impression the last thing you want to do is bad mouth your former job or boss. This is seen as very unprofessional and will usually cast you as someone who is bound to bring about negative vibes. This is especially true in cases where you might be starting a new job to further your career. If employers know you are likely to bad mouth them in the future, they might not want to help because of this bad start.

7. Don’t share your personal life

Your personal life is something you should hold close to the vest until you are trusting of the people you will share this with, but you should never get too personal in your first few weeks. This can have a lot of negative effects. Leave this at home where it belongs and don’t think people particularly want to know about you so soon after starting out.

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