Survival Guide for the Working World: What School Doesn’t Teach You

By Jennifer Florax

The book every novice employee needs to read, Survival Guide for the Working World: What School Doesn’t Teach You offers tips, tricks and bite-sized bits to help equip those entering and navigating the workforce. Combining a bit of humour with some serious conversation, the ultimate goal of this book is to make the transition from student to employee less of a shock to the system.

Providing a high-level glimpse into the behaviours that are expected of you as you enter the workforce. From the simplest concepts, such as dressing properly for a job and how to draft a professional email, to more complex situations you might encounter on the job. Author Jennifer Florax has written a beginner’s how-to, to help ease the transition from school to work. You will be surprised that the most important education you ever receive will be on the job, after you graduate from school.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Florax
• Release date: May 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781773027043

Book preview

Preface

I am not going to guarantee that if you follow all the advice in this book, everything will be smooth sailing as you progress through the working world. I don’t have a PhD in psychology, or organizational behaviour, nor am I am a renowned researcher with a number of credits to my name. I am simply someone who has spent a great amount of time observing others in the workplace—their habits, their work styles and their expectations. Take everything you read here with a grain of salt; just because you read something in a book does not mean that it will work for you or your situation. If you take one thing away from this book, let it be that each person is unique and brings his or her own background, history and experience to every situation. You can’t expect everyone to behave in the same manner in the same situation. What we should be doing is developing a basic understanding of the dynamics of the working world. That does not mean we don’t make mistakes. It also does not mean that we should change our entire personality to match someone else’s perception of what we should be. We are who we are—no amount of coaching is going to change our fundamental being, unless we make a conscious decision to change. What we can do is help ourselves by learning the basic rules of working with others and try our very best to follow them.

Introduction

So, you’ve recently completed your post-secondary education and/or are entering the workforce for the first time…congratulations! And regardless of whether you went to college or trade school or earned your PhD, you’ve probably been told that you now have all the requirements you need to be successful in your chosen field, right? Not necessarily.

We, as a society, invest a tremendous amount of time and money to ensure that our young people are fully prepared to meet the technical requirements of the workforce. The problem is that we assume (wrongfully) that people are born understanding what acceptable work norms and behaviours are—and this is simply not reality. As a result of these types of soft skills not being taught in school, it’s left to others (usually your boss) to break the bad news that the world is not your oyster, as you may have been led to believe. People entering the workforce for the first time need to be prepared for the realities that come with working—otherwise life is going to hit them like a truck.

It just isn’t practical to assume that people will naturally have all the soft skills they need to survive in the workplace. In a perfect world, common sense would prevail and those new to the workforce would be just fine without any guidance—and in some cases this might be true. We do learn a variety of skills and behaviours everyday without being aware that we are processing information for use at a later date. However, the vast majority of people could use a crash course in the softer skills of life, as these are often overlooked in school and at home.

There is a misconception that because society is quite advanced technologically speaking, soft skills don’t need to be taught, as technology is rapidly making them irrelevant. But while, technologically, we are much more advanced than we have ever been, we appear to be losing something in the process. We are losing the ability to interact and behave respectfully on a personal level. There is no indication that this is an intentional decision we, as human beings, have made, but we are certainly left to wonder how it happened. It is possible that we are putting all of our faith in formal education to provide our up-and-comers with everything they need to survive in the working world. It is also possible that we are so busy with day-to-day life that that these types of soft skills have just gotten lost in the shuffle.

This is not your typical self-help book presenting high-level ideas and concepts based on academic research; rather, this book is about the little things and behaviours that, if we address them in our every day lives, can improve our daily interactions. The workplace is a very different environment than school. Once a person enters the workforce, he or she is exposed to many different types of people, perspectives and situations. It is important for people entering the workforce to gain an understanding of workplace etiquette if they are to be successful in their chosen career. In other words, you must be able to see things from a variety of perspectives, including that of your boss, your co-workers and the overall objectives of the organization you work for. On the flip side, if you are the boss, there is a certain code of conduct that you should be following, as well. A work environment can only be a happy one when there is mutual respect between the boss and his or her employees. We all need to coexist; whether you are fresh out of college or are managing staff for the first time, being reminded of the soft skills which many people forget to bring with them to the workplace can greatly improve your work relationships and your chances of future success.

Part 1: The Basics

You’ve got your first job. Good for you! It’s an exciting time: new experiences, new people and a steep learning curve. You are quickly realizing that work is nothing like school. No one prepared you for the emotional roller coaster you are now on. The experiences are nothing like your textbook said they were going to be. The expectations on your skill set are more than you anticipated. You have to stretch yourself much more than you ever imagined. As you embark on this adventure, there are some initial things you need to know as you start your career. These items are fairly simple concepts which include: dressing the part, writing for the workplace, acceptable behaviour in different workplace settings and how to interact with your co-workers.

Part one of this book is going to address these concepts from the perspectives of both the employee and the boss. It is important to be able to see things from both sides of the working relationship; if you put yourself in the boss’s shoes, it will help you understand why things are done a certain way.

As you move through you career, you will find yourself in many unfamiliar situations. However, once you have the basics of work life down, you should be good to go in any new, unfamiliar situation you find yourself in.

Chapter 1: Education

Education is a very important facet of life; it incorporates skill development and ensuring that one has the correct knowledge to do a job in the appropriate manner. Education does not always have to mean formal school learning; it also means life experience. How many letters you have behind your name is not the be-all and end-all—at some point experience starts to count more than how much formal education you have.

There are some people who have been in school since they were eighteen and are now over thirty and have never held a real job. A high level of education is very important if you wish to pursue a career as a doctor, professor, rocket scientist or other profession that requires a significant investment in education. It is expected that these people will have a graduate degree or a PhD. In the business world, however, an MBA does not guarantee that a person will be more competent than a person without. The current education system allows a student to move from high school to under-graduate studies to their PhD without having to enter the workforce. To my mind, it would make more sense for a person to have at least ten years of real life or work experience under their belt prior to being accepted into a graduate program, but this is just my opinion.

Technical learning is very important. Basic skills learned in a formal institution provide you with a base level of knowledge from which to build on. Once you graduate and find yourself in the real world, though, you will quickly realize that your competition all have the same basic skills that you do. Where you need to shine is in the soft skills. Book smart is not the same as politically savvy. There are those with no idea how to interact with people and no idea how to implement anything practical. In other words, once you start working, you might run into people who are out of touch with reality, and you don’t want to be one of those people. Theoretically, their ideas are usually really good; it’s the ability to see the idea through to implementation that poses a challenge for them. Many new graduates with no life experience are generally very eager and believe they can take over the world—and maybe they can. However, experience has a lot of value, and the world would be a better place if there was more emphasis on it. All experiences are good—even the bad ones—as they are an opportunity to learn.

The problem with too much education and not enough work experience is that you could be considered unemployable. If a hiring manager is looking to fill a position, the initial screening is to check if the candidate has the