5 Steps to Providing Your Own OJT

Congratulations! You just landed a new job! You’re all excited. This is something you’ve been wanting for a while and the day has finally come. You go in for the first day on your new job. You find out where you’ll be working. You meet the people you’ll be working with. You fill out those last few forms they need from you and that’s it. They leave. They leave you there alone. They didn’t give you any instructions, they didn’t give you a training manual, there are no online resources for you to reference and the person you report to is clueless as to how your job gets done. The one person who did know how to do this job is the person you replaced and they’re long gone.

Days are passing, time is ticking and there’s only so long you can decorate your office, set up your voicemail or meet the people down the hall before you have to face the stark reality that you’re clueless and help is not on the way. So, what are you to do in a situation like this? Here are a few possibilities.

1) Don’t panic. Panicking is not going to make the situation any better.

2) Begin meeting with your colleagues one-on-one. Beginning with your immediate supervisor, schedule time to meet with each person you’ll be working with. Use that time to get to know a little bit about them and allow them to get to know you a little. Ask them about what they do there and how their position interacts with yours. Be careful not to get involved with any gossip or take sides with any departmental rivalries. The goal here is to take the initiative to start developing some positive working relationships while fact finding about exactly what it is you’re supposed to be doing.

3) Ask your supervisor if there’s anyone in a different department who does this particular job. If the answer is yes, see if it’s okay for you to meet with them to learn more about the specifics of how to get the job done. There might be some departmental differences that you’d have to take into consideration, but if you can gain an understanding of the basics, you can apply what you learned from meeting one-on-one with the people in your department to make the necessary adjustments.

4) Train the other people in your department. If you weren’t offered any training when you started in your new role, then chances are the other people in your office weren’t trained when they started in theirs. Offer to share with them what you’re learning as you learn it. Some may be receptive to it. Others may reject it. For those who are interested, generously share with them what you’ve learned. For those that are not, don’t take it personally and don’t try to force it on them. Should they ever come to you later and ask you something they had previously rejected, don’t hold it against them. Freely answer their question and help them in any way you can. As you share with others what you’ve learned, it will reinforce those processes in you.

5) Create a training manual. As you begin to piece things together and start gaining some insight as to how to perform your new job, start writing everything down. Not only will this give you something to reference when you need it, but imagine the value you would add to the person who comes after you. Whether an additional person is hired for your same role, or you get promoted and would need to train your replacement or if you left that department or organization altogether, what an incredible resource you could leave behind simply by documenting what you have learned.

Now that you’ve heard it (possibly from someone else who does this same job) and you’ve said it (training the other people in your office) and you’ve written it (while creating the training manual), you should be well on your way to becoming proficient in the execution of your new job. Don’t give up and don’t get frustrated just because something isn’t handed to you on a silver platter. Perseverance pays off and it not only benefits you, but all those around you as well.

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