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5 Mistakes New Employees — (I’ve Made) — Make (and How to Avoid Them)

Jenny
4 min readNov 17, 2024

Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash

Jobs. Who knew they’d be so complicated?

Getting a job is hard enough in today’s economy. For those who’ve managed to land your first job, congratulations! You’ve gotten past the first hurdle of many. There’s a entirely new challenge waiting for you that no one ever prepares you for: figuring out how to navigate it all. Office dynamics AND managing expectations —it’s a lot to handle.

I’ve been there, done that. The mistakes I made early on in my career still make me irk and haunt me to this day. But they also taught me some important lessons that I wish I had known sooner. To spare you the trouble of figuring things out for yourself and going in blindly, I’m sharing five common mistakes I’ve made at the start of my working life—and how to avoid them. These apply to all jobs — no matter if they’re corporate or retail!

1. Saying "Yes" to Everything

Saying “yes” to every task that comes your way feels like the right thing to do. You go in wanting to impress your new manager and colleagues. You want to make it past training and/ or probation. I used to think it was the right thing to do, but all it did was leave me exhausted and overwhelmed. The worst thing of all was that it set a precedent where people expected me to take on more…

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Jenny
Jenny

Written by Jenny

Writing all things that come to mind - sharing all the ups and downs that come with life.

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