Job transition: signing an offer is just the beginning

Little announcement: In 2022, I moved to the United Kingdom and started working at an international company. Most of my colleagues now don’t speak Russian, and since I would like to share my ideas with the community around me, I will continue writing this blog mainly in English.

About me

My name is Masha. I have been working in product and data analytics at Yandex (one of the big tech companies in Russia) for almost nine years. But in 2022, I finally realised that it was time to change something in my life and career. I would like to work on another level: on a product that is used all over the world, not tied to just one market. So I have decided to start looking for a new job in a global company.

The last time I applied for a job was, frankly speaking, an eternity ago, so I started to study all available information to restore lost skills: reading blogs, watching webinars, and listening to podcasts. At that time, the topic of looking for a job abroad was trendy, so I had enough materials to dive deeper into it.

After studying all this information, I realised that career materials were similar to romantic comedies I used to watch in my childhood. If you, like me, were a fan of melodramas, you may remember that most romantic comedies end up with a beautiful wedding, and “they lived happily ever after.” Like romantic comedies, most career materials usually end up at the “career wedding” — accepting an offer.

Photo by Andreas Rønningen on Unsplash

I signed an offer at the end of April, and I was convinced that it was only the beginning of my career journey in a new company. I started to look specifically for materials about job transition and how to prepare for it. It took almost four months to have all my visa questions sorted, so I spent a lot of time for this research, and I would like to share my findings with you in this article. In this article, I will share my tips and tricks that can help you to make your next job transition less stressful and smoother.

If you know Russian, you can read my presentation on this topic at MateMarketing conference, which includes extra links to materials available only in Russian.

The stages of job transition

I learned about stages of transition only during onboarding at Wise from the article shared by our trainer. The article talks mainly about Wise, but I believe newbies go through the same stages in other companies. Actually, these phases are similar to Tuckman’s stages of group development: storming, norming and performing.

Let’s talk a bit about each step.

Stage 0: Excitement

It is the stage when you just accepted an offer and are dreaming about your new fabulous work. I would call this stage “honeymoon”. Enjoy this period, but be prepared for the next more dangerous phase.

Stage 1: Freaking out

It is the stage when you have already faced the reality that you need to learn from scratch how everything works in the company: from finding the best place for lunch near the office to prioritising your work. People usually feel unsure, incompetent and completely overwhelmed with new information during this stage.

At my previous job, I was a go-to person for all data-related questions, so I got used to being an expert and knowing (almost) everything. For people like me, coping with such situations of incompetence is especially challenging.

Stage 2: Acceptance

After some time, people usually start to feel more confident and understand that they can be impactful to the team. Using a standard approach for performance review, we can describe this stage as “meets expectations”.

Stage 3: Thriving

Actually, not everybody achieves this stage of performing when you are bold to make new innovative things and know how to solve any problem. I used to be at this stage in my previous job, and I know this incredible feeling of creativity and enthusiasm.

To sum it up, this article’s key takeaway was that everybody freaks out during transition, and it’s normal. You just need to be prepared for it.

Common mistakes

Preparing for transition, I’ve read the book “First 90 days” by Michael Watkins.

The book states that the primary goal of the transition is to reach a breakeven point as soon as possible.

The breakeven point is the moment in time when your cumulative impact (or ROI for people with analytical or marketing backgrounds) is equal to zero. During the first months, you usually consume the resources of your team, asking questions and distracting colleagues. After some time, you will start to do tasks yourself and bring impact. And the goal is to cover all team investments on your onboarding as fast as you can.

Image from book “First 90 Days” by Michael Watkins

The author also states common mistakes people make during onboarding that slow them down.

• Sticking with what you know and coming with “the” answer — believing that your previous experience will also work in a new environment without any changes.
• Falling prey to the “action imperative” — doing before understanding how everything works in a company and why it works like this.
• Attempting to do too much — trying to drive multiple initiatives at the same time without focus.
• Setting unrealistic expectations — not negotiating expectations with your boss and key stakeholders.
• Engaging in the wrong type of learning — focusing only on gaining domain expertise or hard skills and neglecting to learn more about company culture and standard processes.
• Neglecting horizontal relationships — missing communications with your peers, focusing only on vertical relationships with your boss and direct reports.

It was helpful for me to look through this list from time to time to be sure I’m not making well-known mistakes.

Tips & tricks

Below is my list of life hacks, that helped me during onboarding.

Put the finishing touches to your previous work

I believe it is crucial to complete your work appropriately, so there will be a couple of words about it.

• Find all processes that rely on you (i.e. access approvals or regular reports) and transfer ownership.
• Talk to all stakeholders and guide them on who they can contact for the tasks you used to help them with.
• Write down all unique knowledge that may be lost after your leave.
• Share ideas. I believe we all have a lot of research ideas that we never got around to. It is worth sharing them. Maybe one day, someone will have enough time for this RnD work.

One step at a time

As a newbie, you have a lot of new things to learn and sometimes you may feel absolutely overwhelmed by it. To cope with this vast amount of new information and avoid drowning in it, you can decompose your tasks and not try getting everything at once (it’s impossible, I proved it many times). Decomposition is often used for complex projects or research. We can use the same approach for the onboarding, trying to focus on one particular area and dive deep into it, then switch to the next one.

Keep your balance

I’m sure you have heard at least 100 times about work-life balance and the risk of burnout. I must confess I am a workaholic. I can start spending all my spare time on work, especially when I don’t feel confident and have many things to do (typical onboarding). Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to work effectively with such a regime. In the long term, it is not feasible at all. That’s why it’s worth talking about work-life balance and the importance of rest.

My advice is even if you feel the urge to learn everything during the first week (or month), please, stop and keep your evenings and weekends for rest. At least try not to work late hours more than one day in a row.

If your job transition is at the same time a relocation (like in my case), you also have to solve many everyday problems (from finding a place with the usual food to renting an apartment). It’s essential to book some time for this. Otherwise, you may end up without a place to live or critical documents to stay in the country.

Sometimes people worry about doing this routine during working hours. But unfortunately, in many cases, it’s only possible to view a flat or visit a state institution during working hours. Most likely, your boss is aware of such limitations, and it’s ok to tell colleagues that you will be OOO because you need to solve your household tasks.

The last but not the least point is about your dearest people. Please, keep in mind that your transition is also stressful for your family (especially if you relocated). They are also going through their transitions and may need your support.

Accelerate your learning

The main goal for your first month at the new position is to learn everything or as much as you can.

And there is a cheat — you can start doing it before your first day at work. I’ve looked through all available public information (blogs, official reports, YouTube reviews etc.) and tried dogfooding to get a helicopter view of the product and company.

Another way to learn more about your new company is to talk to current employees. LinkedIn can easily help you with finding them. Surprisingly most people are eager to talk about their work and share their opinion and impressions.

Also, if the company uses unknown tools (i.e. databases or BI tools), you can spend some time experimenting with them. This time investment will pay off with less stress during onboarding because you will feel more confident with already-known technologies.

However, the fundamental learning process starts after you join the company. As we discussed earlier, it’s better to focus on one or two key areas and start diving deeper into them, then switch to the following areas, not trying to grasp everything at once.

Sometimes people tend to focus on technical and business aspects (i.e. where to find the data and what is our north star metric). They completely forget about political and cultural ones (i.e. how the team decides what to focus on and who to talk to about new communications). It’s essential to keep in mind all aspects.

Talking to people may help you to learn more about company culture and common ways of doing things. It’s helpful to communicate not only with your team (your boss, direct reports and peers) but also with people from different roles (i.e. product managers, designers, engineers, etc.) and other teams. Such networking will give you a fuller understanding of what is happening in a company and how to solve your tasks effectively.

Early wins

The main goal for your first three months is to start making impact.

So the first step for you is understanding how you can benefit your team right now. It can be tiny tasks involving your base competencies. For example, I helped my team with visualisations for company-wide presentations. At that moment, it was challenging for me to help with complex analytical tasks because I knew very little about data models and all the nuances in our product. Still, I could use my hard skill of visualisation to be beneficial and build a relationship with a team. As a side effect, such tasks also help you to feel more confident.

For more strategic goals, you should definitely align with your boss and key stakeholders to spend your time on tasks that are important for the company. It’s essential to discuss your main tasks and goals for your onboarding.

The cornerstones of communications with stakeholders are visibility (they should know what you are doing and why) and constant feedback (they can stop you from doing unnecessary things or provide useful advice).

Job transition — the hard way

If you change a job and relocate, your transition may be a bit more challenging because of cultural differences. This topic definitely deserves a separate post.

In this article, I would like to talk a bit about “The Culture Map” book by Erin Meyer. This book is a must-read for all people working at international companies as it is full of valuable insights.

The book’s key idea is that we are all different because of our traditions and native culture (we persuade people in a different manner, we treat time differently, and our attitude to negative feedback also differs). Keeping these differences in mind during communications is useful because it will help you avoid misunderstandings and conflicts.

I was entirely captivated by this book as an analyst because it is based on research data. The author surveyed hundreds of managers all over the world and measured them by eight scales.

I advise you to read the book because it gives a lot of practical examples, but you also can skim through some overviews (for example, this one).

Summary

What I would like you to take away from this article:

• Signing an offer is just the beginning of your new work journey. It’s helpful to spend some time and think about the next steps.
• Everybody freaks out during job transition — it’s absolutely normal.
• The primary goal of the transition is to reach a breakeven point as soon as possible.
• To achieve the breakeven point, you should first focus on learning. And remember to learn not only technical and business aspects but also understand the company culture and common ways of doing things.
• The second key to successful onboarding is early wins. Align with your stakeholders on your first focus areas and constantly ask for feedback.
• Even during such a stressful period as onboarding, don’t forget about work-life balance and have at least some time to rest.
• Keeping in mind that we all have different backgrounds and contexts may help you to avoid misunderstandings and conflicts.