It’s not great, but first impressions are often the only ones that matter. So what can you do to give the best first impression over your first 90 days?
Cheat by starting early. Who says your 90 days has to start when everybody else’s does? Start early! Do the stuff you’d be embarrassed to do if you were actually in the office: deep dive product research, spend a lot of time on LinkedIn getting a feel for the other employees and sending out some friend requests, familiarize yourself with the origin story and get an early read on corporate culture, have some lunches with some future fellow coworkers and ask them about key projects or initiatives that are coming up.
If you were to ask a random person on the street what an HR professional does, their answer would probably be conflict resolution, or that HR folks deal with employee salaries and benefits. And while that is part of an HR professional’s responsibilities — to ensure employee safety, respect and accountability — that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
With remote work destined for good to be a fixture of the modern workplace, almost half of companies are monitoring remote employees’ online activities. Monitored activity can include active work hours, websites visited, chats, and messaging logs. Almost a third (31%) of respondents said their employers are monitoring their computer screens in real-time.
Whatever the reason, people seem to be strongly craving a connection with their true selves and to bring more authenticity into their lives. There’s just one problem. There is no true self, at least not in any sense of the self that we can understand through science. We should seriously question the idea of authenticity as a meaningful construct in our lives.
