Afternoon all,
Its been a while since I last posted anything up here due to us moving office, and then me being off work ill.
I mentioned in a previous post that the mini project is a great way to meet other people in the organisation and make a bit of a name for yourself. This is not the only opportunity and there are plenty of chances to use your talents ‘outside of the office’.
Remember that you have been given this job because you have skills and knowledge not already present in the company and therefore there are lots of little tasks you can pick up off the beaten track of your specific project.
For example, I have a degree in Analytical Chemistry. The company has never hired one of my kind before (which meant the first few weeks everyone was looking at me like you would a feral Tiger let loose in the office, waiting for me to go bang or savage someone!)
However, once it was evident that I have in fact been tamed people were more than happy to come and ask me questions about little problems they had. Things which to someone with my training were quite simple to answer, but made a difference as it would have taken a non-trained person three times as long to figure out. A good example of this is when I was approached by the service department.
They had taken a few of our products apart and could not understand what the ’slime’ forming on certain circuit boards was. It did not take me long to do a few tests and find out that the ’slime’ was silicone grease. When I did a little digging around I was able to find out that the grease was used on the production line to help a part slide into place more easily. Where people used too much grease it was seen on the circuit boards.
This was a simple task for me and took no more than a day, but the service department with no chemistry training could have spent many days trying to solve this problem and so were saved a lot of time. The more people that you help out, the more word gets around and so more people will be happy to ask for help.
Don’t see this as a bad thing, get out there and help as many people as you can (without it getting in the way of your work) because this is a really good way of finding out how other sections of the company operate and is great for meeting new people.
And remember… one day you might have to go to them for help!!
