A serial founder and former public company CEO, Dan Richards is an award-winning member of the marketing faculty at the Rotman School of Management, where he also oversees the credit course associated with MBA student internships.
How do you increase the odds of succeeding in a new job, whether it’s a full-time role or a summer internship? One answer comes from Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s best-selling book on how people make decisions.
Mr. Kahneman was an unlikely candidate to win the Nobel Prize in economics. After all, he’s not an economist. The professor emeritus of psychology at Princeton University spent his career running experiments that point to flaws in how we make decisions.
As a result, Thinking Fast and Slow summarizes research on the principles of decision making that can help us stand out and succeed. Among those principles is what is known as anchoring, the cognitive bias in which our initial conclusions tend to persist, even in the face of contrary evidence. When presented with an ill patient, research shows doctors often stick with their initial diagnosis, despite new information pointing in a different direction. The same applies to teachers, lawyers, accountants and company chief executive officers – we tend to stick to our prevailing views.
Put another way, our mothers were right – first impressions truly do matter. Most people intuitively understand this. The first day on a new job, we get up early to ensure we’re on time. We make a point of wearing clothes that will make a positive impact. And we go in determined to impress our colleagues.
But you don’t have to wait until your first day to begin making a positive impression. At the Rotman School of Management, I oversee the course associated with internships by 250 MBA students. As part of that, we discuss how students can increase the odds of succeeding at their internships before their first day on the job.
Show curiosity
Some people believe that when they’re offered a job, the fight is over and they can relax. But in truth, for students who accept a summer job in the hope of being offered a full-time role, the battle is just beginning.
I tell students that when they get an offer, by all means they should take some time to relax and celebrate. Then they should begin to dig deeper into the company they’ll be working for, to be armed with as much information as possible on Day One.
When interviewing for a job at a publicly traded company, often applicants have already sought out articles about the firm and have read its annual report. But now that you have the job, you can go one step further. You might set up a notification so you’re alerted to news about the company. You could research the company’s competitors, reading articles and their annual reports. And you could go the extra mile, depending on the company, and see if you can find customers to ask about their experience. If you’re working for a retailer, for example, visit some of its stores and compare them with competitors.
Doing this before you’ve started demonstrates initiative and curiosity. Kevin Fong spent 25 years in senior roles with BMO Capital Markets. Today he is among 20 internship advisers who work one-on-one with Rotman students during their internships.
“To succeed in your career it won’t take just two or three things, depending on the job, it could be more like 20 or 30. Among the most important is being curious. The most successful people bring a peripheral vision to what’s happening, where they aren’t just passive observers of events, rather they show that they think critically about the implications of events.”
Drilling deep into the company you’ll be joining will give you some useful insights. Next week I’ll share some ways to capitalize on the perspectives you’ve gained to increase the odds of success in your new job.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.
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