So you’ve cleared the gruelling tests, passed the interviews and have landed the coveted job offer at the dream company.
But there’s a bit of a snag. There is an intervening period between your current job and the next. Or if you’re a fresher, you find yourself sitting at home after graduating, not knowing when you start work. And here begins the gruelling wait for the “Date Of Joining”.
While it’s normal to get frustrated and impatient during this time, if spent wisely this period could be a blessing in disguise. Trust me this period is one the best in your life when you don’t have the stress of college or a job, while having the assuring security of an imminent job and a first salary.
Here are some ways to ensure that you have a fruitful waiting period and your start your new job with all guns blazing.
1. Learn to code
You may or may not be from a technical background, but coding can help almost everyone in an IT company. Not only can you develop cool websites if you’re a coder, but create widgets, optimise websites, pick up SEO, and even build apps. The skills of a good coder are coveted universally and the job opportunities grow exponentially with your coding skills. You can join a physical coding academy or consider online coding schools like W3schools or Codeacademy to start.
2. Learn a new skill
Learning something new and mastering it takes time, and patience. Something you will barely have once you are busy working 9 hours a day. While now you have all the extra time and the chance, consider learning an instrument or a sport or even a work skill like photoshop. The benefits include not only an added skill, but a chance to be a star performer during team outings and those yearly extra-curricular events in your company.
3. Go on a movie/show watching marathon
There are millions of good movies, documentaries and shows just waiting to be watched. While watching shows and movies may sound like a wasteful pursuit, apart from all the entertainment, you will be full of perspective about the world, and not to mention spawn off a world of trivia during conversations with the team mates. Just google for some recommendations for good shows and movies (No Saas Bahu and Gossip girl!), download or buy them and voila you won’t even know when the world ended and the job started. This is a good place to start.
4. Travel
A constant grouse of any employee in the thick of a job is how little time they have and a constant urge to travel more often. But once you have a job you will find yourself at the mercy of that yearly 20 day vacation and your boss’ approval. Weekend trips just will leave you begging for more. Now is the time to make those long travel plans, ones where you can afford to spend a day more at the beach if you so desire instead of having stinker emails from the boss.
5. Intern
Chances are you joined this company straight out of college and have no real experience of working in a corporate. An internship at small company or an ad agency can help you pick up valuable experience, skills and a practical insight into the corporate world you’re about to step into. Consider this internship as a trailer for the movie that is your big job. This will be your chance to make mistakes without having a lot at stake.
6. Work on your fitness and skin
Odd as it sounds, the world is a bit nicer to people who are fit and presentable. When you join a new organization, like it or not, others around you are going to judge based on how you look. There’s not a lot one can do to change their appearance, but you can always enhance it and make sure you look healthy, fit and confident. Losing extra weight, drinking a lot of water, working on your skin, going for a complete dental cleanup, could help achieve that.
7. Put together your wardrobe for the new job
If you’re a fashionable person, especially a girl, chances are you care a lot about how you present yourself, including at work. You need your pointy stilettos with your pencil skirts. You must have the perfect jacket with those new tshirts. Once you start a job, there will hardly be time or the inclination to spend large number of hours shopping, arranging the perfect accessories or putting styles together. Now is the time when you can do that at leisure and also save a lot of money doing it since you can afford to wait for sales, look around for the best deals etc. A basic good rule here would be to have a set of 5-6 clothes and accessories to make sure that at least in your first few weeks at the new job, you never have to turn up at work, caught off guard on the style department. Here is a handy infographic on some basic corporate wear norms.
8. Research into the company, know people
Once you start your new job, you will get caught up in the mundanities of a corporate life. The people you meet will largely be your immediate team mates. Now is a time when you can research into the company- what it does, its operations, locations. Also get to know the people who work there. You can find a lot of people on Linkedin, and Facebook groups. Chances are you will also come across a lot of people in the same boat as you- i.e. waiting to start work. Network with them, discuss your stories. You will find it comfortable to have a set of friends and familiar faces when you turn up at a complete strange place. On the other hand, what if you heard some horror stories or inside secrets about the company that influence your opinion about the work place itself? You still have one final shot to decide to work in this company or not before you take the plunge.