By: Skott Schoonover, Strategy Analyst | 08/4/2022 |

From the time you are 5 years old until you reach adulthood, you spend most of your days in school. It’s a 12-to-20-year learning period where teachers, professors, and administrators fill your brain with all the knowledge they think is necessary for you to be successful in life. And while the education was extensive, there are some particularly important things that they never taught us.

At the end of every interview I’ve ever had, I have asked “If I get this position, what can I do to prepare myself to be successful in the role?” Different companies, even roles within companies have unique needs to be successful.

Here are five tips to help you be successful in every role at any company.

Prepare – Know your audience, and tailor the deliverable to them. Check your work before submitting it. You will find all sorts of mistakes when you proofread through something afterward. If you have a presentation, do a run-through in the mirror. Being adequately prepared will help you feel more confident when delivering information, and in turn, will make others more receptive to what you are offering.

Save Your Emails – If it’s not in writing, it never happened. I’ve been in countless meetings where things have been discussed and agreed upon, but no recap or confirmation was sent afterward. Two months later nobody remembers who made what decisions, or what was approved by whom. Save yourself a lot of future headaches and ensure that you get any decisions in writing.

Hard Work = Good Luck – You get what you put in, so invest your energy in yourself. Things are not always going to go as planned, and sometimes you just get unlucky. Putting in the hard work ahead of time will help reduce unlucky bounces and will ensure you’re better prepared to manage them when they do happen.

Use Your Resources – This was a hard lesson for me to learn. I looked at asking for help as a sign of my own inability. We have a company of a few thousand people, who all have diverse skill sets and points of view. Understand everyone’s value and utilize them. Don’t try to do everyone else’s job for them. We were all hired for a reason, if you do your job with excellence, both you and the company will succeed.

Take Your PTO –If you’re reading this, that means you’re a Human Being, and humans need time for rest and repose. This is YOUR time, and your time is valuable. You would never tell the company to pay you less, so don’t give up your time, which is a far more precious resource, either.

These five tips are applicable to everyone and can be used at any level in any business. If you follow them, I can guarantee that you will be more successful at work…and less stressed outside of the office.

Class dismissed.