25 Tips to become successful in corporate from my 5 years of Experience.

This is the season of welcoming new interns ! Organizations are starting to gear up from their side. But having been an intern in the month of May itself, years back, I thought let me share some things that I learnt over a period of time which not only applies to interns but anybody working in the professional world.

Hopefully some of this helps provide a new insight and sets them up for success.

Tips:

1. Questions are great
2. No question is a stupid question
3. Unblock yourself
4. Ask for more work by yourself
5. Take up tasks that you feel are challenging
6. Speak up when you don’t agree with something
7. Everybody’s opinion counts may it be an intern or a Principal Engineer
8. Focus on Individual Goals as well like Public Speaking
9. Volunteer for demos, presentations
10. If you feel overwhelmed, call it out, does not mean you are not capable
11. Commit to what you have confidence in delivering than over committing but at the same time its okay at times to over commit and under deliver.
12. You will eventually get good at estimating this
13. Make sure to check in regularly with your manager around your goals
14. Do not wait till 1:1s to talk to your manager/mentor about something
15. Self initiate the process of taking periodic feedback from peers
16. Manager’s feedback is important but remember your peers are going to give your review so keep asking them for area of opportunities
17. Give kudos to peers in standups if they have helped you out, helps the team understand their utilization of time as well
18. Always keep thinking out of the box, innovating and changing processes for the better.
19. Take up tasks across the stack if you are trying to make a choice in your career based on what you feel most passionate working on. Utilize this opportunity to experiment if your role allows you to do so.
20. Trust me, colleagues can also be friends !
21. Remember the 10 min Rule — If you are blocked, make sure you spend time in exploring various options before asking your mentor/manager, try to self learn first
22. Go out, take some fresh air. Or talk to a friend. Sometimes it just needs a little bit of distraction and change of mind to solve the problem you are stuck with
23. Sign up for meetups/webinars around topics that interest you out of your sprint work
24. Join an Employee Resource Group that you feel passionate or curious about.
25. Pro Tip: If you are a foodie, look for any inter-office slack/other communication channels that share recipes and stay connected. Similarly, if you are a travel junkie, join/create a channel for other travelers to share their past journeys. Trust me seeing all those beautiful throwback pictures will help you refresh yourself in these times. (I usually put my instagram link on our wanderlust slack channel, thus putting it here too :P https://www.instagram.com/lifehacksaroundtheglobe/ )

Feel free to comment below with your insights/experiences, I would love to hear them! Follow me on twitter where I keep sharing interesting things happening in the professional world — https://twitter.com/sagar_barbhaya