One place where reputation comes into play in a huge way is
when you are in the workplace and people don’t necessarily know you well enough
to judge you based on anything but what they have heard from others, your
reputation as a person. As with anything
I pursue and am passionate about, I want to do everything perfect the first
time. I realize this is not realistic, but that is just my nature. Even when making a mistake is expected, I
strive to be the one person who does not make that mistake. I don’t believe in
taking the easy way out and not worrying about making that mistake just because
it’s okay to do so. While I obviously
still make mistakes, my attitude towards them helps me to really learn from the
mistake and how to do it right the next time.
Due to this mentality, as an intern, I developed a reputation as a very
fast learner, and was very quickly being approached my people with tasks for me
to do. While these tasks were beneath
the level of staff, they felt most confident in my ability to do it correctly
with minimal corrections needed by them, thus saving them precious time. As I was given more and more work, I found
that more and more people had work for me simply because someone else I had
completed a project for had referred me as someone they felt could complete the
task at hand. One of my favorite moments came when I received my official job
offer, and one of the first things the human resources manager said was how many
people had been impressed with my work during busy season and really wanted to
see me come back. This to me was a
validation of all the times I had struggled through something and been tempted
to throw in the towel but persevered because I felt my reputation was on the
line.
One thing I realized however, was that a strong reputation
can be a double edged sword. While (in
my case) people may have confidence in your abilities to get the job done, this also means they expect you to do work
you may not actually be prepared for and could present a really tough challenge
you may or may not be equipped to handle.
Thankfully, as I have talked about previously, I had a great support
system in place and this never became a problem.
I can think of times where my reputation has been challenged,
however this takes place more here on campus than it ever did at work. I would say I have a reputation here among my
circle of friends of being very committed to fitness. Most of them expect me to go to the gym on Friday
night before I do anything else, and if I have to choose between the gym or
going out with them, I will likely choose the gym. There are many times where I would love to
ditch the gym and go out to happy hour and out at night, but most of the time
my dedication wins. There are times
however, when I have “cashed in”.
Usually this is after a long week of exams and my willpower to work hard
is pretty much exhausted. One thing I
have found however, is that occasional deviations from your reputation don’t
necessarily mean people change their idea of what you represent. This seems to be very different for people in
the public eye however. For example, a
celebrity or politician may be the most philanthropic, giving, caring person
but the moment they slip or deviate from that reputation, they are jumped on by
the media. I personally feel this is very unfair, but that is a whole different discussion for another time.
I apologize this is late, I was under the impression we did not have a blog post due this week due to reading the calendar a bit too hastily.
ReplyDeleteBecause there is no class today, nor on Wednesday, I'm reading this and commenting on it now.
ReplyDeleteLet me take the workout part first. It is admirable to hit the gym, especially on a Friday evening. I wish you could export some of that discipline to me. But on your occasional straying from your exercise routine, I think referring that as cashing in is not good usage of the term. As near as I can tell from how you told that part of the story, nobody else got hurt by your not going to the gym. When an individual or an organization cashes in on the reputation, others are hurt because they trusted that it wouldn't happen and indeed depended on that being the case.
As to your being a quick learner during your internship, I want to get the facts correct before I comment further. So let me give two possibilities and see whether either of these coincide with your situation. The first is to be a very thorough learner. This requires performing lots of little experiments with whatever it is you are learning so you come to understand it thoroughly. This characterizes me when I learn about a software application that I find interesting, such as Excel. There is depth of learning. But it takes a while. So I wouldn't describe it as quick. But when I'm doing that I'm totally absorbed in the activity, rather than multiprocessing. So it does go faster than it would have had I been doing other things concurrently.
The other possibility is to not learn in nearly as much depth but to create some tolerable (good enough for government work) understanding in a short time as measured by the clock or the calendar. Do this or the alternative fit what you mean by being a fast learner?
Next, you might not be able to answer this, but it sounds like your work as an intern stood out relative to other interns. If so, your reputation might have been formed as much by how you contrasted with them as by how you performed in an absolute sense. If you know anything about the performance of your fellow interns, that information might contribute to the telling of your story. It's a bit of a challenge to write about this without bragging, so I can understand some reluctance in doing so. But if take the perspective of the staff in considering all the interns together, you might be able to consider this by asking what tit takes for a staff person to form a good impression of an intern, as well as to ask why this doesn't always happen.
I also want to note that I am suspicious of stories that one person outworked the other. Presumably all the interns wanted a permanent job offer from the company. And all were operating under quite similar conditions. Given that, why would any intern give less than maximal effort? Performance differences across the interns are then best explained either by serendipity (having good luck early can turn into a permanent advantage) or by differences in talent or human capital that preceded the internship. So you might touch on that as well.
I am glad you reminded me of the fact that to be considered "cashing in" it would need to harm someone else. Well, I typically work out with someone who relies on me to be there not only as motivation (it goes both ways, I'm there to motivate them, they motivate me), but also for safety purposes as a spotter during heavy lifts. By skipping the gym when they were expecting me to go with them, I impact their workout negatively whether it is because I am not there to push them or they simply cannot perform the same exercises because I am not there to spot them. (The latter is less likely because if necessary you can always grab a random person and ask for a quick spot)
ReplyDeleteAs for my performance during the internship, I do not like to outright state that I was better at my job than the other interns but that was most likely the case. The reason behind that I am not exactly sure. Perhaps I was lucky enough to develop a better relationship with my mentor or other older employees early on. This would fit the description of early luck turning into a permanent advantage. It may also be due to having a different professor in a class that helped better prepare me for the work I was doing. It is hard to say. I don't believe, however, that any of the interns gave less than maximal effort. It often happens that people have an internship and it is during that time they realize the work is simply not for them. This is another possible explanation for the differences in performance.