Starting a new job

Today I start a new job. I was unemployed for the last 6-7 months and received a job offer in the final weeks of my unemployment benefits, which is a Godsend.

It's a full-time freelance/contract job for six months, with the opportunity to be hired on permanently after six months.

I've got to prove myself over the next six months and am pretty nervous about it. I have been successful in my career so far, except for perhaps in my last position, which was an anomaly and hiccup in my career.

I am responsible for driving traffic and revenue to the company websites. It's a big job within a large company, with a lot of responsibility.

I hope I like my boss, who is a female. I hope I like my coworkers. One coworker is far younger than me. He is 23-24 years old. I am 52. I think my boss is around my same age, or perhaps a little older. Her boss looks younger than me. Her boss seems a bit tougher. She seemed stressed and uptight in my interview with her.

The last large company I worked in was disastrous. I quit after 5 weeks of employment and was bullied by a female superior within my first week of work. That was a 20,000 person company, with a 200 person marketing department alone. I work in digital marketing. I pray that this job is much better than that experience, but I am soured from having had many negative work experiences at this point in my life.

I am trying to be positive and hopeful. I will go in with humility and will learn and ask questions. I want this experience to be a positive one. I pray that no one in my immediate work environment is toxic. The company has mainly positive employee reviews on Glassdoor.

I have to calm down. My anxiety can get going and then I lose my concentration.

I get to help the company to start a new blog. That's exciting to me.

I'm not sure where I am going with this post, but I wanted to create a thread where I can talk about my work and any issues that come up.

Thanks for reading and for providing any supportive comments.

I am wishing you the best of luck on your new job. It sounds both interesting and exciting. Hopefully the people there will be okay and not stress you out.

Having worked in a toxic work environment I can empathize with you.


here were a lot of "toxic" people where I once worked. A psychiatrist gave me a tip on how to handle that and it eased my stress. He told me to imagine I was working in an insane asylum as a psychiatrist and that all my toxic coworkers were mental patients. I tried this and it allowed me to get some distance from their toxicity. I treated the situation with humor and was able to not let people get to me.

Not suggesting you do this. Just sharing what helped me.

Hopefully you will be blessed with having nice coworkers and bosses so that you don't need to resort to any strategies and tactics to keep going. Workplace stress can be really draining and demoralizing. I have my fingers crossed that everything will work out for the best for you. You deserve a break.

@Have Hope - congratulations on the job offer. I would direct your nervous energy to finding everything you can about the company and how they did business before. This may involve research with other people or other ways. I am not an expert on your new company, but it behooves you to become one and become a cheerleader and promoter of the company.

To dispel your doubts, you may want to look at all the positive experiences you have had in jobs in the past and what skills you carry with you from those work situations.

Building confidence is going to be important because you need to sell your ideas to people at the company and the more informed you are about how the company works and how they make money, the more successful you will be in directing business to them.

One thing I did was to put on my business face and demeanor in the office. I tried to stay focus on what I needed to do. If you are not in the office you may need to develop rapport with key people that can help you gain the info you need to fulfill your job.

The other thing I did was keep a success journal. I wrote down all the successes I had each day when the day was over or even during the day., Each success no matter how small helped me keep myself motivated.

I also got myself on a healthy diet with exercise and enough sleep. I used to do exercises at the beginning before work and again at lunch time or just a walk. Having a routine saved me from falling into negative thinking. When I got low energy during the day I checked with myself to see if I needed a healthy snack. That often brought me back.

Good luck Have Hope. @CANDC

Thank you @Yaowen! I appreciate your support and suggestions. So far everyone seems very nice. If a do run into any toxic people, I will use your suggestion for handling it. It's a good one.

And thank you @CANDC. It's been six months since I've worked. I am so out of practice! I do need to learn everything I can about this company so that I can market them effectively. I've learned quite a few valuable lessons from my past jobs that I can carry forward with me to this one and apply. Especially in the beginning, I am going to keep my head down and focused on work. I like your idea of a success journal! That's handy. I do not exercise as much as I'd like, but I do get enough sleep.

We have a work dinner tonight, on my second day of work. Oh boy. I hope it isn't awkward.

And, I'm very anxious about various things, like getting my health insurance in order, being able to connect my laptop on work from home days, and adjusting my assigned contract hours so that I can be paid for 40 hours of work each week.

I'm freelancing to start with, so my paid time is hourly.

I also have to schedule like 25 individual meetings with various department members to learn about what they do and how we will be working together.

I hate being new and I hate starting a new job. It sucks.

I hear you. It’s not easy to be new. But everyone was new at some point! You’ll be ok. It’s a good fresh start!!!

What do you mean adjusting contract hours? Starting with new insurance is usually not that complicated. HR could help you with that. Dinner is actually very timely because you could meet everyone right from the start. I am glad you aren’t working from home all week. When do you go to the office, 2-3 days a week?

I am not sure how freelance differs from normal employment. Will you have to file your own taxes?

Dumb question. Do they give a lot of perks, being such a large and established company? A granddaughter of my friend works for Puma, they have so many perks! My daughter used to work for marketing department of a beauty supply company. Their perk was every month you can load a BOX of all kind of beauty products of your choice. She never had to buy a single toiletry or make up or skin care product for years after she left! And these were upscale products!

I wonder if NB would have like free pair of shoes every year or something lol

Actually, there are amazing perks! I got a free pair of new New Balance sneakers yesterday, on the house. A whole group of us did! We had a meeting between my marketing department, Google representatives, and our digital agency, and we all got a free pair of sneakers! Google also treated us out to a nice dinner, about ten of us, with wine and tapas!

The hours the company proposed were 9-5. However, since I am paid hourly, I do not get paid for a lunch break, which reduces my hours to less than 40/week if I take an unpaid lunch working those hours. I had to approach my boss yesterday to ask her if I can work 8:30-5:00 or 9:00-5:30, so that I can take an unpaid half hour lunch break and still work 40 billable hours each week. Make sense?

As a freelancer, I am paid by the staffing agency that coordinated the hire. So they take out taxes for me. I must submit a timecard each week to my boss for approval of my hours. I feel silly doing that, but it's how it works with freelancers who are hired by a staffing agency.

Speaking of being new. Yesterday was a bit awkward for me. While it was awesome being treated to a new pair of sneakers and having a nice dinner out on Google, I didn't talk much to people during dinner and felt fairly awkward, being the new person. I did make some amount of conversation with each person sitting directly next to me on either side, but there were long lulls where I where I wasn't a part of any conversation, so I just sat there feeling stupid. A few people left before the bill was paid and after dessert, so I took off early myself for this reason.

One of the Google reps I thought was pretty handsome or cute. I shook his hand on the way out to thank him for our dinner, and he spoke to me but I couldn't hear a word he was saying so I just smiled and nodded. Again, feeling stupid.

And, during our meeting with Google, the digital agency, and members of my dept, I didn't say one word. I just sat and listened for two hours. The meeting was mainly focused on paid Google advertising that New Balance pays Google for, so it didn't have a lot to do with my own work. Still, again, I felt kind of stupid sitting there and not saying anything.

It is definitely hard to be the new person.

It’s your second day on a job. I’d say being quiet is totally understandable. I think it might be better than appearing to be “know it all” and inserting yourself in every conversation. And you had to eat dinner with people you just met! Of course you were quiet especially since it’s a work situation. I’d be surprised if you said you were the life of the party. Take your time. Oh new shoes! That’s awesome.

Did they agree giving you that half an hour for lunch?

Thanks, Divine. Yes, they agreed on my proposed new hours.

My new job is a bit intimidating. I've never worked for a major, well-known global brand or company. The marketing department's practices and reporting is most impressive and intimidating to me. I never took any formal marketing classes. I have focused my education on my own niche area of digital marketing. I majored in something completely different in college, within liberal arts.

Today I am going to educate myself on marketing terminology and tactics. In fact, I have to take quite a few classes to be up to speed in this job.

I don't necessarily feel like I'm suffering from imposter syndrome since I know my own niche field quite well.

And, I am also working side-by-side with an external SEO agency on SEO strategies and implementation.

It turns out that this agency is responsible for devising the recommendations and strategy, and I am responsible for coordinating the internal workflows for implementation and the prioritization of those recommendations. So, the responsibility of strategy for the whole company does not sit solely on my shoulders as I first thought when I was hired. I am relieved to learn this. It takes a lot of the pressure off. The agency is also responsible for reports, so that takes the pressure off me as well. Thank goodness!

I am, however, working on a strategy for developing the company blog. It's coming along.

Could you take one marketing class at a community college? If you register now you could do Fall semester-online and in person. My county college is very good and you don’t need to do it for a degree. I am sure there are other options but I always feel there’s nothing as good as college class, even at community college level-in fact community colleges are the best places to brush up one’s skills. Not expensive either

It sounds like so many people in marketing don’t have those degrees and it seems to be just fine. My son in law is a head of marketing department in a decent size company, so it’s fair to assume he knows his stuff and then some. But his college degree is related to that career in the same way if he went to school to be a ballet dancer and now worked in oil refinery lol It’s not even remotely related.

You could do it. It sounds exciting.. And creating a blog! What fun! Have faith in yourself, you’ll do well. Sounds like a good company

I'd much rather take an online course at my leisure, working around my schedule. I am too old to be attending classes at night, in person. I am typically exhausted after a full work day. The last thing I want to do is to commute to a class and have to pay attention for an hour or more. Online classes are far more convenient.

I am very knowledgable in my own niche are of digital marketing. I just need to learn a bit more.

And yes, it is most exciting to have a hand in creating a blog for a global brand. WOW! I do have faith in myself.

Great! I thought of online college classes. Every college offers those now. I get it about in person schooling. Going to classes after work is unbearable as we get older. Too much.

If you are very knowledgeable then you have nothing to worry about. I misunderstood that you worry about not knowing stuff. If you do, it’s all good! You’ll do great

Yes, classes after work are unbearable. I know enough in my field to succeed, but there's always education and learning. It's a field where you must constantly study and learn.

Yesterday I presented 27 powerpoint slides that I pulled together regarding a blog strategy from an SEO and usability perspective. Then it turns out that they really wanted to identify the functionalities we need in a content management system that will manage the blog and how the blog should function. I put together something different and was worried that I misunderstood my first assignment and project. However, my boss did send my presentation along to the entire team we met with to discuss our needs and functionality of the blog. So, I assume that my work WAS useful since my boss shared it with the whole group. I still want to ask her if I misunderstood what was needed. After I had presented it to her and my younger, more junior colleague, she did say that it was very thorough. My colleagues response was that they had covered many of the SEO points in prior conversations, yet it was good to pull it together into one document.

No harm in asking if you misunderstood and you could even offer that you could now do that assignment that they originally wanted. It would demonstrate initiative and they might appreciate it.

In what ways your colleague is junior? Age wise or you are above him in a work role?

It turns out I did it perfectly. My boss said that she loved my presentation! They even have referred to me in another meeting that i didn’t attend as a “super star”! Wow, what a far cry this is from my last job where they nitpicked every little thing and made me feel inferior!

Great news!!!!

Thank you!!