From the movie "The Intern", how do we become a newcomer in the workplace?

"The Intern" is a comedy film released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States, directed by Nancy Meyers, and co-starring Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro. The film was released in the United States on September 25, 2015. The film tells the story of Ben Whitcott, who returns to work after retirement and becomes an intern at a fashion website founded by Jules Austen.

Although this movie is called "The Intern", strictly speaking, it is not telling the story of how a group of young interns as we think of them enter the workplace and work hard. The so-called "intern" is actually the "Senior Intern" project implemented by an Internet startup company. This project is to recruit several older (over 65 years old) interns. The purpose should be to balance the company's full of young people. status. Therefore, the intern played by the male protagonist of the movie is actually a 70-year-old grandfather.

Although it is not the so-called promotion story of a newbie in the workplace, the movie does explain a lot of how a newcomer in the workplace should quickly integrate into the team and fully express himself.

The first thing a newcomer in the workplace should do is to get along well with team members. After working in the traditional manufacturing industry for more than 40 years, the 70-year-old gentleman Ben joined a trendy female e-commerce company as an intern. As you can imagine, the span was huge, so at the beginning he didn’t know what he could do, or even what he could do. Mac computers can’t even be turned on, and the boss, Jules, initially thought the Senior Intern project was a joke and was not at all what kind of work was planned for Ben.

Although Ben didn’t know what the female e-commerce company did at first, he was familiar with many workplace principles after decades of experience in the workplace, so even if he was not familiar with the company’s business This does not prevent him from integrating into the team. The colleagues around him are nearly 50 years younger than him, but he treats people with sincerity, such as guiding a young colleague who had a fight with his girlfriend on how to win her heart back, and providing accommodation and help to an intern who was kicked out of his home. A dull engineer changed his image and helped the boss's assistant who was under great pressure to complete his work properly. Soon he became a "popular person" in the whole company.

Because the 70-year-old Ben has rich workplace experience, he is very comfortable helping these colleagues. However, he may not be able to do this for newcomers who have just entered the workplace, but it is not difficult to quickly integrate into the team. understand. Most of the time, you don't need to answer people's questions like the plot in the movie. You only need to show your sincerity, rather than closing yourself off or even feeling that you are incompatible with the environment. I believe you will be able to integrate into the team soon.

Newcomers in the workplace must learn to start from small things. Although Ben was already a VP before retiring, he was just an intern in the new company. His past work experience was not useful in the new environment. In addition, he had not yet figured out how the company operated and did not know what his boss thought about him. His own expectations, so he started from very small things. For example, I take the clothes to the dry cleaners for the female boss to clean, clean the desk filled with debris in the middle of the office, act as a driver for the female boss every day, buy food, and even send her daughter to kindergarten, etc.

Newcomers in the workplace will generally not be assigned very important tasks, because your experience is not enough and your abilities have not been recognized. It is impossible for you to take on important projects, otherwise there will be greater risks, so It actually makes sense to arrange for you to do some simple, basic, trivial things. However, some people have high ambitions and low ambitions, and instinctively feel that they are doing chores. As a result, they feel that they are not taken seriously, feel wronged, and even begin to resist. In fact, everyone may have to work for at least 30 years if they really work until retirement. Doing small things in the early days of entering the workplace does not mean that it will delay your career. The important thing is to show your abilities from these basic things. And let the superiors find out.

Take the plot in the movie as an example. The desk full of debris in the middle of the office has never been cleaned. The female boss will nag a few words every day when she passes by, but no one who comes and goes cares. In this matter, only Ben got up early in the morning to clean it up completely.

When driving for the female boss, he is always very punctual and knows the most convenient route. He is even reliable enough to let the boss take a nap in the car. While waiting, he does not forget to buy soup for the boss who has not eaten. Simply completing small things and doing small things perfectly are different concepts.

Newcomers in the workplace must be good at seizing opportunities and taking the initiative to work. If you just work passively and are just satisfied with the assigned tasks, you will definitely have no chance of being discovered. In fact, when Ben was assigned to the female boss as an intern at the beginning, the female boss said that he would arrange work for him through email. However, Ben kept checking his mailbox for several days and did not see the email from the boss. So he began to pay attention to his boss's schedule. By chance, he found that his boss's driver was out of shape at work and even drank secretly. Out of concern for his boss's personal safety, he asked the driver to take the initiative to explain the situation to his boss. Later, he officially became the boss. chauffeur.

In fact, the aforementioned cleaning up the garbage in the office is also a sign of seizing the opportunity to gain favor from the boss. This kind of work is not assigned by the superior, but it requires one's own eyes that are good at discovery. You should seize the opportunity to do what you are capable of doing well. Any team will like a proactive person.

Being good at seizing opportunities is to do your best in the assigned work on the premise of doing your own job well, and then see what kind of team work you can take on, or help your superiors Solve the headache problem instead of thinking about expressing yourself before you have finished the work at hand. This is putting the cart before the horse.

Newcomers in the workplace must continue to learn. Today, with the rapid change of knowledge, daily learning and lifelong learning have become the general trend. The fastest way is to learn at work and learn from colleagues and peers. Ben is 70 years old, and women's e-commerce websites are completely unfamiliar to him. Many of the things his colleagues do, the items they use, their work habits, and the company culture are also completely new to him. However, he did not shrink back because of this. He did not feel that he was old and could not keep up with the times. Instead, he studied hard to make himself qualified for his position.

Ben has also learned to extend his past work experience to new positions. For example, he used to be responsible for the sales of paper phone books, and women’s e-commerce sales of women’s clothing are essentially sales, so he took the initiative to do so. Studying the relevant content and analyzing the data led to the conclusion that the company was investing a large amount of advertising dollars in a market with limited growth. Because of this move, he was once again appreciated by his boss and began to assist the boss's assistant with more core business.

The knowledge learned in school may not necessarily be directly applied to work. New industry knowledge, tools and skills that need to be mastered are constantly emerging. If you stop learning, you will always be a newcomer. Even an experienced person will gradually be eliminated if he no longer learns.

Newcomers in the workplace must be brave enough to solve problems. Being good at seizing opportunities means taking the initiative on matters in which you have full confidence and ability, while having the courage to solve problems means having the courage to challenge difficult tasks. Such work may not necessarily be something you ask for on your own initiative, but may be given by your boss. A puzzle arranged by you. Bosses usually won't deliberately embarrass a newcomer. If this happens, try not to back down and do your best.

The female boss sent an email to her mother by mistake because she was busy. In order to prevent her mother from seeing it after get off work and causing conflicts between the two, she arranged for Ben and three other people to find a way to delete the email. . Ben led the team into the boss's mother's home, found the laptop, deleted the emails, and fled the scene when the police caught up. This is of course a comedy plot in the movie, but the moral is that we should dare to help our superiors solve problems.

Being confident and timid are two extremes. Being able to get a job with a certain degree of difficulty is a kind of trust. If you choose to escape instead of finding a solution at any time, then this kind of being Trust will gradually disappear, and in the long run you can only do very simple and basic tasks.

Newcomers in the workplace must know the rules.

This is an aspect that is easily overlooked. The workplace is different from school. Each company has a distinct culture, each team has a unique atmosphere, and each superior has its own habits. As a newcomer in the workplace, if you don’t understand these, then you will It's easy to hit a wall. Knowing the rules is not about learning the world, but about making yourself more appropriate in the workplace.

Already very well versed in the importance of rules in the workplace. When he first joined the company, he asked his boss's assistant what he should pay attention to when talking to the boss. The answer he received was "wink your eyes" and " Very punctual", "concise and to the point", etc. After the conversation with his boss, he asked her if she wanted to close the office door. When he went to pick up his boss, he rang the doorbell and left immediately. He also paid special attention to his boss's privacy and maintained his image in public, etc.

There is a very interesting plot. There was no one in the office at night. His colleagues asked him why he didn’t leave yet. His answer was that he couldn’t leave before his boss. This kind of thinking may not be accepted by the younger generation of professionals today, but this is his experience of more than 40 years in the industry, and he thinks it is a natural office rule. It is precisely because he understands these rules that we think are "hidden rules" that he has been able to achieve the position of VP in his previous workplace experience, and in a new and unfamiliar work environment, he can become trustworthy to his boss in a short period of time. friends.

In short, a movie is a movie after all, and all plot settings and character relationships are designed to be watchable and arouse the audience's emotions, but the workplace principles behind the story are worth learning.

About the author: Contracted author of Jianshu and Toutiao, LinkedIn columnist, Sina Finance columnist, and special financial management author of major financial platforms such as Sui Note. He has published personal finance books such as "Manage Money Early," "Easy to Become a Financial Girl," "Manage Money While You're Young—May You Live the Life You Want," and a career inspirational book, "Work hard so you can choose." WeChat public account: Mucheng-life