Monday, May 10, 2010

How To Be An Amazing Employee

  • Deliver high quality results as often as possible.
  • Deliver those results quickly.
  • Be enjoyable to work with, courteous, polite, and happy.
  • Be cheap, don't over value your services.
  • Communicate frequently and clearly with other co-workers and especially management.
  • Help co-workers and managers with their jobs. Try to make their lives easier.
  • Arrive on time, and don't over commit to your personal life so it is not a problem to work a little more. Consider 55 hours of actual work hours a week full time. Put in at least 40 hours, which is approximately 70% capacity. Track your own personal time so you know what your hourly burn rate is on a weekly basis.
  • Don't work over 70 hours in a week. You will burn out and cost the company and your personal life even more.
  • Count your productivity by hours of achievement rather then the hours at work. Don't screw yourself over via "wasted hours" watching just a few too many YouTube videos, sending text messages, taking smoke breaks, going on long lunch breaks, or tooling around on Facebook, chat, or other websites. If you don't waste hours, it's amazing what you can accomplish in a day.
  • Personally hold yourself to an "achievement" rate. If you get something done in less time, great. If not, you're putting in more hours due to your poor time management.
  • Always make it a goal to over deliver past what is expected and be a role model to your co-workers.
  • Don't be high maintenance. Have you ever seen House? He is high maintenance. If your boss gets visibly annoyed at you, you're being a pain. It's probably not "what" your doing, it's "how" your doing it that is annoying him or her.
  • Finally, be amazing! The fantasy for an employer is that their employees will be amazing. Every time you deliver a bit sub par it is painful to them because it is their failure because they hired you. Every time you are amazing, it brings happiness to them because they hired you and you are amazing.
This advice applies if you are a grunt, intern, a volunteer at a church, or an executive of a company. Happy Work'n!