New people, New team, New beginning.

18/1/2013

Given my limited interaction in the corporate world from the prior year as a cadet I had a fair idea of what to expect in terms of the required etiquette, what it would feel like to be in an office environment, whether I’d be sitting in a pod or hotdesking, and the more than likely (familiar) numbing sensation of one’s behind when you sit for an hour too long (which, by the way, I have effectively countered through numerous hourly trips to the kitchen to replenish and hydrate my body with water).

Just a bit of background, Johnson & Johnsons consists of Medical, Janssen (the Pharmaceutical affiliate) and Consumer. Both Medical and Janssen reside in Macquarie Park with Medical being the big, red, brick building we toured during our site visit while Consumer can be found in Ultimo. All UTS Bacc co-ops intern at Medical while UNSW co-ops can be found directly across the road from the big, red, brick building at Janssen. Truthfully, I was quite nervous about how well I’d integrate into my new team and I could feel the nerves getting to me on my first morning but when I was warmly greeted by my bright, talkative manager I couldn’t help but just smile widely and relax. She introduced me to the finance team of approximately 10, divided further into three different groups for management accounting, financial accounting and reporting and planning. For the next six months, I was to work with my manager in reporting and planning on jobs yet to be defined but they would be given to me when they found something suitable.

As the first week passed quietly I had gradually come to the conclusion that I may have started my internship at an inconvenient time for my team. One of the characteristics of Johnson & Johnsons as outlined in my previous post is that they are a US company and therefore their year end is 31 December. Coming in on the 2^nd January meant that there was a substantial amount of pressure on current employees to finish their designated tasks so that unfortunately left me with not much work or the kind of work that required little explanation as time was of the essence. Please don’t be mistaken, I was very grateful for whatever work I could get and after the first few days I became great friends with the printer and scanner. Looking on the bright side it was a great way to meet new people as the printer was located in a corner of our kitchen and I’d bump into all sorts of people from different departments such as customer service, business intelligence and IT and get to know them. The overall lesson I learnt here is to make the most of your opportunities and turn what may seem to be a dull and monotonous task into something more valuable and fun.

Another issue I puzzled over during this time was when and how often to ask for work to do. As I was not given any set tasks except to help out whenever I could I was always running out of things to do. I did not want to be sitting idly at my desk twiddling my thumbs but neither did I want to be constantly pestering my teammates for work especially when they were trying to meet deadlines and had their ‘heads down bums up’ as the saying goes in the office. So I thought the best approach would be just to ask each person on my team once a day at the beginning if there was anything I could help out with and if they didn’t have anything at that moment in time I let them know I would be free to lend a hand when they needed it. However I do wonder if there was another way I could’ve tackled that...