Building Influence From Day #1 on the Job

Interesting story, we just had this leadership conference and I was sitting with one of the heads of one of our trading desks, and we were having this conversation about junior talent and he said you know, I’ve got somebody working on my team now. What I always tell our analyst is like, be present. Make yourself known. Don’t come to work and be invisible. And when we walk into the conference room as a team, you come in and you sit at that table and recognize that from day one you have a place. And if we don’t want you there, we’ll kick you out.

He said this particular individual was doing that from day one, which was very different from a lot of the new analysts he had seen. So, be present, build your network, have an opinion, and also have an approachable demeanor. Be somebody that’s interesting. Be somebody that’s people wanna get to know, that people want. Our culture is an apprenticeship culture, so there is this natural behavior where we wanna help people learn and grow. But you don’t want to do that with somebody that’s sort of non responsive. So have an opinion, have a personality, work hard, do whatever people ask you to do, and good things happen.