Launching into work and starting your professional career come with unique challenges. This pivot to your first season of employment presents one of life’s greatest and most rewarding transitions, but it starts with a necessary period of learning and adjusting.
My 30-plus years as a human resources leader gave me a front row seat to the world of work. Starting a new job well should be a concern for every Christian who understands their vocation to be a calling from God.
God gave us a mandate to care for his creation (Genesis 1:28). From the beginning, God gifted humans with the opportunity to join him in tending to his world, even before the weeds appeared. A few millennia later, it’s still our role to subdue the earth in the myriad ways needed for the thriving of God’s creation. Starting well in a new career is a worthy quest.
Learning from Israel
The path God’s people take to occupying Canaan provides some positive and negative examples of the “starting” process. The ordeal of the exodus forced them to leave their old way of life and journey to a new land while remembering their essential mandate: love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Once through the desert, their river crossing signaled a new start, which they memorialized by establishing a marker, a pile of stones. The people had a physical reminder that God kept his promise to get them across the Jordan, a sign of his provision and care for them during their travels.
Not long after the reminder, though, Achan showed the consequences of not listening to God (Joshua 7). Achan chose to disobey the mandate to leave the plunder and keep resources that were not his. He was called out for greedy disobedience, a sobering reminder that going against God’s word has consequences.
Finally, the debacle of the Gibeonite interaction (Joshua 9) exemplifies how skipping prayer and making plans apart from God are detrimental. Here we see prayerless and careless decisions resulting in a mess that lasted generations.
Anytime we start something new, it requires shedding old patterns of behavior and creating new habits. As you start your new job, you need to remember that everything is a gift from God. He has cared for you from your first breath and will not abandon you.
You will be tempted like Achan to act on self-seeking impulses rather than self denial, and you will be enticed to look at the world through a purely materialistic and financial lens. A disciplined prayer life will remind you that even at work, it is in God that you live, move, and have your being (Acts 17:28).
Taking Work Personally
We are uniquely and wonderfully made, which involves being uniquely gifted. Our skills are tools given to us by God, and we are called to put them to use for his glory and the good of our neighbor.
First, you need to understand your own giftedness. Know who you are and know who you are not. This will help you as you communicate with your manager and collaborate with others. In order to consistently align your job requirements with your abilities, start by knowing your abilities. Getting on the “work” bus is one thing; being in the right seat on the bus is another thing. The truth is, this process will likely take some trial and error before you figure it out.
Second, you need to understand your personality and how others experience you in the workplace. Your personality influences the way your skills come to bear in any situation. As you will soon discover, every workplace has its own culture. You will need to align the way you deliver your skills with your organization’s culture. Of course, there are a number of tools to help you understand your personality (Enneagram, StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs, DISC, etc.).
Third, you need to understand the expectations for your role. It is great to know yourself. But you can only be effective when your work aligns with the expectations of those who hired you. You can make progress in this area by being curious and asking questions around the organization. Learn from the experiences of others. Ask them how you can start well. Most people will be delighted to help you in your transitions, which will open new perspectives for you.
A few questions to consider asking others:
- What was your launch into your career like?
- What was the hardest thing you faced when you got started?
- What was the best part for you?
Effective workers are usually curious and genuinely interested in why things are the way they are. They seek to understand an organization’s history and their role in it before they start fixing things.
Anyone can point out problems. The people who rise to the top are the people who can propose and implement solutions. Employees who spend time in the break room talking about all the things (and people) they do not like in the office are unlikely to move up the corporate ladder. The people who are agents of change will.
The Israelites needed a long transition time. They had to put the past behind them and pick up new habits and behaviors in order to glorify God. They finally adjusted to the new reality God had inaugurated, though imperfectly and inconsistently. And the same will be true of you.
My prayer is that as you start your career, you will find yourself learning more about God, yourself, others, and the world around you. You have gifts, and you were made to use them. As you do, may loving the God who created, gifted, and called you be your highest aim.
Randy Berg serves as a ruling elder at Christ Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara, California, and has over three decades of experience in human resources.