hi guys and welcome back to my channel this video is probably two years late but people are still
starting remotely in their new jobs in publishing like i did technically on my first day so i just
thought i would give a video about like tips and advice starting remotely i've also spoken
to a couple of people that did start their jobs completely remotely when we were in the middle of
the pandemic i have yeah now just started my new job and i have been doing two days in the office
in three days at home so technically i started remotely as well and i've been having to kind of
like juggle using teams rather than just talking to the person next to me but i thought that yeah
this video might help some people advice what you should and shouldn't do and maybe what companies
could be doing to help people starting remotely as well the pandemic is not over yet there are still
cases and stuff so people aren't going back into the offices full time at the moment so
yeah so if you are starting your job remotely then massive good luck to you if you have any
particular questions then leave them in the comment section down below i hope you find
this useful for me it definitely helps just ask those questions on teens it felt like i was being
so annoying typing more and more questions but at the end of the day that's how i'm gonna learn and
i feel like sometimes i was given a task and would sit there for ages trying to figure it out and
actually if i just drop someone a message and got them to call then i'd probably figure out a lot
easier than just kind of like suffering in silence on my own so my main thing would just be to like
ask questions and reach out to people don't be afraid of like making like spontaneous calls as
well which i did a couple of times to people in my team just like hi can we just run through this
it'll be easier on a call and like screen sharing being in the office like comparatively it's so
much better for learning um if you can join any like meetings virtually as well i would definitely
recommend that even if you just have your camera off your microphone off and you're just sitting
listening it can just help with that kind of like learning process of how the publishing process
works at where you're working so you obviously started your job remotely can you take us back to
the beginning before you got a job in publishing what were you doing before that so i was working
in a pr and comms internship for a while i thought i was being unsuccessful in my publishing job hunt
so i thought the best thing for me to do was go do something else so i could get some transferable
skills perfect yeah and then when did you join the publishing industry then i joined in november
2020 and so midway through what was the second national lockdown here and uh so that was nice
and exciting it was just after my birthday it was that was the only happy thing that happened
and so how were those sort of like initial stages obviously presumably you knew that it was going to
start remotely because we were in the middle of said pandemic so how were those initial stages
for you yeah i mean i think going in to the job i knew it would be remote like you said and i just
finished doing a remote internship as well so i feel like a lot of me was definitely prepared for
that but what made it a little bit more scary was knowing it was a job that i cared a lot about and
i was going in remotely and i was worried about not being able to trail someone on your first day
which is always a great thing to happen on your first day everyone was there from the get-go to
help me you know help me set up i had members of hay house emailing me on my personal email address
you know resources for me to use when i started so i felt like i wasn't being thrown at the deep
end at least i had some sort of armbands basically did you have any nightmares with i mean starting
any new job i feel like there's always some kind of tech issues or anything did you have
anything in your first week that was an absolute nightmare nothing like absolutely like that but i
couldn't connect to the server to get some files for the first few days and it just kept throwing
air after error and my wi-fi my old place was notoriously bad as well so the first time i
tried to say something in a meeting that wasn't just like a cash up and the internet went down
and no one could have me so that's a nice first i am in for my first week and then besides that how
were like the team with the obviously you said you felt supported do you feel like it would have been
different starting remotely compared to being in the office where you could sort of just turn to
someone and ask them questions oh yeah for sure that was the biggest thing i missed nothing quite
compares to typing out an email and having a question of being able to turn around and be like
you know help me i am super lucky that my manager also started remotely and she understood where i
was coming from and i think it's really important just to ask for help because now what we're you
know well over a year and a half into the pandemic the likelihood is that someone either at your
level or senior to you that started remotely and it's definitely benicious to reach out and be like
hey are you feeling this as well or hey um can you just help it takes a certain amount of courage to
kind of be proactive and send someone a message because you're physically having to do that click
send as a poster yeah just talking to someone do you have any advice for someone that might
be particularly reserved or a little bit more shy that doesn't feel comfortable doing that do you
or do you just think just do it just push yourself out your comfort zone and do it totally just push
yourself out your comfort zone but also i understand how difficult it is to make that
initial move sometimes i am quite the overthinker as well so it's hard for me to reach out and my
best advice would be don't overthink someone's tone in a message a slack message or an email
because more often than not the full stop that's there does not mean that they're angry with you
it's just because they're probably using proper grammar which is really easy to read
try and do it if you can what importance do you think that has the kind of tone of voice
having a call with someone opposed to just messages or emails or something do you find
that it's more helpful when you have calls with people personally yeah not just because of the
being able to actually interpret what they mean a lot easier by their tone of voice
and also you can read their body language see their facial expressions but also it allows for
you to tag along questions you didn't know you were going to have it's a bit more of a
effort to send an extra email when you have a question you know five minutes later when you're
on a call those questions freely flow and coming from a marketing department a lot of my um queries
and questions are relatively creative and being able to speak to someone on a call about that
your creativity just you know transpires differently and better over a call than it
does over a slack message and what advice would you give to people that have started having their
first few meetings having started their job remotely what i did in my first big meetings
when i had the cross-departmental ones was take a couple of notes uh each time so you can kind of
look back on them if there's recurring things or conversations you can almost refer back to
your notes and prepare for that definitely do try and speak as much as i just complained about the
annoyance of zoom lag it's definitely worth it nine times out of ten everyone's going to
make space for you to speak especially if you're starting as well everyone wants to hear your voice
you know you've been hired for a reason even if it's just something as small as saying you
agree with someone it's important you try and get try and get yourself out there try and get your
voice heard and following on from that what do you think the other employees could be doing as well
to support the new starters that have started remotely there's a whole range of what people
could do ranging from something super simple as a slack message or a team's message or an email
on their first day just to show that people are aware that they're coming and they're welcome
and even you know scheduling a coffee break which i had quite a few on my first week some zoom
coffee breaks and some members of the team where everyone gave me a rundown of what they did and
i think that's really important to get a mental grasp of what everyone's doing in the company get
a little bit of a mind map going on i think if and also if you know that someone's starting remotely
and you've also started remotely when you reach out to them like i've done a hay house and been
like look i started remotely if you want to speak to someone or just about the pains of starting
remote working just let me know i think just reaching out making them know that you're there
yeah and it's really nice that you said obviously that you're reaching out to people because you can
be like look i was literally in your situation before and i've survived and then finally do
you have any kind of like last minute advice for people that are starting their job remotely and
you think this is what you need to on your first week or your first month before they start even
before you start um i actually ended up watching some like just general like marketing seminars not
even about books i just wanted to give myself this extra skill set and also i wanted some talking
points i could maybe bring up with the rest of my team and probably doing a catch-up i wanted
to be able to talk i wanted to impress basically you know it's your first day i'm sure many people
want to do the same thing also like i said earlier just reach out even if it's just to be like hey
how are you everyone is there to support you even if you don't think they are and you think oh you
know they're too high up the chain to speak to you everybody wants you there everyone is there
to support you so absolutely just reach out say hi and don't be afraid of making friends with
random people around departments so then when you joined how was that too obviously you knew
it was going to be remote because we were in the middle of the pandemic and you knew all about that
you knew you'd have to be logging onto a laptop on your first day rough and going to an office
how were those kind of initial stages of getting you all set up and your first week etc it was
better than i expected i think because everyone was very aware of the fact i was starting remote
and they were very aware of how everything can go very wrong if you're not there with it but it was
scary and i felt a lot of pressure making sure that my camera was facing something
that looked professional and making sure that i looked really on it every day
just because i was really worried that people would think i was just a slob in my bedroom
yeah so you sound about like learning from other people and i think that's like copying
other people is how you learn a lot of the time do you think that still applies even when you're like
starting remotely that you had to kind of learn from copying other people was it harder because
you couldn't see them i think it's harder there was a certain element of like sharing screens and
learning that way but it is a lot easier to learn when you're in an office surrounded by people
talking about the job and not having that really made it harder for me to learn things i think
you don't really think about it when you're in an office you just talk but it feels a lot more
intrusive to message people and to constantly be sending messages and asking questions so i think
it did take me a while to get over that so once i was over that it became a lot easier and do you
think that was a big part of it like just dropping someone an email or a team's message to ask them a
question yeah yeah i think because in publishing you'll know there's so many niche terms acronyms
all sorts of things that you you just wouldn't know if you didn't ask and when
these things pop up i initially was so scared of asking because i thought i should know these
like everyone's going to think i'm really daft everyone's going to think that it's a
really stupid question but everyone has to start somewhere so once that kind of clicked in my head
it wasn't too bad i got used to it faster than i thought it was it was a lot better than i expected
i was expecting it to be very lonely and to just be sat by myself not talking to anyone all day
so it was really nice to come into it and have pretty regular team meetings and to have
teams where we could just chat fine but i didn't i didn't kind of have the confidence to talk so once
i got over that it was a lot better but initially it was a bit lonely yeah so do you think looking
back you would change that to try and get involved more is there anything else that you would change
looking back now and if someone was starting remotely what advice would you give to them
i would definitely have talked more because as soon as i started to get to know people it became
so much easier so yeah definitely talking more definitely asking more questions from the get-go
not being scared to ask for help i feel like that's the same for in-person training as well
as soon as i realized that everyone had the same issues that i did everyone struggled to learn
how to use all the spreadsheets and how to use biblio and all of the publishing software
i wasn't as worried asking questions so asking questions is is key and then what about um sort
of on the flip side what do you think the other people in the team and in the business could be
doing to support someone that's starting remotely um i think they can well they can make it clear
that you can ask questions and being friendly what i thought was really lovely when i started at
bloomsbury was people had already emailed me before my actual start date so when i started i
opened up my emails and there was emails from all the people in my team saying welcome to bloomsbury
let me know if you need anything always happy to have a chat so that made me feel really welcome
and that was absolutely lovely um i think starting a remote is scary it's really really scary and
you're going to be very nervous about talking to all of these people that you're not going to meet
in person but lots of people have done it and i think just making sure that you communicate and
you know that everyone is very very happy to have you there and they're not going to judge you for
what you're asking or what you can and can't do don't worry and you'll get used to it quicker than
you realize i mean be as honest as you like you know did you feel supported did you feel that you
were quite distant from everyone is it different to how you expected it wasn't it wasn't because
um my previous role that i was in for a year was work remote so i had experience working from home
and i kind of sort of predicted what it would be like obviously it's different with every company
um but yeah so i had kind of the confidence to do that and kind of the awareness that i was gonna
have to learn how to do my job and interact with people completely through a screen how did you
find that kind of communication because obviously when you're in the office you can just turn to the
person next to you ask them a question did you feel that that was slightly different because
you'd have to message them on teams or call them or email or yeah what was that like at the very
very beginning i felt a little bit apprehensive just messaging people on teams and being like
hey i need this thing from you is that okay um but everyone was really really nice about it and um i
did feel supported and i felt like my confidence grew um i didn't even really take that long
for that to happen so um i really appreciated that it helped that we were we were doing other social
things alongside we were having conversations it wasn't just about work and so when it did come
down to work questions that i needed answered um people felt a little bit more approachable moving
on from that so how important do you think those kind of social things are when you're
starting a job remotely for the very first time do you think that it makes much of a difference
oh i think it makes a lot of difference and so i think that that's a big element of making work
feel like a workplace even though i'm just you know sat in my front room yeah i think it's pretty
integral to it but the advice that i would give i think is just ask for any and every resource and
study whatever you can learning more the way that you put that definition back in your job the way
that you like plug into your job and feel that confidence and and and getting involved totally
get involved anything get involved especially if it's social because it makes that work place feel
like a workplace it's important to just realize that it's it's challenging and information is
your friend so making those resources available for one is also what helped me was just having
a lot of people checking in at first it was a little bit like i was about a bit kind of
just taken aback by it like oh i don't really know who you are but i'm supposed to tell you
how i'm doing um with this or that thing but um but yeah i think ultimately it helped because
i felt supported and i felt like i had multiple multiple people i could ask if i had a question so
if i had a question i didn't really know who to ask i would just kind of think about it
for a second and then choose somebody and say i don't really know who to go to with this can you
point me in the right direction and having those connections in the first place was important for
me to be able to do that otherwise i would have probably just sat there and tried to figure it
out on my own more and more people are starting remotely it's it's not a brand new thing anymore
and so it doesn't have to be scary because companies are actually doing the work to be
that support system yeah it feels it feels strange and it will probably continue to feel strange for
a while because it's just not it doesn't come naturally um but yeah don't be afraid of it