初入职场应该知道的10个行为准则

As another class of college seniors prepares to finish their final semester of school, they might focus on finals and job interviews – but they should also think about what awaits them once they get those jobs. There's plenty that will be new to them about the work world, some of it pleasant (paid vacation!) and some of it less so.

对于又一届即将结束大学最后一学期的大四学生来说，他们最关注的问题可能是毕业考试和工作面试。但是他们同样要考虑到工作后的情形。工作领域中有很多新事物，有些令人愉悦（比如带薪休假！），但有些却不是这样。

Here are 10 things that entry-level workers don't always realize in their first jobs – but will hopefully figure out quickly.

这里是给职场新人的十个建议。他们在第一次工作中往往不能很快意识到这些，不过希望他们很快能弄明白。

1.The salary you accept when you take the job is the one you need to live with for at least a year. People new to the professional workforce don't always realize that and think they can negotiate a raise after, say, three or six months. Attempting that won't go over well with most employers, since the convention is that you typically can't ask for a salary increase until you've been on the job for at least a year.

你接受工作时同意的薪资水平至少会持续一年。迈入职场的新人们通常都没有意识到一点，而且也认为他们在之后的3到6个月里就可以商议增加薪水。这种尝试，在多数雇主那里是行不通的，因为按照惯例，至少工作满一年以后才可以要求涨薪。

2.When you were in school, making a mistake on a test or a paper or handing in work late only affected you. But at work, mistakes can impact your boss, your co-workers and your company. People might end up staying late to fix your work, miss their own deadlines or lose important business because of you.

上学期间，你在考试、论文里犯的错和不及时上交工作只会影响到你一个人。但是工作后，你犯的错会影响到你的老板、同事和公司。大家可能会因为你的失误而需要熬夜来修补你的工作漏洞，错过了任务最后期限或者是错失了重要业务。

3.Being smart and having potential is no longer enough; what you actually achieve is now what matters. In school, teachers often favor the smartest students and even cut them slack on things like being prepared for class or even on being respectful or working hard. But in the working world, reputations and careers are built on actual work; being smart won't give you a pass if you miss deadlines, aren't prepared for meetings or don't meet your goals.

仅仅聪明、富有潜力还不够；你的实际工作才是现在最关键的。学校里，老师总是喜欢那些最聪明的学生，甚至在课前准备、品格和工作态度方面对他们放松要求。但是在工作中，声誉和事业要基于实际的工作。聪明的特点不会在你错过截止日期，或是没有对会议进行充分准备，或没有达成目标时给你特赦。

4.You have to book time off around holidays. It's not like school, where you automatically get a week or more off around Christmas and New Year's. And many offices are open the day after Thanksgiving; it's not a holiday, despite what school schedules might have led you to expect. And speaking of longer vacations …

你要在假期前后请假。不像在学校，在圣诞节和新年的时候，你会有一周以上的假期。很多公司在感恩节后的第二天还继续营业。感恩节并不是假日，尽管学校的日程安排可能让你觉得它是个假日。其他的长假也是类似的。。。。。。

5.Two weeks is the most time you can take off at once in many workplaces. Those days of lengthy vacations may be a thing of the past. In many workplaces, two weeks is the uppermost limit of how much time you can take off at once. In fact, two weeks might be the full amount of vacation time you're allotted per year, and if you use it all up at once, you won't be able to take any time off the rest of the year. (But this does vary by workplace; some offer double or even triple that, particularly as you move into more senior roles.)

两周是很多工作场合允许的最长休假时间。过去悠长假期的日子已经一去不复返了。在很多地方，2周是一次性请假允许的最长时间。事实上，2周可能是你每年可休假时间的总数。如果你一次性把假都请完的话，1年里剩余的时间里就没有任何假期了。（不过各个公司情况有所不同。有些公司的假期长度是这个的两倍甚至是3倍，特别是当你升入更高的职位之后。）

6.Unlike in school, great performance on the job isn't just about waiting for assignments and doing them. While in school it was often enough to simply do your assignments, at work you should be identifying ways to drive your department's work forward and taking initiative to do things better. If you sit around and wait for someone to tell you what to do, you might not get much done. That said, you also need to know the parameters of where you can take initiative and where you can't, which isn't always spelled out explicitly (and therefore can really confuse new workers).

不像在学校里，工作表现良好不能只是等待分配任务然后完成它们。在学校，只要完成你的作业就够了，但是在工作场合中，你必须明白让你所在部门的工作向前推进的方法，并且主动完善。如果你坐等别人告诉干什么，你可能不会有很大的成就。另外，你要把握好分寸。这个分寸一般都不会明说。（因此新员工可能会很困惑）。

7.You need to look politely interested in meetings, no matter how boring the topic. Yes, you might see senior folks checking their phones or looking bored – but they've usually earned the right to do that. As a junior employee, nodding off or being obviously distracted will reflect far worse on you than it does on senior colleagues; you're expected to look attentive, no matter how sleepy the meeting might make you.

出于礼貌，不管话题有多无聊，你都要表现出对会议感兴趣的样子。你可能会看到资深的同事在查看手机，看上去一副很无聊的样子—但是他们一般已经为自己赢取足够的权利这样做。作为低级雇员，打瞌睡或是明显走神的行为在你身上出现比在那些高级职员身上出现要糟得多。不管会议是不是让你昏昏欲睡，你都看上去要很专注。

8.Your attitude really matters. You might do good work, but if you appear unfriendly, rude, disinterested in others or defensive, you'll find it hard to advance – and could even end up losing your job. Being polite and cheerful isn't optional if you want to thrive in most workplaces.

态度很重要。你可能工作完成得很好，但是你看起来很不友善、粗鲁、对他人漠不关心、戒心很强，这样你很难得到提升，甚至可能最后丢掉工作。在大部分工作场所中，如果你想要成功，必须要做到礼貌、开朗。

9.A lunch “hour” is often 30 minutes. Forget what you've seen on TV or read about in books; in many workplaces, 30 minutes is the maximum you can take for lunch, and people often don't even do that and instead grab something and eat it on the go.

午餐时间通常是30分钟。忘记你在电视上或是书上看到过的场景，在大部分工作场所中，30分钟是可以用来午餐的最长时间。大家通常只是随便买些东西，匆匆忙忙地解决午餐。

10.Your boss wants you to get to the point. In school, you might have learned to delve deeply into every aspect of an issue, but most managers want to hear the upshot first and then decide whether to ask for more background. This is true in face-to-face conversations, but it's especially true in writing; few managers have the time or inclination to read multiple-page memos or lengthy emails. Short summaries with bullet points are generally preferred.

抓住重点。在学校，你可能学会了深层探究一个议题的各个方面。但是大多数管理人员首先想要听到结果，然后再决定要不要询问更多背景信息。这适用于面对面的交谈，同时也尤其适用于笔头文件。没有人有时间、有心情读上好几页的文件或是冗长的邮件。简短的总结加上几个重点更为合适。

（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）