After landing your first IT job

Communication:

1. If this is your first job, first thing you need to put on shelf is your shyness. Being polite is good, but being shy will keep you in the bay from promotion and team work. At back-home if you're shy, people may not care about it. But here in North America, it could develop an impression that you're not able to communicate and co-operate in a team environment.
   
   
2. Before communicating through e-mails or answering phone calls in office try to get familiar with online netiquette and phone etiquette. There are thousands of free online resources that could help you mastering in this arena. If you'd like to learn about online etiquette, A good place to start at RFC 1855(written in simple English, even non technical people can understand). In general, remember few rules:
   
   
3. Understand different email attributes such as cc, bcc, urgent flags etc.
   
   
4. Communicate with short sentences and with clarity. Always try to speak to the point before explaining it details.
   
   
5. Do not send an email written in all capital letters.
   
   
6. Always check spelling and grammar of your email. Now a days almost all mail clients have built-in checker.
   
   
7. In a professional email do not use too many informal IM words such as great (gr8), before (b4) etc. Words like ASAP, IMHO, FAQ, BTW, EOM , ETA etc are ok. A list of such words can be found here.
   
   
8. Do not send a MB attachment with an email to clog the mail traffic. If possible upload it to an internal server and send the link to your audience.
   
   
9. In all cases, if possible, prefer plain-text message over html mail
   
   
10. Try your best effort not to send typical formatted emails, or configuration files/source code through email. You should not assume that everybody is using same mail client as you do. The person who will execute your formatted source code might not get the same compile/run time error/success that you have had, because of the extra characters embedded in it. It may even create some non-desirable outcome.
    
    
11. If you need to use email signature use it line with company's policy for official email.
    
    
12. If you meet new people in meeting or in hallway try to introduce yourself in a professional manner.
    
    
13. If you're in a conference call and try to make point , make sure you tell you name before dropping your thoughts. Remember everyone might not recognize you from your voice.
    
    
14. When requesting meeting or scheduling it through software, make sure you mention meeting agenda. Incase if you've an office in east and another in west coast in North America, try to mention the meeting time clearly such as PST, EST, PDT etc. Do not simply rely on outlook or other scheduler to tell your participants about the timing of the meeting, even though it will automatically do so.
    
    
15. Activate your voice mail in your phone with a professional greeting.
    
    
16. Do not solely depend on email, on time sensitive issues, say we are releasing this product at 5 PM. Your audience might not be checking emails to get this important message.
    
    
17. Do not solely trust emails. People has personal setting for spam/virus filter. Your message might end up at junk email, depending on the setting of the user. For instance if a mail sent to All caps with subject such as. PROJECT LAUNCH AT 3PM, might go to junk. If the user set all caps subject to be considered as junk/spam mail.
    
    
18. Do not forward sensitive confidential emails by electronic communication to people outside your office. Your electronic communication will speak against you if further problem arises down the road.
    
    
19. If you're asking someone a question, and the person is not able to understand , try to rephrase it with different words keeping the main theme in it.
    
    
20. Distribute meeting notes, know how to use conference calls, send meeting minutes right after the meeting.