About honors sober

In the midst of the holidays, the first holivar of 2018 was published on Habré - an article on why it is bad to be an excellent student. The article is ambiguous, but rational and strong, if only because it raises a serious issue that faces all employers and the IT industry in particular. It is even surprising why no one has raised this topic here before, because this is, among other things, the problem of companies. Actually, that is why the author at the end turned to employers with a request for adaptation. And you know, with excellent students in business it’s sometimes difficult, but on the whole they are either good employees, or brilliant performers, or intellectual innovators. And very rarely - offended evil spirits. In general, everything is complicated, and we have something to say about this.

First of all, we reread all the comments on the original article on Habré and even on social networks. They came down to several types.

• “I myself am an excellent student, everything is correctly stated, the same story was with me, +100500, the author is right, it is strictly necessary for all parents to read it.”
  
• “I myself am an excellent student, PhD / businessman / teacher and everything is really very simple: to study, go to my goal and get career and intellectual growth. Didn't you know? Business then. ”
  
• “I’m a master of sports in figure skating, Colonel Chingachkuk - as in a Soviet joke. These are some fantastic universals who talked about their successes in studies, science, sports, communications. In everything and at once. ”
  
• “The author needs a psychotherapist, a coach, a specialist in emotional intelligence, and in general it’s time to do self-development, and not to spread his cockroaches to everyone.” There were a lot of them in business public places.
  
• “The article has both a personal and a general one, the problem exists, it’s good that we are not silent about it.”
  

We stick to the last point more. We at RegionSoft Developer Studio have excellent students, almost all of them with more than one diploma. And I must say, there are those features that are described in the article, and those that are not in it - huge positive points. And the excellent students come for an interview, worked with our employees earlier, etc. In general, on the first day after the holidays, we joined the work for a short discussion of this issue and are ready to share our thoughts with you.

And yet - we will not talk about the “drawn-out" honors, around which the controversy erupted in the comments on the original post. Yes, they are, they were in our schools and our universities, they come to work "by pulling." We do not have such, we avoid them. Therefore, we will focus on diligent and / or talented children who studied consciously and had some goals in front of them.

You are an excellent student - good

In general, talking about an excellent student after 5-15 years of his working experience may seem strange - after all, the employee has already gained experience, skills, communications, filled up bumps and learned lessons. But this is only at first glance. The desire to achieve goals, knowledge, the ability to learn and consistently perform well versatile tasks over the years of study have become habits and have formed a special character. By the way, this is not always perfectionism, that is, an extreme form of desire to do everything perfectly. In general, perfectionism is another psychological phenomenon; you should not put an equal sign between perfectionists and excellent students.

Here they are, bonuses of excellent students as employees.

• High goals lead to high results. Excellent students are able to set exact goals and take on really difficult tasks - they have the realization that they will definitely understand a new topic. It is these guys who can one day take on and learn a new stack or programming language, for example, to start developing a new product or mobile application. They are also able to master different sales strategies, synthesize something of their own and successfully apply them in their work.
  
• Excellent students have unique learning abilities: when the fear of a five-point scale passes, they easily and with pleasure master new things that are not related to their work. This is an invaluable feature for the IT sector: they can be programmers, but with interest look into finances, sales, production, etc., and then develop thoughtful software that is good both from a profile point of view and from a software one.
  
• Excellent employees are always result-oriented and often increase the self-esteem of self-confident colleagues, helping to find positive results in any activity. If the team is psychologically healthy, such guys act as a powerful motivator - a kind of “engine”.
  
• Excellent students deeply understand things from the inside and know how to explain , they make good internal trainers, mentors, mentors and employees who are simply ready to help. Sometimes they can discover the skills and hidden abilities of people in an absolutely amazing way.
  
• They have developed a will to win , both intellectual and physical. You can rely on an excellent student and know that he will certainly finish the job.
  
• Excellent students may not be innovators or inventors, but they are always early adopters of technology and good performers who will do the job carefully and wisely. If we are talking about programmers, they are neat, mandatory, comply with code style, ready to refactor and not snort that this is an extra waste of time.
  
• Excellent students are masters of flexible skills (the so-called soft skills). This is due to their broad horizons, erudition and ability to get to the bottom of things. In psychology, soft skills include the ability to persuade, find an approach to people, lead, negotiate, take responsibility, manage your own time, etc. These skills, by the way, greatly contribute to productive work and career development.
  
• Excellent students from school get used to public speaking , so they make good speakers and speakers at relevant conferences. If you need to present a product or service in terms of intelligence, then you cannot find a better speaker.
  

This is a positive outlook on excellent students. These features are present in many of them. As a rule, these are responsible, able to plan, disciplined guys who have learned to love school and now know how to love work.

But, as you know, the coin has two sides.

You're an excellent student - bad

Excellent students can be capricious and demanding employees, can burn out, can become uncontrollable. Many of their “dark” sides are associated with the features of behavior, and character, seasoned in battles for the coveted fives. However, they are quite easily overcome if management and tops do not give a damn about the psychological climate in the team.

• Often, the excellent students are those employees who "carry everything that they load . " Thus, many work tasks and processes are closed to them, a tangible part of the work depends on these specialists. In the case of their vacation, illness or dismissal for some time, their project is plunged into collapse, from which it comes out with difficulty. And sometimes this is an employee’s deliberate strategy - he wants to show his importance and need, closes the processes on himself, strives to work for everyone. As a result, the rest are lazy (and what to plow when this blessed one plows from 8 to 22?), The excellent student gets tired, the company suffers when he is absent.
  
• Employees with an “excellent” past often form erroneous prioritization — they cannot separate important tasks from not so important ones. If they become leaders, then each letter from them and each ticket will be dumped with the notes “important” and “urgently”. Such an approach necessarily leads to time delays - because time is sometimes spent on the lowest-priority work. Excellent students often set too narrow goals. They will be defocused within the performed duties and go deeper into a minor problem, forgetting about the rest of the work. Alas, work excellence does not always correlate with productivity; a good employee turns out to be a ballast on the way to commercial goals.
  
• And yes, indeed, such employees take a lot of time to work . This is certainly bad for the socialization and communication of the person himself, but no less bad for the employer. Just an excellent student sees that he works more than the rest, but the salary does not grow or the attitude of the leader does not change. And the employee begins to believe that he is worse than the rest, begins to work even harder. The circle of grievances and reproaches is closed, and an absolutely coiled and always dissatisfied colleague appears in the team.
  
• Excellent students (especially if there are two of them on the same job site) can create unhealthy competition and social services . competitions out of the blue. It’s a pity the leaders who encourage such competition and expect high performance from it - it will end soon, and the whole race will come down to conflict.
  
• Excellent students tend to theorize (and this was in the original article). Often, they tend to first understand the issue to the last comma, and then begin to do the work. It is clear that this is a waste of time.
  

The story of life. The software company was the head of the department of advanced development. A newcomer asked him, who was walking Wikipedia and Stackoverflow right away. How can one not take this when he brilliantly answered all the questions, had two honors degrees and 6 years of experience, however, some very fragmented one. But it soon became clear that he did not understand at all how the project worked, how corporate software was created, how to work with a bugtracker, etc. So the secret of his frequent work shifts was revealed. He was eventually sent to bookkeeping by June to the developers. Now, after 4 years, he has become a good and competent team lead.

• Alas, almost all excellent students are extremely susceptible to failure and prone to burnout . Even a petty remark by a leader or a colleague can permanently unsettle them, cause stress and even depression. This happens because of a strong dependence on the opinions of others and an increased sense of guilt. They may not show what happened to them, but inside they will be terribly worried and these experiences will certainly affect both the mood and the quality of work. Such people constantly, continuously evaluate themselves and correlate their behavior with the world around them - sometimes such a “analytics” is bad for everyone.
  
• It is very bad when an excellent student begins to consider himself the smartest and stops learning and strives for new things. Work is not learning, in practice, some new items and secrets of activity are updated almost daily. If you stop developing, you can quickly lose all skills and fall out of the cage.
  
• The worst thing about honors for themselves, relatives, people around them and employers is psychological extremes . It happens that a person "raped" by years of intense study, internship, postgraduate study and work, having got a good place and a good position, once in a good team, relaxes and a rollback occurs, which is sometimes revealed in the most bizarre and difficult way.
  
  • They are completely shut up, vulnerable and cannot reveal their knowledge, their skills, or their mind, because they are afraid to make even a tiny, insignificant mistake. From each blot they cringe, as if under execution.
    
  • The other extreme - everyone owes them. Directors are required to hang out portraits and diplomas in the reception room, colleagues are required not to distract and consult on each issue, department heads must be allocated endlessly against the rest, and in public.
    
  • They can ignore teamwork and collective tasks, because the team and the distribution of responsibility within it scare them, although they will show that the team simply did not deserve to work with smart women like them.
    
  • They can ignore the rules and regulations: KPIs are not for them, the plan is not for them, meetings take too much time, etc. Although one must pay tribute, they rarely call for the disobedience of others.
    
  • They have big health problems: many excellent students from the institute are accustomed to nootropics, antidepressants drink from anxiety, often get sick from constant stress, etc.
    

But this, of course, is more likely an extreme than a rule. Nevertheless, they can be encountered both at work and in ordinary informal life. Unfortunately, almost all of our problems come from childhood - and these guys hardly wanted to become neurotics, just the environment, family, school led them to this state. And yes, this is overcome and “cured” with the right approach from others and with the desire of the person himself.

So what to do?

You’ll be surprised, but the employer drives himself by registering not upcoming tasks, namely skills (for example, not “bring a new product to regional markets”, but “have the skills to work with branches” or not “develop a mobile application”, but “ knowledge of Android development, ownership of Swift. ”Here’s the network for theorists.) The reason is simple: different companies have different tasks and different tools for their implementation. So it turns out that formally the person meets the vacancies, stumbles at the interview, and then it is not clear. Speaking of interviews. Ask the applicant about achievements. If this is a person with work experience, but lists you diplomas, trainings and other certificates, before you is “ordinary cramming” and “eternal student”. The specialist should be able to highlight the result in their activities. You can also ask to talk about interaction with the leadership in the previous place: a good candidate will focus on solving / not solving work problems, and not how he was awarded an honorary diploma and a gold badge on the 20th anniversary of the company.

But, of course, you need to take excellent students - as we wrote above, these are wonderful performers, speakers, fellow colleagues, reliable and smart guys. And if there are negative symptoms, then, of course, you should help. After all, we repeat, personnel management is not only about catering and entertainment.

In response, we will write a checklist to excellent students from the employer - how to work on ourselves in order to become a truly invaluable, irreplaceable and included employee.

• If you are a racer, then you need to enjoy the race, and not just victory in it. On your life paths you gain experience: you are mistaken, see unexpected turns, meet talented rivals. Therefore, do not go from victory to victory - work productively and with pleasure, work for the goals of the company and the goals of your development. With this approach, victories will not be long in coming.
  
• Do not forget that the theory is over - practice has begun. It's mega cool that you are deeply versed in everything new and complex. Just do it in parallel with the work - especially since the material is much easier and better absorbed.
  
• Do not overload yourself with work, picking it up on all fronts. It is important for the employer that you perform your duties well. If you want to bring more benefit to the company and show your abilities, talk with the leader and ask what other work can be done.
  
• There are strategists who see ahead of themselves and move towards set and independently adjusted goals, and there is a labor force that pulls an 8-hour strap. Your mind and your abilities allow you to be strategists and innovators - try it!
  
• Do not be afraid of mistakes, but learn from them. The one who does nothing is not mistaken. Know how to recognize your shortcomings and work on them.
  
• Do not compare yourself with others - each person is gifted in something of his own and has his own set of abilities. If you are a good salesperson and understand commerce three heads ahead of the rest, do not waste time studying programming just because this work seems more intellectual to you. There is no such division; there is a division into productive and mediocre employees.
  
• Learn to work in a team. So you can transmit your knowledge and skills, and in return receive new ones. Be open to the lessons and information that you receive from colleagues.
  

What a specialist will become within the company depends largely on the environment and position of the employer. No one calls to fiddle with each colleague, as with a child. But employers must have adaptation systems and practices for dealing with different employees. And this should not be a flattering and thoroughly lying girl-HR with a psychologist diploma - this should be a principled position and leadership policy. And an excellent employee or not an excellent student is the tenth matter. The main thing is that he aspires to be a good employee, possesses the necessary skills and knowledge and preferably is a good person. Although the theme of the correlation of “bad”, conflict and professionalism lies already outside our theme.

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By the way, we are looking for partners in the regions of the Russian Federation and the CIS - write, call, especially if you know how and want to work and earn money. Companies and individual entrepreneurs are welcome, ready to write reports, scripts, train users and take all the income from this to themselves, and share only the cost of licenses with us.