The Importance of Job Shadowing In The Early Stages Of Your Career

Job shadowing is a type of on-the-job training that allows an interested employee to follow and closely observe another employee performing the role.

A lot of companies with strong learning & development and career progression programs find that Job Shadowing is an excellent way to learn valuable skills and tricks from those with more experience. It’s a highly effective form of training that allows the learner the opportunity to ask questions and get real-time answers.

The BlueBridge One NetSuite Graduate program utilises this training method throughout the 12- month period. The graduates also get an opportunity to do entry-level tasks for certain projects while they are job-shadowing.

Here are some of the reasons why job shadowing is an important part of your early career development:

• HELPS YOU WITH CAREER EXPLORATION

The job shadowing experience will allow you to explore different parts of a company and identify and measure your areas of interest. Choosing an area of speciality right after graduation is difficult, and this is the best way to get started.

• SHARPENS YOUR NETWORKING SKILLS (Internally & Externally)

As you work alongside senior colleagues and shadow them, you will get an opportunity to develop a professional relationship with them. Some of the people you will work under are probably industry experts and forming those relationships at the beginning of your career is invaluable. Additionally, you will get an opportunity to mingle with other professionals in the industry through corporate engagements. Ensure that these connections are strategic throughout in order for them to benefit you in the future. 

• YOU GAIN PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE ON SEVERAL TOPICS

It’s always good to put your theory to practise and one of the benefits of Job Shadowing is that it enables you as the learner to discover solutions to potential problems. Additionally, this is a great practice to also discover the soft and hard skills you need to develop to advance your career.

• GIVES YOU IN-DEPTH KNOWLEDGE OF THE BUSINESS DYNAMICS

Job shadowing gives you an opportunity to canvass the whole business as you learn how to solve multiple business problems across the company. You will get to engage with heads of departments, technical teams and customers during this process and this will give you a great deal of insight into how the business is run and how it can be more effective. This is one of the most important aspects of job shadowing as it helps you share your insights with your mentor as  the fresh eyes of the company.

Our graduates had this to say about their job shadowing experience:

Laurine: Job shadowing at BB1 is like nothing I expected. After being assigned a mentor and project, I didn’t expect to participate in meetings with clients and handle documentation for different projects. It was surprising yet exciting and I felt like I was part of the team. I enjoyed the on-site visits to the clients and working with my mentor. I learnt a lot by being actively involved. It is a good way to cement the theory you learnt and gives you first-hand experience of what it means to be an implementation consultant for BlueBridge One.

This is my first job shadowing experience and I think that BlueBridge One hit the nail on the head. Usually, you’d expect job shadowing to involve quietly observing on the side and making notes, but at BB1 you are given responsibilities and opportunities to display your skills. This is a huge plus in my books and my mentor has been a blessing as well.

I do think that the stage of the project that you’re assigned plays a very big role in your experience, so that is something to note for now. Other than that, my time in implementation has been beyond expectations. 

Sebastian: So far, my impression of job shadowing at BlueBridge One is that it’s helpful as a graduate to learn on the go how the company works. It was particularly helpful in Support, where we started our two months shadowing our mentors as they solved cases via NetSuite, and eventually changed to them shadowing us as we dealt with support cases and service requests to ensure that we were doing everything correctly. This helped as I would always have support readily available if I had any doubts about whether I was doing the right thing or not during the Support cycle, and our mentors were able to guide us and give us advice on anything we worked on during that period. Learning while on the job rather than spending too long reading up about Support was a big help in getting used to the environment, and even helped to speed up my learning process. At this stage, it also helped me to establish a working relationship with my mentors as well, which only grew over time as we progressed through the Support unit.

What I enjoy most about job shadowing is being able to learn new concepts by just sitting in a meeting between a fellow consultant and customers, and being able to see how different people approach different problems. As people have their own unique ways of working, getting a range of shadowing experiences helps me to discover my own way of dealing with work within Bluebridge One. I also enjoy getting to work with other people within the industry, as it helps to develop relationships and even friendships within the company.

Nicole: My general impression is that it’s working 100% for me. I feel included in the project that I’m working on as all entry-level tasks are handled by me. My mentor also schedules some time for me in her diary to explain concepts and anything else I’m uncertain about. These tasks are usually dependent on which stage the project is. Thus, if a project has just kicked off not a lot of tasks will be available for us to do.

PS: Presenting the functionality of the system to clients is also a plus! But I tend to be nervous in this regard. But no stress, your mentor will always be there to offer you guidance and support.

I enjoy the experience and skills that I’m gaining from it. All this is new, but as soon as we get involved I tend to see where the puzzle fits in and also realise that I am part of business innovation at its core. The client meetings are my favourite. Seeing NetSuite’s functionality and how it can be customised to fit a specific company opens your eyes to a whole new world.

This experience is also helping me to decide which parts of the business or topics I am more interested in. I like the accounting part, but I’m still open to learning every single process of the business system.  

Toby: During my journey so far at BlueBridge One, Job shadowing has been a really important aspect of my development. It has helped me build relationships with my colleagues, whilst learning valuable knowledge and skills that they have. 

For our first rotation with Support. Alex (Head of Support) and Razvan (Support Consultant) did a great job showing us (through screen share) how support works and how to respond to customers with solutions to their queries. They also got each of us to share our screen and talked us through how to navigate and solve issues within the client’s account. This allowed each of us to pick up tasks quickly as we were able to see how they should be completed and how to navigate each section. 

During our current rotation with implementation, Seb & I were assigned a project with a client. So far we have only shadowed the workshops which were led by Paul ( Consultant- Implementation). These helped to get an understanding of the business and its processes, also how they would like NetSuite to be optimised for them.

I enjoy job shadowing because It shows me how someone who has been in the role for a long time does things, and it sets a level of expectation which I want to achieve. 

It also allows me to be shown how a task is completed before I attempt it on my own. This means that there is less chance for error as I already have the knowledge needed to navigate and complete the task. Therefore there is less time wasted researching how to complete it or wasted contacting others to help.