First Months
Reading what the person before you left behind
Inheriting a role means inheriting decisions, half-finished work and a reputation, and most of what you need to know about all three is discoverable in the first month.
By Marta Kowalska4 min read
A role arrives with a history attached
Unless the job was newly created, somebody did it before you, and the state you find it in is the residue of how they worked and how they left. That residue is genuinely useful information, and it is available for a few weeks before it dissolves into the ordinary background of the job and stops being visible at all.
Most handovers are thin. The predecessor was working out their notice, distracted, and possibly not inclined to be generous about a place they were leaving. So the document you were given describes the process as it was supposed to run, and the interesting material — which parts were quietly abandoned, which were held together by a personal relationship, which recur every month and infuriate everyone — is usually not in it.
Distinguish the mess from the design
Everything you inherit falls into one of two categories, and they need opposite responses. Some of it is a deliberate choice made for a reason you have not yet learned, and changing it will break something you cannot see. Some of it is accumulated drift that nobody has had time to tidy, and changing it is uncontroversial.
You cannot tell which is which by looking, and the temptation to guess is strongest in the first fortnight when the oddities are most conspicuous. The fastest way to find out is to ask a specific question of somebody adjacent rather than a general one of your manager. Asking why a report goes out weekly when nobody appears to read it will normally produce either a short history or a shrug, and either answer settles the matter.
Unfinished work is the highest-risk item
Half-done things are where inherited roles actually go wrong. A piece of work that was three-quarters complete when somebody left will not announce itself, but somebody somewhere is still expecting it, and when it surfaces it will surface as your problem regardless of who started it.
Spend part of the first month building a plain list of everything that appears to be in progress, including things you only suspect. Then take that list to whoever commissioned each item and ask whether it is still wanted. A surprising amount of it will turn out to be dead, which is a good outcome, and the remainder becomes work you chose to pick up rather than work that ambushed you in month four.
You have also inherited a reputation you did not earn
If your predecessor was well regarded, some people will be quietly comparing, and a few will tell you so. If they were not, you will be extended patience you have done nothing to deserve, and you may also find that requests which should come to you are still being routed around the role entirely, because people learned to work without it.
Neither situation is worth resenting and both are worth noticing. The routed-around version is the more practical problem, because it means part of your job is happening somewhere else and nobody has any reason to hand it back. Finding out what those workarounds are, and asking to be included again, is slow and dull and it is the difference between holding the role and holding the title.
Be careful how you talk about them
The single most damaging thing a new joiner can do with an inherited mess is describe it as a mess. The people listening chose that predecessor, worked alongside them, and in some cases built the thing you are criticising. Even where your assessment is entirely correct, saying it early buys you nothing and costs you the assumption of good faith.
Describe the current state without attributing it. “This report takes a day a week and I am not sure who uses it” is the same observation as “my predecessor left this in a terrible state”, and only one of them will get you permission to change it. That distinction holds well beyond your first months, and it is one of the more portable habits available in a first job.
Where the trail has gone cold
Sometimes the predecessor left abruptly, or the role sat empty for months, and there is no usable handover at all. That is a harder start and it is worth saying so plainly to your manager rather than absorbing it silently, because expectations set on the assumption of a clean handover will not be met and the reason will not be obvious.
In that situation the recoverable history lives in the systems and in other people’s memories. Old messages, previous versions of documents, and the finance or scheduling records that outlast individuals will tell you what actually happened, which is not always what anybody remembers happening. It is slower than being told. It is also more reliable.
Common questions
What should I ask for in a handover if I get the chance?
The recurring commitments and the unfinished work, in preference to the process description. A calendar of what has to happen each week and month, and an honest list of what is outstanding, are worth more than any written procedure, because procedures can be reconstructed later and obligations cannot.
Should I change things my predecessor set up?
Eventually, and rarely in the first month. The reason to wait is not deference but information: you cannot yet tell which arrangements are load-bearing, and the cost of discovering that by breaking one is paid by other people, which is an expensive way to establish yourself.
What if colleagues keep comparing me to the last person?
Usually it fades once you have done a few things they can attribute to you rather than to the role. Where it persists past the first months it is worth a light, direct question about what specifically worked well before, since that converts an uncomfortable comparison into something you can actually use.
Features writer, After the First Job
Marta writes about first months, managing up, money at work, mostly the parts other people skip and would rather show the working than assert the conclusion.
