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Q: Anyone regrets of starting a new job on first day?
Yesterday was my first day to start my new job"sales manager", then I found this company even doesn't have company email for the sales to contact customer, instead the boss let everyday uses 163 mail. Then I checked their company website, it's a completely mess with some QQ and Chinese on the English website, hilarious and unprofessional.
Then I found the 3 sales girls can't even speak English. Ooops. One girl just worked there for two weeks, the boss still keeps her, that's silly. And Yesterday I found that she even doesn't know how to operate alibaba, she apparently doesn't even have that skill. And the more hilarious thing is the boss let her operate the whole alibaba store and as she doesn't know how to operate it, the store is in a completely mess.
Then I told those girls that I am more familiar with operating alibaba and asked if I can take over the main account operation for the alibaba store. They agreed, then I went to the boss and told him that I am more familiar and those girls agreed for me to take over. The boss then went to ask those girls if they agree with me to take it. How dumb he is. Why he wasted his time on somebody who has no such skill to operate the alibaba store? He will only give me unless the girls agreed, but all girls have no skill for B2C platform operation. Why he cares if they ageed or not? He should only appoint somebody has such skills to operate it right?
I was hired as their manager, the girls apparently lack of skills and the work they have done are messy because of lack of leadership. The boss just didn't let me lead and train them. I just got a manager title with no manager authority.
I am not a fan of this job anymore, I think I might quit soon or the boss will fire me as we aren't even in the same tune.
Anyone regrets of starting a new job on first day? Please share your experience.
Viki viki viki...did you not to check their website before decide to go for a job? That's why you ended up where you are! If they have some white guys there, just go and hook up, link up, shack up, marry up, muck up, ‘fess up, split up, pay up, and end up looking to start over with knock up somewhere along the way. If there are only dumb girls there, I am not suprised that you want to quit on the first day. 
Viki87:
Only girls here. But I have been sent to do interpreting and to get customer namecards by visiting a trade show. Cause I am the only one in this dumb company who can communicate in English easily, so actually I stayed there alone and got a lot of freedom today. I talked to many foreign guys there.
And a foreign company gifted me icecream to eat. My boss just stayed here for a while and left me alone here.
Oh Vicky, where do we start......
So okay, the place is a mess and badly managed. You recognise it so what can you do about it?
My advice would be to spend this week looking at how the Sales department works, what doesn't work, what you'd do to make it more professional...
You've been hired as the manager so prove to your new boss that you know what you're doing. Write a report on improvements that can be made and how you'd do them. Make sure the report is not critical of the boss...
A few pointers...
1) Explain that it would look more professional to clients if all Sales used a compnay email address. Find webhosting companies first who can do this and check their prices (as none are free). Then go to the boss and suggest all sales staff get emails "Sales01@company.cn", Sales02..." etc. Why numbers? Eaier to manage when someone leaves. Of course you email address would be "Vicky@compnayname.cn".
2) Do a review of the Alibaba pages and list improvements you see necessary and what improvement they'll bring in terms of attracting customers.
3) Find out what experience your staff have and where they lack experience. Then suggest training for them. This can be done by you over a few weeks or months. Plan!
4) Review the sales girls performance. If any of them are really bad then speak to the boss about replacing them.
Why do all the above? You don't want to leave now as you'll still have a gap in your CV. If you make improvements then those can be added to your CV for when you look for a better job.
Viki87:
There's one girl who just came to this company two weeks before me, she's inexperienced and wrote stupid emails to customers asking why he only order xxpcs at first trial order and she wrote long meaningless stupid promotion emails. Once I told her to write the project details in the excel project form I sent to her instead of writting on the notebook, she went angry and muttered in an angry tone. I am authorized to train her by boss. I feel she's very disrespectful. Should I continue trainning her?
I also told her that it's not polite to ask customer why he only order xxpcs directly. She didn't even understand the basic business logic and continue arguing with me then eventually she said that's only the foreign culture which she doesn't know. That's so logic to understand that everybody doesn't like this question, no matter if they are Chinese or foreigner. I understand that logic without anyone teaching me when I first worked as international sales. I feel she's stupid and not humble and rude. Just not suitable for the job.
But she gets along with the boss and she's talkative. The boss thinks she's right for being a sales.
But the problem is she isn't capable of interacting with customers and doesn't understand after I trained her. Holy crap.
On my second day start working in this company, I am appointed to go to a trade show in Shanghai, we didn't exhibit. I only went there to approach customers, I made contact with like 40-45 companies in like two days by approaching customers there and went to talk with some companies who have booth there by promoting our products, I didn't even get real products trainning. I made appointment with several customers to come to my office, On my fifth day working here, I closed a business deal with the South African customer. Also on my first day working there, I assisted my boss's friend to close a deal with a British company by being her interpretor and giving business suggestion.
Viki viki viki...did you not to check their website before decide to go for a job? That's why you ended up where you are! If they have some white guys there, just go and hook up, link up, shack up, marry up, muck up, ‘fess up, split up, pay up, and end up looking to start over with knock up somewhere along the way. If there are only dumb girls there, I am not suprised that you want to quit on the first day.
Viki87:
Only girls here. But I have been sent to do interpreting and to get customer namecards by visiting a trade show. Cause I am the only one in this dumb company who can communicate in English easily, so actually I stayed there alone and got a lot of freedom today. I talked to many foreign guys there. And a foreign company gifted me icecream to eat. My boss just stayed here for a while and left me alone here.
There are two rules in life regarding this.
1. If you're single and don't care, sure resign and look for your dream.
2. If you have family to support, suck it up. Do the job!
Viki87:
I'll suck it up to make the money first. Face the reality and deal with the shits.
I think a lot of people didn't end up happy with where they are sometimes. I can just run my own business while sucking up to a shitty job. I believe that I am talented on several things, I can design the way to run my business professional.
Just give them tasks everyday:
1. Alibaba.com improvement
2. X nbr of customer contact per day
3. Daily reports from each one of your staffer tell you about what they did during the day, what they learned and what they plan for to do next day.
check and fix ... good luck
Viki87:
I have to say, in Chinese company, most managers aren't given the authority to do teh manager job. Ie. The manager isn't given the authority to fire people under him/her.
hamzaben:
@viki87: Agree. Also Chinese are Micro-managing every aspects of their employees. They like to know everything X or Y employee do on a daily basis....it's a kind of a school day!
From my experience in chinese companies, the day start with a drill, then each one have specific tasks to perform, and usually produce a report at the end of the day/week. Outside China, employees are given directions, and they perform to the best of their abilities with weekly meetings and performance metrics....
