Getting offered a new job in optics is a great feeling.
Perhaps you’ve spent several weeks looking at vacancies, speaking to recruiters and attending interviews. Maybe you weren’t actively searching at all until the right opportunity appeared. Either way, you’ve made the decision, accepted the offer and handed in your notice.
At that point, it is tempting to think the hard work is finished. You can concentrate on leaving your current practice and worry about the new one when you walk through the door on your first morning.
We would look at it slightly differently.
The first 90 days in a new optical job can have a big influence on how successful that move becomes, but those 90 days don’t really start on your first day. The period between accepting the position and arriving at the practice is an opportunity to prepare, finish your current job properly and begin thinking about how you want to approach the next stage of your career.
You certainly don’t need to spend your entire notice period studying your new employer. Nobody expects an Optometrist to arrive on Monday morning knowing every patient, every system and where somebody has hidden the spare printer paper.
A little preparation, however, can make those first few weeks considerably easier.
Finish Your Current Optical Job Properly
Before thinking too much about the new position, there is still some work to do in the old one.
Once you’ve resigned, it is easy to mentally move on before you’ve physically left. The new opportunity is more exciting, your current job suddenly feels temporary and the things that mattered a month ago can start feeling considerably less important.
Try not to let that happen.
Your reputation within optics travels further than you might think. Former colleagues become managers, managers move businesses and people you worked with years ago can reappear somewhere completely unexpected later in your career.
Leave well.
If you’re responsible for patients, customers, team members or ongoing work, make the handover as useful as possible. Finish what you reasonably can and leave clear information about anything that will continue after you’ve gone.
If you’re a Practice Manager, that might mean making sure your team understands what is happening with rotas, recruitment, targets or ongoing issues. If you’re an Optometrist, Dispensing Optician or Optical Assistant, there may be customer matters, orders, recalls or other information colleagues need to know about.
You don’t need to spend your final weeks trying to solve every problem the practice has ever had. You simply want the people you’re leaving behind to feel that you behaved professionally until the end.
That is a good reputation to take with you.
Keep in Touch Before You Start
Depending on your notice period, there could be several weeks or even months between accepting an optical position and actually beginning it.
During that time, stay appropriately connected with your new employer.
You don’t need to email them every Tuesday asking whether they’re still looking forward to seeing you, but respond promptly to any requests for information and make sure the practical arrangements are clear.
What time should you arrive? Who should you ask for? Is there anything you need to bring? Are there forms, checks or documentation that need completing beforehand? If your role requires professional registration or other information to be provided, make sure everything is ready rather than discovering an issue the day before you start.
It is also worth checking in with your recruiter if anything changes during your notice period.
At Inspired Selections, accepting the offer shouldn’t mean the conversation suddenly ends. A successful recruitment process is ultimately about somebody joining the right optical business and settling into the role, not simply getting an acceptance over the line.
If you have a question before starting, ask it.
It is usually much easier to deal with a small uncertainty early than allow it to become a worry in your head for three weeks.
Do a Little Research With a Different Purpose
You probably researched the business before your interview.
Now do it again.
The difference is that before the interview you were researching the company as a candidate. This time you’re looking at it as somebody who is about to work there.
If you’re joining an independent practice, learn more about its history, patient base, services and the way it positions itself locally. If you’re moving into a multiple, franchise or larger optical group, understand how the wider business operates and where your particular practice fits within it.
You might also look at the services offered. Does the practice have a strong contact lens business? Does it offer enhanced clinical services? Is there a particular emphasis on premium dispensing, children’s eyecare, myopia management or another specialist area?
You don’t need to become an expert before you’ve arrived.
The purpose is simply to make the environment feel slightly more familiar. If colleagues start talking about a particular service, brand or part of the business during your first week, having some basic understanding makes it easier to join the conversation.
Don’t Turn Up Trying to Change Everything
This becomes particularly important if you’re joining as a Practice Manager, senior Optometrist or experienced Dispensing Optician.
You’ve been recruited partly because of what you know. Perhaps you’ve worked in several successful practices and have strong opinions about how things should operate. You may walk into the new business and immediately notice things you would do differently.
That’s fine.
Just don’t assume that noticing something on day three means you understand it.
There may be a perfectly sensible reason why the practice operates in a particular way. There may also be no sensible reason whatsoever, and in time you might be exactly the person who improves it.
The important words there are in time.
Spend the first few weeks understanding before trying to transform. Ask why things are done in a certain way. Learn what has been tried previously and speak to the people who actually work with the process every day.
One of the quickest ways to frustrate a new team is repeatedly telling them how your previous practice did everything better.
Your previous experience is valuable. That’s one of the reasons you’ve been employed.
Use it when it helps, but remember that you’ve joined a new business rather than opened another branch of your old one.
Learn the Practice Before Judging the Practice
Every optical practice has its own rhythm.
The diary might be structured differently from what you’re used to. The way patients move through the practice may feel unfamiliar. Responsibilities between the clinical, dispensing and support teams may be divided differently.
Even the busiest times of the week might surprise you.
Give yourself time to understand it.
If you’re an Optometrist moving from longer appointment times into a different testing environment, you may need a little time to find your rhythm. If you’re a Dispensing Optician joining a practice with a different product mix, there will be things to learn. An Optical Assistant moving from one business to another may find familiar tasks handled through completely different systems.
That doesn’t make your previous experience irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Your experience will probably help you adapt more quickly.
But experience doesn’t mean everything should immediately feel familiar.
Being new at something you’ve been doing for years is a strange sensation. You know the profession, but you don’t yet know the practice.
Give yourself permission to learn the difference.
Get to Know the People, Not Just the Systems
You can learn a practice management system relatively quickly.
People take longer.
The relationships you build during your first few months can have an enormous influence on how much you enjoy the job and how effectively you perform in it.
Get to know the people around you. Understand what they do and what they need from you. An Optometrist and Dispensing Optician may work closely together throughout the patient journey, but each sees different parts of that experience. Optical Assistants often know an extraordinary amount about how a practice really operates because they are dealing with customers, appointments, phones and dozens of small issues throughout the day.
If you’re joining as a manager, resist the temptation to learn everything about your team from somebody else’s description of them.
Talk to people yourself.
Find out what they enjoy, what frustrates them and what they would improve. Ask where they need support and what is already working well.
You may eventually disagree with some of their views, but listening first gives you a far better foundation for making decisions later.
Ask Questions While You’re Still Allowed to Be New
One of the great advantages of being new is that nobody expects you to know everything.
Use that opportunity.
Ask how things work. Ask why something happens in a particular way. If you’re unfamiliar with a system, say so. If you don’t understand an abbreviation everybody else appears to know, ask what it means.
There is sometimes a temptation, particularly when you’re experienced, to avoid questions because you don’t want people to think you lack knowledge.
Usually the opposite is true.
There is nothing impressive about pretending to understand something and then making an avoidable mistake three weeks later.
People generally expect questions from somebody who has just joined. Six months later, those same questions can become slightly more awkward.
Take notes as well. Nobody wants to explain the alarm code to you every morning for the first month because you weren’t listening the previous six times.
Being willing to ask questions is good.
Being willing to learn from the answers is better.
Understand What Your Manager Actually Expects
A job description tells you what the role contains.
It doesn’t always tell you which parts matter most.
During your first few weeks, have a proper conversation with your manager about what a successful start looks like.
What are their priorities for you? Are there particular areas they want you to concentrate on? Is there anything in the practice that needs attention? What would they like you to have achieved or understood after your first month and by the end of your first three months?
For an Optometrist, the immediate priority may simply be settling into the clinic, understanding the systems and building good relationships with patients and colleagues. A Practice Manager may have more specific commercial or team objectives. A Dispensing Optician might have been recruited partly to strengthen a particular area of the practice.
Whatever the role, clarity helps.
You don’t want to spend your first three months working incredibly hard on something your manager considers a minor priority while overlooking the thing they actually employed you to help with.
If you’re unsure, ask.
Don’t Worry if You Feel Slightly Out of Your Depth
This can catch experienced optical professionals by surprise.
In your previous practice, you knew everything. You knew which cupboard contained what, which colleague to ask about a particular issue and how the systems worked. You recognised regular patients and could probably solve half the day’s problems without consciously thinking about them.
Then you change jobs and suddenly you’re asking somebody how to use the printer.
That temporary loss of familiarity can feel like a loss of competence.
It isn’t.
Your clinical knowledge, dispensing experience, customer skills or management ability haven’t disappeared because you don’t know where the contact lens trials are kept.
You’re learning a new environment.
There will probably be moments during the first few weeks when you wonder whether moving was the right decision simply because the old practice felt easier.
Of course it felt easier.
You knew it.
Give the new one a chance to become familiar too.
Don’t Judge Your New Job in the First Fortnight
The first few weeks in any new role can be slightly uncomfortable.
You don’t know everybody’s names. You haven’t worked out the personalities yet. You may miss former colleagues, and simple tasks can take longer because you’re constantly asking where things are or how the business handles them.
That can sometimes create an immediate feeling of doubt.
“I think I’ve made a mistake.”
Maybe you have. Occasionally a new job really isn’t what somebody was promised, and genuine concerns shouldn’t be ignored.
But there is an important difference between this job is wrong and this job is new.
Give yourself enough time to work out which one you’re experiencing.
This is another reason keeping communication open with your recruiter can be useful. If something doesn’t feel right, talking it through with somebody who understands both you and the employer can provide a little perspective.
Sometimes there is a genuine issue that needs addressing.
Sometimes you simply need another few weeks.
Look for Small Ways to Add Value
You don’t need to transform the practice during your first 90 days to make a good impression.
Often the things that build trust are much smaller.
Be reliable. Turn up when you should. Do what you say you’re going to do. If you promise to find something out for a colleague, go back to them with the answer. Help when the practice is busy rather than becoming overly concerned about whether something technically belongs in your job description.
If you spot a straightforward improvement and understand enough to know it would genuinely help, suggest it.
If a colleague teaches you something, remember it.
If you make a mistake, own it and learn from it.
These behaviours aren’t particularly dramatic, but they tell people what you’re going to be like to work with.
That matters enormously in an optical practice where the quality of the patient experience often depends on the whole team working well together.
You can be technically brilliant and still make everybody else’s day harder.
The strongest professionals usually bring both competence and cooperation.
Give Yourself 90 Days to Build, Not 90 Days to Prove Yourself
There can be a lot of pressure attached to starting a new job.
You want the employer to know they made the right decision. You want colleagues to respect you and perhaps you want to prove to yourself that leaving your previous position was the right move.
Try not to turn those feelings into a three-month audition.
You already passed the interview.
The employer chose you.
Your job now is to build.
Build your understanding of the practice. Build relationships with colleagues and patients. Build confidence with unfamiliar systems and processes. Understand what good performance looks like in this particular environment and begin contributing your experience where it can genuinely help.
By the end of 90 days, you don’t need to have changed everything.
You should simply know considerably more than you did when you arrived, have built some useful relationships and started demonstrating what you can bring to the business.
The Right Job Still Needs a Good Start
At Inspired Selections, we spend a great deal of time helping optical professionals find opportunities that suit their experience, ambitions and circumstances. But getting an offer accepted is not really the end of a successful recruitment process.
It’s the beginning of somebody’s next career chapter.
A fantastic Optometrist vacancy can still become a poor move if expectations aren’t clear. A brilliant Dispensing Optician can struggle if they arrive believing they need to prove everything immediately. A talented new Practice Manager can create unnecessary resistance if they start changing things before understanding the team.
Equally, a candidate who prepares properly, arrives curious and gives themselves time to learn can settle into a new environment remarkably quickly.
That is why your first 90 days really begin before your first day.
Finish your existing role professionally. Keep in touch with your new employer and recruiter, learn a little more about the practice and arrive ready to ask questions.
Then listen.
Learn the people as well as the processes. Understand what your manager expects and don’t panic when something that used to feel automatic suddenly feels unfamiliar.
Most importantly, don’t expect yourself to know everything immediately.
Your new employer didn’t recruit you because they thought you already knew every detail about their practice.
They recruited you because they believed your experience, skills and personality could become valuable there.
Give yourself the time to prove them right.
And if you’ve recently accepted a new optical position through Inspired Selections, remember that you can still talk to your recruitment consultant after you’ve said yes. If you have a question before starting or need some advice while settling into the role, keeping that conversation going can help make the transition considerably easier.
The placement may have been made.
Your career move is only just beginning.
