Professional Advice I’d Still Follow If I Was Starting My Career Again
Before starting out as a young professional (however that’s defined), I got a lot of bad advice and definitely had some problematic role models, but there are three pieces of advice I’d follow and would absolutely give 1000% over.
How you do one job is how you’ll do any job — choose to do it well
I arrived fully formed into adulthood in the middle of the Great Recession. My prospects as a freshly graduated Journalism student in a new city where I had few connections were very grim.
With Student Loan bills coming due in the very near future, I had to get a job. I ended up working for $8 an hour in a retail job during the busy holiday season. This was always intended to be temporary (and thankfully it was), but I knew that I could at least try to make the most of it.
The job had some great positives — I was on my feet most of my shift, I got a discount at a store I would shop at even if I didn’t work there, and got a little taste of what working adulthood was like.
I gave that job my all, hoping that maybe someone would see my potential and work ethic and offer me a position that would deliver me from the bane of my nights and weekends. While that didn’t exactly happen, it did lay a foundation for professional skills that allowed me to get a better role roughly a year later.
If you’re going to half-ass a thankless job — you’ll probably half-ass your dream job as well. Don’t allow yourself to be exploited, but you’ll feel less hopeless if you can squeeze every drop of value out of what you’re doing.
You can get a lot just by asking
I’ve done this in big companies, I’ve done this in small companies. It’s an almost universal truth that you can generally ask for quite a lot (within reason). There are a couple of qualifying factors here — you should be good at what you do (like being an amazing worker) and make sure you go into the conversation without expectation.
Depending on what you are looking for — having a reputation for being a rock star will open a lot of doors for you. If nothing else, it gets you some actionable advice from someone doing the work you’d like to do or enough information for you to decide what you don’t want to do.
I have found this to be best when I asked about shadowing, filling in for someone who had the role I hoped to move into, or simply getting the elusive answer to a burning question.
You could probably level this up for stuff like raises or promotions, but I’m not quite there yet.
The low expectation part is also important — there’s a certain level of confidence that is helpful, but if you are the lowest person on the food chain, projecting entitlement or arrogance will not win you any fans.
Sometimes You Just Need to Walk
Quitting a job without having another one lined up is risky, but you might have a time when you have to do it for your own health, safety or sanity. Ideally you’ve saved up a bit of money or at least have some prospects in your pipeline, but sometimes sh*t isn’t working out and you need to go.
If you can do so with dignity and respect, that’s the best scenario. You never know who knows who and lighting the bridge on fire as you run away screaming can taint your chances of being hired elsewhere. Hopefully you didn’t hate everyone that you knew at that job and they may be able to serve as a reference.
There may be questions about the gap in your resume but a thoughtful and professional answer should be sufficient for most reasonable hiring managers.
And yeah, you might have to get a crummy temporary job to make ends meet while you look, but like I said at the beginning, there’s always something of value to be gleaned from any role you hold.
Work hard, ask for what you want and don’t be afraid to walk away and you can make yourself an incredible career and life you can be proud of.
