Job Series #1 My First Job
Whenever I have career conversations, I focus on the past few years of my experience. They seem to be the most relevant and what people want to hear about. However, I had 9 distinct part time jobs before landing my first paid internship that you can see displayed on my Linkedin profile. The more I think about my career development, the more I realize how crucial those experiences were in shaping who I am. If you entered the job market early, you probably have some memorable stories to share. Here is my first one!
When I was 15 years old, I wanted to start earning pocket money to pay for my own expenses. A family member worked in a small electronics shop and they needed some help distributing brochures so she got me in touch with the manager who gave me my first job. It was quite simple: I was given hundreds of brochures advertising the stablishment and I had to distribute them around the neighborhood. My main tool was a shopping hand truck dolly that I pulled around. Instead of handing them to people in the streets, my strategy was to cover as many buildings as possible by foot, convince residents to let me in and insert them inside their mailboxes. These are some of the things I learnt that stay true to this day.
Work integrity builds reputation: Spending hours going from building to building and doing the job well was not easy and I was tempted to take shortcuts. I could have put all or part of the brochures in a bin and waited for time to pass and collected the money. Sometimes I made it inside the building and saw on mailboxes signs that the residents did not want to receive any commercial post. I could have ignored the warnings and inserted them anyways. Instead, I decided to respect the rules and act with integrity. There was something that motivated me more than having someone checking on my work or the embarrassment that I could go through if I was caught. I wanted to leave a good impression and have a chance of being offered another job afterwards. Acting with integrity gave me the confidence to ask for the next opportunity to contribute. In fact, after the first delivery, they quickly scheduled me for a second one, then a third and a fourth. They also offered to put in a good word for me so that I could get jobs from other employers in the future. Work integrity builds reputation and our reputation follows us around.
Failures make us better: Sometimes people would not be at home or they would be reluctant to open the door. Sometimes they opened without even asking who I was. At times, I was stopped and questioned by the concierge or the security personnel of the building. Occasionally, I was invited to exit the building without being able to distribute any publicity at all. I learnt to enjoy the quick wins knowing that tougher times would be waiting literally around the corner. I realized that it was not worth getting too caught up by mistakes or taking failures personally. When struggles came my way, I was gentle to myself and ready to work through them, applying the learnings from every misstep and doing it better the next time around. I learnt the protocols and do’s and don’ts for every building and community and customized my approach accordingly.
Relationships optimize results: I had a target number of items to distribute and was paid a flat fee. If I could do it quicker, my rate per hour would go up. Meeting a neighbor or knowing the concierge of the building made operations easier. Smiling, chit chatting and building trust and relationships facilitated resources and getting things done quicker. Accomplishing any valuable outcome requires collaboration and there’s plenty of partners and enablers that we meet along the way. We can often get too tunnel focused because we think we know better and we can do it faster alone. That’s far from being true! It’s important to look around and realize that we need others to achieve our highest potential.
Do any of these insights resonate with you? I still apply them in my day to day life and they’ll be with me for years to come. To summarize them: Act with integrity, fail to fuel learning and build relationships to better results. That was job number 1 for me! What was yours and what did you learn?