Starting A Career

You have just sent off your CV for the 34th time, applied to another LinkedIn posting, and just created your Wobbjobs account. You have had a couple responses for an interview. Some have gone bad but some have gone well. After months of rewriting CVs, applications, and interviews, you have finally got an offer letter. Phew!

You can't wait to start earning money and finally enjoying life. Big mistake.

These formative periods of any career are priceless and can have a serious effect moving forward. With this in mind, below are a couple reasons to make sure you're getting the real value out of this time.

Don't Just Chase Money. Chase The Skills & Mindset. Having that hard earn cash in the bank is of course a great feeling but your mind is a bank as well. One that earns skills and lessons from your colleagues and manager. Being part of a positive, empowering, and teaching is absolutely priceless. Making sure that your development is being carefully progressed and monitored will make sure that your successes are recognised and shortcomings addressed.

You will only know this by working and enjoy working with your work and colleagues on a day-to-day process. Not by completely focusing on your salary at such an early stage.

Take Every Opportunity To Learn

You are at the bottom of the barrel. The Intern. The Executive. With this in mind, expect the dirty jobs or projects that weren't on your job description. When this comes, you got two choices.

One is to have a negative outlook. Looking at the task as an unnecessary burden that you are not strictly being paid for and that, probably, another manager is asking of you. You go through the experience dragging you feet and showing your colleagues your attitude and work ethic.

The other is to take advantage of it as you get to expand your network by working with more people and having the chance to learn more about the business. At this early stage, learning should be priority. Grabbing every chance you have to work with different departments, for different clients, and practising your different skills.

Bring Your Own Value To Work

You might think that because of your junior standing and experience means that you do what your told without critically analysing tasks or discussions. This is completely wrong.

You need to demonstrate that you can involve yourself in discussions with constructive perspectives based upon research, case studies, and rational thinking. Employers are not looking for robots, they are looking for a person who can think through problems to reach a solution that they can execute. If they want a robot then they are probably not a good employer.

Set Good Money Habits Now

You first inclination is to spend that money right away on the latest clothes or nice food. Please don't. Make sure that you have a budget to train you to handle the money with respect and cautiousness. Money is a finite resource so treat it as such.

Allocate a portion to saving for emergencies as well as explore ways to start investing that money. I would personally recommend looking towards Unit Trusts or Robo-Advisories as they, in my mind, as the easier to invest in but if you are more interested in Stocks then by all means.

Investing now can really pay off in the future due to compound interest taking effect alongside your returns.