The Long Term Gain from Your First Job After School

Transitioning from school to work means getting your first job while you are still dealing with the hassles of school, parents, activities, and social life. How in the world are you supposed to balance all that? Well, obviously, through very fine scheduling and time management. Which are both skills you could add to your pepelwerk talent profile. More importantly, let’s talk about setting expectations around what a first job is or what an internship is. It’s important to set out  the expectations that we should have of those first-time jobs and internships for when we finally get ahold of them. Through pepelwerk, you can get ahold of opportunities such as internships and entry-level jobs when you create your talent profile. We’re here to help you navigate scheduling and time management because we want the process of getting you connected to those opportunities as easy as possible, but setting expectations is a really good place to start. 

Internships and Entry Jobs = Experience 

This new generation of gen Z’ers have been entertained around the idea of entrepreneurship and the sexiness of being able to be the next digital superstar making $10,000 a month. If you are one of those young adults who are looking to make yourself the next advertising star on digital platforms, I congratulate you. I’m learning how to do that now. and it’s a stretch for me to put myself out there so socially. I didn’t grow up with this technology, but I’m learning it from my own millennial daughters and getting their suggestions along the way. So, if that’s the path you’re taking, go after it and go after it aggressively, 

But really good ideas go nowhere without experience in execution, and it’s just impractical for an internship to be more than that, Internships help you in getting life experience so that when you come to your next opportunity to flourish in a leadership role or in your next great idea, you have some sort of foundation. So, that’s what internships are for. Yes, you are gonna do tasks that seem to be mundane, but they’re mundane for a reason and you need to think about what is going on around you. Be observant. Use that time in that monotonous task to be observant.

That goes the same for if you decided to work at The Smoothie Factory because it’s close to your high school. Maybe making shakes doesn’t seem so cool or exciting to do, but it’s income and it teaches you responsibility and balancing multiple priorities and learning how to manage your time wisely. You learn customer service and how to deal with customers. Those are all skills that you have to be able to learn that you can actually put onto your talent profile to advance you into the next opportunity.
But, there is always a foundation and your first job

They are Worth It 

The next part of the conversation about expectation is: some of those jobs actually end up allowing you to play the long game. Let me back up just a second because the short game, is: ” I need to get cash now, so whatever job I can take, I’m gonna take,” but some of those jobs that you think are not worth your time or attention in the long run, or the idea of them just doesn’t work with you, you may wanna open your eyes to what they can provide you. 

Did you know that over 3% of the millionaires that exist today started off in hourly roles like baggers, cashiers, and fast food servers, and some have worked as plumbers, in manufacturing, and different packaging and delivering roles. We all started somewhere, but that’s a foundation for something that could be the long game, and I’ll give a particular example from Panda Express. In speaking with my 19 year old about whether college going to be the right thing for her or not, we decided a few things. Because of the skills, interests and abilities she has, a four-year degree program isn’t the best bang for her buck. She chose a different path to start, but we started to evaluate the long game, and Panda Express was a great example of the long game. If you start at Panda Express as a cashier or the person who makes the trays of food, that’s your ticket in to eventually become a franchise owner. They only allow people who have gone through the ranks to earn a franchise. It’s actually the same for 60% of the most profitable franchises of the world, not just in the US, but in the world. They appreciate the work ethic,  foundation, dedication, and the loyalty that started in high school, and ended up to be a multimillion dollar cash ticket for them.
The point here is, when you’re making a decision about a job, don’t knock things because they don’t necessarily have all the cool points that you’re looking for or they don’t necessarily fit within the ideal of who you want to become

Set Your Foundation

It’s a foundation. It’s a starting point and the most important thing that we want for you to be able to achieve with your new jobs, your first time jobs, your starter jobs, is the ability to set a foundation for what kind of work ethic you are going to have and how you’re going to approach work for the rest of your life. You can look at it in the short term or the long term, and with your Pepelwerk talent profile, you know that you can manage and edit those skills as you evolve. That’s the whole point of it. Your talent profile is personal to you and grows as you grow in order to match with employers when you’re ready. But those starter jobs and internships, are a great place to start.