Student Job Link's Resources

Let me open this blog in true Canadian style, with a caveat bordering on apology. I write from experience (in modern parlance, ‘cred’), and will keep the human resources theory to a minimum.

Secondly, my advice is free, so remember what your Nana told you about accepting free advice. That said, I have held more or less continuous paid employment since age ten, when I first lied on an application form to secure a job reserved for those aged 13 and up. During the next quarter-century, the jobs have become more complex, the experiences more intense, and the learning more valuable. And the pay has gone up a little bit, too.

 

Mattress salespeople often open their pitch with the observation that you spend a third of your life sleeping, so you ought to buy the best mattress (read: most expensive mattress) lest you spend that third of your life in misery. The consequences of an inexpensive mattress are abstract and frightening, ranging from dreams populated solely by angry clowns to jaw clenching syndromes to spinal wasting. I was tempted to inaugurate my blog by exploding the same sort of dirty bomb of fearful assertions about getting the highest-paying job possible from the outset, but from experience, I know it is counterproductive. I bought the cheap mattress and sleep just fineLet’s start with a little soul-searching, but not too much because this isn’t a yoga class. Right after your Nana told you to avoid free advice, she told you to “start as you mean to go”. Follow her advice.

Step 1: Visualize what you want from this life of employment. If you see money, start your visualization over. Sometime during that dreary psychology course, you learned of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and this is where it applies in a meaningful way. Money belongs on the bottom two levels of the five-level hierarchy, somewhere between sleep, excretion, and security of resources. If you focus on money, you purposefully dodge actualization and happiness. Try to see how occupations, jobs, and careers can help you become skilled, confident, healthy, educated, etc.

Step 2: Define your starting point so you can follow the path seen in Step 1. This is very difficult because it requires you to suppress primal feelings. Go for the money, the resources, the safety, or so your brainstem is telling you, and do it now before someone else does. Ignore that inner voice or you will forever be in a cycle of survival. Apart from the fun to be had feigning caveman during a weekend of camping, survival is a miserable task. Practically speaking, look for employers respected for their innovation, positive work culture, mentoring, and potential for internal advancement. Be cautious of wages as they are an inaccurate reflection of quality of employment. Some excellent employers pay very well, but so do some soul-eradicating salt mines.

Step 3: Prepare to walk the line. Once you choose an employer (yes, you choose your employer), make sure you take steps within the company to develop along the path you have chosen. This will mean actively seeking a mentor, delivering true effort, and being introspective enough to align those efforts with the company vision. You should approach your first decade of employment with the vigor of an unpaid intern or apprentice, ready and willing to absorb any and all lessons. Your paycheque then becomes a fortunate side-effect of Canadian labour laws, not your raison d'être.

There you have it. A three step plan for employment bliss. Next week: Prison of Hyperbole.