Here are this week’s Life Pro Tips.
1. Learn to do — and enjoy — things by yourself. You’re going to miss out on a lot of fun if you keep waiting for someone else to accompany you.
2. If entry-level job lists “Sales” as one of the responsibilities you can safely ignore anything else listed, that will be your job.
There is a plague of “companies” (fronts) out there that prey on college grads (particularly grads that don’t have an immediately applicable non STEM degree) desperate for a job or retail workers that desperately want out of the big box retail store scene. They will list these jobs as being “Event Coordinators” or “Marketing Associates”. It’s a lie, you can find these people at stores like Costco trying to sell some useless appliance that no one wants or going door to door trying to sell other appliances that no one wants.
And the recruiters that craft these resumes are VERY good at just bending the truth enough that what is on the job description isn’t technically a lie, but any reasonable person’s interpretation of the description is nothing like the reality of the position. That’s why the title is what it is: if they list sales, that is what you will be doing and nothing else.
An easy way to avoid this is to google the name of the company you are applying to. Either nothing will come up or they will be associated with other companies that are accused of doing the same thing.
3. If there is anyone at your job you don’t like, always take special care not to take a vacation at the same time as them. Having toxic/stressful people gone from the office is like a mini-vacation by itself – that you would miss out on if you’re gone.
4. As soon as you check into a hotel, test out the shower before doing anything else. If there’s a problem, it’s better to change rooms immediately rather than finding out at an inconvenient time when you’re tired, naked, and already unpacked.
5. Understanding who you don’t want to be is as important as understanding who you do want to be.
