Why Early Job Experiences Matter

You might think those first jobs you had like slinging burgers in a fast food location or going door to door with your lawn mower don’t have any effect on your long-term professional life. Maybe you should take a look at the things you gained from those early job experiences.

The Benefit of Experience

The only benefit from every job isn’t simply the potential is has to become a bullet point or paragraph on your resume. Sometimes it’s about the experiences you accumulated while you were there.

Obviously if you want to become a programmer standing behind the grill won’t have taught you anything about coding, but it did teach you a few things.

What did you learn?

Working in fast food for example requires you to work quickly and efficiently and carefully. (You wouldn’t want to burn yourself!)

If you’re behind he counter, you’ll learn all about dealing with difficult customers, how to take ownership of your mistakes if you mess up. You also learn what it means to be a good co-worker.

If you did go door-to-door with your lawnmower you learned all kinds of things about scheduling, talking to people, taking control of your own destiny.

Every experience impacts the person you become

Sometimes it’s important to reframe how you look at early jobs and recognize the benefits of the experiences you had there. Learning how to deal well with customers and co-workers, learning to be accountable to yourself and your job are experiences you can apply to everything you do for the rest of your career.

Every experience you have contributes to the person you become. Whether you’re conscientious or lazy. Whether you work well with others and are able to ask for help when needed. Whether you become the go-to person or there never-there person.

Pay attention to the shape your taking. Embrace what you learn in every situation.