Your first jobs are not meant to be the be-all and end-all of career stardom. How can you master the skills it takes to get ahead without putting in any time in the trenches? That’s like saying you could win an Olympic gold medal in swimming without learning to doggie paddle first. Look at your first post-college positions as temporary stops on your career path instead of as permanent ones. You are getting paid to learn everything you can so that snagging the next job isn’t quite as challenging. This chapter will describe how to make the most out of your first job, knowing that you probably won’t stay there forever. I’ll start by sharing how you can set goals that further your personal mission. Next, I’ll discuss strategies for adding value to your company and for developing critical career skills such as risk-taking and problem-solving, which will be useful no matter where you go or what you do. As you’re reading, imagine your current company as a training ground to practice everything I cover.

Let’s be realistic. Most junior-level jobs in the corporate world have a low glamor factor. As I talked about briefly in Chapter 2, twenty-somethings are often required to pay their dues regardless of their education, and there’s a chance your responsibilities have nothing to do with what the interviewer promised. I’m willing to bet that they’re more administrative, less creative, and less empowering. This situation can be frustrating, especially if you’re used to accomplishing much in a short period of time. You’ll be much happier, though, if you look at your time on the bottom rung as an opportunity, instead of lamenting the tragic turn your once promising life has taken. Keep in mind what’s really important to you and use this situation to acquire valuable skills and experience that will take you there. The easiest way to do this is to set specific, reasonable, and attainable goals for your present position that correspond to your long-term career strategy.

In his book Getting Promoted: Real Strategies for Advancing Your Career, Harry Chambers defines goal-setting as a positive statement that proclaims your expectations of growth and achievement. You want your goals to motivate you rather than discourage you, so they shouldn’t be too ambitious. Instead, make them just tough enough so that you’ll stay involved, constantly putting forth effort and reaching for that brass ring. Devise meaningful career goals by considering the following:

For example, a few years ago, I set the following goal for leveraging my present job responsibilities to further my big-picture agenda:

Increase your commitment to your goals by writing them down in a list, and then sit down with your boss to review it and ask for his feedback. Do your personal goals align closely with your company’s goals or the goals your boss has set for you? Are your boss’s expectations practical given your level of experience and expertise? Are your own expectations reasonable? For example, does your boss concur with your goal to manage a client relationship self-sufficiently within six months, or does he feel that you’ll require an additional year of mentoring before you’ll be ready to take on that responsibility? Don’t leave this initial meeting until you and your boss have agreed on your goals leading up to your first scheduled performance review. He will be impressed with your conscientiousness, and voilá—you’ll be on the path to that promotion months sooner than if you’d waited for the formal review process.

Types of goals vary, depending on the specific job. Every twenty-something should aim to build a wide range of transferable skills (such as public speaking, client relations, project management, and budgeting) that will add value in any corporate job and that are not likely to become obsolete. Use your time on the job and your company’s resources to achieve goals related to transferable skills, even if such goals are not directly related to your daily job responsibilities. My friend Joanne wanted to move from her position as a research coordinator to that of a sales representative, and provided the following example:

Even after you’ve learned the basics, practice honing existing skills and acquiring new ones. Your development never stops if you want to stay marketable. Keep a running list of all the job responsibilities you have and the projects you work on, and create a portfolio of work samples. Learn all you can about your company and your field. Because the corporate world moves at the speed of the Internet, spend a few minutes each day reading Websites, blogs, and news outlets focused on your company and industry. Regardless of your position, keeping your finger on the pulse can only help you.

Some other ideas? Sign up for as many professional and leadership development courses as your company offers for your level, and take advantage of job rotations or temporary assignments in other departments that may be available. Join company committees or projects outside your daily job responsibilities, and seek additional education in the form of certifications or advanced degrees.

Independent of your manager’s involvement, you should take the time to evaluate your goals and reflect on your progress every three to six months. Mark Swartz, a career columnist for the Toronto Star, recommends taking a regular inventory of what’s working and what’s not. Ask yourself the following questions and answer honestly:

Finally, be positive. Focus on how far you’ve come instead of how far you have to go. Take time out to pat yourself on the back. Eat your favorite dessert, buy the better seats at a baseball game—whatever—as long as it’s a real treat. By acknowledging your progress toward reaching your goals and concentrating on how close you are to achieving them, you’ll be more likely to go the distance.

If you’re reading this chapter, chances are you’re blazing a trail of driven fire. You probably can’t wait to make your mark on the company and prove to everyone you’re worth 10 times what they’re paying you. Well, hold on there, partner. Taking initiative in order to add value is an excellent idea, but there are a few things you’ll want to consider first.

At a new job, size up the turkey before you carve yourself a piece. Realize that no one is expecting you to make a sizable impact within a month of your start date. Actually, going out of your way to make a big splash could be perceived as presumptuous and might incite jealousy among your new colleagues. You should also assess your boss’s personality before you jump right in on projects. Although most managers appreciate independence, some like to maintain tighter control over the group’s work and will be insulted and/or threatened if they feel you’re taking too much initiative. Bottom line: in the beginning, when looking for ways to prove your worth, you’ll be safest if you start small.

Ask yourself what your company or department needs, and think about how you can use your unique set of skills and talents to provide it. So what if you’re hardly a Renaissance man or woman? You’re still new blood. Can you offer a fresh perspective on a vexing problem that has been plaguing your managers for months? Can you find a way to do something faster and more efficiently?

When I started a job in corporate communications, I discovered that my company lacked templates for certain documents, such as launch plans and activity reports. My colleagues weren’t against the idea of creating templates—they’d just never thought of it. They created every new document from scratch because that was the way they’d always done it. I recognized that I could make a contribution by introducing the templates I used at my last job. However, I didn’t want to appear as though I was forcing my methods upon my new company, so I started by casually incorporating the templates into my individual projects. Eventually, my teammates figured out on their own that the templates were huge productivity-savers. Instead of feeling offended or threatened, my colleagues and manager began to see me as an asset.

Remember that you have to give your company more than you take out in salary and benefits to be considered a worthwhile investment. In the financially-driven corporate world, it’s not about effort—it is all about results, so you’re better off concentrating on areas that directly impact your company’s bottom line. Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking, Inc., recommends focusing on opportunities that present themselves, even if they’re outside your official job description. For example, you might not be in sales, but you can help your company generate new business just by talking to people about what you do. You networked your way into the job, now go out and do it on behalf of your company!

Many twenty-somethings are entrepreneurs at heart and believe they have to leave the corporate world in order to fulfill their dreams. This is not necessarily so. If you’re lucky, your organization is one that supports intrapreneurship—or the practice of entrepreneurial skills and approaches by or within an established organization. Employees, perhaps engaged in a special project within a larger firm, are encouraged to behave as entrepreneurs even though they have the resources and capabilities of the larger firm to draw upon. Intrapreneurs focus on innovation and creativity and transform good ideas into profitable ventures. In her article for the UK’s Times Online, Clare Dight offers these suggestions for budding intrapreneurs:

I’m not going to lie to you—starting an intrapreneurial project out of thin air is going to be more challenging than, say, joining an existing committee whose job it is to generate fresh product ideas. You should wait until you’ve been around a while and have proven yourself as a smart, capable employee, and even then it takes guts, because there will always be some higher-up whose mission is to preserve the status quo and who thinks that you, as an intrapreneurial twenty-something, have some nerve. Your best bet is to put together a bulletproof case that clearly demonstrates how your concept will benefit the company, and to share it subtly and modestly, one person at a time, until you have enough supporters to counter the naysayers.

While working for a Fortune 500 software firm, I attended an annual staff meeting. The CEO tossed a beach ball into the audience, and everyone watched for five minutes as the ball was batted back and forth. Finally, the CEO called for quiet and asked for the ball to be returned to him. He held it in front of us for a moment before speaking again. “I’m going to throw this ball again,” he finally said. “And this time I want someone to catch it and hold onto it. I want you to treat this ball as if it were one of our customers. Instead of passing the inquiry to another person, own the issue yourself.”

“Beach ball management”—or bouncing a request over to a colleague because it’s not your responsibility to handle it—is all too common in the corporate world. I think e-mail forwarding was invented for this purpose. If someone asks you a question and you don’t know the answer, make it your business to find it. I realize it’s easier to pass on the request and forget about it, particularly if the person asking is not someone you need to impress or if the request has nothing to do with your area. But if you take that extra step to ensure your department or company is perceived in a positive light, you will add value and stand out as a team player.

Sometimes when you answer the phone, an exasperated coworker or customer will be on the line. Quite possibly, you will be the fourth or fifth person this individual has been transferred to during a single call. Don’t underestimate the importance of being the one who actually offers assistance and shepherds the issue through to a satisfying resolution. All it takes is one grateful person to e-mail your boss expressing appreciation for your efforts, and your reputation is made. If that isn’t enough of a reason to do a good deed, consider the corporate “karma” factor: go out of your way to help someone today and the universe’s system of checks and balances will see to it that you are rewarded later.

Of course, it’s also imperative that you take ownership as it pertains to your job. Volunteer to take on tougher assignments whenever you can, and if you don’t have much on-the-job experience yet, scout out small tasks that you can own. Treat every person you deal with as though he or she is your most important customer, and make sure to finish every project you start. If you encounter roadblocks, marshal your resources to get around them rather than letting a project languish. If a task requires you to follow up at a later date, stay on top of it and keep it on your calendar until it has been completed. You should never hear your manager say, “Whatever happened to that…?” Provide her with frequent updates so that she doesn’t have to ask you for a status. You’ll advance much more quickly when you can demonstrate the ability to manage projects with minimal supervision.

In Chapter 1, I talked about the necessity of showcasing your abilities and achievements in the business world, and suggested that you think of yourself as a publicist with the sole task of promoting you. It was easier to do this while you were interviewing, because all eyes were on you and you had your superiors’ undivided attention. However, now that you are ensconced in a corporate job, people are not as inclined to listen, and you have to compete with all kinds of noise to be heard. It’s no longer enough to keep your nose to the grindstone and turn in a solid day’s work. If you want people to take notice of you and consider you a serious player, you must make your accomplishments visible.

This is not an easy thing to do, especially given what you were told throughout your 16 years of schooling. In high school and college, achievement was an individual endeavor. You were taught a lesson, you studied, you took a test, you got a score—and no one was the wiser. In fact, you were probably not encouraged to share your grades, particularly if they were good. You were equally successful, whether anyone realized it or not. The corporate world, however, is a whole different ball game. Your promotability depends not on what you do, but on who knows what you do. Being insular is most damaging at the lower levels of your career, when you are unknown to 99 percent of your company. You could be sitting at your cube churning out work like there’s no tomorrow, but unless someone in a position of authority is aware of it, you probably won’t get anywhere.

So how do you share your contributions without being perceived as arrogant or boastful? The key is enthusiasm. If you emphasize your passion when describing an achievement, people will think you’re just excited about it. An excited person appears earnest, and it’s hard to be critical of someone earnest. Practice on your boss. It’s okay if you mess up and start bragging uncontrollably, because your boss is supposed to know about everything you’re doing and can’t fault you for keeping him informed. But when informing everyone else of your successes, be as subtle as possible. Here are a few tactics you can employ without leaving your desk:

Forward e-mails praising your work to your management, disguising them as modest FYIs and making the success seem as though it was a team effort (use “we” instead of “I”):

Ask people outside your department who appreciated your stellar work to let your higher-ups know about it:

Disguise your own success through a thank-you note to others who worked on a particular project with you.

You might feel weird the first few times you do something like this. Unless you have a major ego, deliberately trying to make yourself look good is not going to feel natural. But trust me, you’ll get used to it. As a mentor of mine once said, step out of your comfort zone often, and watch it get bigger every time.

One last point with respect to visibility: Always strive to share your good ideas, but be prepared: many of your suggestions will not be implemented. This is because, in the corporate world, a lot of the important decisions are made at a high level. You should not consider your visibility efforts a failure if your ideas are nixed before they see the light of day. The goal is to show the higher-ups in your department that you consistently make worthwhile contributions.

I’m not a big risk-taker myself, so it probably makes sense that much of this book is about treading carefully through the jungle that is the corporate world. However, there is a time and a place for everything, and I believe that if you learn to take calculated risks, you will be more personally fulfilled, and you will reap greater career rewards in a shorter period of time. Research cited in Gail Sheehy’s book Pathfinders supports this point, suggesting that most truly contented people have taken substantial risks at some point in their careers.

Career author Harry Chambers defines risk-taking as the willingness to confront problems, recommend appropriate actions or solutions, and take responsibility for the ultimate outcomes. When you’re a low man on the totem pole, putting in your two cents about anything may seem like a risk. You also have to be careful not to step on your colleagues’ toes. For example, if your boss is around to handle a situation that falls under her jurisdiction rather than yours, chances are it’s not appropriate for you to jump in and handle it for her.

When is a good time to take a risk that could jump-start your career? Because you can’t plan for most opportunities (for example, your boss comes down with the flu and you must address a high-level executive’s complaint in his absence), the best way to prepare is to learn in advance what would be considered an appropriate risk. This way, when you’re presented with an opportunity in the midst of a stressful situation, you will be able to easily determine whether or not you should take the leap. Chambers suggests some risk-assessment questions to keep handy:

You will likely face stressful situations in your career, especially when a risk presents itself and you must act immediately. In his book Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better, world-renowned psychologist Albert Ellis says that you can assuage your risk-taking fears by preferring, rather than needing, a successful outcome. Realize that a bad risk won’t kill you. Sure, you may lose, but you may also appreciably gain. Look at it this way: If you refuse to take risks, you will never get over your fear of them. Your career will be predictable and boring—and life is too short to live that way.

Also, keep in mind that how you react in a crisis tells others a great deal about you. If you’re wishy-washy, you are likely to be perceived as ineffective, whereas if you take a confident stand, you will make a powerful statement about your career potential. Whatever you do, don’t let on that you doubt yourself—nothing will cause people to lose respect for you faster. Even if you make a mistake, no one can fault you for courageously confronting a problem head-on. And when a plan doesn’t work out, don’t take it personally. A bad risk does not make you incompetent and shouldn’t prevent you from taking similar actions in the future. Be honest, own up to your error, and take stock of what went wrong and make a note to do it differently next time. There is no better way to learn.

Knowing how to resolve issues and act decisively on the fly are skills you shouldn’t be without. Early in your career, you may not have enough accountability to practice problem-solving on a regular basis, but if you take the time to master the process now, you will be all set when a curveball is thrown your way.

It’s easy to say that a problem exists. Maybe you can even determine who’s to blame. However, coming up with an effective solution is much more challenging, particularly when you’re navigating uncharted waters. Problem-solving abilities do not come naturally to many people. Some are born procrastinators, and others become so stressed that they lose their ability to think rationally. Either way, when confronting a situation that requires action, many people put off addressing the issue until the window of opportunity has closed. If you are faced with a choice, it is usually more effective to take the wrong action than to do nothing at all.

Let’s look at the four steps of problem-solving with a potential scenario. Suppose it is just before Christmas. You work as a junior account executive at an advertising agency, and your client is a national bank. Your client contact informs you that the bank has had a sudden change in marketing management and wants your firm to pull together a presentation proposing some new creative campaigns. Unfortunately, the presentation is due just after the New Year, and your boss has already left for vacation. The future of an important client relationship is now in your hands. Yikes! What are you going to do? First, take a deep breath and don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. You’re going to solve this problem with a clear head, and you will come out looking like a superstar in the process. Here’s how: Step One: Define the problem in concrete terms.

What is the problem, specifically? In less than a week, with most of the team on vacation, we must overhaul our existing advertising plans and devise a slide presentation detailing a new, yearlong creative campaign. I have neither the authority nor the expertise to create this presentation on my own.

Is this objectively a problem? Yes. I am not just panicking or exaggerating the criticality of this situation. The client really expects this presentation next week.

What can I gain by fixing it? This is a major opportunity to prove myself to senior executives in my firm and to develop a positive working relationship with my client without the interference of my managers.

What are the alternatives?

Are any of my potential solutions totally unrealistic? All of the options are realistic except for #3. At my level, I am not authorized to spend several thousand dollars to hire freelancers. I also cannot release control of the project to an external resource without senior executive approval. Step Three: Evaluate each solution and choose the best alternative based on the pros and cons.

Have I prioritized the best option? After analyzing the pros and cons, I believe the benefits of #4 to be the most substantial, and its drawbacks to be the most tolerable. I can mitigate the risk by collaborating with others as I take the reins.

Step Four: Implement the chosen solution.

Have I developed a contingency plan? If things get out of hand, I can always pull in a senior executive to take over (see Solution #1). At least then everyone will know that I put forth my best effort.

Once the problem is yesterday’s news, take a moment to assess how things worked out before you move on to the next big thing. If you succeeded, think about what worked and why, and document everything for later use in performance reviews or discussions about your goals with your manager. Don’t forget to promote your success as subtly as you can and to sincerely thank the people who helped you along the way. Return the favor by sharing your skills and resources to help your colleagues with projects in the future.

If you didn’t succeed, don’t look at the experience as a failure. You simply made an ineffective choice. Your career is far from over, so dust yourself off and prepare for the next challenge. As I mentioned in the section on risk-taking, if you think about why you didn’t succeed and try a different approach the next time, you’ll be 100 percent on track. Take responsibility for the choices you’ve made, but don’t overapologize. Believe in yourself and others will too!