I was 15 years old and arriving to my very first interview by ten speed bike. It’s the only interview I’ve ever had to bike to, and the only interview I’ve ever attended in khaki shorts and a collared polo shirt. I arrived at the office, and after a few minutes, was offered the job selling video games, magazines and game cleaning systems over the phone. My best friend growing up had a job with the company and got me the interview. I got the job on the spot.
Like most teenagers, my parents were not going to hand me the keys to my very own car. If I wanted a car, I had to figure out how to pay for it. So getting a job seemed like the first logical step. Unlike the inspiration for my reason to get a job, I’d like to take the opportunity to point out that this job likely no longer exists. My first job has now been taken over by web sites and physical retailers that probably still rely on teenagers for a portion of their workforce, but phone based video game sales are a relic of past. If my first job was still available for teenagers today, I’d recommend it as a solid first job. It taught me how to work with a variety of people in different age groups with personalities that I’d never encountered. I learned that if I sat there and did nothing, I would still get paid, but was in danger of losing additional income I could earn for selling certain product, and losing the job itself if I couldn’t meet goals and quotas. At 15, I realized that to a certain extent, I was in control of my own destiny based on how I performed at my job.
My video game sales job was not a temporary thing. I stayed with the company through the rest of high school, came back and worked holidays during college, and it was one of my two jobs that I worked during summer vacations in college. However, going into the summer before my senior year in college, I got the news that I was going to be one of the two Eau Claire accounting grads that received a job offer from E&Y. My path to secure the E&Y job was a little different than arriving on my ten speed to the video game sales job interview in my polo shirt. I proactively figured out when E&Y was coming to campus and made every effort to attend each event. I took every opportunity to show and explain why I was the right person for the job. During my time at E&Y, I learned that the sales skills I had been using for the last six years were working for me in nearly all of my daily interactions. I learned that I enjoyed working with my driven, smart E&Y colleagues, and wanted to figure out how I could apply my accounting and finance education in another way.
I was having trouble picturing myself crunching numbers behind my desk and eventually landing as a partner in public accounting, so I started working with a recruiter to explore my other options. When my recruiter asked me if I’d ever considered recruiting in the accounting and finance industry, I answered honestly that I had not. After a few more interviews, I started my career in recruiting. I had a strong basis in accounting and finance, and was looking forward to using it in a new way. From the beginning, I found that recruiting allowed me to take what I learned about what my bosses and peers were going through in public accounting and apply it in a meaningful way. I found I was well positioned to help them with their careers.
I could write another entire post on why recruiting has been such a rewarding area for me to channel my entrepreneurial spirit I started embracing at age 15. My first job was memorable for a lot of reasons. From my interview transportation, to the variety of people I worked with, I am grateful for everything it included. It gave me the opportunity to experience what it would take for me to find my career path.