When I say “find” and “get” I’m talking about the situation where a young person who has ZERO work experience is trying to get some kind of job. Usually their primary motivation is money; but there’s also some amount of building a sense of freedom and responsibility as they transition from being “kids at home” to “responsible adults.”

THE NORMAL PROCESS
The normal process starts something like this.

1) Recognize money is a thing that’s needed.
I think the first step is waking up one day and realizing money is a “thing.” My kids are 2 and 4. For them money is coins they can spin and throw around with no connection to the house, the toys or the food. When kids get older they make this connection and start negotiating for allowances/ad hoc money/pay for chores or any other mechanism so that they can have money providing them with greater choice and freedom from mom and dad. The next phase pushes them to not want to ask mom and dad at all. After all, even though allowance is “your money,” parents are still in the background judging your decisions… if there was someway to get money without asking parents at all, they can’t do this anymore. (Of course, us adults know that our parents STILL do this, but let’s not ruin it for the kids 🙂 ).

2) Figure out where to get it.
This is where things get interesting for me. What I see happening is that my nieces and nephews almost immediately see a single possible transaction mechanism. Specifically that they have to “do” something for someone else (a company) and they “get” paid to do it. This is a simple labor for money transaction. Thus the goal is to figure out how to get as much money for as little labor… that is a high $/hour wage. From what I can see there is not a ton of focus on passion, resonance with employer, long term prospects, etc. and it makes sense because mostly these are young adults looking for spending money over the summer. Real jobs don’t come until after college, as per script.

3) Figure out HOW to get it.
The next phase is to figure out how to get the job in the first place. So you learn about job applications, cruise around town looking for places that have “hiring” signs, go in, get an app, fill it out, give it back and get ready for rejection. After enough rejections, you’ll somehow get hired. Maybe the manager thought you were cute or took pity on you. Maybe there were few other candidates and you were the only one that spelled things correctly. Maybe the timing worked out well. Who knows. In any case, it’s kinda like dating… you see what’s available, make a move and hopefully get to the next stage.

4) Figure out what work REALLY is.
Here I’m totally speculating, but what I learned when I had 2 “medial” jobs (Pizza Place, Software Store) is that most people don’t care at all, and this annoyed me. I think it annoys most people… even the ones who don’t care… and partly why they don’t care is because no one else cares. Since no one in school teaches you how to care about something everyone else doesn’t care about, it’s a new thing and you probably don’t know how to deal with it.

Another thing you learn about is power structures in a financial compensated setting. In school, the power structure is simple. The teachers have it all, the students have none…or very little. In the SOCIAL part of school it’s much more complex. Work is more like the social part of school with money thrown into the mix. So we learn about the person who is sucking up to the manager to get a raise. You learn about the abusive manager, the empowering manager, the manipulative manager, and so on.

You also learn the most important things. What you DON’T want to do. I think most people DON’T want to work an entry level retail/food job for the rest of their lives. Even if you stay in retail or food (nothing wrong with that) you presumably want to move “up.”

THE CRAZY HERMANN PROCESS
I have to say, I approached this whole thing quite differently.

My first job was at Little Ceaser’s Pizza back in 1993. I was close friends with the manager and I talked to him about it for a while before applying. The store was right across from the bus I took to college (which I later dropped out of) every evening. So strategically it was perfect. It paid minimum wage, but I got to take some pizzas home AND there was basically a supply of food while working. The combination of flexible hours, free food and convenient location made it perfect.

1) Engage and Innovate… anytime, anywhere.
I tried to innovate things when I started.

I found out scrubbing the giant sinks sucked balls, so I started a process where you fill the sink with water, add a bunch of cleaning materials and then stir vigorously to generate a huge vortex taking most of the crusty pizza dough off the sides of the sink.  I also learned that customers HATE waiting, even when they show up early and even more especially if they had kids. So if it was late at night and there was a rush and I was working alone or with one other person, we’d hand out free crazy bread and this had a huge positive effect.

Essentially I tried to look around and see what problems there were and just assumed that I was totally empowered to try and fix them. I didn’t ask for permission or wait for approval. I highly recommend this, even if it gets you fired. Work is MUCH more fun when your attitude is “how can I make things better” rather than “how long am I stuck in this dump.”

I call this the “Lazy/Persistent” approach. I basically think “hmm… how can I do little or no actual work but still get the job done.” Without the persistence I’d just be lazy and that’s no good… but together it’s like the necessity/mother thing.

2) Follow your passion.