Dear youngins,
When you start a job, WRITE DOWN THE DATE YOU STARTED. Also the date you ended, if it ended. Write down the address. Write down the supervisors name.
You have NO IDEA how many forms this will be on. Seriously. I dont care if you have to email it to yourself on your hello kitty email or something, write it down and keep it.
im gonna back you way up.
when you start LOOKING FOR JOBS, keep track of all the places you’re applying to. write down the name and title of everyone who you speak to and write down the addresses of places you need to be. Some times interviews are conducted offsite. Have an interview with a recruiter? Get all of their info. If you need to follow-up you’re gonna want to be able to find this person easily.
AND BE ON TIME FOR YOUR INTERVIEWS! 2hrs early cause you had to take the bus is better than 5 minutes late.
It is also helpful to write down your salary/hourly wage with the corresponding dates. At the very least, write down your starting salary/hourly wage and ending salary/hourly wage.
Keep three files ongoing for your working and adult life - one with all of your job information, such as the stuff listed, as well as your duties, official title, names and contact numbers of supervisors (esp if you might be able to get a referral from them later). It’s SUPER helpful when you’re looking back at your job history trying to fill out all that mess. Also, having your job description along with a list of duties is helpful when you are writing a resume, or rewriting one, or writing multiple ones tailored for different specific fields that have different jobs or tasks highlighted.
The second file, for those of you who have ever moved, should contain the addresses and phone numbers of every place you’ve ever lived, along with names of people who can verify that, in case you ever find yourself needing to fill out a security clearance. You might think you could never forget your first address, the one you learned in elementary school, but it’s an easy thing to forget. Some applications for certain kinds of jobs require you to go back ten years and prove you lived there. Do you know your address from ten years ago? Do you know your phone number from ten years ago? The cell phone and the home phone? Are you sure? Write that shit down.
The third is what I call your brag file. Any time you do an exemplary job and that person tells you you can use them as a reference - fucking write that shit down. Write down what you did and how much work you did, because four years later when that person is the only person in your history who could give you a reference that is vaguely related to the thing you’re trying to change careers to, you probably won’t remember the details, or you’ll misremember, and they will probably have forgotten. So keep those details somewhere, specific dates and names, to jog their memory when you send them a LinkedIn message from out of the blue years down the line. Most people are nice people, and if they remember you as a good person who did good work, they’ll probably be happy to write you a thing. But even nice people can have shitty memories, so - remind them. If you have any great projects that you worked on and it’s possible to keep drafts of photos or copies or whatever for your portfolio, do it.
Keep track of the people who might be useful to you later. Friend them on FB if you’re close, connect with them on LinkedIn if you’re not and it needs to stay more professional, but do something to make sure you don’t lose touch entirely. Send them holiday cards if you have to, with a short little note about your life, just so they don’t forget you.
This is something my mom told me: you generally only need to include your job history for the last ten years. Anything older, you don’t need to include on applications and your resume.
Speaking of the resume: put one together and keep it updated. I had to make one in high school and it’s been super helpful. Especially for keeping track of start and end dates for jobs.
To those in the design business, also write down key details of your projects - what is the brief, who is the client, how big it is, what is it for. And if your company policy allows it, save your key sketches, drawings, and final products. Because it will save you the grief from trying to remember all this stuff when you are updating your portfolio a couple of years down the line. (I was lucky to be in a big company where they archived and had information systems set up, smaller companies may not be so good)
(Source: scarilysweet)
