Your First Job - Some Tips To Help You

As my dear friend Tony Redgrave is finally completing his Industrial Training stint at the end of this week, I guess I’d better give him my 2 cents on job hunting. Hehehe.. Not to forget that yours truly was unemployed for 3 months before securing a job. So here is a friendly rundown of some facts associated with getting your first job after the completion of your tertiary education.

So you’ve decided to send in your resume to the employer of your choice. If you’re sending in a written CV by snail mail, wait until the last minute before posting it. Why, you ask? Well, imagine that along with you, another 200 candidates have sent in their applications, and everything is neatly stacked in a pile on the secretary’s desk. You’d wanna be on top of that pile. Coz the boss might come in and say “Send the 50 application from the top of the pile to me, and throw the rest away.” You might argue that the secretary might say “But what if the best candidate is at the bottom?”. And the boss might reply “Well, I do not want to hire unlucky people, don’t I?”. So make yourself lucky by ending up at the top of the pile.

When browsing the classifieds, you should keep an eye out for advertisements that mention the word “Urgent” or “Immediate Vacancy”. This means that the company has found itself in some deep shit, due to some guy/lady who decides to leave his/her job in the midst of a big project for totally SELFISH reasons like wanting to experience a different working environment or being badly bitten by a zombie rabbit. If you’re qualified, you can squeeze them with your own employment terms like a better salary or benefits. Of course once they employ you, you will be asked to complete a 4-month delayed work in 4 weeks. They might ask you to clean the pencil sharpener once in a while.

Most fresh graduates will be sleeping in till around 1 or 2pm due to them watching porn at 3am. As this information is widely known to the masses, employers usually call you up at around 10 or 11am to give a preliminary phone interview. Anyone who is able to answer the phone in a somewhat comprehensible language understood by man will be immediately scheduled for the next interview. Often, the candidates are not what they seem, and the employer usually bangs his head on the wall after appointing you. This is because he just realised that before, he had a 35 year old man with plenty of experience on the job doing the work, and now, all he has is a fresh graduate with crumbs in his eyes every morning who drools in front of the PC while munching a chocoloate bun.

If your job requires you to be anywhere near a phone, try not to answer it. If your job requires you to answer the phone, please request your employer on not to place any hot chick/dude near the phone, as it may severely affect your phone skills. And dont chew anything while your answering the phone. It might send mixed messages to the person on the other line. The next thing you know is that big burly men might be removing the furniture from your office with your boss crying in a corner. But always remember to make long distance phone calls, to steal office supplies, and to access pornographic websites through your internet connection. This favours well with all the other staff.

And please learn to operate the fax machine. The boss might have told you several times that the document goes face-down in the fax machine. Yes, you’ve taken the document and demonstrated it for him. Yes, you’ve stood there and made him do it over and over, you’ve hired an outside vendor to create a large, flashing neon sign that says Faxes Go Face Down! and hung it directly over the fax machine. But one day, without fail, without doubt, you will consistently put the fax in face-up. And your boss will call you from Bangladesh and thank you for faxing him yet another set of blank pages, which he’s sure the foreign conglomerate will accept in lieu of a contract. Take note: your boss is a sarcastic bastard.

Live long, and prosper, punks!