Brian Tracy gives advice to recent graduates on starting a career: choose the right job, conduct informational interviews to learn about companies, and seek more responsibility at work to advance faster.
Most people, when it comes to new work, they sit on their hands, not you, and you will move ahead faster and have greater satisfaction in your career. Hello, I'm Brian Tracy. And because I speak on business over the years I've been asked to address business classes at graduation time. Many times MBA classes, many times just commercial classes. But they always ask, what advice can you give me, a business student, going into the workplace for the first time? And I'll give you some great ideas which I have given them. The first is don't allow the world to decide where you're going to work or what you're going to do. Sit down and make out a list, a plan for exactly the kind of work that you enjoy doing more than anything else. What sort of work activities in your past have been most responsible for your success? What do you enjoy doing? If you were not being paid, what kind of work would you choose to do? And that is the starting point for your getting the right job. The second of all is you use what is called informational interviewing, is you pick a company and you make an appointment to see the key decision maker in the company and then you do exhaustive research on their website. You walk in really understanding this company. You may even look up their competitors and find out who their competitors are. Maybe you look at industry statistics to find out how the industry is going. And when you go in, you make it very clear. You say, thank you very much for your time. I've done a lot of work on your website and on the websites of this industry to learn as much as I could about your company. And what I would like to do is ask you a couple of questions about where you think this industry is going. I'm not applying for a job so much as I'm just trying to get as much information as possible to see if this is the right place for me and if I would be the right place for you. So could you tell me what do you think is going to happen in this industry in the next three to five years? And you ask a lot of questions. You control the interview. You don't look for a job at all, but you get an opportunity to get a lot of information and to find out whether or not you actually want to work in this company. Now, here's a very important point for recent graduates is choose your boss with care. Choose your boss with care. Just like if you're going to go out on a date and you're going to go out on more than one date, it better be somebody that you enjoy and you're relaxed and you're comfortable with. Same with a boss. You must be really comfortable with your boss. You must like your boss, because he's going to. Or she will have more of an influence on your pleasure and enjoyment and your success at the job than anything else. But here's my key strategy. The key strategy is, once you get a job and you get settled in, you have an assignment and so on is begin to ask for more responsibility. I learned this when I went to work for 200 company conglomerate many years ago. And whenever I got my work done and I got it done quickly, I would go to my boss and I would say, I would like more responsibility. And I remember initially he was a little bit surprised at this and kind of. He said, okay, well, let me think it over. And I kept going back several times a week. I would say, I'm all caught up. I'd like more responsibility. I finished that job. I would like more responsibility. And then just sort of like a little leak. He said, all right, well, here's something extra you can do. And he tossed it to me like tossing a stick to a dog. And I grabbed a honk and I ran and I did the extra job, and I brought it back to him. And this is the second part. Whatever you're given to do, do it quickly and well. Whatever you're given to do, do it quickly and well. Sometimes my boss would give me an extra job on Friday afternoon, Friday evening, he said, you know, you get to this next week, I'd appreciate it. I would work all weekend long. And when he came in the next morning, on Monday, I have the job done, all written, typed, ready to go. And eventually, it just dawned on him that if he wanted something done, he could give it to other people. But if he wanted something done quickly, he gave it to me. And this changed my career forever. Eventually, I got bigger and bigger responsibility. Then the company was approached to become the international distributor for a large Japanese company. And he brought this to me, and he said, what do you think about this? Do you think we should get into this business? And I pounced on it. I ran out. I did research, market research, pricing research, competitive research. And I put together a proposal, and I brought it back. And the answer was, on these terms and conditions, we should go ahead with it. I ended up in charge of a $25 million division within another year. It was unbelievable. I could tell you stories that would blow your mind. The bottom line is this is most people, when it comes to new work, they sit on their hands, not you. You keep raising your hand. You keep raising your hand. You can't. I'll do that. I'll do that. I'll do that. I need more responsibility. And you will move ahead faster and have greater satisfaction in your career than anything you can imagine. Thanks for watching. What are some of the ideas that you have to be more successful in your career when you're starting off? Please share the comments below. If you enjoyed this video and you feel it was valuable in teaching you, subscribe to my channel like this video and share this video with your your friends. Don't forget to click the button on the screen for a free gift. Thanks again for watching.
