your first job

CRUCIAL THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE STARTING YOUR FIRST JOB

Imran Zafar Picture

By IMRAN ZAFAR

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It was last week of March 2005, I was at my workplace when I received a call from  Siemens Pakistan, the lady from HR shared the news “Imran, Congratulations You have been selected for our BU Switchboards”, I had no idea what is BU Switchboards and what job role I am going to be offered there.

By that time I had completed 15 months with my first job, almost the entire time since my graduation, it was a well established small organization with over 30 headcounts. Mostly the staff was experienced and all managers were given 1000 cc cars, and the company recently moved to a purpose-built 3 story its office building. The owner decided to hire 3-4 fresh engineers and I was one of them.

The organization was not bad in terms of compensation. I was offered a hefty bonus amount after completion of one year and the company provided me exposure to different industries across the country. I traveled to Faisalabad, Lahore, and Interior Sindh.

I joined this organization after almost one month of graduation. Perhaps it was the first company which offered me to join.

How long you can wait to join your first organization?

Your first job is most important in defining your long term career direction. If you know what your strength is and specify which field you want to join and you are not financially under pressure, then you can wait up to 3 months, refusing options not aligning to your goals.

However, joining an organization is always better than staying at home. The work atmosphere provides lessons which one cannot understand by reading or watching stuff. 

Many of the fresh graduates like me only realize their strength & interest after joining their first job but you have time within 2-3 years of your career to switch and restart from scratch.

Business traveling in your First Job, a bundle of experience gaining opportunities.

Many people are hesitant to travel, especially those who have not traveled before. I also had never gone outside my birthplace Karachi, but I was keen to gain the opportunity. So I can’t forget my first airplane journey from Karachi to Faisalabad.

I went there with my senior engineer for the commissioning of the Process Automation System at Rafhan Maize Jaranwala plant. It was a newly constructed plant and I was not intensely involved in programming and with 03 months of experience, my role was just to support the senior engineer. I must acknowledge the wonderful mentorship by Sarim, a very serious, hardworking, and committed engineer.

My next visit was at the BHP ZAMZAMA Gas processing facility. This was by far my best learning experience during the initial year. Understanding the whole Gas composition, production, processing, and billing of Natural Gas, knowing the Oil & Gas culture, their uncompromised safety standards, and procedures. I met several different vendors and created new contacts, I heard the stories of the people on how they got a job in BHP Billiton as it was a dream job working in Oil & Gas.

Then I made a couple of more visits and received a huge bucket of experience.

So, the owner of the company was investing in me a lot and in addition to the above, he scheduled 02 weeks training for me at EMERSON Singapore and my passport was in Singapore Embassy for Visa stamping when I receive a call from Siemens.

Siemens was offering me much less salary, I had to give up all my one year experience and restart as a fresh trainee with my junior batch.  There was no issue with money and exposure in my current job and excitement for the first international trip was high. I had to make a tough call.

Important things to consider in early career switching

I had no idea what kind of work I will be offered at Siemens but there were two major reasons I left.

  1. First, a constant reminder from senior staff and managers. They encourage all fresh graduates to leave for a better place. They always tell us you have no future in this organization. All fresh graduates joined with me had already left and all managers kept worrying me, “Imran, time is passing, you will be stuck”.

Maybe they were honest in their advice or maybe they were worry that young & smart engineers may question their position in the long term. But now I believe it was not fair to act at the part of Senior managers to demotivate fresh engineers, with the employer who was spending money to hire and train new engineers.

  1. Secondly, I was reporting to the owner, perhaps he liked me and wanted to utilize me, but I was not given a permanent settled role. I was oriented with different departments learning every section, but it was not satisfying to remain without responsibility, and lastly, the offer was from Siemens, a German multinational brand and Siemens was at its peak at that time.

When I presented my resignation to the owner, he was understandably disappointed and angry, as he was investing in me.

Remember, when your organization is putting more & more responsibilities on you, you should enjoy and feel blessed, as it is increasing your capacity & capability. You are making assets that you can be able to cash in soon.

However, if you have no serious responsibilities, you are at risk. You not only get lesser opportunities to learn and you will be the first victim in downsizing. The people who take initiative in earlier careers demanding more work will soon find them much ahead in the professional journey.

Should you know your passion before you start your career?

Many people say you follow your passion, and it is true but if you have not explored your passion how can you follow it? So what you could do then?

  • Try to join the organization as early as possible after your graduation.
  • Discipline comes first, you need to be punctual and organize. One of the reasons my first boss liked me was anything he asked me, I write in my diary and kept it following until he accepted as closed.
  • Do not leave your first job for the sake of leaving. The more the time you spent on your first job, the more you realize your strength & interest. If you keep on changing jobs every 3-4 months, you would never able to develop passionate interest.
  • Whether you found the job of your passion or not, you need to give your best as every day at the workplace teaches us something new and we somehow get to utilize it in our future.

So, this was the end of my first job stint lasting over 15 months.  I gave up one Singapore visit and later in my career I got an opportunity for at least 10-12 Singapore visits.