Video Transcription
Jim 0:12
Hi, welcome to Career Track, Coaching Minute. My name is Jim Frisch, where we help young adults find meaningful careers through a coaching process. And once a month, we bring insights from highly successful business people and young adults, right out of school, and we asked them a couple of questions to help our clients and, and so forth. And so today I have David Nickow. David, nice to see you.
David 0:40
Nice to see you as well.
Jim 0:42
Yeah, it’s been I think we were talking before, it’s been three years, I think since I saw you last. And, yes, yeah, it’s crazy how fast time pre-COVID. And actually, David was a client of ours in the past, which is awesome, that he’s doing well. And to give you a little background on David, he’s a senior product support representative at Litera where he works with clients, training, and implementing software, as well as solving problems with errors and bugs in the software. And so his role has been working on a number of different projects with new challenges every day. And what was great about David is, is he pivoted from, you know, being in the printing industry to the software industry where he wanted to go. So great job, David. So as I mentioned, we just wanted to ask you a couple of quick questions. The first one would be, you know, what advice would you give a graduate that’s coming right out of school?
David 1:40
Yeah. So one piece of advice, I’d give a graduate coming to the working world today, understand that when you get a job, but after some time, you aren’t happy due to your daily tasks, or maybe your compensation isn’t where you want it, it’s okay to look for a new opportunity, that’s a better fit for you, especially the first time it’s kind of scary, but your company’s if they’re not providing you with the resources, you need to be successful, you don’t need to be afraid to look for new opportunities. Just additionally, even if you are happy with your current job, it doesn’t hurt to just apply to other positions and do the interviews, it’s great practice, when you and then when you actually need a ready for do a real interview for a new job, you’ll have, you’ll be ready to go. And then you also never know if an opportunity comes along to use can’t pass up and be in the right spot.
Jim 2:30
You know, and I always say, I know we talked about in the past set, you know, even though if you’re in a job that you’re not that happy with, you’re hopefully learning from it, meaning you’re learning new skills that you never had before, new experiences that you could bring to you know, your new workplace, and, and so forth. So great advice. And then the second one is, you know, in terms of your success, can you share maybe a habit that’s really helped you where you are today?
David 3:02
Yeah, so one habit that helped me find success in my job is knowing when to ask for help. It’s important to be aware of what you know, and what you might need additional training on, and your company wants you to succeed. So if you need additional training in order to do your job best to your ability, they’re going to be willing to help.
Jim 3:22
Yeah. So I’m just curious with your current job, how long did it take you to feel comfortable? In your position?
David 3:32
Yeah, probably took probably about a year to feel comfortable and know that I can do everything on my own without constantly asking for help for some of the senior members. And then after about a year, I was doing the same thing and helping the new support representatives and helping them with all their questions and training them whenever they needed some help too.
Jim 4:01
Great ! And what impresses me as well is thinking about you went from a completely different industry to the software industry into a different type of position. And I believe you got the job because you still have the skill set from your old job and were able to transfer to the software industry.
David 4:21
Yep, apps. Absolutely. Um, yeah, that was the biggest part even though I didn’t have direct experience at the time was trying to picking and choosing the experience that I did have and making sure that they knew that I have worked with customers in the past and have worked with software in the past even though that wasn’t my actual direct job.
Jim 4:42
Yeah. Great. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for your time and your insight here and hope to see you down the road.
