Jim
Hi, welcome to Career Track Coaching Minute. My name’s Jim Frisch, where we help clients, young adults find meaningful careers through a coaching process. And once a month we bring, you know, past clients to this quick video to ask them a few questions to help others with advice on their careers. And today we’re lucky to have Jason Shapiro and Jason just graduated from Madison. Congratulations.
Jason
Thank you again. Yep. Yep. It’s been awesome.
Jim
Yep. And from what you told me before, the weather was awesome. Everything worked out great. So I’m so happy for you. Yeah. And yeah, and Jason, he majored in personal finance, financial planning, and minor in entrepreneurship, business analytics, and political science. So, and as I mentioned, he graduated in Madison and we worked together during college here his senior year to position him for looking for, you know, his, his next gig right out of college.
And so, as I mentioned, Jason, what I was hoping to do is ask you a couple of quick questions, of course, to help everyone. Right. So I guess, what’s one piece of advice that you would give to someone that’s looking for a job right outta school?
Jason
For sure. One thing I definitely wanna say is at, especially at the start, you don’t wanna freak yourself out. You’re just at the start of your career and you’re just trying to find the general direction that you wanna go in. And things will eventually come as you apply. Don’t be afraid to apply that to any unconventional role. Just consider all opportunities, keep doors open. ’cause eventually you’ll recognize paths that in the jobs you apply to, that will naturally kind of draw to you. And through that process, you’ll definitely get better at finding those positions that you could easily flourish and or enjoy.
It’s definitely, you know, that a path that requires hard work and determination. ’cause you will find moments where you’re psyched out and a little stressed out. But just trust the process because there’s definitely something out there that can line up for you and your interests.
And just understanding the people that are out there want to help you. So really just talking to passionate people and, and getting to understand what they believe in will, will lead you down a path that you find what maybe you wanna believe in and what, what, what networks or connections, you know, get you down that path that really can lead you to success and happiness. So,
Jim
Yeah. When you say like, don’t freak out. If you, if you think back when we were first starting out, what, what kind of like freaked you out about the whole thing, you know, about looking for a job?
Jason
Yeah, so personally I, as you already mentioned, Jim, I’m a personal finance major. Yeah. But coming into kind of this job process, I really wasn’t sure specifically what kind of role I was looking at. Whether it be more of an analyst role or an advisor role where you’re more in, in connection with, with your clients.
Yeah. I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to branch out in finance. Yeah. So I think really just finding that niche area propelled me to, you know, find those roles that make sense with what I’m interested in.
Jim
Yeah. And, and so to help you kind of determine that, what did you do to, you know, what process did you go through? Was it through networking or talking to others? Or how, how did you figure that out?
Jason
I think wan I had an internship over the summer that really gave me some insight. Good. But I would say in terms of networking, it was definitely through the process of interviewing. I think I just developed an interest for kind of these different roles and how people kind of described what the culture was in these, these companies. That really led to me to be like, okay, I, I think I believe that this kind of role is something that I really am looking for, especially after that internship or internship experience that I had.
I think it really just, the more interviews and and practice that you get Yep. Will just lead you to a path that makes sense for you. Yeah. So you’ll, you’ll, again, as I mentioned in the previous question, you’ll, you definitely will learn what you’re interested in as you continue to, to interview over and over again. Yeah. And network.
Jim
Okay. No. Awesome. And then, you know, I was a, a big proponent of, you know, developing habits through this process. And I guess, if you don’t mind sharing, what are a couple of habits that might have helped you with your success during the search?
Jason
Definitely one big habit that I think I kind of lacked in coming, coming into this job search was kind of building a routine. That’s something that Jim and I really focused on throughout this past year was, you know, allowing myself to easily plan the days. ’cause I’m obviously in school and you have schoolwork as well. Yeah. So you wanna manage your time efficiently. And I think me and Jim really focused on building a routine where the days of my schedule would break down into kind of certain blocks where I was able to focus on completing certain assignments at various times. So developing that plan of attack really allowed me to concentrate on the job search at specific times.
Specifically for me, I found Monday and Friday to be very efficient and was able to complete most of my job search work on those days. Right. And then complete schoolwork on other days.
So yeah, that was one habit that, you know, I think me and you definitely helped. Yeah. We developed and made me stronger as, as an applicant and just a as as a as a student.
Jim
Okay. Yep. Was there, was there anything else or was that kind of
Jason
Yeah, and then I, I’d say just another quick habit of mine. I, I definitely worked on, sorry.
I would say another kind of big habit was recording my progress. I think that sometimes I would be working on various applications and then once I completed those, I didn’t necessarily record it in, in the right spot. So I think building an Excel sheet to really keep track of what you do allows you to, to focus on all the connections and conversations that you had and be able to look back and see, you know, where, where you have already looked, what, what roles you’ve looked at. And so it allows you to just continue to diversify and, you know, expand your network with different opportunities since you can go back and look at what you’ve already done.
Jim
Great. So yeah, just those two habits. Yeah.
And, and you know, what, when, when you talked about like, you know, making sure that you were consistently working on specific days and times as a habit, I think it’s so critical whether you’re in school or out of out of school and you, let’s say you, you have a full-time job right outta school and you now wanna look for another job. It’s, it’s hard when you’re working full-time or you’re in school. So it’s critical that you pick some dates and times and make it a habit. So it’s nice and easy and so forth. So, no, these are really good habits and you were, you know, you were great to work with.
I wish you all the best and thanks for your insight today from prayer track coaching. Till next time. Thank you very much.
Jason
Thank you. Yep.
