Insights & discussion for young professionals

What is your primary job description as a young professional? Lawyer? Engineer? Accountant? Office lackey? I don’t care what your business card says, as a young professional you all have the same primary job description:

Your job is to make your bosses job easier.

It’s that simple. When your boss doesn’t have time to complete a task herself she will ask you to do it. The task is not important, it could be presenting to the board or just making copies. The important thing is to remember that your official job title will not cover every task you’ll be asked to complete. Complaining that something isn’t in your job description won’t make it go away, it will just make you look lazy and seem as though you aren’t a team player.

A common complaint about young professionals today is that they have a sense of entitlement and aren’t willing to ‘pay their dues’ as their bosses have done before them. Young professionals are often perceived (rightly or wrongly) as being stuck up and above certain tasks.

I can totally sympathize that it’s a waste of your 0.25 years of experience to ask you to spend a day putting together sales binders, but you need to look at this from your boss’s perspective. She’s wants to see how well you handle these menial tasks before assigning you more important work. If you slack off on ‘busy work’ then why would she have any reason to believe you would give your all for slightly more interesting work.

In summary, you’re not hired to do four or five specific tasks each week. You were hired to help your company grow and succeed. Sometimes this will require you taking on new and challenging projects and sometimes this will mean you suck it up and stuff envelopes for six hours straight. Either way, always give your best effort and you will be rewarded with more interesting projects in the future.