Health Care Administrator
The industry is in a constant state of change. Keeping current is a challenge but a necessity.
When making a decision, think in terms of patient care first, risk management second and profit last.
Your staff is your most valuable resource. Treat them as such.
Actually, I disagree with this. Secretaries - good ones who have the ear of their bosses - hold the keys of access to the person you’re meeting with/interviewing with/seeking medical advice from/seeking an opinion from. If you treat the secretaries nicely, it pays huge dividends. Savvy, not nice people are good to secretaries.
All of these are pretty interesting!
Videogame Designer:
1. Play boardgames. Experiment with designing them. Board games expose their rule sets directly to the player instead of hiding them away like videogames do. Since being a game designer often involves lots of tinkering with rule sets, the more practice you have fiddling around with rules, the better.
2. Learn how to program. Junior designers often work as scripters, which requires programming skills. Plus knowing how software works gives you a better idea of what’s feasible and what’s not. And it helps you tell when the programmers are lying to you.
3. Learn how to draw. You don’t have to be a great artist. But you do need to be able to communicate your ideas visually. Being able to quickly throw together a rough sketch of a level or a puzzle makes everything easier.
Defense industry business development:
The government loves small, disadvantaged businesses and sends lots of work their way. Even though the big companies seem more stable with better benefits, they’ll drop you like a hot potato if they lose a contract. The big contracts are often the easiest to cut, or give to small businesses. All that said, pick a company of reasonable size that already has a few core contracts in place and a good reputation. If they hired you to save the company because they are going downhill, you’ve already lost, especially in this economy.
Unlike some of the other industries, specialization is key whenever possible. If all your company does is “systems engineering, program management, software engineering, and program support”, you just described 95% of all defense companies. You want to be known as the experts in system X, or a subspecialty within those generic categories. Yes, you want to offer all things to all people, but if you try to, someone else will always do it better and ultimately you’ll be competing on price, which is a losing proposition.
Treat everyone you meet with respect. You’ll learn some people are lazy or full of shit all the time, and you can selectively avoid those people when possible, but you never know who is friends with who, so don’t talk smack. These same people may be in a position to give you a job in the future, or select you as a teammate for a future project. If you get to know the secretaries and engineers, you’ll be surprised who will throw you a lifeline when you need it most.
So you want to be a manufacturing engineer for a global automobile company? Okay, kid, listen:
[ol]
[li]Learn to communicate well in English, especially written English. I know you’re a native speaker; that’s not good enough. Written communications forms an equal part of a triad with technical skills and leadership.[/li][li]Leadership isn’t solely about having people work for you. It’s about getting things done and taking ownership and not making excuses. It’s much more important to reflect your leadership upward in a hierarchy than it is to direct it downward.[/li][li]Learn Spanish or Mandarin. The business is going global.[/li][/ol]
By that do you mean commenting code?
A few years ago I solved a problem with a solution that was very clever. Like, genius-level stuff. I was a programming god. Today I had to go back and look at that code. I scratched my head for hours and kept saying “What the hell was this crackhead thinking?”
no, by that I don’t mean commenting code. Writing comments in the code is what they tell everybody in college (and few people do it consistently) and it will not give you much more than a very local understanding of the codebase even if done well.
“Notes” as such are taken in separate text files (or maybe separate wiki documents, if that’s more up your alley). Some notes are for the long term, other notes are for right now, describing what I have done, what I am doing and what I am about to do. Or quoting disparate tidbits of code and my comments in order to understand how a given feature works. Or listing the files that I have checked out from version control and am modifying (our version control system gives no easy way to query this by user ignoring the folder tree - a better one wouldn’t have hurt, but that also shows that effective note taking helps you roll with the punches even if things are less than optimal).
Some of the people I have encountered have a stack of yellow paper on their desk that they claim to constitute “notes”. I have at least two notepad windows open at any given time, one for long term stuff and the other for short term (in case you are wondering, I haven’t built any elaborate special-purpose note taking tool yet, although do have some interesting thoughts there as well). In any event, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I tend to be faster at figuring out how to do X in the codebase even when I have worked in the company a lot less than people who follow the unwise paper-based note taking policy or else have no notes whatsoever.
Federal Subcontracts Manager:
[ul]
[li]Read the FAR cover to cover at least once every five years. It’s easy to lose track of how things fit together if you only learn the clauses ina reference list. Don’t worry, this won’t be boring after the first time. As the years go by every clause will remind you of 2-3 anecdotes or scenarios you ahve lived through.[/li][li]Choose a well established company for your first few years. They will have excellent training programs, and legal experts whose brains you can pick if you’re confused.[/li][li]Never forget that you are a tax payer, and this is your own money you are spending.[/li][/ul]
Web developer:
Don’t jump on the newest bandwagon immediately. I know, the newest coolest hippest thing in the world is something you want to use. Then a year down the line no one cares about it any more. Wait for a stable userbase before you start thinking you need to redo your entire codebase in $awesomeNewThing.
You work for the client. The client doesn’t care what you’re using, they just want their deliverables. This ties into #1 - if you’re the only person in the office that knows $awesomeNewThing and the client needs something right away but you’re unavailable? Yeah, you’ll piss off both the client and your coworkers.
It ain’t glorious. It ain’t The Social Network. You’re not going to get to do super-special fun things all the time. If you think you’re going to be Mark Zuckerberg, you aren’t.
Chemical Engineer
Get an internship. Otherwise you’ll be leaving school with no idea of what jobs are out there, and when someone asks you what you’re interested in doing during your interviews, you’ll sound clueless no matter how well you bluff.
Learn to work on your own and to find out what you need to do so; if someone has to tell you how to do every step, they may as well have done it themselves and not have hired you at all.
Figure out how to communicate with others:
3a. If you’re shy and reserved, learn to speak up.
3b. If you’re not a native English speaker, work on you conversational skills.
3c. If you are a native English speaker, work on understanding folks who aren’t.
3d. Use more than one method to get your point across – explain it in writing, review it in conversation, and use charts and graphs and diagrams whenever possible.
3e. Then, let someone else talk. No one is really that interested in how you did the overpressure calculations, just that you did them.
To writers —
Don’t try to impress people with how charmingly facile you are with language. The more you puff up your prose with needless complexity, the more you draw attention to your writing — and less to the subject at hand.
Use active verbs.
Learn what commas are for. Ditto apostrophes. Don’t ever be caught misusing an apostrophe.
Consultant - Higher Ed
Be Ok with not knowing the answer every time: there is wisdom in listening and learning.
Takes notes and learn from those who succeed authentically.
Work for yourself after you turn 30 - experience pays, hiring managers want to now you can do a job, not what your grade point average was. Take some time in an industry learning something, or just simply gaining experience. Then, after mastering it, share with the world.
I’ve been trying to figure out if/how I might summarize. Worth a shot - Leader of a Business:
Know exactly how you make money: Make sure you know your company’s mission, business model, customers, value propositions, core competencies, etc. and how they add to your ability to create value (i.e., generate profits). Learn to filter every decision based on whether it strengthens or weakens your business model as defined.
If it doesn’t make obvious sense, don’t do it: decisions must be made with so much noise going on - make sure that the “business story” leading you to your decision is clear and compelling and the business case is factually grounded and points to unambiguous profits. Otherwise, have the strength to push for greater clarity before deciding or say No.
Get practical experience; pay attention: avoid all-in bets; set up a rapid-deployment-and-feedback approach to learn and find opportunities to grow while minimizing downside risk. Pay attention and be open to modifying “what you stand for” based on improving your long-term ability to create value.
Reading it, it sounds like jargon-riddled business platitudes - but when you own the bottom line, this stuff works.
Music Producer/Audio Engineer
1- Be one step ahead in anticipating the moves and needs of whomever you’re assisting.
2- don’t talk to the talent unless they talk to you. Even then, say little and repeat less.
3- don’t ever question anyone senior to you in a studio in front of the talent or the suits. Period. Ask questions later, sure…but never presume you know more than than the head engineer or producer. You don’t.
4- RTFM (read the fucking manual) - know how it works, whatever it is.
5- Screw the latest software. Engineering is in your ears and your brain. Know signal flow, frequency ranges, mic placement, phase alignment, signal processing and the like. Everything else is workflow, tools and technique.
6- use your ears not your eyes. learn to track and mix to tape, on an analog console.
7- know your DAW and any hardware implicitly. This is for production and workflow, not how to. If you can do it in a DAW, they did with 4 tracks at Abbey Road and it sounded better. But it took 10x longer and cost 25x as much (at least) Key Commands and templates are the name of the game, and unique to the facility or production. Tru
8- listen to music. all the time. All genres, all styles, all eras. Dissect it. Know it.
9- always have a reference CD in your car. Likewise a spare portfolio. Always have a business card. No matter what.
10- if you’re a studio guys, avoid live sound like the plague. It kills your hearing, breaks your back and the problems that arise are of a completely different nature. You can be really good at one or the other, but not both.
11- you’re a craftsman, not an artist.
12- network wherever you are and whatever you do. If you’re in the business, people will share every story they have about their media and entertainment connections. This is gold, mine it.
13- always invest in analog gear. Good stuff. Its expensive but doesn’t lose value. Unlike software and digital hardware.
I agree at the JD level but technically MBAs are supposed to have a reasonable amount of job experience. I had 7 years going into my MBA and had been out of undergrad for 10 (earning my JD took up another 3).
So true! Doing little things like this gives you cred with your admins. On the other hand, I vaguely remember my friends in BigLaw telling me that they weren’t supposed to make their own copies because of billable rates etc., so I think it may depend on the organization.
Most of us don’t really like these types of people either, actually, because they are the type to treat their peers like admins. For the most part they’re weeded out at the application stage, even more so than law school, since b-schools interview. Still, a few sneak in every year, and they’re usually the ones who don’t get invited back to their organizations after the summer internship is over.
Example: Don’t crap on the analysts and treat them with respect because they know WAY more than you do is the first thing you’re told when recruiting for investment banking at the MBA level. Whether or not this advice resonates depends on the individual MBA. Like I said, most of my peers with 5+ years of job experience understand this stuff.
Sorry about your lame MBA hire-I find my peers in business school to be way way more personable than they were at the JD level. I know the type of person you’re talking about though, and I usually work around him/her.
If your company has a policies and procedures (P&P) manual, memorize it to the extent possible. You need to know what rights an employee has.
Always RTFC (read the fucking contract) if you’re in that business. What you don’t know can bankrupt you.
I’m currently split in two, so I’ll just give two for each profession:
Receptionists (and other sundry customer service personel)
For those who hope to do anything in the film business (where I currently freelance as a shot manager):
I agree. But I consistently see people who cannot do any of the 3, or who can’t manage to do all 3 at the same time.
I know audio guys don’t normally count higher than 2, but is your aversion to the number 3 so bad you had to list 14 things???
Fun fact: why don’t audio guys count past two?
Because on 3 you lift! 
Actuary