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Welcome to Warehouse and Operations as a Career and to 2020! I’m Marty and I thought we’d talk a little about seeking employment or finding a job today. Its just not as easy as it sounds. No matter what industry were in. 2 weeks ago, we talked about the millions of square feet of warehouse space being built every year, and there’s no end in sight. Look around the room you’re in now! Everything you see came thru a warehouse, has been on a trailer or container, well, unless grandma or our kids made it for us. It was produced or manufactured in a facility, then trucked to a distribution facility, and delivered to us – the end user. I’m a little biased towards operations, I’ve always felt like it’s the perfect career choice, even for a first job.
We’ve learned about the many different positions, unskilled labor or utility work, to skilled positions like machine or equipment operators to the transportation fields and logistics. Even the tech fields in operations today can take us to so many positions on a global scale. We’ve talked about all the great positions and fields of logistics, man, if I had the opportunity to do it all over again! Seriously though, Operations, Warehousing and Transportation are those opportunities we’re looking for wither we plan on continuing our education or we’re ready to join the workforce after high school. Service jobs like restaurants and retail are good jobs and there easy to find, there always hiring. But let’s say we’re planning way ahead, know what we want to do and earn, say 10 years down the road. We’ll need to start learning something, getting experiences we can build upon. Running through 5 or 6 restaurants or department stores isn’t really going to build skills will it. Now of course if we enjoy the work, they can offer us great opportunities in management and advancements such as procurement and merchandising maybe. I know one lady that worked for a national department store right out of high school and today she is responsible for all their fashion purchasing. She travels all over the globe. But she’s been with the same company since graduation and didn’t skip around or have those 5 or 6 different jobs. She loves her career choice!
So, it’s the first week of the year. Everyone’s making those new year resolutions, a rabbit hole let’s not go down today, but let’s walk through how we’d go about planning for our new job! I guess we ought a look at both new jobs and planning a career move though.
Ok, a job. It’s important to remember that a job that we enjoy and are passionate about is just fine, its great actually. Let’s pick forklift driving as an example. Say I love driving a counterbalance lift and like being on it 10 hours a shift running up and down or around the warehouse all the time. A few things I might want to think about when seeking employment. One, how far am I willing to drive? Our time on the road driving to and from work is our personal time, time we could be spending with the family or on our hobbies or side hustles. We’ll need to have a distance in mind. Second, our pay. What hourly wage are we willing to work for, it’s important to know the difference of what we want to earn and what our present lifestyle requires here. We may be willing to take a little less than we’re wanting if we just need to get our foot in the door with a company, we know will afford us the wages we want down the road. Maybe they only hire through an agency at a lower wage than we’ll be making after 520 hours when we get hired on. Depending on the opportunities and things like our travel time it’s something we may consider. Third, benefits. The benefits like profit sharing, insurance, 401k programs should be considered as a piece of our wages. Those things are a lot more important than we give them credit for most of the time. As a young employee, and when I was hired on at my new company, I knew nothing about all the different programs they were offering, but 26 years later I was glad I had enrolled in everything that was on the table! Fourth, our job description. I’ve always felt that my job description is, well, the job. It’ll define what I will be doing and what is expected of me. It’s something I’m committing to do. Now, of course, our job will be to do what were asked, and they’ll always be those special projects. I feel we need to understand our job description. When I’m interviewing with a candidate, I always review the job description line for line with the individual. It’s only fair that the employer and the employee is up front about the expectations and the commitment, right?
Now, if were looking for our career position or the company were hoping to retire from, we’ll need to consider all the things we just discussed, and we’ll need to plan out a bit further. I have a friend that lives out in Florida. A new corporate facility was being built about an hour from where he was living, and he started putting his plan together. His goal was to get hired, advance within the organization and retire with them. Strayed a bit, anyway, we’ll want to think about the things that’ll be important to us down the line a way. Things like school districts, property taxes, the cost of living in a particular area. Remember now, were working towards a long-term goal that’s made up of several little goals, it’s all a part of a plan!
We’ve talked about researching our prospective employers before. It’s really just the reverse of what our hiring agent’s doing with us. We should ask them questions. Oh, one of my favorites is asking a recruiter how to do you like working for this company. Or if it’s an agency, what kind of feedback do you receive from employees you place here. What’s the retention or conversion rates. All that is information they should be happy to share with us!
So, I talked a whole lot today, lets recap Part one of New Year New Career.
In 2020 we have a plan, right? We’ve written down our goals. And if a new job is step one, we’re going to be ready and prepared!
So, we’ll know what we want to be doing in 12 months. Maybe have a job in the warehouse as an unloader or loader, maybe an order selector or forklift driver. Shoot, in 12 months maybe we could be a lead or supervisor if that’s our goal!
We’ll have picked out a few facilities that’ll fit our needs distance wise, with a payrate we can start with and it’ll offer us the benefits we’re looking for. We’ve check it out online, maybe spoken with a few present employees and we’re comfortable with the opportunities it’ll bring to the table.
We’ve spoken with our significant other and our family, everyone’s comfortable with the idea, so we’re ready to seek employment with them now!
This is where we as applicants have to shine. We need to answer ads and apply. We’ll probably have to ace a phone interview and if successful there we’ll have a face to face interview. Do we have everything together, are we ready to sit down and talk to them?
And what if we’re only seeking a job. Things get even stickier because we just need work, we haven’t identified where we want to work yet. Maybe not even what we want to do yet. We’ll have to go out and work the Job Boards, Classifieds and start hitting up social media sites! Yep, finding work can be tough. But, with the right tools and knowledge, a plan if you will, you’ll be surprised how quickly we’ll be getting that first check.
Next week we’ll learn how to search those job boards and how to clean up our resumes and work history’s, hopefully cutting our job seeking time in half and land that perfect position! I’m hoping to have a couple of professionals visit with us and they’ll walk us through the entire process and help prepare us for the hunt!
Well I hope I’ve given you a few things to think about today, being prepared is key. Last week John did a great job explaining the importance of planning and goal setting. I think we’re ready for 2020 now, don’t you?
I’m so looking forward to next week and visiting with our guest, as you know I like learning and talking about short cuts and success stories! Until then, keep putting your goals to paper and working on those plans. Keep safety your first priority and rock this first week of the new year!