My 1st 'real' job

I was an accounting assistant and knew absolutely nothing. I stayed there for about two and a half years. My revelation later down the line - I should have left sooner. That was probably one of the first mistakes I made. I think I was making about $17/hour. Far from the riches I thought I would be making after I graduated college. During summers I was making $12/hour serving at a country club and easily surpassing $17/hour at the end of the day with tips.

The money isn't why I should have left. I was doing the standard introductory accounting role - AR, AP, billing and collections. Scaling the collections and billing process was probably my only resume topper in that era of my career. The truth is, I didn't need to stay two years to figure that out. Rather than asking for a measly $3/hour raise and getting $2, I should have pressed for a heavier workload. Early in your career, exposure is everything! Learn as much as you can when you can. The problem was that I didn't know what I needed to know. I'm not too sure how you can expedite that part of the learning curve. If I knew then what I know after 6 years in accounting, I would have done things differently. Expressed interest in more high-level areas of accounting when I was in a job where the CFO herself was willing to sit next to me and draw a T chart. I also didn't know how specialized accounting was. I didn't know about Big 4 audit firms or a CPA exam. Had I directed my career towards accounting in the first place, I would have known the career path - major in accounting, get a job at an audit firm for a few years, and study for the CPA exam. Boom, you're an accounting manager out the door. I'm not an expert on too many careers outside of my own, hell I'm not even an expert at my own, however I do know that a plan would have been helpful.

If you don't have a plan, build your confidence and be able to articulate what it is you do. For God's sake, have a personality too. Being likable and having a good sense of humor has definitely helped me along the way. Especially when I moved into the SF tech space. They are much more likely to hire someone with personality and a smile that can grow into the role, than a rigid robot. Of course you have to have a brain in there, but your personality and the will to be successful will take you far here.

After two and a half years in Real Estate management, I never wanted to see a fax machine ever again. I wanted to work in Tech in San Francisco. I didn't know much about it, but that was my goal. I applied for several roles until I landed an AR Specialist position at a start-up in SF. Pre-IPOs were foreign to me, I had no clue what that meant at the time. Regardless, I was offered the role and I took it. All over again, I felt that I had made it.