Looking to People Leadership When You’re Young & Hungry
How to make those big dreams work for you
If you’re young and hungry with big career aspirations, this is the blog for you.
First off, here’s a word of advice: don’t sleep on people leadership early in your career.
Retail and sales floors are tough. Food and beverage work is grueling. But the opportunity to manage large teams at a young age doesn’t come easily outside this kind of work. Regardless of the exact role, any job where you lead groups of people can help you chart a course to find meaningful opportunities for your future.
Let's use Starbucks as an example. How can you take a barista position–a role you share with over 350,000 other people–and leverage it in your larger career trajectory? Consider this step-by-step process:
Get hired and kill it as a Starbucks employee: learn fast, get along well with your team, and set a good example for your peers for what "right" looks like. No slacking here, or else you won’t make it to the next step?
When you're offered a supervisor role, and then a manager role, take them. Learn, ask questions, observe, and then make small but measurable changes to help things run more smoothly and make your team a little happier. Keep track of these wins.
Once you have a few years with great leadership experience under your belt, think about what you really want to do. Maybe it's working for a tech company or a fashion brand. Focus on big companies with lots of job opportunities to grow laterally and vertically.
Tune-up your resume. Ask yourself: what did I accomplish, drive, or build as a leader in my previous roles? Play up this leadership experience. If you need a place to start, most business schools have simple, free resume templates that work well–take advantage of those!
As soon as you land your first desk job, start to observe the other roles around you. Make sure to network with people in other jobs that you find interesting, with people you look up to, and with anyone you genuinely connect with. You’ll learn SO much this way.
Stay focused on excelling in your role, while keeping a handle on potential next steps in your career. However, it can be difficult in a new role to find any outside time for additional work. If this is you, take on a few extra projects within or outside of your current team and scope. Keep track of these so you can come back to them later.
Now, It's time for that early leadership experience to come back into play! Is there a new big role you think you’d love AND be great at? Moving into a role above your current role is easiest to do within your current company–so start here. Maybe it's a people leadership position or maybe it's an influential leadership position. Both are common the higher up the ladder you get. Position your resume to highlight your leadership experience, what you've accomplished, and the extra experience you've gained from special projects. Focus on your mindset and your confidence: this job CAN be yours.
While early leadership experience might seem like one bullet on a longer resume, it will absolutely matter down the road. Cultivating leadership skills early in your career is actually an invaluable asset to both you and your team.
No matter what role you’re in: stay focused, learn to articulate your value, and keep dreaming big and you’ll get there before you know it.