Impact of your First Job on your Career on 3AW 693AM Radio Melbourne with Tom Elliott

By Sue Ellson

Topic: Impact of your First Job on your Career

Date: 31 July 2024

Media Outlet: 3AW 693AM Melbourne https://www.3aw.com.au

Broadcaster / Interviewer: Tom Elliott

Producer: Breanna Edebohls

Duration: 00:05:52

Time of show: 11:11am

Audio Recording:

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SykLMsOkGIs

Impact of your First Job on your Career on 3AW 693AM Radio Melbourne with Tom Elliott and Sue Ellson

Transcript

So your first job 13 3693. What did you do and did it actually shape you? I um what did I learn from mine? I used to sell the evening or the afternoon Herald at Camberwell Junction so I’d go down on my bike get 60 to 80 papers from the local newsagent walked down to my allotted street you know Riversdale Road or Camberwell Road. I mean the cars pulled up at the lights. There might be dozens of them. You’d walk in between the two lanes of cars yelling out Herald and try and sell the paper. Now what I learned is that people are lazy. One, is you know they like to have the paper brought to their the window of their car. Two, when the paper was 15 cents people would just give you 20 and say keep the change but the problem was when the paper went to 20 cents they wouldn’t give you an extra five so our tips went from quite a lot by the standards of the time to virtually nothing when the Herald increased its cover price. I wouldn’t say defined who I was but it certainly taught me that you know if you want your own money then you you you understand that that work equals money. You know that the money isn’t just a free thing that appears. You have to work for it. Our next guest is a Career Development Practitioner. Sue Ellson, good morning.

Hi Tom

Well do you remember your first job?

Absolutely. Apart from babysitting, I started my career six days after my last year 12 exam at Westpac as a career recruit.

Oh.

And I spent the next 11 years there so yeah.

So no no university you you went straight from high school to Westpac Bank.

Well I did but as part of being a career um recruit they actually said I had to do study so I started studying part-time while I was working full-time and that was at TAFE and I hated it I did eight subjects before I actually moved to a degree and I did my entire degree by correspondence from the age of 26 as a mature age student.

Yeah, that’s interesting because I remember when I was at University we’d have lectures in the morning but then in the evening they’d repeat the lectures.

Mmm.

And there’d be all these 18 and 19 year olds but wearing suits and ties and they’ gone straight into the workforce.

Yep.

But again were studying part-time, studying in the evenings.

Mmm.

And I thought wow, that’s that’s pretty devoted of them.

Yeah it’s a full-on load but I really am very grateful for it and since I’ve finished my degree I’ve just continued going to heaps of events every week ever since so the the learning process never actually ends but yeah your first job can make a huge difference.

My Dad worked in the airline industry and I just learned by osmosis all things to do with airlines you know because they’re the conversations you have around the dinner table

Mmm

You know holidays everything.

Mmm.

You learn heaps of things from your first job.

Do you have any insights into into why Rex suddenly has gone into Administration?

I would say they tried to pick up the big routes and that was obviously too much competition for them and they’ve probably overspent trying to to capture that end.

I have a teenage daughter and she has told me this coming summer she wants to get a job she wants to work I think I think it’s great.

Mmm.

She’ll be she’s 14 going on 15 but she still thinks about it purely in terms of money oh if I get paid you know $18 an hour and I work for you know 5 hours I’ve got $90

Mmm.

We haven’t explained the issue of tax and that sort of thing.

No.

So it’s not so much the work she does is just how much money she can make.

Mmm, well I think that’s obviously going to be influenced by a number of factors. I mean if she hasn’t had a little potty of uh pocket money then obviously she’s going to value that money in the first instance but over time she’s obviously going to realize that that job’s not necessarily for life and then she’ll need to explore other options and the sad part is a lot of people just go on the well-meaning of advice of friends and family and they don’t necessarily get professional career advice either at school or at university or just generally as part of their career.

Errr.

Because the skills to get a job are different to the skills to do a job.

Sure but but do you think career advice really works? We were discussing that a week or so ago.

Mmm.

Because I mean one of the issues about careers is a lot of the jobs of the future don’t even exist now.

Correct.

So it’s sort of not easy for a career’s advisor to to predict you know the types of things.

Mmm

We might be doing and what is needed but I I have a theory that when you’re young you should do, just do different jobs because you might surprise yourself.

Mmm.

You might find something that you quite like doing that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Yeah absolutely I mean I have strengths in accounting but I hate it so I’ve gone out and learnt other skills and and I use those skills more regularly uh than my accounting skills.

Yeah.

So yeah you can definitely do that but I think what the way work is going, in the past it was fancy job titles fancy organization names. Now we’re moving to skills. So it’s a case of each individual your teenager included of developing skills and then exploring those and trying different workplaces and I haven’t had a real job since 1994 so I I get lots of variety from many different organisations.

Just on that I’m with you on accountancy I mean I started accounting at school and at university and it was just assumed that I would become an accountant.

Yep.

But weirdly, even though I was quite good at it I just had no desire to to be one.

Yeah and you know originally you started holding the newspaper now you’re in the newspaper.

Well sometimes. All right thank you for your time Sue Ellson Career Development Practitioner. It is interesting though I mean some people start doing something it doesn’t mean that’s the job that they end up doing but they they learn something from it again this chap um Paul Xiradis who founded this uh Financial firm called Ausbil Investment Management he learnt his knowledge of markets he says by accompanying his father when the son was aged six to the fish market and he learned about how prices change and how markets work and that that helped him in later life.

Social Share

FIRST JOB // Today in the Australian Financial Review 🗞️ Sally Patten and Lap Phan shared the story of Paul Xiradis from Ausbil Investment Management who believes that his experience supporting his migrant family’s🐟 fish and chip shop helped prepare him for his career in financial markets.

Tom Elliott interviewed me today on 3AW Radio Melbourne 693AM 📻 and we discussed:

✅ career starting points – with or without university
✅ working and studying at the same time
✅ relation to money with a first-time casual job
✅ career advice from well-meaning friends and family
✅ professional career advice
✅ understanding your strengths and learned strengths
✅ careers moving from titles and organisation names to skills

Enjoy the show online at https://sueellson.com/blog/impact-of-your-first-job-on-your-career-3aw-693am-radio-melbourne-with-tom-elliott

This link also includes further information you may find helpful.

Thanks to Producer Breanna Edebohls for reaching out!

➡️ Did your first job shape your career?

#3awmelbourne #firstjob #careers #university #tomelliott #sueellson