Leaving Campus & Going to Work
T. Jason Smith MHG SPHR
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2006 Aspen Mountain Publishing
ISBN: 0977723763

Practical Guidance for the First Year of Your First Job After College.

Leaving Campus & Going to Work addresses topics faced by most people fresh out of school about how to manage time, develop professionally, date co-workers, & balance lives.

What Jason Smith has to offer is years of experience & observing the intense “frustration that comes along in a campus hire's first year of their first real job; things like adjusting to the structure and rules of a professional job, learning to manage more money than they have ever had in a paycheck, and in some cases, even figuring out what their boss really expects them to be doing.”

“A young woman just left my office in a frame of mind I see more and more with new campus hires: a mix of confusion, borderline fatigue and a touch of disenchantment. No, I am not a doctor. I am a Human Resources Manager. I work for a corporation and I help manage the people who work here. Like a parent, I bring people into the company, help them grow, offer praise and discipline as needed, and finally watch them move on to other things as they retire or find better opportunities. It is a typical career life cycle, one that I have watched happen over and over at several different companies for the past fourteen years. The dancers change but the steps are always the same.” (p.1)

Written for “students coming right off of campus who are (or will be very soon) in the first year of their first real full-time job. You know who you are: bright-eyed, eager, full of dreams, and loaded with student loans.”, Leaving Campus & Going to Work covers:
Building a Solid Foundation
— Education —Round II
— Be Indispensable To Your Boss
— What Am I Supposed to Be Doing?!?!?!
— Building Bridges
— Big We, Little We, Not About Me
— Do What You Said You Would Do
— Watch Your Tongue
— Why Do I Care About Company Culture?
— The Unwritten Rule of the Day Is
— You Truly Annoy Me, & much more!
Personal Realities
— A is for Accountability
— The First Year Emotional Curve
— This Is Not Reality TV
— I Did WHAT Last Night?
— Money - YOUR Money & more!
Maintain Perspective
— The Roles You Play
— Balance.

I really like Jason Smith's approach — it's informal & informative with, at times, unexpected humor. Yes, everything he has to tell is serious & important & I wish I'd had these insights when I first set foot in the “real world.” I didn't know “corporate culture” existed, I didn't have a clue about what the repercussions of what I said would do to my status, & I certainly didn't know how to handle my paycheck! & my boss was not inclined to teach or help me.

In fact, as Jason Smith writes: “employers do a relatively poor job of helping... [new hires] transition from the safe, structured, and finite world of academia into the full-time working world. We basically drop you into a big pit of chaos without a clue about what you are to do next.” After all, they're not there to “mother” you along, they're there to make the business make money, & your personal health & wellbeing doesn't matter. Am I right, or am I right?

In the scheme of Darwinian things, out there in corporate ocean it's “survival of the fittest” & all your employers have to do is watch whether you get eaten by the sharks or sink or swim. Well, Leaving Campus & Going to Work is, like any good guide book to a foreign country, just the ticket as you wade into those office pools.

Highly recommended!
(04/09/06)

Rebecca