31 AGCAREERS FOOD & AGRICULTURE CAREER GUIDE Congratulations! You’ve done it, put in the time and effort at school and your work experiences to be ready for your moment, and now you’re here, ready for your first full-time career. You’ve learned a lot from your studies and jobs that set you up for your first full-time career; you may be an agronomist, so you know every disease corn can be susceptible to and how to treat it! But how are your employability or soft skills? We often look beyond those soft skills and want to bring in more of our fact-based knowledge, which we believe has helped us secure this job. You are now part of a team! To really be part of a team, you must be a contributing member at work. What does that mean? A successful team member should be actively listening, engaging, and speaking up when it is their time to do so. We will explore the importance of speaking up and gaining respect in the workplace. I wish I had known these things when I began my first full-time job. It is easy to put yourself into a corner with the mindset that I am the least experienced person here. Why would anyone want to listen to me?! WE POLLED NEARLY 600 AGCAREERS SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS ON HOW COMFORTABLE THEY WERE SPEAKING UP DURING A MEETING, AND THEY SAID: VERY CONFIDENT 40% SOMETIMES HESITANT 27% I RARELY SPEAK UP 9% IT DEPENDS ON THE SITUATION 24% I have an interesting perspective on this topic; although I am in my mid20s and not a business leader, I have been with the company for a while now and help supervise our interns and co-op students. “No one would want to listen to me; I JUST graduated…” Many of us have had this thought before; I know I did, and I know many students who have had that thought and maybe still do. POINT OF VIEW: Think of it like this—yes, you are the youngest here, yes, you have the least amount of experience, BUT that isn’t just a downfall. • You are the youngest one here – with the trendiest and freshest ideas!! • You are the least experienced one here, but you bring a new and exciting outlook to our business that we all need. I realized I wasn’t getting much feedback or ideas from my interns and was, frankly, getting a little irritated. Why was I the only one giving out ideas? Why weren’t they coming to the table with something fresh? Well, I did some self-reflection and part of the problem was ME! What? It couldn’t be?! Well, it was. I didn’t set up my students correctly to empower them enough to contribute to the team. Now, when interviewing or onboarding interns, I tell them that we work as a team. I want to hear your thoughts! And that is part of your job experience here: sharing ideas. SPEAKING UP & STANDING OUT: BE HEARD AND RESPECTED ON THE JOB BY CLARA TAYLOR, DIGITAL MARKETING COORDINATOR, AGCAREERS PHOTO: blacksalmon – stock.adobe.com
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