The Job In Detail

Try stuff. Fail early. Fail often. Some times quit. All the things you're told are bad, can be, but they can also be the most valuable learning tools in your arsenal. 

For this episode, I have talked to an administrative assistant for a Christian organization. Hearing her roots, her early jobs, and how she ended up in her current position resonated with me because I felt the same sense of being in over my head when I started my first career-based position. I still wrestle with imposter syndrome today. Sabrina felt stuck in her fast food position and didn’t know where she could go. As it turns out, all the skills she learned in fast food translate to the administrative assistant role: she can think quick, has customer service experience, can schedule, work with vendors, and more. I believe a lot of people could relate to Sabrina’s experience and benefit from her advice: make friends with your coworkers. They will understand what you’re going through when times are tough. They also may help connect you with the person that will lead to your next job. Thank you so much for listening, I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’d like to support the show, you can do so through thejobindetail.com or anchor.fm/thejobindetail. You can also tell someone about the show and leave a review on Apple, Google, Spotify or wherever else you may get your podcasts. If you are someone you know would like to tell me about your job, reach out to me through the website form or send an email to [email protected] Thank you again for listening and I’ll see you on the next episode. Stay safe everyone.

This episode is all about writing – essays, novels, poems, and commercial copywrite. My guest is Robert Dean. He is now based out of Austin, Texas. Originally from Chicago, he departed for New Orleans to kick off his writing career. There, he started to really learn his craft, getting to experience failure that prepared him for when he would later get his “day job”. Since then, his work has appeared in Mic, Fatherly, Forbes, Consequence of Sound, the Austin American-Statesman, and more. During our chat we discuss his influences, past projects, upcoming projects, getting published, and advice for anyone that may want to be a writer. We also discuss the importance of living and the importance of failure. A writer that’s never been out in the world tends to have hollow words, if they can ever find them at all. I can attest to that, as I am more likely to read about an experience than live it. This frequently results in me staring at a blank page trying to figure out how to fill it. The best cure for writer’s block is having experiences to share or observations of others that can be slipped into your writing. Even if it has to be creatively tailored to your story, at least the experience is real, including the human motivation behind the actions. Neil Gaiman refers to this as the ‘compost heap’: your life experiences and interactions you’ve observed go here to coalesce until you need them. Another take-away echoes the sentiments of Steven Pressfield. Do the work. Write every day. No one else will do it for you. Not all of it will be good. But the more you write, the more you will become acquainted with your voice. See more of Robert's work below: https://www.facebook.com/robertdeansworld/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ63waAx39w&authuser=0 https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Dean/e/B007VDV7UG%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

This week's show is a quick thought due to a No Call, No Show. We will be back next week with more episodes! Thank you for tuning in.

We were off for a few weeks for the holiday and then had some scheduling issues. But now we are back with another engineer. This week’s guest is my friend Kevin Froehlich. He is a licensed civil engineer in the state of California and works for the County of Orange. In his current role, he works at a landfill overseeing the intake of waste, projects regarding site maintenance, and environmental compliance. If you’re in school or thinking about going to school for engineering, this episode has some useful information about what to expect and challenges that may arise. There is also great information about finding your first job, even if it’s not initially what you thought it might be. As it turns out, while it’s important to be good at math as an engineer, you also need to be able to effectively communicate, both electronically and verbally, to both individuals and teams. Perhaps more importantly, and this goes for all the non-engineers out there too, you need to be a lifelong learner, being curious about solutions to problems not just in theory, but in practice. __________ Thank you so much for listening to the episode. If you like the show and want to support it, please subscribe and rate wherever you get your podcasts, and visit the support section on achor.fm/thejobindetail or thejobindetail.com. Thank you to Kevin for joining me – if you’re interested in seeing the documentary we referenced, I have linked to it below. I am lining up a few more episodes, but if you or someone you know would like to be interviewed, send an email to [email protected]. Thank you again for listening. Stay safe everyone and see you on the next show. https://www.my5.tv/secrets-of-the-mega-landfill https://iconfilms.co.uk/productions/secrets-of-the-mega-landfill/

Happy Father's Day! My guest this week is an old friend – we played little league baseball together and a lot of Tetris in history class. We lost touch, but I am so glad we reconnected. After chatting for a few minutes, we started the show and I fell into a world I did not know I would be so fascinated with. Vincent “Boomer” Olivas started in the beverage industry as an analyst for a beer company after graduating college and returning from New Zealand. While he had a marketing degree, his business experience was not largely focused on numbers and forecasting. But, with a willingness to learn all facets of the business and an openness to new experiences, he has worked his way through multiple positions and into his current role as a program manager for 2 Towns Ciderhouse. In his position, he gets to work closely with just about everyone at the company from CEO to logistics, cultivating relationships and getting product from the Ciderhouse to stores, and hopefully your home. With hard seltzers taking over last year, it will be interesting to see the next big trend and where the business will be going. This episode contains great information for anyone that thinks business degrees mean being locked away in a cubicle somewhere or that sales can be bad, fake, or boring. It’s also great for anyone that may be experiencing some personal strife or struggling to find their footing in their careers. As we learn in this episode, sometimes you just have to go for it. Other times, you’ve got to hit the reset button and do something seemingly crazy, getting out of your comfort zone and gaining some perspective. If you’d like to check out more about 2 Towns Ciderhouse, you can find them at https://2townsciderhouse.com/, where Boomer is actually featured in one of the slideshows on the homepage. It sounds like they have some exciting products on the horizon and we’ll be scheduling a follow up episode sometime in the future. Thank you for listening to the show – if you liked it and want to hear more, please rate the show, like and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to see the visual component of the show, there is a YouTube page, just search The Job in Detail, and we should pop up.  If you have any ideas for the show, would like to support the show, or you’d like to be interviewed yourself, reach out through www.thejobindetail.com or through the show’s Anchor page at Anchor.fm/thejobindetail. Thank you again for listening. Stay safe and see you on the next episode.

For this episode, we have another biology major. In episode 2 with Jake Cecala, we explored academia and the research world from a PhD perspective. My guest this week is Monica Saavedra. She is a research associate at UCLA in an infectious disease lab – normally, they’re primary area of study is HIV, but with the Corona Virus outbreak, they have switched to COVID-19 data collection. During our conversation she explained how the projects are picked, designed, samples are taken and stored, and offered a glimpse into research from the data collection perspective. The job itself is interesting, but I also enjoyed hearing Monica’s journey to get to where she is. She started college as a business major, wanted to try biology, but she struggled with the possibility of switching majors for a myriad of reasons: “What will my parents think?” “What if it’s too hard?” “Does it really make sense to start over?” While these are important questions, she learned a very important lesson that has carried over into her career: Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Friends, co-workers, professors – you might be surprised to find that most people want to see you succeed, even if for no other reason than the fact that you have a shared struggle. There will be failures. There will be bumps in the road. But don’t quit. Push through. If you stop at the first sign of resistance, you will miss out on so much opportunity. Check out the YouTube page here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGoHTnqe444 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

For our Memorial Day episode, my guest is Trevor Grant. He is currently an Explosive Ordinance Disposal technician for the United States Air Force. He enjoys this role for many reasons, but it allows him to both dismantle and detonate munitions – a sort of best of both worlds. During this episode, Trevor walks us through the day to day of his job, but also talks about how The MythBusters helped inspire his career path. Specifically, the motto “When in doubt, C4”. He also discusses how he ended up finding the EOD position after he felt his first military contract wasn’t going to quite work out. Now that he has found the job, he can’t picture having any other one. He’s also met lifelong friends and received valuable advice: “Don’t stress when not on the job. Do the job when on the clock. After hours, unless it’s an extreme emergency, it can wait until tomorrow.” Donate to the EOD Warrior Foundation: https://eodwarriorfoundation.org/ Check out the Jock Podcast for Memorial Day: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jocko-podcast/id1070322219 If you like the podcast, please rate and subscribe!

Jake Cecala is a PhD student of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, where he is in his last year of studies. That means, in 2021 I will officially have to call him Dr. Cecala. It also formalizes what I refer to him now, which is “The Bee Doctor”. During this episode, Jake thinks back to High School, where he remembers asking himself the question, “should a be a scientist or an artist?”. I can personally attest to his artistic prowess. I still have several of his drawings today: even the ones that he has made in jest are fantastic displays of competency. Perhaps this is due to his very talented mother passing down her artistic abilities, or perhaps it’s the perfectionism that Jake references during our conversation. Either way, it seems he chose wisely to go into the field of science, as it has allowed him to work with relative autonomy and enjoy the experience of having no two days be exactly the same. During our conversation, Jake reveals that he did not know what he was going to do. He knew he liked science, but it wasn’t until he was in a notoriously difficult class, did well, and didn’t feel like he was working, that he figured he may be on to something. Because of this experience, he took a chance and asked the professor about volunteer opportunities for undergraduates in her lab. By taking that chance, it led to his first paying job in the sciences, exposure to his eventual field of study, and his master’s degree advisor. We cover a lot during this podcast including the general field of Entomology, academic publications, and community outreach. I think Jake offers great information for high schoolers, college students, and adults who are thinking or worrying about what they may want to do for a career. Mainly, don’t panic. Be open to new experiences. Try things. If you can do that, you’ll likely find your path.

Greg Kammarmeyer works in sales, acting as a consultant to companies such as hotels, food plants, or just about anyone that has a steam boiler system. He got his start working for his Dad at a John Deer shop before college and his first job post college with Iowa Beef, after missing out on the job he really wanted. Instead of throwing in the towel, he kept working his way up, eventually finding himself in the position he is now. It's not something he initially envisioned when starting an agricultural engineering degree, but he wouldn't change a thing. If you like what you hear, please rate the show. We will be up shortly on YouTube so you can see what the guests look like. Lastly, thejobindetail.com will soon host all things related to the podcast.  If you would like to tell me about your job or know someone else that would, reach out to me via the form on thejobindetail.com or on twitter @TheJobInDetail.