How to Make Your Jobs Benefit Your Career

From high school summer jobs to college part-time jobs to full-time jobs after I graduated, I've had some jobs that really don't match each other. Examples include a dishwasher, a receptionist, an airport security guard, an insurance paper copier, a photography technician and a catalog salesperson. Now could any of these jobs help a person who wants to be a reporter or a writer? Absolutely. Here's how.

Receptionist: As a reporter, you are constantly going to have to deal with people's attitudes. You will greet them in person, via phone and may work on transcriptions and record keeping. This is a fast-paced course in customer service. Working an 81-line switchboard phone taught me a lot about working with different types of people.

Airport security guard: If you're a reporter that wants to take on security topics, it's imperative that you are trained in what to look for. What is an orange alert? How do you know what a secret bomb looks like? How do you figure out how people smuggle guns in their suitcases? Why is it so important to take off belts and shoes? How do you travel from Point A to Point B? If you're a travel reporter or report overseas, you'll want to get acquainted with airport traffic and get past the idea of first-time flying. In addition to communicating with different people who may not speak the same language as you, it's also a crash course for security research.

Insurance paper copier: Anytime you work with someone's insurance papers, you're looking at a lot of numbers. I worked for a health insurance company, reviewed underwriter comments to make sure there was nothing missing and learned a lot about the insurance industry. If you ever want to report on insurance details, especially considering President Barack Obama passed health care reform, this comes in handy. As a copyeditor, I also edited financial and insurance manuscripts.

Photography technician: If the staff photographer is unavailable or you're a reporter who happens to drive past a story in the making, there's no time to schedule a backup. You have to have a camera with you at all times, preferably one that records in case you don't have your tape recorder. (Make a point of keeping a tape recorder handy, too.) Make sure your camera is charged, takes clear shots and can be used for print stories. By learning how to develop film from the time it leaves the camera or on a digital card, what chemicals to use, what to avoid, how to work with everything from 110 film, 35 mm film, XD or SD cards, how to fix a Compact Flash disc and what film to not develop with a regular film processor, you become very savvy on the layout side. Working with digital photography will usually lead you to learning about Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and/or PageMaker, or even less sophisticated picture editing software like Paint.

Catalog salesperson: It's a given that you're going to run into people who will not want to talk, won't want to give their names, won't want to be photographed and will think you're the enemy. This is the time to lay on the charm or aggression and figure out how to make this person care about what you're doing. Outside of shopaholics, not too many people walk around thinking, "I can't wait for someone to sell something to me from a catalog," but it happens. Find talking points. Find out ways that your interviewee can benefit from talking to you, whether it's to help someone solve a crime or to inform the public about an upcoming issue or event. Being a reporter is no time to be shy and usually no time to take "no" for an answer.

As far as the dishwasher job, clearly washing dishes didn't help me professionally. However, it did help me mentally. That kind of job humbles a person as well as other jobs in the maintenance world. Any job is better than no job at all. However, with every job you apply for, find a way to make it work for you whether you want to hang around for the long run or not.