If You Want a Job, Be Like Your Mom!

If You Want A Job, Be Like Your Mom!

Say hello to Jimmy! Jimmy is an 18-year-old Senior at Wheaton Academy who’s interested in business. He’s spending the first two weeks of January working in all the Departments of Aquascape as an intern. Jimmy landed this opportunity for one reason and one reason only.

Jimmy has a real enthusiastic mom!

As the owner of Aquascape by far the most common questions I get from people on their first visit to Aqualand is “how do I get a job here” Sometimes though people don’t inquire regarding themselves, but rather how their kids could get a job here. Jimmy’s mom falls into the latter.

That’s why today Jimmy is learning how to install spillway bowls in our indoor sandbox with other contractors who traveled from near and far to Aqualand to hone their installation skills. It’s also why yesterday he was loading packages into a truck in our warehouse and why tomorrow he will be shadowing the accounting department people doing whatever it is all those ladies do over there. In other words, he’s getting a brief snapshot as a high school kid of how a business operates. If that doesn’t beat sitting for two weeks in a classroom learning theory than I don’t know what does!

The bigger lesson here though is not what Jimmy is learning actively participating inside a company’s operations. Rather it’s the energy his mom put fourth to land her son this opportunity that I see as his real lesson. His mom saw our business as an opportunity for her son to learn something that he thinks interests him (business) She then did what everybody who’s ever accomplished anything, anywhere before did…

SHE GOT IT DONE!

She went from talking to me (like everybody does about working here) to working through my H.R. Dept to help work on what a curriculum would look like. She then went back to the school to get his time working here approved.

In other words, she went to work on her son’s behalf and landed him this opportunity!

Everyone should be so lucky to have a mom like Jimmy.

But here’s what I want to say, above all else, to the “Jimmies” of the world out there.

You can’t take your mom to work. If you do bring her though she will be the one that I hire! You better learn how to get things done on your own if you ever want to do anything in the real world!

I know I can’t be the only employer concerned about the “go get it” attitude of these current generations?

Jimmy’s mom is a walking, talking dynamo of energy who when she sees something she wants she goes and gets it! As much as we might try, she, you or me can’t live our kids lives for em. Every parent should be working to help their kids successfully leave the nest. Usually to accomplish that nowadays, that takes a Herculean effort like the one demonstrated by Jimmy’s mom. I’m more than glad to help Jimmy out but more often than not I or even the most tenacious parent can only do so much.

They need to learn to fly and to do that they need to fly away from the nest.

After all, you can’t take your mom to work in the real world. And if you did you’d get fired and your mom would get hired in your place!