I would like to begin with the end in mind. You should be focused on being as successful as possible. Always look for an opportunity to exceed what's expected of you. You're going from school to your new job and will be working until you retire. This will be some 30-40 years. You don't want your first job to be a failure. If you go into your first job thinking and feeling that you have to succeed – you will because you will put everything positive that you have into it.

Look around you. What's your purpose and what part do you play in making the organization work? You need to know your job, you need to know about the business and how you fit into it and in your individual department and role.

You make yourself invaluable by:

• Punctuality: You need to be on the job and on time. This also goes for your projects and other work responsibilities. Whatever you're doing make sure it's done in a timely fashion. It goes without saying that attendance is very important along with punctuality.

• Quality and Quantity of Work: The quantity of work that you do should also reflect quality. You shouldn't sacrifice quality for quantity because in the end you will make mistakes and that's not what you want to happen.

• Different generations in the workplace: As an older manager, I found that the younger people didn't value their jobs. They'd go onto the computer, take care of personal business as opposed to doing the work they were hired to do and were unproductive. They had difficulty adhering to the rules and regulations. Oftentimes they felt that they could do what they wanted and couldn't understand why they had to do it the way they were told it was to be done. They didn't understand going into the workforce the importance of rules and regulations. They would come in at any time, get written up through the disciplinary procedures and still wanted to do it their way.

• Best Advice: The best piece of advice I can give is to go in and realize that this is your job and you have to place it as a priority in your life now. Your job determines if you're going to advance or not, how you handle things on a job is a very serious step in your life – it's not like at school. It's important to have maturity and be able to be responsible, have initiative and strive for good performance reviews. Be careful not to violate the policies and procedures if you plan to advance.

• Mistakes: When you make mistakes, first you should admit that you made the mistake, then you fix it and try not to make it again. Honesty is the best policy. Try to figure out why you made the mistake and naturally, you correct it. If your manager has to be involved, admit that you made the mistake, ask for help in trying to avoid it if you can in the future.