I hope you would stop and take a few minutes of your time to read what I have to say and think this through especially if you are a fresh graduate looking for job.
IT IS OKAY TO BE PICKY!
Your first job should be beneficial for you and the employer. It should be a win-win situation whereas you contribute your knowledge, skills and sweat and in return you get your hard earned reward. If you are needed to stay back to do extra work, do not hesitate to ask if you would be paid because you are not doing a charity work! You are working to feed yourself and other responsibilities. If you do not ask if you are paid to do extra work and you wait for some time, you might face difficulties to claim your OT.
YOU ARE A HUMAN NOT A ROBOT
You are entitled for sick leaves and emergency leaves, human have problems that need to be settle especially if it concerning your health and family. Company should not question why you need to take sick leaves and emergency leaves, you are not a robot! People get sick, people have family and people sure do have problems. If your employer started being nosy and give excuses to not letting you go, clearly they have issues. It is not as if you do not complete your job, wise people would do extra work and try to complete pending works as much as they can so that they will not be burden when they come back to work from leave, because if you are ignorant and take leaves as you like you will be in hot seat in the end.
REWARDS OVER RECOGNITION
When we were little, our parents would buy us candies after we complete house chores to teach us that we have to work hard to get something we want. It is nice to get a pat on the back for doing a good job but it is much nicer if we get rewards. As for me, I could not care less about recognition because when you are being recognized for something especially in working environment, people tend to be jealous and started questioning if you really deserve it. They will start comparing you and surely talk behind your back and act all nice in front of you but really they are trying to desert you. Thus, it is nicer if you get paid rather than recognition because salary is a secret deal between you and employer.
GAIN EXPERIENCE, AVOID STUCK BEING A TRAINEE
My mistake is that I straight away furthering my degree after completing my diploma. It is normal thing to do as people around me are doing the same thing. As I'm the eldest, I experienced mistakes a lot as I do not have examples to teach me not to. My younger siblings are much more fortunate because mistakes happening around me enable them to take into consideration not to follow my footsteps. It should be right after diploma, I started looking for experience working for at least a year, then quit and gave 'furthering studies' as excuse. As right now, I can see the trend is that employers tend to hire people with impressive experience rather than impressive education qualification. If you are a fresh graduate with none experience whatsoever lucky for internship, then you are definitely in trouble finding jobs. You will be consider as trainee for some period of time with a contract stated if you improve the employer will hire you as permanent employee but not all of them do, they will make excuses saying you are not improving enough and you need extra training time and you will be stuck as the trainee with little pay but work as if you are fully paid. Then you started realizing this is the company way to cut cost and it will be difficult for you to get away. With a piece of paper of contract between you and the employer, you would not stand a chance to fight for your right in the court of justice because these companies got years of experience to build back up plans to save their asses! Not to mention expensive lawyers.
So, there you have it, a piece of mind to share. Save your sorry ass before it is too late.
