First Day New Job Quotes & Sayings

One theme that runs through many [job hunting books] is just plain harmful: the advice to "just be yourself." Wrong. Remember that first day on your first job, when you went to get your first cup of coffee? You found the coffee machine, and there, stuck on the wall behind it, was a handwritten sign reading:
YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T WORK HERE
PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF
You thought, "Pick up after myself? Gee, I guess I've got to develop a new way of doing things." And so you started to observe and emulate the more successful professionals around you. You weren't born this way. You developed new skills and ways of conducting yourself, in effect creating a professional persona that enabled you to survive in the professional world. — Martin Yate

You're not going to be immediately good at anything you do. You wouldn't quit on the first day of your new job, so why quit on the first try at doing something else? — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

There was something liberating and terrifying about the first day on a new job. In any new assignment, Bobbie had always had the unsettling feeling that she was in over her head, that she wouldn't know how to do any of the things they would ask her to do, that she would dress wrong or say the wrong thing, or that everyone would hate her. But no matter how strong that feeling was, it was overshadowed by the sense that with a new job came the chance to totally recreate herself in whatever image she chose, that - at least for a little while - her options were infinite. — James S.A. Corey

Starting a new job is always scary, or at least for me it's always scary. It's like the first day of school. — Sean Maher

Lighting the Way for Sailors SENTINEL Hamilton's lighthouse at Cape Hatteras was rebuilt after the original succumbed to erosion. As his storm-tossed brig passed North Carolina's Cape Hatteras on the way to New York in the early 1770s, a fearful Hamilton vowed to someday build a way-finding lighthouse there. In 1789, Congress passed An Act for the Establishment and support of Lighthouse, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers, and the job of maintaining those structures was given to the Department of the Treasury. Thus did Hamilton find himself the "Superintendent" of Lighthouses. His first commission, which rose near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, was designed by John McComb Jr., who would one day build the Grange, Hamilton's New York home. And in 1803 a promise was kept, as "Mr. Hamilton's Light" opened on Cape Hatteras. — Editors Of TIME

We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God's feet; before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God's share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of 'our own' pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be 'our own'. A man starts a new job with a sense of vocation and, perhaps, for the first week still keeps the discharge of the vocation as his end, taking the pleasures and pains from God's hand, as they came, as 'accidents'. But in the second week he is beginning to 'know the ropes': by the third, he has quarried out of the total job his own plan for himself within that job, and when he can pursue this he feels that he is getting no more than his rights, and when he cannot, that he is being interfered. — C.S. Lewis

The cover letter is all about what you want. Nasty Gal gets so many cover letters that detail a "passion for fashion" and then proceed to talk about how this job will help the applicant pursue her interests, gain more experience, and explore new avenues.
If a cover letter starts out like this, I usually end up reading the first couple of sentences before hitting the delete button. Why? Because I don't care about what a job will do for you and your personal development. I know that sounds harsh, but I don't know you, so the fact that you want to work for my company does not automatically mean that I have an interest in helping you grow your career. I have a business that is growing by the day, so I want to know what you can do for me. It's as simple as that. — Sophia Amoruso