How I Earned My First Salary: My Journey from Money-Obsessed Kid to Job Hunter on LinkedIn

Follow the story of a middle-class kid obsessed with money who found ways to earn online and finally landed his first job through LinkedIn after relentless job hunting.

Disclaimer – The content written in this blog is true as per my best knowledge.

Today is one of the best days of my life; when I am writing this blog my fingers are trembling.

Let’s get the party started; I didn’t get to choose a womb of my own, so I was allotted a middle-class family.

As a middle-class child, I was so obsessed with money, and I am now.

Money can’t solve all of your problems, but money can solve all of the money problems.

Naval

My father got a smartphone when I was in class 6th ( Around 2016 ), so I got the chance to have my hands on an android phone.

I tried many ways to earn money, starting with a few apps that paid me for referring; it was named something like Taskmate ( Not Sure ); I made around ₹100 from this app.

I remember at that time, Paytm was trending, and a few items gave Paytm cash that, included Dairy Milk Silk and Veet hair removal cream, I remember I went kilometres on foot to get Veet cream just for the sake of ₹40 Paytm cash.

As I grew, I learned about live quiz apps like Qureka. The app asked ten live questions at 8:00 pm daily. If anyone answered 9 of those, the prize money was distributed among the winners. Still, because I was in Class 7th – 8th So, I wasn’t able to answer those questions, but then I got to know that the answers are leaked on telegram, so I used to answer the questions, and I was rewarded around 0.30 – 0.60 paisa per day and around ₹4 on every Wednesday.

I earned a couple of hundred rupees via this app.

I also used the MPL app, and I won around ₹200 from it. I remember my mother bought a muffler for my brother with that money.

I also used Google opinion rewards, from which I earned around ₹100, and used the money to top up in free fire.

As I grew further, so was the gambling apps like Dream 11 were promoting themselves and as a money-obsessed, I downloaded the app and started gambling, but this time it was different.

This time I didn’t earn anything; I only lost money. I lost thousands of money from my father’s bank account. Gradually. I understood this wasn’t made for me, so I uninstalled it.

I also used Mcent Browser, which gave points when someone used their browser,so I used to play videos all day – night to get points that I could withdraw to recharge my father’s phone.

I also invested ₹2000 in some cryptocurrencies at COIN DCX, but eventually, it went in loss, and now it’s only around ₹300.

When the time came for my admission to class 11th then, my father opened my bank account in IPPB, so I got access to Phone pe, Paytm and Google pay.

After a few months, I got a mobile phone that was Poco M3 ( 6/128 ) for ₹13k.

When I got my phone, I again earned around ₹400 by referring the payment apps to my friends and family.

Time passed, and I came to class 12.

I was studying from Physics Wallah in class 11th and 12th, so sometimes I saw terms like resumes, CVs and LinkedIn in their community posts.

Slowly  I got to know about it, and I downloaded LinkedIn. ( Around 5 Jan 2023 ) 

When I installed it, I was blown away. It was way different from other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Here I saw posts that were valuable and not made for entertainment.

I saw founders and entrepreneurs talking in a language I didn’t understand.

I explored the app and sent job applications and Dms to more than 200-300 people, but I was rejected at every instance.

After this setback, the time came for a comeback. I made my resume, and I again started applying. A few of them contacted me, but eventually, neither worked.

The first one offered me ₹3000/month for content writing, and because it was my first job, so, I accepted it, but soon, my board exams were on my head, so I had to quit the job.

When I again came to him, he didn’t seem interested, so I got off and deleted LinkedIn.

After a few days, at the suggestion of my friend Kunal, I reinstalled LinkedIn, enhanced my resume and started hunting for jobs.

I applied for 200+ jobs one by one.

I was also applying when my class 12th board exams were going on.

My exams ended on the 7th of February 2023, and I got my job at night on the same day.

Have a look at the screenshot, and you will get to know how I got my first job.

I struggled at the job as I lied about my 3 years of experience and I was breaking the company’s rules and also because I lied about possesing a laptop, so eventually, I was kicked out after 22 days, but yeah, at last, I was paid a f*****g amount of ₹10,000.

This was my story about how I got my first salary.

This is Navneet signing off from today’s blog.

Peace 🕊️