Three tests worth applying
A good first candidate passes three tests. It happens often enough that you will see a pattern within days. It has a clear finished state, so you can tell whether it worked. And the cost of a poor first draft is your time, not your reputation.
- Frequency: at least a few times a week.
- A recognisable finished article: a draft, a summary, a list, a pack.
- Reversible: nothing is sent, paid or published without you.
Good first jobs
Sorting an inbox into what needs a decision and what needs a reply. Turning a set of notes into a structured document. Preparing a brief before each meeting. Chasing overdue invoices with a polite, escalating sequence of drafts. Assembling a weekly summary of what moved and what is stuck.
These share a shape: information already exists, it needs gathering and arranging, and a person makes the final call.
Poor first jobs
Anything where being wrong is expensive and hard to detect: pricing decisions with no reference data, advice that carries a regulatory obligation, clinical or legal judgement, or anything you would not let a capable new starter do unsupervised in week one.
That is not a permanent verdict on those tasks. It is simply the wrong place to learn.
Write the request as you would say it
Describe the job the way you would describe it to a competent person who is new to your business. Include the constraints you would mention out loud — the tone you use with customers, the prices that are fixed, the person who signs things off.
If the output is wrong, the fix is usually a missing constraint rather than a missing feature.
Keep the decision
Handing over preparation is not the same as handing over authority. The work that arrives should be ready for your judgement, not past it. If a job cannot be structured that way, it is not your first job.
Written by the 8ORA team. We publish no customer names, figures or certifications we cannot evidence.