Let’s face it, we all have been there: looking for a new opportunity in our careers is not something new, it is in fact a dilemma that most, if not all of us, have been through. Most of the time, we fail to jump into a new opportunity because we were scared to be… rookies.

Traditionally, recruiters always ask about your experience and analyze if you are fit for a particular position through these experiences. This is why so many people end up spending all of their working lifetime in jobs they do not even like! Once you get into a specific field or industry, you are stereotyped and cast into the same role over and over again. After all, that is what specialization is all about.

There is really nothing inherently bad about this set-up. I mean a lot of our great leaders and successful entrepreneurs today doggedly pursued a certain path in their career so they could come out on top of that pile. It is also how we get dependable mentors and coaches that can literally teach all the ins and outs, backside and flipside of a certain industry they have mastered.

However, this does not mean that path is the only way everyone should take. We all start out as rookies at something and over the course of time we learn and develop the skills necessary to be good at it. And I am not just talking about being a fresh graduate, taking your first job, and being the gofer for the longest time before someone finally realizes they are under-using your potential (and your salary). Being a newbie at something can be your best advantage yet. A lot of human resource experts are now recognizing the advantages of hiring someone who is not particularly experienced for a job.

Apparently, there is more adrenalin when one is caught up in a job he knows nothing about. It triggers an amazing response in most of us – the want to prove ourselves. Because deep inside, we know that people are looking at us, expecting us to produce results, we stretch ourselves a bit longer in terms of putting in effort to learn.

Additionally, since we know that we cannot bring anything yet to the table, we keep on looking for the experts that can actually tell us what is going on. Having these many resources can only produce one thing – a diverse and infinitely more informative cornucopia of ideas and information that we can use to create something new and more effective.

See, being a rookie in a job does have a great advantage – you are pushed to step out of your comfort-zone and in doing so, you widen your scope in life.