Being a young professional starting your career is tough. Diploma in hand, you set off into the real world to begin the unavoidable grind of starting your new job.

For those lucky enough to land a dream job right out of college or graduate school, you are excited to get started. You’ve done your business-attire shopping, you’ve mapped out your commute, and you are ready to do what it takes to get ahead.

If you’re less than excited about your career, you may be hesitant to start work in the real world. But even if you are pursuing a career that is far off from your college major, there are apps that can still really help you.

“There’s an app for that.” Lucky for you, we live in an age where apps and subscription services are designed to help young professionals who are just starting their career. Can you even imagine trying to get ahead without nearly unlimited access to wifi?

To lend you a hand, we have compiled this list of five great apps that are incredibly valuable to young professionals who are just beginning their careers. We wish we had these when we were first getting started!

1. Grammarly Regardless of your profession, it is essential to have excellent grammar. Nothing can turn your boss off to your content, a great email, or your general communication style than writing filled with typos and incorrect grammar.

Grammarly is a writing-enhancement platform designed to proofread and improve your writing. Grammarly offers both a free and paid subscription-based service that you can install right on your personal or work computer. Grammarly also comes with a Chrome plugin that will proofread your writing in Gmail, LinkedIn, and other online services.

Grammarly will not only ensure you do not fire off an email with an embarrassing typo, but it will also help you improve your writing skills, boost your vocabulary, and impress your colleagues and boss!

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‍ 2.Recostar Does your new career require you to talk on the phone often? In sales, journalism, recruiting, and management professions, talking on the phone is a large part of the day-to-day tasks. Whether you need to record a conference call or critical business call with your boss and the client you are working with, need to take notes for a new story, record a conversation with a potential candidate, or want to improve your professional skills to drive more sales, recording phone calls can be beneficial when just starting in your career. Recostar is a highly-rated mobile app that allows you to record, save, and share essential phone conversations on your iPhone or Android smartphone. Because you cannot record phone calls by default on iOS or Android, Recostar is the best solution to document these meaningful professional phone conversations. The Recostar removes the hassle of taking call notes, providing documentation of a business conversation, and much more! ‍

3. Trello If you are just starting your career in the business world, you may already be familiar with Trello as a well-known and affordable project management tool. However, Trello is not only designed to help business teams collaborate!

The Trello mobile and desktop app is a great tool to manage your own personal or professional to-do list and projects. Trello is a free service and app, which offers paid subscriptions and “power-ups.” Many young professionals use the free version to create individual task management boards to organize the progress of daily tasks.

Trello was initially designed to replace the need for sticky notes, a common use of task prioritization in the days before subscription services. (Yes, there was once a time). Trello is a great tool to help you stay on top of deadlines, manage smaller tasks and even keep a personal to-do list all in the same place!

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4. 1Password(https://1password.com/) If you are like me, remembering passwords is not a skill of which you excel. Trying to remember the multiple passwords you create for every account that you are subscribed to is an enormous waste of time, and incredibly inefficient.

When first starting out in your career, it is important to ensure your colleagues think you are on top of your game, and well organized. Scrambling for password recovery, asking superiors for re-access to a tool is a poor reflection of your organization skills. With 1Password, however, you immediately ensure your countless passwords are accounted for.

1Password is an app and subscription-based service that keeps a record of which password you’ve created for each site you visit. 1Password will remember your password for each respective site. Therefore, you remove the hassle of guessing at your password each time you have to log in to a personal or professional service you use.

5. Focus(https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focus-a-simple-site-block/akghpofhgkghbnodfjfenhimdhajhpdh?hl=en) Do you habitually check Facebook, Instagram, or other social media channels to procrastinate on a project? You could be doing it without even noticing.

Many young professionals use a quick social media break as a chance to escape professional projects or tasks. Focus is a Google Chrome plugin that lets you block websites for a specific period of time while you need to focus on getting work done.

So, if it is crunch time on a project you are working on, just set Focus to disable your access to Facebook or any other distracting channel. Over time, your social media clicking habits will disappear, and your productivity will increase!

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