I thought this was great advice from Howard Lindzon (source).
“the sooner you get more specific with the role, career, job, industry you want to work in the better and then take any opening you can get. Optimize for mentorship and responsibility and a company that is growing fast, not salary or title.”
Optimize for mentorship, responsibility & growth, not salary or title.
For posterity, I’ll share some of my early career experiences.
Two of my teammates from the hockey team were a few years ahead of me, Geoff Martha & Dennis Magulick. I am happy to say I am friends with both men to this day.
Very clearly they were, and still are, very high performers.
Both men got finance/accounting jobs right out of undergrad with GE’s Financial Management Program (FMP) making an insanely large $32,000 annually. In the early 1990’s GE was a booming organization, and this was THE JOB for finance & accounting majors from PSU, or at least I thought so. I set my sights on that job despite not enjoying, or having any aptitude for corporate finance or accounting. I simply wanted to follow in their footsteps & make at least $30,000 right out of college.
During the Fall of my senior year, thanks to recommendations from Geoff & Dennis, who were both early career star performers at GE, I got an on-campus interview, despite not being an accounting major (finance only), and my GPA not meeting the 3.5 minimum & not being in the Honors College, which wasn’t even aware existed. The GE interview went well (I still remember it!), but not well enough. I was denied the job.
At the same job fair, I met a representative from Martin Marietta, which was in the process of being acquired by competitor Lockheed. They were interested, and offered to fly me to a facility in Burlington, Vermont for an on-site interview with Martin Marietta’s Armament Division (manufacturer of plane parts). Interestingly, I had just visited Burlington the previous summer and liked it. The interview went well, and I was offered the job with the Financial Leadership Development Program (modeled after GE’s FMP program), but only after their first choice declined.
“When you are wearing rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like flags”.
Despite many red flags, I took the job before I went home for Christmas ‘94 and was able to tell everyone I was gainfully employed & soon to be rich, as I was making $30,500 to start.
I showed up in Burlington in July of 1995, and over 24 months was rotated through a government compliance role (hated it), an accounting role (I was terrible at this), & a program management role (not a fit). I was well-liked, but it was obvious that I was not a star performer.
During this period, the former Martin Marietta plant (along with three sister Armament Division manufacturing plants in the region) had formally become part of the newly created Lockheed Martin. Everyone seemed to know the Armament Division was going to be sold and closed. The rumors of our demise were flying and the culture was terrible. I was advised to have a backup plan. In early 1997, our division was, in fact, sold by Lockheed Martin to General Dynamics.
Heeding the advice of some old-timers, I had been floating my resume & applied to MBA schools. I was subsequently denied acceptance everywhere except Georgetown ($75k annually, even back then!) & Case Western Reserve University (scholarship!), which I had only applied to as it was in my hometown of Cleveland, where I always imagined I would eventually live.
I left the job & took off for Cleveland, enrolling at CWRU in the Fall of 1997.
Subsequent to my departure, General Dynamics did make changes, closing all of the Armament Division plants except Burlington. The plant is still in operation today as part of General Dynamics.
While all experiences offer lessons, and I still maintain friendships from that time of my life, had I optimized my early career for mentorship, responsibility, & growth, in an industry in which I had some level of interest, I would have made much better use of that time.
I left in May 1997 ... they’ve done just fine without me.
Rose Colored Glasses (not actually mine):
