The Best Resume Comes from the Best Experience
Posted by admin in Careers and Money
A lot of times we think of personal finance as being only about how to save, how to invest, how to get the best prices on whatever we buy, but not necessarily about how to get more money coming in in the first place.
I read this career advice article from Jim Citrin (who I'm quickly becoming a fan of) and it makes great sense.
The article is written for those just starting out in their careers, but there's good advice in there for anyone. If you're a little further along in your career, you can look at the list and see whether you're maximizing your career potential.
Citrin's first piece of advice is to "Go Blue Chip", meaning start out with a big, well-known company like Proctor & Gamble, GE, Merrill Lynch, etc.
He discusses the fact that you as an employee have a "brand" and your brand becomes more trusted or impressive when you've logged time with "brand" companies. Their legitimacy rubs off on you in the eyes of other employers, just as having gone to a highly-regarded university gives you greater legitimacy in the eyes of employers–what you actually did at those companies isn't necessarily as important as the fact that you worked there at all.
I'd also add that working at a big company allows you to learn a ton more than a smaller employer can, even if the small employer might give you more responsibility right off the bat. Big companies allow you to see how a company runs, the many departments and jobs that come together to create what the public (or other companies if it's a business-to-business employer) sees as the face of that company.
For example, I once worked for one of the major greeting card companies, and you'd be amazed at how many people are employed to create a fairly simple product — creative artists and writers, product managers for different lines of cards, operations people to handle the logistics of getting the product to stores, marketing/advertising people, not to mention accountants, lawyers, HR employees, etc., etc. and so forth.
These companies have spent a lot of time making it all come together, and even though you'll inevitably complain that you work for a company that doesn't know smack and that you can't fathom how they've become an industry heavyweight, the fact is that your experience with those types of companies will help you every step of the way afterward, and you'll repeatedly find yourself saying, "When I was with (GE, HP, P&G, etc.), this is how we handled that." And that knowledge will be very valuable, especially if you're using it to help a smaller company as it grows.
So, what good is this to you who are already into your careers, especially if you've worked 15-20 years and didn't follow that advice?
Hard to say, except… Think about where you are now, what you know and what you don't know about your career field, and where the best place would be to go to take the next step up in expertise. It might be time to get into the big company atmosphere, or you might find that it's taught you all it can, and it's time to leave and be more than a small cog in a big machine. It might tell you to go back to school (if you can swing it financially).
Every day that you go to work at a job that is rote, that offers you no new challenges and no particular promise of impending promotion, regardless of the size or "importance" of the company, you're stalling your career and your ability to make more money (and that's true even if you make a lot of money now). Is it time to move on?
There's a whole industry built around assisting people with their resumes, helping them beef up the importance of their past jobs so as to look good to new employers. For some people, puffing up their past is a necessary evil. But you won't need to go to such lengths if your experiences speak for themselves.
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