imagine it’s 1997 and I’m just entering
college the Internet is still a
brand-new thing and companies like AOL
are just coming into their own they’re
sending out these exciting floppy disks
with a hundred free minutes to try out
their internet service over a fast
dial-up connection I have a computer
before my friends and I wait for those
discs to come in the mail manis down the
dial-up modem makes when it connects
gives me goose bumps startups are
popping up everywhere and getting huge
investments was easy young kids about my
age are getting funding for companies
and they have more money than they know
what to do with I love computers I go to
college to learn all about them and all
about the Internet I study computer and
systems engineering at a little
engineering school in upstate New York
it’s like a combination of computer
science and electrical engineering
I learned to solder parts together to
build websites and to code so many
different computer programming languages
including Fortran 77 C and HTML it’s the
perfect degree it guarantees me a job
when I graduate not only that it
guarantees me a great paying job well
that was true until about halfway
through my pricy private school
education when things changed completely
the dot-com crash happened and the
dot-com boom was over the recruiters
that normally came to our school to hire
students they canceled their visits not
only did they cancel their visits but
the jobs they were hiring for were
canceled too I was terrified the entire
job market had just changed
and I wasn’t even the best student to
begin with my friends were the ones with
the straight A’s and the perfect SATs
not me I wonder how in the world I’d
survive in fact in a number of my
computer programming courses I’m the one
who helps to organize the team and put
the presentation materials together
writing computer code feels difficult to
me that’s why I help with the
presentation materials or so I think
about halfway through our senior year
one of our professors asks us to write a
story about someone who’s made a
difference for us during our time in
school and to my surprise one of my
super-smart classmates writes about me
he says I have a thing for bringing
people together and for making our
projects make sense it was something I
never thought of and I never considered
maybe it’s not that I’m bad at one thing
maybe I’m good at something else
and with that I started to explore
alternative career paths I mean what
could I do other than computer
programming
what transferable skills did I have well
I applied for a project management
position at a little logistics company
called FedEx you might have heard of
that and I was really excited to fly
down to their headquarters for a job
interview right up until I met the two
other people that they also flew in to
interview against me for one job I
remember meeting those people and
feeling in total total disbelief that a
job interview could be structured this
way I mean it was like interview to the
death or some kind of weird gladiator
movie oh man I went back to the hotel
room and I reread the Job Description
and I found something
I missed that job required an MBA not
optional required I went from feeling
scared when I arrived to feeling
completely embarrassed not only were the
two other candidates more than twice my
age but they both had MBAs an extensive
work experience the night before the big
interviews we all ate together at a
local Memphis barbecue restaurant they
used MBA business jargon I’d never even
heard before well I decided to give it a
shot because what did I really have to
lose I did my best and then I headed to
the airport expecting to never ever hear
from them again when suddenly while I
was still in the terminal I got a phone
call
it was the hiring manager he was calling
to offer me the job I couldn’t believe
it but looking back I was a great fit
within the organization and let’s be
honest I was definitely the cheapest but
the thing that really surprised me was
that during the interview they asked us
math problems that’s right we had to
work out math problems in front of a
panel of judges one of the problems was
a Venn diagram if so many people ship
with FedEx and a handful of other
variables how many people might ship
with FedEx and some other provider it
turns out of the three of us I was the
only one who caught the math problems
right
I guess engineering school really is
good for something
well the thing I learned from this
experience is that the rules we see out
in the world just aren’t always rules
sometimes they’re just guidelines or
suggestions but if we don’t push those
boundaries we won’t know which our rules
and which are more flexible requirements
on a job description just aren’t always
required and the job market isn’t always
what you’d expect but you’ve still got
to try anyway what I’m trying to say is
I can relate to this difficult job
market that we’re all facing today for
the first time in the modern era more
people under the age of 35 are living
with their parents that are living with
romantic partners I live in downtown
Memphis and I recently started seeing
some signs for apartments in my
neighborhood but they weren’t the normal
signs about the cost or the number of
bedrooms they were about the advantages
of living in your own apartment rather
than your parents house one of them
actually said let’s be honest your
parents aren’t going to move out first
oh but it makes sense as to why young
people are struggling to find their
place in the world I mean the average
cost of private college tuition was over
$33,000 last year and for state school
it was over $9,000 baby boomers are
staying in their jobs for longer than
ever before leaving less good jobs for
young workers in fact people who are
thirty only half of them are making as
much as their parents did at their age
that’s a huge drop from the 1970s when
over 90% of people were making as much
as their parents so what can we do about
this well here’s an example I recently
had a meeting with a hiring manager who
was having a hard time getting
applications for a particular job
posting
he’d been advised to put everything he
could want into one job posting and so
he did he included things like digital
marketing skills selling skills customer
service skills technology skills if you
read that job description you might
think he was looking for a computer
engineer with an MBA and marketing and
experience in sales digital marketing
and technology it’s really a lot to ask
for in one person in pretty specific
well I sent that job description around
to a number of people who I know would
have been a great fit and they all said
the same thing
I’m not comfortable applying because I’m
not qualified but the thing is that
hiring manager he would have happily
taken someone who met 70 or 80 percent
of the requirements if only they’d
applied will remember that FedEx job I
got that I was totally under qualified
for I took it and I worked at the
company and I enjoyed the great benefits
the 401k and the vacation for three
years before I quit my job to go back to
business school at the time I received
quite a bit of negative feedback from
the usual suspects who said things like
why would you want to quit your job
you’ve got such a
great job well for those of my parents
and grandparents generations staying at
a job for 20 or 30 years meant you’d be
set you get a retirement it was the
right thing to do
but in today’s career environment people
only stay at a job for 3 to 5 years in
fact if you stay at a job for too long
your future hiring manager may wonder if
your skill set is out-of-date or if
you’re not very ambitious in fact there
are even men studies that have shown
that those who stay at jobs for too long
will likely make less over the course of
their career Forbes estimates this
number to be 50% less 50% but if you
think about it logically it makes sense
because if you stay at one company
you’ll get a raise of just about 2 or 3%
each year but if you switch companies
you get to renegotiate from scratch and
you can go up 10 percent 20 percent or
even 50 percent in just one switch I can
personally attest to this twice I’ve
negotiated up my own salary over 50
percent and once I doubled my salary
this is a great incentive to never stop
looking for a job it’s also a great
incentive for companies to spend less
time and less energy training their
existing employees because turnover is
so high this puts the burden back on you
to pursue your own education in your own
training on your own don’t assume that
your company will send you to some
special course go out there and do it
otherwise someone will pass you by who’s
pursuing their own training and their
own skills on their own this is exactly
why I quit my job to go back to business
school that and to interfere with my own
career path yet again I entered white I
initially thought would be a 20-month
program and I ended up graduating in 15
months at the end of the program I had a
number of great job offers including one
that paid twice what I was making before
business school
sounds pretty good right in theory yes
but it was twice as much money to do the
exact same kind of job I had before
business school but just for a different
company and I didn’t quit my job to go
back to graduate school to make twice as
much money doing the same job but just
for a different company I’m ambitious
and frankly that sounds boring I wanted
to switch departments and go up the
company ladder so can you guess what I
did yep
I turned down every job offer it was
scary because at the time I wasn’t
working and I didn’t know how I’d pay
the rent but I had faith in my abilities
and I knew that if I could finish school
early I could take a little time to
think about what I’d like to do for work
I didn’t have to do anything
well my decision honestly scared me for
a really long time and I kept a copy
that big off her letter nearby and I’d
look at it whenever I was feeling
uncertain about things at the time it
was a lot but then the strangest thing
happened I learned about this new field
called digital marketing I knew how to
build websites and I had a pretty good
sense for marketing I became an
affiliate marketer it’s this kind of
marketing where you promote products
online for companies and then you take a
commission on their sales
I sold a whole lot of shoes for this
website you might have heard of called
Zappos calm and after a while I built up
my skills enough to land a full-time
digital marketing job on my own it was a
game changer I became a director of
digital marketing at a well-known home
services company and later a vice
president at a large bank in today’s
career environment you don’t get bonus
points waiting for your boss to tell you
you’re good enough don’t wait and don’t
let the fear of failure stop you from
trying
as someone once said formal education
will make you a living self education
will make you a fortune ironically my
own career transition from engineer to
project manager to digital marketing
executive led me to an entirely new
career path it turns out I really like
interviewing for all sorts of jobs and
at all sorts of companies it’s kind of
like an obsession yep I once snuck onto
a graduate school campus where I did not
go and pose as a student there in order
to get a job interview it worked when
word got out about my love people
started asking me for help with their
careers as a career coach and now I get
a chance to see inside the secret
process that we’re all in the middle of
and do you know what makes some people
more successful than others they don’t
wait for permission and they never
assume a company isn’t interested in
them or that they’re not qualified let
me leave you with this finding your path
isn’t going to be easy it’s not going to
be straightforward and it may take a
while to put all the pieces together in
fact you may find that you’re always
working to put another piece into the
puzzle but it is absolutely worth it to
take a risk to interfere with your
career to find something that you truly
love thank you
[Applause]
college the Internet is still a
brand-new thing and companies like AOL
are just coming into their own they’re
sending out these exciting floppy disks
with a hundred free minutes to try out
their internet service over a fast
dial-up connection I have a computer
before my friends and I wait for those
discs to come in the mail manis down the
dial-up modem makes when it connects
gives me goose bumps startups are
popping up everywhere and getting huge
investments was easy young kids about my
age are getting funding for companies
and they have more money than they know
what to do with I love computers I go to
college to learn all about them and all
about the Internet I study computer and
systems engineering at a little
engineering school in upstate New York
it’s like a combination of computer
science and electrical engineering
I learned to solder parts together to
build websites and to code so many
different computer programming languages
including Fortran 77 C and HTML it’s the
perfect degree it guarantees me a job
when I graduate not only that it
guarantees me a great paying job well
that was true until about halfway
through my pricy private school
education when things changed completely
the dot-com crash happened and the
dot-com boom was over the recruiters
that normally came to our school to hire
students they canceled their visits not
only did they cancel their visits but
the jobs they were hiring for were
canceled too I was terrified the entire
job market had just changed
and I wasn’t even the best student to
begin with my friends were the ones with
the straight A’s and the perfect SATs
not me I wonder how in the world I’d
survive in fact in a number of my
computer programming courses I’m the one
who helps to organize the team and put
the presentation materials together
writing computer code feels difficult to
me that’s why I help with the
presentation materials or so I think
about halfway through our senior year
one of our professors asks us to write a
story about someone who’s made a
difference for us during our time in
school and to my surprise one of my
super-smart classmates writes about me
he says I have a thing for bringing
people together and for making our
projects make sense it was something I
never thought of and I never considered
maybe it’s not that I’m bad at one thing
maybe I’m good at something else
and with that I started to explore
alternative career paths I mean what
could I do other than computer
programming
what transferable skills did I have well
I applied for a project management
position at a little logistics company
called FedEx you might have heard of
that and I was really excited to fly
down to their headquarters for a job
interview right up until I met the two
other people that they also flew in to
interview against me for one job I
remember meeting those people and
feeling in total total disbelief that a
job interview could be structured this
way I mean it was like interview to the
death or some kind of weird gladiator
movie oh man I went back to the hotel
room and I reread the Job Description
and I found something
I missed that job required an MBA not
optional required I went from feeling
scared when I arrived to feeling
completely embarrassed not only were the
two other candidates more than twice my
age but they both had MBAs an extensive
work experience the night before the big
interviews we all ate together at a
local Memphis barbecue restaurant they
used MBA business jargon I’d never even
heard before well I decided to give it a
shot because what did I really have to
lose I did my best and then I headed to
the airport expecting to never ever hear
from them again when suddenly while I
was still in the terminal I got a phone
call
it was the hiring manager he was calling
to offer me the job I couldn’t believe
it but looking back I was a great fit
within the organization and let’s be
honest I was definitely the cheapest but
the thing that really surprised me was
that during the interview they asked us
math problems that’s right we had to
work out math problems in front of a
panel of judges one of the problems was
a Venn diagram if so many people ship
with FedEx and a handful of other
variables how many people might ship
with FedEx and some other provider it
turns out of the three of us I was the
only one who caught the math problems
right
I guess engineering school really is
good for something
well the thing I learned from this
experience is that the rules we see out
in the world just aren’t always rules
sometimes they’re just guidelines or
suggestions but if we don’t push those
boundaries we won’t know which our rules
and which are more flexible requirements
on a job description just aren’t always
required and the job market isn’t always
what you’d expect but you’ve still got
to try anyway what I’m trying to say is
I can relate to this difficult job
market that we’re all facing today for
the first time in the modern era more
people under the age of 35 are living
with their parents that are living with
romantic partners I live in downtown
Memphis and I recently started seeing
some signs for apartments in my
neighborhood but they weren’t the normal
signs about the cost or the number of
bedrooms they were about the advantages
of living in your own apartment rather
than your parents house one of them
actually said let’s be honest your
parents aren’t going to move out first
oh but it makes sense as to why young
people are struggling to find their
place in the world I mean the average
cost of private college tuition was over
$33,000 last year and for state school
it was over $9,000 baby boomers are
staying in their jobs for longer than
ever before leaving less good jobs for
young workers in fact people who are
thirty only half of them are making as
much as their parents did at their age
that’s a huge drop from the 1970s when
over 90% of people were making as much
as their parents so what can we do about
this well here’s an example I recently
had a meeting with a hiring manager who
was having a hard time getting
applications for a particular job
posting
he’d been advised to put everything he
could want into one job posting and so
he did he included things like digital
marketing skills selling skills customer
service skills technology skills if you
read that job description you might
think he was looking for a computer
engineer with an MBA and marketing and
experience in sales digital marketing
and technology it’s really a lot to ask
for in one person in pretty specific
well I sent that job description around
to a number of people who I know would
have been a great fit and they all said
the same thing
I’m not comfortable applying because I’m
not qualified but the thing is that
hiring manager he would have happily
taken someone who met 70 or 80 percent
of the requirements if only they’d
applied will remember that FedEx job I
got that I was totally under qualified
for I took it and I worked at the
company and I enjoyed the great benefits
the 401k and the vacation for three
years before I quit my job to go back to
business school at the time I received
quite a bit of negative feedback from
the usual suspects who said things like
why would you want to quit your job
you’ve got such a
great job well for those of my parents
and grandparents generations staying at
a job for 20 or 30 years meant you’d be
set you get a retirement it was the
right thing to do
but in today’s career environment people
only stay at a job for 3 to 5 years in
fact if you stay at a job for too long
your future hiring manager may wonder if
your skill set is out-of-date or if
you’re not very ambitious in fact there
are even men studies that have shown
that those who stay at jobs for too long
will likely make less over the course of
their career Forbes estimates this
number to be 50% less 50% but if you
think about it logically it makes sense
because if you stay at one company
you’ll get a raise of just about 2 or 3%
each year but if you switch companies
you get to renegotiate from scratch and
you can go up 10 percent 20 percent or
even 50 percent in just one switch I can
personally attest to this twice I’ve
negotiated up my own salary over 50
percent and once I doubled my salary
this is a great incentive to never stop
looking for a job it’s also a great
incentive for companies to spend less
time and less energy training their
existing employees because turnover is
so high this puts the burden back on you
to pursue your own education in your own
training on your own don’t assume that
your company will send you to some
special course go out there and do it
otherwise someone will pass you by who’s
pursuing their own training and their
own skills on their own this is exactly
why I quit my job to go back to business
school that and to interfere with my own
career path yet again I entered white I
initially thought would be a 20-month
program and I ended up graduating in 15
months at the end of the program I had a
number of great job offers including one
that paid twice what I was making before
business school
sounds pretty good right in theory yes
but it was twice as much money to do the
exact same kind of job I had before
business school but just for a different
company and I didn’t quit my job to go
back to graduate school to make twice as
much money doing the same job but just
for a different company I’m ambitious
and frankly that sounds boring I wanted
to switch departments and go up the
company ladder so can you guess what I
did yep
I turned down every job offer it was
scary because at the time I wasn’t
working and I didn’t know how I’d pay
the rent but I had faith in my abilities
and I knew that if I could finish school
early I could take a little time to
think about what I’d like to do for work
I didn’t have to do anything
well my decision honestly scared me for
a really long time and I kept a copy
that big off her letter nearby and I’d
look at it whenever I was feeling
uncertain about things at the time it
was a lot but then the strangest thing
happened I learned about this new field
called digital marketing I knew how to
build websites and I had a pretty good
sense for marketing I became an
affiliate marketer it’s this kind of
marketing where you promote products
online for companies and then you take a
commission on their sales
I sold a whole lot of shoes for this
website you might have heard of called
Zappos calm and after a while I built up
my skills enough to land a full-time
digital marketing job on my own it was a
game changer I became a director of
digital marketing at a well-known home
services company and later a vice
president at a large bank in today’s
career environment you don’t get bonus
points waiting for your boss to tell you
you’re good enough don’t wait and don’t
let the fear of failure stop you from
trying
as someone once said formal education
will make you a living self education
will make you a fortune ironically my
own career transition from engineer to
project manager to digital marketing
executive led me to an entirely new
career path it turns out I really like
interviewing for all sorts of jobs and
at all sorts of companies it’s kind of
like an obsession yep I once snuck onto
a graduate school campus where I did not
go and pose as a student there in order
to get a job interview it worked when
word got out about my love people
started asking me for help with their
careers as a career coach and now I get
a chance to see inside the secret
process that we’re all in the middle of
and do you know what makes some people
more successful than others they don’t
wait for permission and they never
assume a company isn’t interested in
them or that they’re not qualified let
me leave you with this finding your path
isn’t going to be easy it’s not going to
be straightforward and it may take a
while to put all the pieces together in
fact you may find that you’re always
working to put another piece into the
puzzle but it is absolutely worth it to
take a risk to interfere with your
career to find something that you truly
love thank you
[Applause]
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