I Went Looking For A Job Change

[Hitout]

One of the articles I posted in this group. Please join for more.
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Here is an article (?) I love most that was published in smiles.
I would not call this "career advice" but his presentation chuckled me
most. While the career articles get into serious advice I want you to
smile a little bit with this one.
Hit a Homerun.

I Went Looking For A Job Change
Michael Cohen

It was the mid 1970's, and I was young, about 23 or so and had been
working for a national magazine distribution company in Los Angeles,
California for almost five years when I realized I was totally bored. I
had moved up fast - from the warehouse to management in two years and
I was in charge of almost all of the internal functions involved with
magazine distribution on a national scale. Nothing creative - just
move the product in bulk from the print shop to the shipping center,
run the invoices off the computer (the computer by the way was so big
that it had its own room in those days), oversee the breakdown and
shipping of the titles, get the invoices filed and the customer copies
out in the mail. I was just starting to form relationships with the
accounts, major periodical distributors all over the world when I got
bored. Like I said I was young and in looking back I realize now that
boredom was a luxury of youth that disappears as we get older. Somebody
somewhere, at a party or a bar, started talking about record
distribution and I'll be damned if it wasn't identical to what I
was already doing except that it was RECORDS! (FYI- records were those
big, vinyl things that came before CD's) Rock Stars! Groupies!
Parties! I was on fire!

I started with personal letters to NAME PEOPLE at the top of the
industry. I wrote to them as if they were friends of mine who could
help me make the shift from magazine distribution to record
distribution. I had the skills, the talent, the experience and the look
(long hair, Quiana shirts etc.) and the desire, so why wouldn't they
welcome me with open arms? That move flopped so loudly the noise still
registers on the Richter scale in Southern California every time I
think about it. Employment lesson #1 - The people at the top of an
industry, who don't know you, who arent related
to your uncle, don't care if you live or die and won't help you get
a job.

I moved to phone calls and was I ever surprised when I actually got a
positive response. Two actually. One guy talked to me for about fifteen
minutes and we scheduled an appointment for the next day. Another guy
talked to me for about fifteen seconds, handed me off to personnel and
we scheduled an appointment to meet a few days later. I was off! I was
flying! I had two "interviews" - one with the head of
distribution for a small but well respected record label and one with
the head of personnel for a major company. One out of two! 50% odds I
was going into the record business! Even money (I played the ponies in
those days) that I was leaving my boring, well paying job in magazine
distribution for the glitz and glamour of the record biz. Yeah!

Interview #1 with the actual head of distribution. I was polished and
ready to roll. I arrived early and was led to an office, in this
totally cool office complex and told to wait. The secretary of the guy
I was waiting to talk to looked like she just stepped out of Dream Girl
Monthly. Long blonde hair, short skirt, throaty voice. She offered me
coffee, water, anything I wanted to drink. I declined - what I wanted
was to marry her right there on the spot. I was home. After a few
minutes she signaled me to go into his office. I opened the door and
the place looked like heaven on earth to me. You actually had to step
down to enter. Rock posters adorned the walls next to gold records and
pictures of this guy with the stars. This is what I wanted, simply
replace his pictures with mine and bang, I'm there. I sat down. What
a nice guy. He was totally professional. And charming. He was
knowledgeable about his business and mine as it turns out. I told him
my skills, talents, expertise and education and the job I was doing
now. And as it turned out, I was correct in my analysis of record
distribution - it was identical to what I was doing. I was already
trained in doing the job I wanted to do. I was getting in! After
fifteen minutes of the most pleasurable conversation I'd ever had in
my life, he turned to me and said, "You know, the job you want is my
job." My heart sank. I knew he was right. He gave me some advice
about starting at smaller companies, at the bottom and working my way
up, but I knew it was over. In another minute we were shaking hands and
I was leaving, never to see him again. I was crushed. Employment lesson
#2 - never interview for a job with the guy you want to replace. The
better you look the faster you'll get thrown out of his office.

Interview #2 with the head of personnel for a major record company. As
I feared, the big company was not cool but so businesslike that I was
thrown off my "game" as soon as I walked in. No long haired, laid
back guys but suits everywhere. Receptionists who looked like my
mother's friends, and who worked like machines in a building so clean
you could sleep on the floor. I was handed a printed sheet with
instructions on how to get from the lobby, up the elevator and into the
personnel department with warnings about visiting other floors or
poking your head into offices where it didn't belong. It felt more
like the pentagon than a record company. I arrived at personnel and
checked in, was handed a clipboard and sheet to fill out and I waited.
Thirty minutes later I was ushered into her office where I met the
scariest women I had ever met up until then. Dressed like a lawyer, she
spoke in clipped tones, asking a set of rehearsed questions and writing
down notes as I spoke. She asked all the usual stuff about background,
education and then the big one - "What were my goals at the company
if I was hired?" I took a deep breath and thought to myself that this
was the one and only chance I would have to impress this woman, to
loosen her up a bit with some charm and self confidence. I said, "I
fully expect to begin wherever there might be an opening in
distribution, and work my way up to the top of this company so fast
that I would appear like a blur to other people." I smiled, satisfied
that I had hit just the right note. She rolled her eyes and before I
knew what hit me I was out on the street. I never heard from her again.
Employment lesson #3 - Big companies have a working structure, a
hierarchy, and while some upward motivation is viewed as a good thing,
too much ambition is definitely discouraged and viewed both as a threat
and some form of not so temporary insanity.

Well, I never made it into the record business but I actually ended up
owning that magazine company a few years later. Here's what you might
want to glean from my attempts to get into the record business. Unless
you're related to someone, you have to start at the bottom and blend
in and work your way up. And you have to do that slowly. Fast movers
without connections are gotten rid of somehow, by somebody higher up
the food chain who you're threatening to replace as you move
vertically throughout the organization. I knew I was good and I proved
it when I bought that business and turned it into a real moneymaker.
But if you know you're good, and you want to work for somebody else,
keep most of your mouth shut. Give them your stuff a little at a time.
Keep your goals in line with the corporate structure you're in. I
want to work hard for the good of the company and show my superiors
what I can do is a better attitude than I want to rise to the top like
a blur, even when you really, really do. Suppress your youthful
ambitions and dreams - don't kill them, just don't wear them on
your sleeve. Get in to the industry where you want to be and then
slowly impress them with the quality of your work. It works out better
for everyone that way in the long run. Especially you.

Michael Cohen is a Freelance writer from Goshen CT USA