I GOT A NEW JOB!

WheelCipher — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Today is a very pivotal and important day in my life and in my career. I am starting a new job this morning and I am optimistic at the potential this position will have for me. I am going to explain how all of this came about and how education and social networking helped me in ways I would have never imagined. Please read on!

I have spent the last eight years with Time Warner Cable as the Manager of Customer Care in Austin, Texas. This is a job that I loved very much, but when I step back and look at it from a realistic perspective, it was a dead end. When I started at Time Warner, I had exactly zero hours of college credit to my name. When I am done with the MBA in about three months, I will have gone to school for six years straight to earn three degrees. All of that hard work paid off last week when I the new company made an offer I could not turn down. This is how it happened:

About a month ago, I a recruiter found me on LinkedIn. He sent me an e-mail that stated something to the effect of, “I have a great opportunity…” I replied, “I hate to sound like a prude, but I’ve had horrible experiences with recruiters. If this job doesn’t pay at least $100k just to get the conversation started, I don’t want to waste your time.” I knew that sentence would reveal the truth about this “great position”.

After a short phone call that night, I had a two-hour phone screen the following day with a strategic consultant that works for the company to handle their mergers and acquisitions, long-term strategy, and a whole host of other things that have made this company successful. After knocking that out of the park, I drove to Dallas for a panel interview that lasted a couple of hours.

That panel interview included the Vice President who would ultimately be my boss, the Vice President of Human Resources, and the strategic consultant that had interviewed me on the phone. A week later, I had another one-on-one interview with the VP who would be my boss. Then on Friday, February 27, I had yet another panel interview. This one included three VP’s that I had not previously met and the CEO of the company.

The following day, my cell phone rang and we verbally worked through the compensation package. This is where my education and experience paid off. While it is not appropriate to say what the package was, rest assured that it was way beyond my wildest dreams. I am now the Director of Customer Care in the aerospace/government/military industry and I could not be happier. The process took a month to complete but it was more than worth it.

In another post to follow in the next couple of days, I will outline what I did differently in this interview process and how it worked to my advantage. I think things happen for a reason, but as you will see in this upcoming post, I did put a lot of effort into it. Hopefully someone else will be able to benefit from my positive experience.

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Let's Talk Salary

WheelCipher — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 21:07:00 GMT

Let’s talk salary for a moment.

eLearners has a great link at here...

We all know that going back to school can provide an endless amount of satisfaction both on a personal level and a professional level. We’ve also all heard about how much more people can make if they have a degree. I wanted to write a post on this topic to show how much of an impact a degree can have on the pocket book.

If you take the time to look on Monster.com and other job sites, you will see that we’re rapidly moving toward an economy that is becoming more competitive all the time. A job that might have been considered to be on the lower end of the scale a few years ago is now only attainable with a degree of some sort.

What this does is forces a lot of people who might not have otherwise earned a 4-year degree to go get one just to stay minimally viable in the workplace. When this comes full circle in several years, the graduate degree will be the credentials needed to get anywhere in the job market. It will definitely be the defining factor in the career of a lot of people.

I took a look at a study done by the University of North Texas.

You can see that a high school grad makes about $37k a year. With the cost of everything going up, that is slowly becoming a minimum standard just to get by in life. You can also see the difference between that and the Bachelors degree (almost twice as much). This is very telling when someone asks what kind of impact a 4-year commitment can mean to a person over the course of a lifetime.

Look at the big picture for a moment. Let’s say you are a high school grad making $37k a year. You have no plans to go to college, and you are comfortable in your current position. At your average yearly raise of 3% - 5%, that’s not enough to keep up with the rising costs of food, gas, housing, clothing, and all the essentials of life. As time goes on, and the economy keeps getting bigger, you keep getting poorer.

There are a ton of other salary surveys out there. Take the time and look them up. Keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, but these basic numbers are very telling.

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My Norwich University Experience : Salary

I GOT A NEW JOB!

Let's Talk Salary