I’m a California native, currently residing with my wife and two children here in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
I’m a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, where I received a B.A. in Economics. I also attended U.C.L.A., where I received my M.B.A. from The Anderson School of Management.
I’ve been fortunate to have had a fulfilling and profitable 25-year business career across a range of first-class companies.
My career actually got started with a move back East to join the Pepsi-Cola Company, later followed by a move to the consumer goods giant Unilever and beyond.
This run of good fortune eventually took me to Callaway Golf, where I served as Division President.
I ultimately chose to retire at age 50, a lifelong dream.
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So Why Start "Job Offers For Grads"?
I started the company because getting off to the right start is so important to a fulfilling career.
I should know. Because my career actually started with a resounding “thud”.
I almost didn’t recover.
As mentioned above, I attended U.C. Berkeley as an undergraduate. It was my first choice of schools. I loved it and made the most of the experience.
I studied hard, graduating in the top third of my class. I played on the J.V. Basketball team. I became Treasurer of my fraternity. I even secured an internship with the Oakland Chamber of Commerce.
While I knew I’d miss school, I started looking forward to getting a job after college and making the transition to the next stage of life.
I actually thought it would be pretty easy.
Turns out, I was wrong.
Even though my job search did get off to a promising start. I’d secured on-campus interviews prior to graduation with a range of first-class companies – including Nordstrom, Wells Fargo, and Hewlett Packard. Unfortunately, nothing ever materialized.
After graduation, I dialed things up a notch. OK, maybe two notches. I was pretty competitive. I became the Jedi-master of job applications. I applied to every single relevant listing I could find. Every single one. I was relentless.
Guess what happened?
Nothing. Squat. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Zero.
It felt like my resume was simply going into a black hole. And when, by some miracle, I managed to secure an interview, I always flamed out in the first round.
But I kept at it. Like I said, I’m relentless. I literally submitted applications for ten solid months. 300 straight days. Almost a full year. Of grinding. And pain. And rejection. And disappointment.
And then finally, it happened.
I received a job offer.
Ouch - Taking a Job That Didn't Require a Bachelor's Degree
OK, so it wasn’t a job offer from Wells Fargo or Nordstrom or Apple that I wanted. Nothing quite that good.
Instead, it was an offer to become a Service Representative. At a Paralegal Services company.
The job also didn’t pay all that much. In fact, the salary was about half of the salary I’d been hoping to get.
But it was a job! And I was so sick of searching for a job that I felt like I had to take it.
Big mistake.
This is what this “Service Representative” job felt like:
It was so boring. I was basically a clerk who filled out forms for our legal clients. Every hour of every day of every month of the year. Oh yeah, and sometimes they’d make me do deliveries.
I could have done this job out of high school. Was this why I earned a college degree?
But I stuck with it. And you know why? Because the thought of searching for another job was paralyzing. Even though this dead-end, monotonous job was pure agony, strangely it didn’t feel as painful as the job search.
After several more months, I felt like I couldn’t take it any longer.
So what did I do?
I applied to business school -- and got accepted into U.C.L.A.
For someone already deep in debt, this didn’t make a lot of sense. I know my parents felt that way. Plus I’d already so much about Business as an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley. So I wasn’t going back to school for more education. I was going back to school to escape my job.
Then an amazing thing happened. In retrospect, a very good thing. Someone told me I was full of crap.
I was at a party with some old high school friends. I’d been bragging about getting into U.C.L.A.’s program. Most of my friends offered their congratulations. They were happy to finally see me happy.
All but one. He wasn’t buying it. And told me so to my face.
His point was that I didn’t need the education I’d be getting at U.C.L.A. He said my education at U.C. Berkeley had taught me how to DO the job I wanted to do.
My problem was that I’d never learned how to GET the job I wanted to do.
Those are different skills. So why waste money getting more of the former when I really just needed the latter?
That really shook me.
I still went to U.C.L.A., mostly because I didn’t know how or where to acquire job search skills.
However, that conversation changed my entire approach to school.
Commitment to Learning Expert Job Search Skills
Instead of going to school to ESCAPE the pressure of the job search, I decided to go to school to EMBRACE the pressure of the job search.
I wanted to become a job search expert. Because I didn’t know how else to do it, I decided to do it on my own.
I read every single job search book I could find. I met with every single job search expert I could find.
In just the first year, I’d read over 50 job search books AND had formed a network of over 100 people who educated me on job search skills.
I then put these skills into practice.
M.B.A. programs are two-year programs, separated by a summer break. Every single student wants to get a great internship during that break. As I was learning, Rule #1 of the job search was to acquire relevant experience.
However, getting an internship was tough. Demand far exceeded supply.
I worked hard to find opportunities. The most promising opportunity I’d uncovered was a very competitive summer internship with Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
I’d applied everything I’d been learning to obtain a screening interview and then to make it to the final round of interviews. When I was done, I knew I’d nailed it. The last interview was like a conversation. It flowed. I was on. And the hiring manager clearly liked me.
So, you can imagine how shocked I was when I got turned down for the job. Yes, they loved me. But apparently, they loved someone else a bit more.
I decided not to give up. After all, I’d now developed some job search skills. I had some confidence.
Through my research, I’d learned that companies had the flexibility to create internships for candidates they liked. Lilly clearly liked me.
But how to go about it?
Fortunately, I’d developed a strong network of people to provide me with advice.
I found someone who’d previously worked at Lilly. He mentioned that Lilly had a fast-growing division that could probably use help from an intern, but wouldn’t have had time to organize an intern-search effort.
I loved the idea. But instead of approaching Lilly directly, I asked the person who beat me out of the internship to make the request on my behalf. (She was in my network!)
She was happy to do so. Her hiring manager then reached out to someone at this other division and made it happen.
I landed an amazing, fully-paid internship at a great company.
That would never have happened had I not invested so much effort in developing job search skills.
Here’s the problem. College teaches you how to DO a job. It doesn’t teach you how to GET one.
Because I learned how to GET great new jobs, I made many successful transitions during the course of my career. I started at Pepsi. Then went to Ragu Foods. Then became part of Unilever. And so on.
Sharing What I've Learned
The pace of job transitions is becoming even more frenetic for our children, especially in a world where pensions, training programs, and job security have all but disappeared.
According to a recent LinkedIn study, today’s college grads are now expected to hold more than four different jobs in just the first ten years of their career. And they should now expect to hold 15 to 20 jobs over the course of a career.
That’s a lot of job transitions. Job search skills have never been more important.
Especially in a world that’s becoming increasingly competitive. I’m sure you’ve seen the statistics.
It’s 30 times harder to get into a superior company like Google than it is to get into a superior college like Harvard.
Perhaps this is part of the reason that so many college grads – a full 52% – are now taking jobs that don’t even require a college degree. Just like I did!
I put the program together because I love this topic. I love sharing how to find great jobs. I hope it shows.
I also put the program together because I have two boys that will eventually enter the job market.
I worry about them like any parent does.
I want them to be happy and I want them to be fulfilled.
So, I want to do what any good parent wants to do. I can’t do it for them, but I can teach them how to do it.
That’s what our team at Job Offers for Grads is all about.
We help students who have developed the skills required to DO a great job learn the skills required to GET a great job.
We’re passionate about the job search!