Waldron Career Insights: First Jobs
This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features quotes from Alumni from the Career Summit and previous alumni conversations focusing on lessons learned through first jobs. Alumni speakers share their thoughts on jobs that change constantly over time, how to succeed in a transforming job field, gaining skills during your first job, and seizing new opportunities!
Timestamp Details for Alumni Speakers:
0:50 - Samir Patel ’94 (Biological Sciences)
2:35 - Juna Nakai ‘04 (Economics, International Studies)
6:40 - Michelle Wantuch ’15 (Psychology with Global Studies minor)
10:35 - Liz McMath ’09 (Biological Sciences)
Cassie Petoskey:
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world.
This episode is brought to you by the Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program, a resource in Weinberg College where we help current students explore career options through making connections with alumni.
In today's episode, we're excited to feature quotes from alumni from the Career Summit and previous alumni conversations, focusing on lessons learned through first jobs.
Our first clip is from the Weinberg College Career Summit's Alumni panel on Healthcare. Samir Patel, who graduated in 1994 with a major in biological sciences, talks about how he is still in his first job as a position. Samir talks about how his job has constantly changed and how progressing within a field can lead to new experiences and opportunities for growth as technology influences how your job is performed.
Samir Patel:
I'm also in my first job, which again started with just me in a small rented office space, seeing patients for their skin conditions and then reading some pathology with a couple of employees. So I'm still part of the same deal, but the journey has been interesting and amazing from a clinical perspective, seeing all these patients over all these years and all these different conditions and learning as... Obviously lifelong learning process. And again, from the business perspective, from a small practice to growing a large practice, although I've been in the same job, I've felt like I've had 15 different jobs within this journey. So it's just so broad and expansive and variable. When you go through any career, you sign up for the job and it's like this for a year, and then it changes and grows and technology grows, diagnoses, treatments, everything is constantly growing. So I think that's one of the things is you get that job, but it's always going to change and you have to keep up on everything as best as you can. Don't know if that answered your question, but that's my thoughts on it.
Cassie Petoskey:
The next quote is from an alumni conversation with Junta Nakai who graduated in 2004, where he talks about his first job on Wall Street and how that job changed over time. Junta gives great insight into how you can succeed and adapt to a transforming field.
Junta Nakai:
I want to talk a little bit about my career. So in 2004, I graduated Northwestern with mediocre grades as a international studies and economics major, and I dreamed of having a job on Wall Street. And in 2004, trading on Wall Street was the most coveted job that you could have. It was fast-paced and exciting, and had the potential for superstar bonuses. And I remember I had to go through 44 interviews to get that job at Goldman Sachs, and I started in 2004 in July as a analyst in the equities division at Goldman Sachs, and I was at Goldman for almost 14 years. And what happened over that 14 years is probably going to be a common path for what you're going to see in your careers going forward as well. In 2004, when I joined Goldman, there was roughly 600 people trading stocks, equities on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs.
When I left, there was two, so 600 to two. And it turns out that trading, especially in liquid assets like equities, is a job better suited for machines. So trading stocks, executing trades, connecting buyers and sellers, turns out to be much more effectively done by computers than humans. So all these people, all these super talented people that went to all the best schools all of a sudden their jobs are gone 600 to two, that means 598 people roughly had to go find something else to do. And I tell that story often because now I want you to think about, what would you mean or how would you react if you were one of those people? One of those 598 people. They lived very comfortable lives, they were living fulfilling careers, exciting careers. And then over the course of a few years, everything changes. It gets disrupted.
And today I get probably dozens of resumes every month from people that I knew or I used to work with at one point or another might have made millions of dollars a year that today have been jobless for several years. So I think that the point of that is as you proceed in your careers and think about your careers, the most important thing to keep in mind and to internalize is that extrapolating the past is very dangerous. And with everything that's going on in the world today, that's probably more true than ever. And one of the things I thought about is to always keep in mind, what am I doing that's different? How am I going to get to the place where I'm going to go to? And if I have a view of where I need to be? I think the reality is it's much better to be a year early than a day late.
And when I was sitting on that trading floor at Goldman and looking at everything being automated around me it was at the simultaneously, it was probably at the best point of my career in terms of my upward trajectory career-wise, but also the amount of money I was making. But I thought to myself, "Well, if this is where the world is going to be, I have to try to be a disrupter than be disrupted myself." And that's the path I took and that's the path that got me to Databricks and to Brooklyn Kura, the sake brewery that Cassie just mentioned.
Cassie Petoskey:
Next is a clip from a previous alumni conversation with graduates working at Microsoft. Michelle Wantuch from the class of 2015 who graduated with a major in psychology and global studies minor, shows us that your first job doesn't need to be the perfect fit. Michelle talks about gaining skills and developing her vision to work in education, technology and research to eventually land at Microsoft.
Michelle Wantuch:
So kind of a winding, funny path. So like I said before, I studied psychology and global health. And so I ended up taking a course my junior year called the Psychology of Instructional Technology and Design. It was a joint course between psychology and SESP with Professor Rapp. I think he's now just became the Dean of SESP actually. But he was kind of both in Weinberg and SESP, kind of straddling the two and then ended up going and studying abroad in South Africa on the public health community development program and just really the global health and that course just kind of rang a bell finally when I was panicking senior year like, "What do I want to do?" And I was like, "Oh, I guess I could try and work on education technology, super niche, but that would be kind of cool." And so started looking at jobs, wasn't really getting anything, but then just kind of had a reflection of it'd be awesome to actually go and give back and work in a school, not become a teacher forever, but go and teach for a little bit, especially if that's who I want to eventually be making products for.
So I did a teaching fellowship in a Chicago public school and then ended up going to grad school after that at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And they have a program specifically on education technology. I feel like the story sounds like I had a plan, but really it was just one step at a time, just figuring it out. Then after that I was applying for all sorts of jobs, actually trying to go back finally home to the Bay Area. And then one day just came across something on Instagram around a feature in OneNote and it was made for students with dyslexia. And I found that really interesting and realized that it's not just Google doing things for education and small startups, Microsoft is doing stuff too. So I was thinking, "Oh, maybe I'll get an internship there." Turns out I couldn't land an internship because I was graduating soon.
So then I was like, "Okay, I guess I'll just apply full time." And then it was like, "I still don't know..." Even after grad school, came into grad school thinking, "Do I want to be a designer, a researcher, a PM? I don't know." Came out, still didn't know. So I applied to all of them and actually first interviewed and did a design portfolio review at Microsoft. Then they shifted me over to content and they're like, "Oh, not quite a fit for design, but maybe content." And content is kind of more of writing, it could be everything from in product writing to support. And then I kept talking about research that whole time. And so then they shifted me over to research and then finally got an offer and thought, "Why not? I guess I'll move to Seattle. I'll learn a lot." It wasn't even specific to education. It was on a team that kind of, I could work with students, but it wasn't really focused on education, but knew the whole time that was my goal. And Microsoft was really awesome at also having different opportunities and moving between teams. So about a year and a half after joining Microsoft, finally made it over to the education team, so developed the vision and finally made my way there.
Cassie Petoskey:
Our last clip is from a Women in Science panel where Liz McMath, who graduated in 2009 with a degree in biology, talks about her first job as an analyst after grad school and her experience finding her own path after missing the consulting cycle. Liz talks about making the most of her first job and she sheds light on seizing opportunity to take on projects and learn to develop skills on your own, which can lead to landing another great job in the future.
Liz McMath:
Yeah, so I will refer to the job I got coming out of graduate school really as my first job. And so that was as a senior analyst at a company called bioStrategies Group. I think as I mentioned before, about 20 person company in Chicago. And for me, I really wanted a job right after graduation and consulting hires in cycles, at least when I was in it, they did. So if you wanted to go to the big firms, you had to catch the right cycle. And so you'd have to interview in the summer or you'd submit your application in the summer and you would then interview in fall and you get a spot for the following summer. And I missed that sort of cycle because in graduate school, you never fully know when you're going to be able to graduate and things were coming together and everything.
So I missed some of that cycle. And so I was left with fewer options for companies that were hiring off cycle. And I got really down as I was in December, January, November, December when I was trying to find an interview for jobs thinking, "Okay, I can graduate in spring." And bioStrategies Group was a company where I just dropped my resume and they ended up calling me back and I went through the interview process really quickly and they normally wanted to hire people right away, but they were willing to wait for me to graduate in May. So that job was an analyst or senior analyst. They had never hired PhDs before and they didn't really know what to do with me, but I kind of convinced them. Now it's very common for consulting firms to hire PhDs, there's been a turn in how they think about it.
But when I joined that company, there were no consultants and no managers. They had since left. And so the company was really in a contracted phase because they don't hire in normal cycles. They kind of hire just in time. And it was a single owner company and small, somewhat disorganized. So I was kind of thrown into the deep end. There was no training and it was a very steep learning curve, but at the same time, I had so much opportunity. And so the partners would essentially give me a project and say, "This is what we need to solve for, this is what the client wants to know." And I had to go figure it out and how I was going to do it. They'd give me a few examples and thinking it through and it was great because I didn't have to stay in my box.
It wasn't just, "You are an analyst, you do this type of work, the consultant does this work, the manager does this work, the partner does this work." It was, I could take on as much as I was capable and I could go through the ranks and get promoted quickly, or I was doing consultant level work within a few months of being there. I was managing clients within my first couple years. But at first it didn't look like that great of a job. It wasn't a fancy consulting firm. There wasn't a training program, but I wouldn't give it up because when you're learning, somebody can tell you to do something a certain way and then you do it that way because they told you. Or you can essentially trial and error and figure it out yourself, what is the best way to do it?
And then you understand it. You don't just do it that certain way, you understand the components and the rationale and the reasons, and it's much easier to teach people. And so I think I got a much better educational experience from coming up through those ranks. And I was able to get a job at a really competitive biotech, now part of Novartis coming out of a no name, somewhat consulting firm, as bad as that is. So my advice is don't wait for the perfect job, or at least for me, it was not to wait for a perfect job, take what you and learn from it, make the best of it. Learn what you like, what you don't like, gain new skills, build your network, and then move on from there. Because if I wanted to go to McKinsey or L.E.K or something, I could potentially get there.
They do do experienced hires because it's all about the accomplishments that you have. Take what you're given and be able to turn it into something. And so I would say, how can you be successful in a highly ambiguous situation like going into being an analyst without any managers, without knowing what to do. And it's really, you need to be intrinsically motivated. So the same things that get you there to Northwestern are going to be the things that help you in your career. And it can't just be about, I want to collect a paycheck. Money can be a motivator in a short term, but eventually you'll have soul-searching, what is the purpose of my life and what am I doing? And so finding something that you can be intellectually stimulated by and having aspects of that of the job can be important too, because you never know where it's going to get you, but you have to be able to show people, "Look, I can accomplish things. I can get stuff done." So start building that track record sooner rather than later.
Cassie Petoskey:
Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations, links to the full videos and podcasts are below. For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, visit Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please email us with your thoughts on the program. Have a great day and go Cats.
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world.
This episode is brought to you by the Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program, a resource in Weinberg College where we help current students explore career options through making connections with alumni.
In today's episode, we're excited to feature quotes from alumni from the Career Summit and previous alumni conversations, focusing on lessons learned through first jobs.
Our first clip is from the Weinberg College Career Summit's Alumni panel on Healthcare. Samir Patel, who graduated in 1994 with a major in biological sciences, talks about how he is still in his first job as a position. Samir talks about how his job has constantly changed and how progressing within a field can lead to new experiences and opportunities for growth as technology influences how your job is performed.
Samir Patel:
I'm also in my first job, which again started with just me in a small rented office space, seeing patients for their skin conditions and then reading some pathology with a couple of employees. So I'm still part of the same deal, but the journey has been interesting and amazing from a clinical perspective, seeing all these patients over all these years and all these different conditions and learning as... Obviously lifelong learning process. And again, from the business perspective, from a small practice to growing a large practice, although I've been in the same job, I've felt like I've had 15 different jobs within this journey. So it's just so broad and expansive and variable. When you go through any career, you sign up for the job and it's like this for a year, and then it changes and grows and technology grows, diagnoses, treatments, everything is constantly growing. So I think that's one of the things is you get that job, but it's always going to change and you have to keep up on everything as best as you can. Don't know if that answered your question, but that's my thoughts on it.
Cassie Petoskey:
The next quote is from an alumni conversation with Junta Nakai who graduated in 2004, where he talks about his first job on Wall Street and how that job changed over time. Junta gives great insight into how you can succeed and adapt to a transforming field.
Junta Nakai:
I want to talk a little bit about my career. So in 2004, I graduated Northwestern with mediocre grades as a international studies and economics major, and I dreamed of having a job on Wall Street. And in 2004, trading on Wall Street was the most coveted job that you could have. It was fast-paced and exciting, and had the potential for superstar bonuses. And I remember I had to go through 44 interviews to get that job at Goldman Sachs, and I started in 2004 in July as a analyst in the equities division at Goldman Sachs, and I was at Goldman for almost 14 years. And what happened over that 14 years is probably going to be a common path for what you're going to see in your careers going forward as well. In 2004, when I joined Goldman, there was roughly 600 people trading stocks, equities on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs.
When I left, there was two, so 600 to two. And it turns out that trading, especially in liquid assets like equities, is a job better suited for machines. So trading stocks, executing trades, connecting buyers and sellers, turns out to be much more effectively done by computers than humans. So all these people, all these super talented people that went to all the best schools all of a sudden their jobs are gone 600 to two, that means 598 people roughly had to go find something else to do. And I tell that story often because now I want you to think about, what would you mean or how would you react if you were one of those people? One of those 598 people. They lived very comfortable lives, they were living fulfilling careers, exciting careers. And then over the course of a few years, everything changes. It gets disrupted.
And today I get probably dozens of resumes every month from people that I knew or I used to work with at one point or another might have made millions of dollars a year that today have been jobless for several years. So I think that the point of that is as you proceed in your careers and think about your careers, the most important thing to keep in mind and to internalize is that extrapolating the past is very dangerous. And with everything that's going on in the world today, that's probably more true than ever. And one of the things I thought about is to always keep in mind, what am I doing that's different? How am I going to get to the place where I'm going to go to? And if I have a view of where I need to be? I think the reality is it's much better to be a year early than a day late.
And when I was sitting on that trading floor at Goldman and looking at everything being automated around me it was at the simultaneously, it was probably at the best point of my career in terms of my upward trajectory career-wise, but also the amount of money I was making. But I thought to myself, "Well, if this is where the world is going to be, I have to try to be a disrupter than be disrupted myself." And that's the path I took and that's the path that got me to Databricks and to Brooklyn Kura, the sake brewery that Cassie just mentioned.
Cassie Petoskey:
Next is a clip from a previous alumni conversation with graduates working at Microsoft. Michelle Wantuch from the class of 2015 who graduated with a major in psychology and global studies minor, shows us that your first job doesn't need to be the perfect fit. Michelle talks about gaining skills and developing her vision to work in education, technology and research to eventually land at Microsoft.
Michelle Wantuch:
So kind of a winding, funny path. So like I said before, I studied psychology and global health. And so I ended up taking a course my junior year called the Psychology of Instructional Technology and Design. It was a joint course between psychology and SESP with Professor Rapp. I think he's now just became the Dean of SESP actually. But he was kind of both in Weinberg and SESP, kind of straddling the two and then ended up going and studying abroad in South Africa on the public health community development program and just really the global health and that course just kind of rang a bell finally when I was panicking senior year like, "What do I want to do?" And I was like, "Oh, I guess I could try and work on education technology, super niche, but that would be kind of cool." And so started looking at jobs, wasn't really getting anything, but then just kind of had a reflection of it'd be awesome to actually go and give back and work in a school, not become a teacher forever, but go and teach for a little bit, especially if that's who I want to eventually be making products for.
So I did a teaching fellowship in a Chicago public school and then ended up going to grad school after that at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And they have a program specifically on education technology. I feel like the story sounds like I had a plan, but really it was just one step at a time, just figuring it out. Then after that I was applying for all sorts of jobs, actually trying to go back finally home to the Bay Area. And then one day just came across something on Instagram around a feature in OneNote and it was made for students with dyslexia. And I found that really interesting and realized that it's not just Google doing things for education and small startups, Microsoft is doing stuff too. So I was thinking, "Oh, maybe I'll get an internship there." Turns out I couldn't land an internship because I was graduating soon.
So then I was like, "Okay, I guess I'll just apply full time." And then it was like, "I still don't know..." Even after grad school, came into grad school thinking, "Do I want to be a designer, a researcher, a PM? I don't know." Came out, still didn't know. So I applied to all of them and actually first interviewed and did a design portfolio review at Microsoft. Then they shifted me over to content and they're like, "Oh, not quite a fit for design, but maybe content." And content is kind of more of writing, it could be everything from in product writing to support. And then I kept talking about research that whole time. And so then they shifted me over to research and then finally got an offer and thought, "Why not? I guess I'll move to Seattle. I'll learn a lot." It wasn't even specific to education. It was on a team that kind of, I could work with students, but it wasn't really focused on education, but knew the whole time that was my goal. And Microsoft was really awesome at also having different opportunities and moving between teams. So about a year and a half after joining Microsoft, finally made it over to the education team, so developed the vision and finally made my way there.
Cassie Petoskey:
Our last clip is from a Women in Science panel where Liz McMath, who graduated in 2009 with a degree in biology, talks about her first job as an analyst after grad school and her experience finding her own path after missing the consulting cycle. Liz talks about making the most of her first job and she sheds light on seizing opportunity to take on projects and learn to develop skills on your own, which can lead to landing another great job in the future.
Liz McMath:
Yeah, so I will refer to the job I got coming out of graduate school really as my first job. And so that was as a senior analyst at a company called bioStrategies Group. I think as I mentioned before, about 20 person company in Chicago. And for me, I really wanted a job right after graduation and consulting hires in cycles, at least when I was in it, they did. So if you wanted to go to the big firms, you had to catch the right cycle. And so you'd have to interview in the summer or you'd submit your application in the summer and you would then interview in fall and you get a spot for the following summer. And I missed that sort of cycle because in graduate school, you never fully know when you're going to be able to graduate and things were coming together and everything.
So I missed some of that cycle. And so I was left with fewer options for companies that were hiring off cycle. And I got really down as I was in December, January, November, December when I was trying to find an interview for jobs thinking, "Okay, I can graduate in spring." And bioStrategies Group was a company where I just dropped my resume and they ended up calling me back and I went through the interview process really quickly and they normally wanted to hire people right away, but they were willing to wait for me to graduate in May. So that job was an analyst or senior analyst. They had never hired PhDs before and they didn't really know what to do with me, but I kind of convinced them. Now it's very common for consulting firms to hire PhDs, there's been a turn in how they think about it.
But when I joined that company, there were no consultants and no managers. They had since left. And so the company was really in a contracted phase because they don't hire in normal cycles. They kind of hire just in time. And it was a single owner company and small, somewhat disorganized. So I was kind of thrown into the deep end. There was no training and it was a very steep learning curve, but at the same time, I had so much opportunity. And so the partners would essentially give me a project and say, "This is what we need to solve for, this is what the client wants to know." And I had to go figure it out and how I was going to do it. They'd give me a few examples and thinking it through and it was great because I didn't have to stay in my box.
It wasn't just, "You are an analyst, you do this type of work, the consultant does this work, the manager does this work, the partner does this work." It was, I could take on as much as I was capable and I could go through the ranks and get promoted quickly, or I was doing consultant level work within a few months of being there. I was managing clients within my first couple years. But at first it didn't look like that great of a job. It wasn't a fancy consulting firm. There wasn't a training program, but I wouldn't give it up because when you're learning, somebody can tell you to do something a certain way and then you do it that way because they told you. Or you can essentially trial and error and figure it out yourself, what is the best way to do it?
And then you understand it. You don't just do it that certain way, you understand the components and the rationale and the reasons, and it's much easier to teach people. And so I think I got a much better educational experience from coming up through those ranks. And I was able to get a job at a really competitive biotech, now part of Novartis coming out of a no name, somewhat consulting firm, as bad as that is. So my advice is don't wait for the perfect job, or at least for me, it was not to wait for a perfect job, take what you and learn from it, make the best of it. Learn what you like, what you don't like, gain new skills, build your network, and then move on from there. Because if I wanted to go to McKinsey or L.E.K or something, I could potentially get there.
They do do experienced hires because it's all about the accomplishments that you have. Take what you're given and be able to turn it into something. And so I would say, how can you be successful in a highly ambiguous situation like going into being an analyst without any managers, without knowing what to do. And it's really, you need to be intrinsically motivated. So the same things that get you there to Northwestern are going to be the things that help you in your career. And it can't just be about, I want to collect a paycheck. Money can be a motivator in a short term, but eventually you'll have soul-searching, what is the purpose of my life and what am I doing? And so finding something that you can be intellectually stimulated by and having aspects of that of the job can be important too, because you never know where it's going to get you, but you have to be able to show people, "Look, I can accomplish things. I can get stuff done." So start building that track record sooner rather than later.
Cassie Petoskey:
Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations, links to the full videos and podcasts are below. For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, visit Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please email us with your thoughts on the program. Have a great day and go Cats.