I spend a lot of time on this site called "Brazen Careerist." It's the site for a company that started as a regular column, written by Penelope Trunk, for Fast Company magazine. I like the ideas, the energy, the answers and most of all, the questions. Ms. Trunk wrote this article recently about how to avoid starting your career at the bottom. As a career coach I chuckled at the suggestion. Avoid entry level? Seriously? C'mon, man. It's like skipping a grade because..oh, wait. You can skip a grade. That's right, students do it all the time. If you work hard, study and make your grade point you can skip and/or graduate from school early.
Not many people do that. The reasons may range from it being a lot of work or you really do have to be incredibly book-smart or some sort of other pressure.
The foundation of work here in the US and around the world is that we should all start at the bottom. The self-made are thought of as heroes. Mailroom (not sure the mailroom is the bottom. I met some very smart people there who knew more about people than any Phd) to Boardroom. People who skipped grades and started in the middle are scorned. We complain that somebody helped those people. We say they are not like "us" and that's not fair.
I'm writing this from Los Angeles at the
Asian-American Journalists Association annual conference. Earlier in the week, an angel investor from the area spoke to our
"New U" group and, in regard to launching a company, he said "success is the result of persistence."
I think in that regard, you can't skip, leave early or start in the middle.
