I have worked at four Fortune 500 companies
at 23 and these are my six learnings [8]:
I am 23 this year and I have worked at four Fortune 500 companies and one non-F500/non-American corporation that is also a global conglomerate.
As I have had work experience in both my home country Viet Nam and the U.S., these learnings apply to both countries. Since the two are at opposite ends of the work environment spectrum in my opinion and from consulting with friends working elsewhere, I am sure these learnings can be safely applied in most other places as well.
Six learnings from working at four Fortune 500 companies:
Know thyself
If you want to succeed in a corporation, or in any context for that matter, you need to have a strong grasp of what you bring to the table: your strengths, skills and interests.
When you know what you are good at, it will be easier to prove your value to the company by focusing on tasks and projects that you naturally excel at. Your salary for the most part is proportional to one, how replaceable you are and two, how good you are at solving other people’s problems. The more you can steer your development and career to the overlapping part between what a company values and what you are good at, the better. See Ikigai’s chart “profession.”
Know other people
This comes in two folds: having good relationships with people and understanding them as people/co-workers.
In any job, your day-to-day would be significantly easier if you had a good relationship with the people who you work for and the people you work with. Invest the time to understand people on a personal level, you will realize that for the most part, most humans aren’t that unlikeable (or is it just me?). Good relationships can open new doors, whether you are climbing the good old corporate ladder or exiting the traditional world to opening your own business - a bakery for instance (ahem!) or doing freelance.
One thing I always like to do as a serial introvert is to ask people questions and let them talk about themselves. Most people like to talk about themselves, whether it’s their education, family or their hobbies. As an extension of my personal obsession with personality tests, I also like to ask people about their MBTI personality. The method is not scientific but it’s a fun way to gauge how people like to work and react.
Always negotiate
When I accepted my first full time job in Viet Nam, I genuinely worried about not being able to pay rent with the average meager pay of the large corporations there. With a little bit of internal fear and external push from an Internet friend, I learned the important lesson of negotiation and successfully did it then and with every offer after. With any business prospects, it’s not abnormal to consider negotiation because you almost never lose anything by asking. Worst case scenario, you are told no and can then move on.
In most cases, companies have a budget range for a new hire’s salary. Use this to your advantage by assessing your credentials and skillsets, current market pay for this specific role and your expectation and then pop the question the next time you are offered a role or wants to get a raise. Well, because, everything is negotiable! (This is actually a book that I want to read soon)
Draw a line
In my humble period of time of working in big corporations, a mistake I have made and gladly have done so is to throw all myself into work. Regardless of how much I was paid or how invasive the working hours have begun to look like, I wouldn’t bat an eye working until the early hours.
As I progressed further in my career, I understand the value of my time and the corresponding capital that I get from working at a corporate job. I strongly believe that one’s identity is beyond a desk job and it’s in your power to draw that line, probably with a caveat that you have gained the trust and established a certain reputation for your work.
Understand what you are doing, like really.
Sooner or later, there will come the time when you think about moving to the next role or to a different company/industry. What will help you the most then is to be able to verbalize your past contributions, achievements and actual work that you have completed.
A tip to have a good command of what you are doing at your job is to conduct a monthly or bi-weekly reviews of your scope of work, noting down the key responsibilities you are taking on. These will come in handy the next time you switch jobs and need to play up your experiences.
Bonus: ‘I don’t dream of labor’
Lastly, and the most near and dear to my heart, working at a big company is not and should not be a be-all-end-all. Even if the Internet/LinkedIn/your peers can make you feel like it, at the end of the day, a job is a means to make a living. You know it and the CEO of the #1 company in the world knows it.
It’s tempting to ponder about the next “dream job” in tech, finance, or consulting as the ultimate goal of your life, and for some people that might be, but ultimately people aren’t born be stick to desks, stare at computer screens while selling labor for faceless entities for 40+ years.
Know what matters to you at the core and work for it instead.
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