Changing Careers – Don’t Let This Happen To You!

It was the mid 1970’s, and I was young, about 23 or so and had been working for a national magazine distribution company in Los Angeles, California for almost five years when I realized I was totally bored. I had moved up fast – from the warehouse to management in two years and I was in charge of almost all of the internal functions involved with magazine distribution on a national scale. Nothing creative – just move the product in bulk from the print shop to the shipping center, run the invoices off the computer (the computer by the way was so big that it had its own room in those days), oversee the breakdown and shipping of the titles, get the invoices filed and the customer copies out in the mail. I was just starting to form relationships with the accounts, major periodical distributors all over the world when I got bored. Like I said I was young and in looking back I realize now that boredom was a luxury of youth that disappears as we get older. Somebody somewhere, at a party or a bar, started talking about record distribution and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t identical to what I was already doing except that it was RECORDS! (FYI- records were those big, vinyl things that came before CD’s) Rock Stars! Groupies! Parties! I was on fire!

I started with personal letters to NAME PEOPLE at the top of the industry. I wrote to them as if they were friends of mine who could help me make the shift from magazine distribution to record distribution. I had the skills, the talent, the experience and the look (long hair, Quiana shirts etc.) and the desire, so why wouldn’t they welcome me with open arms? That move flopped so loudly the noise still registers on the Richter scale in Southern California every time I think about it. Employment lesson #1 – The people at the top of an industry, who don’t know you, aren’t dating your sister, or related to your uncle, don’t care if you live or die and won’t help you get a job.

I moved to phone calls and was I ever surprised when I actually got a positive response. Two actually. One guy talked to me for about fifteen minutes and we scheduled an appointment for the next day. Another other guy talked to me for about fifteen seconds, handed me off to personnel and we scheduled an appointment to meet a few days later. I was off! I was flying! I had two “interviews” – one with the head of distribution for a small but well respected record label and one with the head of personnel for a major company. One out of two! 50% odds I was going into the record business! Even money (I played the ponies in those days) that I was leaving my boring, well paying job in magazine distribution for the glitz and glamour of the record biz. Yeah!

Interview #1 with the actual head of distribution. I was polished and ready to roll. I arrived early and was led to an office, in this totally cool office complex and told to wait. The secretary of the guy I was waiting to talk to looked like she just stepped out of Dream Girl Monthly. Long blonde hair, short skirt, throaty voice. She offered me coffee, water, anything I wanted to drink. I declined – what I wanted was to marry her right there on the spot. I was home. After a few minutes she signaled me to go into his office. I opened the door and the place looked like heaven on earth to me. You actually had to step down to enter. Rock posters adorned the walls next to gold records and pictures of this guy with the stars. This is what I wanted, simply replace his pictures with mine and bang, I’m there. I sat down. What a nice guy. He was totally professional. And charming. He was knowledgeable about his business and mine as it turns out. I told him my skills, talents, expertise and education and the job I was doing now. And as it turned out, I was correct in my analysis of record distribution – it was identical to what I was doing. I was already trained in doing the job I wanted to do. I was getting in! After fifteen minutes of the most pleasurable conversation I’d ever had in my life, he turned to me and said, “You know, the job you want is my job.” My heart sank. I knew he was right. He gave me some advice about starting at smaller companies, at the bottom and working my way up, but I knew it was over. In another minute we were shaking hands and I was leaving, never to see him again. I was crushed. Employment lesson #2 – never interview for a job with the guy you want to replace. The better you look the faster you’ll get thrown out of his office.

Interview #2 with the head of personnel for a major record company. As I feared, the big company was not cool but so businesslike that I was thrown off my “game” as soon as I walked in. No long haired, laid back guys but suits everywhere. Receptionists who looked like my mother’s friends, and who worked like machines in a building so clean you could sleep on the floor. I was handed a printed sheet with instructions on how to get from the lobby, up the elevator and into the personnel department with warnings about visiting other floors or poking your head into offices where it didn’t belong. It felt more like the pentagon than a record company. I arrived at personnel and checked in, was handed a clipboard and sheet to fill out and I waited. Thirty minutes later I was ushered into her office where I met the scariest women I had ever met up until then. Dressed like a lawyer, she spoke in clipped tones, asking a set of rehearsed questions and writing down notes as I spoke. She asked all the usual stuff about background, education and then the big one – “What were my goals at the company if I was hired?” I took a deep breath and thought to myself that this was the one and only chance I would have to impress this woman, to loosen her up a bit with some charm and self confidence. I said, “I fully expect to begin wherever there might be an opening in distribution, and work my way up to the top of this company so fast that I would appear like a blur to other people.” I smiled, satisfied that I had hit just the right note. She rolled her eyes and before I knew what hit me I was out on the street. I never heard from her again. Employment lesson #3 – Big companies have a working structure, a hierarchy, and while some upward motivation is viewed as a good thing, too much ambition is definitely discouraged and viewed both as a threat and some form of not so temporary insanity.

Well, I never made it into the record business but I actually ended up owning that magazine company a few years later. Here’s what you might want to glean from my attempts to get into the record business. Unless you’re related to someone, you have to start at the bottom and blend in and work your way up. And you have to do that slowly. Fast movers without connections are gotten rid of somehow, by somebody higher up the food chain who you’re threatening to replace as you move vertically throughout the organization. I knew I was good and I proved it when I bought that business and turned it into a real moneymaker. But if you know you’re good, and you want to work for somebody else, keep most of your mouth shut. Give them your stuff a little at a time. Keep your goals in line with the corporate structure you’re in. I want to work hard for the good of the company and show my superiors what I can do is a better attitude than I want to rise to the top like a blur, even when you really, really do. Suppress your youthful ambitions and dreams – don’t kill them, just don’t wear them on your sleeve. Get in to the industry where you want to be and then slowly impress them with the quality of your work. It works out better for everyone that way in the long run. Especially you.

Written by Mike Cohen