Over twenty years, I have hired hundreds of people and watched hundreds more start their careers. I have been the person on the other side of the table, the one deciding who gets the shot.
And if you asked me to describe the ones who went on to build genuinely great careers, here is what would surprise you: they looked nothing alike.
Let me show you what I mean.
One of the first people I ever hired was a college student selling cell phones. He was working full time to pay his own way through school, which stretched his degree well past four years. His grades were fine, a B average or so, but that was never what made me want to meet him. It was one line on his resume: "I learned Spanish to become the top salesperson in New England." He had noticed how many of his customers spoke Spanish, so he taught himself the language, and then he went and became number one in the region. I wanted to hear that whole story, and when he told it, I knew. I can train almost anyone on the skills a job needs. I cannot train drive. He had it, and he had put it right there in a single sentence.
Then there was the swimmer I met while recruiting on campus. Our interview was at 8am. I showed up 15 minutes early, and he was already there, in a full suit, calm and ready to go. I thanked him for meeting me so early, and he waved it off. He had already been up since 5am for a two-hour swim practice, and the recruiting office was on his way back from the pool. I could not personally relate to that kind of morning, so I leaned in and asked how he balanced all of it. He told me about how he and his teammates held each other accountable, pushed each other, stayed disciplined so the team could win. When I later worked with him, that same instinct showed up again and again. He stayed late to help teammates, taught himself new things so he could contribute, and kept everyone's energy up. I have worked with a lot of college athletes since then. That drive and teamwork is almost always there.
Then there was the kid who started a landscaping business in high school and ran it all the way through college. He started with a single lawnmower, knocking on doors. Then he bought a used truck so he could reach more customers. Then he brought in a few friends to work for him. Summers were busiest, but spring and fall weekends were packed too, and somehow he still played sports on top of all of it. He was selling the work, doing the work, and managing the people doing the work, all at once. Here is what that gave him: by the time he reached a corporate job, he had already done sales, marketing, customer service, scheduling, and operations, by trial and error, with his own money on the line. Those are some of the hardest things to teach someone all at once. He had learned them the only way you really can, by rolling up his sleeves, making mistakes, and getting better.
And then there was the woman I interviewed, and later managed, who had a PhD in Japanese studies. She was American, with no family ties to Japan, but she had fallen completely in love with its language, culture, and history. She became so fluent that she qualified to work as a flight attendant on Japan-bound flights, partly because it was an affordable way to keep going back. In our interview she walked me through her doctoral research on Japanese Americans during the Second World War, first-hand interviews that her language skills had opened up, a subject I had never thought about and then could not stop asking about.
Every one of these four worked relentlessly. The salesman paying his own way through school. The swimmer up before dawn. The kid running a real business out of a truck. And here, a scholar at the very top of the academic ladder. The difference was never how hard they worked. It was that none of them were defined by a grade. What set them apart was that each had built something real and genuinely their own, and knew how to show it.
Look at those four people. A cell phone salesman, a swimmer, a landscaper, and a scholar. Different majors. Different grades. Different everything. Not one of them just optimized for a number and waited to be picked. Every one of them did something real, followed a genuine interest, solved a real problem, or bet on themselves and built something.
That is the whole thing. Success is a full package. Your grades do not have to be perfect, and you do not have to have climbed Everest. But you do have to own what makes you different and show how it translates into the way you will show up at work. Someone who brings that kind of passion and drive to their own life is going to bring it to their job, too. That is what I am actually looking for when I sit across the table. And it is almost never on the transcript.
Here is my promise to you. In the coming weeks, I am going to tell you these stories in full, and many more like them. What these people actually did, the moment it mattered, and exactly what you can take from them for your own career. Along the way I will share what I wish someone had told me at twenty-two: how to build real experience, how to stand out in an interview, how to make smart career moves, how to handle your money, and how to build a career worth having without burning out.
You do not need a perfect GPA. You need to become someone worth hiring, and you need to know how to tell that story. Let me help you do both.
I am glad you are here.
Jeff
P.S. Hit reply and tell me one thing: which of these four sounds most like you, or most like who you want to be? I read every reply, and it tells me which stories to write next.