The Unemployed Life

How a Banker Reinvented Herself

When I first met Vivian Chen, she was an investment banker.  She had spent eight years working her way up the ranks to vice president. She had become an expert in her area of coverage, health care. Her staff numbered 100. And she had a global purview.

And then Vivian became one of the many casualties of the financial crisis. That’s when she came to see me.

I had been working in the public relations industry, with a focus on corporate communications. Since the recession began, I had also started to feel somewhat of a career coach, with so many friends of friends aspiring to move into PR. I found myself conducting informational interviews on a regular basis. Most of them were fairly standard introductory conversations, and I usually never heard from them again.

My first meeting with Vivian started out like the rest. She asked how l had come to work in PR, how long I’d been with the firm I was working for, what I liked best about it. She described her climb up the financial ladder and the skills and interests she wanted to pursue. Now, she told me, she wanted to extend all that into helping life sciences companies connect better with investors.

It was clear that she had done her homework in evaluating her skills and priorities, but it was also apparent that she knew very little about the communications industry. She used investment banker lingo, not PR lingo, and she didn’t know the key financial communications firms or how they operated. The industry associations and key trade pubs were unfamiliar to her. I guess that was in part why she had come to see me.

I was impressed by Vivian, but saw obstacles. We were in the worst economic crisis in decades, and jobs weren’t exactly sitting open for the taking. I knew that she had an uphill battle to get a job in her own field and much less in a new industry, but her proactive and enthusiastic approach were so refreshing that I was motivated to do what I could to help. And that’s really key: In most cases, changing careers or even just getting a job hinges on inspiring others to want to help you. Dedication, focus and enthusiasm go a long way toward that end.

The second time we met to work on a cover letter that would resonate more with communications professionals than bankers. She was already telling me about her in depth industry research and thoughts new business ideas around helping alternative energy funds reach venture capitalists.  It was dawning on me that it wasn’t a question of if she was going to get an investor relations job but when she was going to get one.  She only needed a tiny window of opportunity to get in the door.

Uphill Battle

Headhunters weren’t interested. I had forwarded her letter and CV to a couple of headhunters who I knew.  The one who responded said, “Thank you of thinking for me, but I am having a hard enough time placing people without agency experience.”

Resourcefulness & Perseverance

Vivian’s enthusiasm and dedication to her goal never waned.  We spoke periodically throughout her 75-day search, and she blew me away with her tenacity, creativity and thoroughness. She followed the typical job hunting tactics of researching about the industry and networking, but she just had so much commitment about it.

Through these conversations, I discovered that she was networking like mad. And whenever I sent her information on the industry, her reaction was always immediate. She researched resources that I recommended to her, like the National Investor Relations Institute, which she bartered volunteering with them in exchange for a membership, which normally cost $700.

Glimmers of Hope

Sometimes all it takes is one lucky turn. It was fortuitous that at a networking event she was introduced to someone who knew of an opening at an IR firm.  He recommended her, and she got an interview.

She had pinpointed a crack in the industry and had a foot in the door. Once she did, she shoved her foot right in and wedged that door open as wide as possible. Vivian didn’t hesitate to take control of the interview process. She thoroughly researched employees at the firm, identified one who had gone to her undergraduate school and connected with him before the formal interview. Through her information gathering, she knew that she needed to give her potential employer a clear sense of what she could do for them from day one. So she brought along a 30-, 60- and 90-day plan of how she planned to build the firm’s business. Since she was overqualified for the position, so she made sure to express her enthusiasm to learn tricks of the trade and focused on the value proposition she would deliver to the business. What was supposed to be a 30-minute interview became two-and-a-half hours. Within five days, she was negotiating her offer.

The Offer

For Vivian, the time from informational interview to brand new career was about 75 days. After the whirlwind experience, she had landed the new gig, as senior market intelligence executive at an investor relations firm. Amidst all the negative employment numbers, it was fun and refreshing to witness flaring entrepreneurialism first hand – and rewarding to know I’d played a hand in encouraging her despite my own initial doubts.

Both of us are still in a little shock at her incredible feat against the economic odds within less than two and a half months.  She started her new position a couple of weeks ago.  The fairy tale isn’t perfect.  She probably isn’t earning as much as she would as a banker—yet—but she’s absolutely on the right track to be where she wants to be and loving the journey of getting there.

Tags: careers, new career, Wall Street