Post
by AldenG » Fri Jan 14, 2011 10:47 pm
Have you asked your former teachers?
I can see two sides on this.
One is that in certain organizations, it might be possible to climb to the executive ranks from the rank-and-file, particularly within the same company. I don't know whether McDonald's in Finland is one of the companies that works that way. United Parcel Service (UPS) in the United States is one such company, if I'm not mistaken. I believe they prefer that kind of person but even then, there must be some limit. It's hard to imagine a CFO could start as a truck driver.
In other organizations, there is a hard glass ceiling, a clear class distinction between command-and-control compared to rank-and-file. Many countries' militaries are this way (don't know about Finland), where it is very, very rare for someone to move from enlisted class to officer class. In most American companies, there is no track from the mail room to the executive suite. Finland may tend to be less rigid that way, but it's hard to believe Nokia would have such a track, either.
What goals do you state on your resume? What goals do you have that you aren't stating on your resume? What did you picture yourself doing when you chose the course of study and how did that picture evolve during your studies? Is your Master's from a school where graduates typically do end up in executive positions?
Our opinions here don't count for a lot. "I would think...it's good to have ground-floor experience." Maybe that's true and maybe it's the opposite. It depends so much on the culture of the company(s) in question and the general management culture of the country.
I haven't hired for the kinds of positions I would imagine a master's in international business would lead to. (Is it comparable to an MBA or is it something else?) I've only hired (quite a bit) for other types of master's-level positions, mostly instructional designers and software engineers. The latter were for tool-builder type work, not entry-level programming. In Finland those are master's level positions, although in the US such software engineers mostly have degrees in other subjects or sometimes no degree at all but are highly intelligent and self-educated. At least that's how it still was about a decade ago when I was still hiring.
In THAT context, post-graduate McDonald's experience is not an asset, it's a detriment. Taking the work would be seen as a sign of low goals and vision; citing it would be taken as a sign of really poor overall judgment. And I am far from alone in that opinion -- over here. Finland may be different because there's so much less employment opportunity and employers may be used to seeing highly qualified people in menial jobs. I know that when I've visited even next-door Canada, I've seen a lot of obviously very over-educated people working in menial positions. On the other hand, a potential employer might see it as a sign of meager ingenuity that you had to fall back on such a job.
The best answer would come from people who hire for the kind of work you want, and if you can't find them, then from your teachers. If you have even so much as an interview for the type of work you really want, toward the end of the interview is a good opportunity to ask "What qualities and experience do you look for in an ideal entry-level applicant?" and try to get beyond the boilerplate answers of paper qualifications. Asking questions at interviews is a very good thing as long as they appear humble and sincere, not rhetorical or sarcastic.
What are the opportunities for contracting in your areas of knowledge and interest? I don't mean just hourly temporary work or free-lancing, but identifying a service or problem that potential employers need taken care of and giving them a formal business proposal for you to provide the solution on a job basis, not an hourly basis. That's the kind of initiative that (in the US) often leads to full-time positions. Make yourself indispensable and soon they'll start wanting to save money by bringing you in-house.
Did your degree program offer any kind of training on job-hunting strategies like these? Are there resources at the school that you can go back to as a graduate to help identify such opportunities?
P.S. I'm not claiming to offer answers. At most I hope I'm offering the right questions.
As he persisted, I was obliged to tootle him gently at first and then, seeing no improvement, to trumpet him vigorously with my horn.
