It was 2008. I had just graduated from Clemson with a Communications degree in the height of a recession. I figured, I’m wonderful, surely someone will want to hire me!
Side note: I decided to be a Communications major, because at orientation, the Dean said “if you don’t know exactly what you want to be or do, be a Communication major because it’s so versatile and you can do anything.” Virtually every interviewee said “so you’re a communications major…what can you do”….ANYTHING, ASK MY DEAN!
After moving in with my roommates (parents) I decided to upload my shiny resume (with virtually nothing on it) to every ‘cool’ job board I could think of. Social media was still in its infancy back then so along with Nike, Playboy, and Coke, I added my resume to Facebook’s job board. I heard nothing, shocker.
Fast forward roughly 6 months later, to the beginning of 2019 and I receive an email from a recruiter at Facebook telling me they’d like to consider me for a contract role. SHUT UP. I immediately deduced that this must be some sort of scam and someone is trying to steal my social security number. My roommates (parents) agreed.
Some of the details after that are a bit hazy. I made it through several phone calls and remember the final interview was a screenshare with my would be boss and his colleague, where I was asked to perform several tasks while they watched me work. ‘How would you do this?’….’How would you do that?’…I think at one point I blacked out but I do vividly remember getting off the phone, dripping in sweat, sitting in my office (childhood bedroom) thinking what just happened.
A few days later I got the call that they wanted to hire me! Holy Sh*t…I have a job with Facebook!?!?!. It was super glamorous. I worked from home on their self serve ad platform and I believe I made $9/hr. Sadly, I received no stock. Thanks a lot, Zuck. My job was to find companies that had a Facebook page, that were NOT currently advertising on Facebook. I’d then advertise for them, launch a campaign, and send a direct mail piece with the results and a free ad credit for them to take over. Basically a way of showing them, look what I did…here’s some free ad money, you should start doing this for yourself. At the end of the contract, there was no full time offer, still no stock, and I was a free agent, yet again.
I did learn a lot however. I was able to see behind the curtain of one of the (soon to be) biggest companies in the world. I also walked away with 2 key lessons.
1) You simply cannot replace ‘doing’. What do I mean by that? In my current role I discuss social media, click ads, etc. with clients on a daily basis. Having actually ‘done’ it myself gives me a much better perspective and allows me to communicate more clearly with my clients who aren’t as well versed.
If you have the opportunity, ‘do’ as much as possible. Reading is cool and all, but applying that knowledge to real world stuff will make you better at what you do.
2) One small teeny tiny action has the ability to change your entire life…or at least point you down a path. As Nike would say, Just Do It. Uploading my resume to Facebook’s job board took roughly 2 minutes if I remember correctly. While I didn’t lad a full time job, once Facebook was on my resume I was able to parlay that into job interviews and several offers. It also pointed me in the direction of social media and marketing which is something I truly love. If you’re ever thinking, eh, this is a long shot. Do it anyways, you’ll be happy you did.