When I was 26, I was in school full-time and working full-time. I was finishing my degree at night. I was a student at Mundelein College, but the last class I needed to graduate wasn't offered at Mundelein that spring.
I needed a marketing strategy class. It was offered at DePaul, in downtown Chicago. It was a huge headache for me to travel from my job on the north side of the city down to school for that class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but I had no choice so I went.
One night after braving the packed L train and the freezing winds to get to my marketing class, I heard something that blew my mind.
Our professor showed us the
A company with a small share of a large market is called an Investment. A company that has a big share of a big market is a Star, and one that has a big share of a small market is called a Cash Cow.
"What happens to the Cash Cows?" I asked my professor. "If the market isn't growing --
"You milk a Cash Cow," said my instructor. "You don't put money into it. You just milk it."
In a blinding flash I saw that my company was a Cash Cow. Oh no! I thought. When I had joined the company, it was a tiny startup. Sales were one million dollars a year back then. They'd treated me well since I stumbled into the place when I was nineteen. Our company had grown to $180 million in sales, but we weren't going to keep growing. There was no place to go, revenue-wise.
I was running HR and learning a lot, but I could see that our overwhelming share of a small market would cement our company into the Cash Cow slot for the foreseeable future. My brain exploded as I sat in class. "
I earned my degree and started my first stealth job search.
A stealth job search is a funny thing. It's the business version of having an affair. I loved my co-workers, but I was ready for a change. I was dating a guy in the same company (we'll be married 23 years next May) and as the company HR chief I knew that wasn't something that would work for very long. I started to send out resumes and cover letters. I talked to some headhunters. I went on interviews.
I learned how to split my brain in half, devoting half of my mental energy to my job and the other half to my job search.
When I got to the right office, a stony-faced woman glared at me and directed me to hang my winter coat in the closet "over there."
She motioned to a wall that looked like solid rock to me. I started pushing on the panels on the rock wall, and one of them opened to reveal a coat closet. This place reminds me of the Flintstones' place in Bedrock, I thought. Everything is made of stone. I knew I couldn't lead HR in a place like that. How could you build community or human energy in the middle of so much cold stone, in the furniture and even in the receptionist's voice?
The was nothing soft in the vast, black marble reception hall; there were marble benches and marble floors, black marble walls and the invisible coat closet. The reception didn't offer me coffee, and not one employee who passed through the reception area stopped to speak with her or even made eye contact. Get me outta here! I thought, but just then my interviewer arrived.
The Central Casting version of a stern office lady walked over to me and summoned me to rise. "Elizabeth?" she asked. "You can call me Liz," I said. "This way, Elizabeth," she said. She had a bun of black hair pulled tightly up above her head and a gray suit that reminded me of something that Miss Hathaway in the Beverly Hillbillies might have worn. Miss Hathaway was a lot friendlier than this chick was.
She had circles of bright red rouge on both cheeks, and ghastly white skin. I felt as though I was in a movie. I followed the lady, like the heroine in a slasher film walking into the wrong hallway as the audience screams "Don't do it!"
The lady and I had a short, brittle chat. I could no more have worked with that humorless zombie than I could pilot the space shuttle. I never heard from those guys, and I was glad.
I got my next job, at a small-but-growing technology company called U.S. Robotics, through a guy who knew a guy who knew me. I knew at my first interview that the energy was good. My boss John, the CFO at the time, forgot that the main lobby revolving door was locked at five p.m. Because I was working, my interview was scheduled for five-thirty.
I saw that the revolving door was locked and I started walking around the huge office-slash-manufacturing facility looking for a way in. At the loading dock I talked my way into the building and found my way to John's office. When John asked me "How did you get in?" and I told him, we were off on the right foot.
The hardest part about a stealth job search is not updating your resume or reaching out to headhunters and hiring managers. It isn't making the time to job-hunt at night and on the weekends, although that can be draining. When you're ready to make a change, your body will find the strength to do it. The hardest part of a stealth job search is realizing that you are worth more than what you've got right now, not just in money but in headroom -- room to grow professionally - and in the scope of your role.
When it hits you that you've been coasting for awhile, you might make excuses to stay in the 'meh' job because it's close to your house (mine was three blocks away) or because you like the people.
Life is all about change. When I got to U.S. Robotics our annual sales were $15M. We were tiny compared to the company I left. I could tell by the energy in the air that enormous momentum was building. I left USR nine years later when sales were $3B and we had 10,000 employees around the world. The company was sold, so I went off to follow my path.
You can start a stealth job search whenever it hits you that you're capped out, topped out and unable to grow in your current situation. The whole universe will conspire to support you in your adventures once you get the message "There is something bigger ahead for me. I just have to go and find it!"
