For 30 years, I was supposed to be a professor. As a senior in college, I briefly considered philosophy and computer science before deciding to get a PhD in linguistics. I knew where I was heading: for a career at a liberal arts college, teaching and researching, in that order.
Until six months before I graduated, when I changed my mind.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do instead. I wrote linguistics papers and creative non-fiction. I hustled Scrabble for extra cash. I certainly never considered working in software, although I’d been coding since I was three.
Still, I needed a job, so I started applying. My resume failed numerous automated screening programs. Nothing about my background indicated that I’d be an obvious fit for corporate technology.
At the last minute, I got lucky. I will always be grateful to the perceptive person who spotted the exact combination of things in my background and hired me. It is not overblown to say that in giving me a chance, she altered the course of my life.
It is not overblown to say that in giving me a chance, she altered the course of my life.
Perhaps because of my own experience, I’ve always been a sucker for the curious-minded and driven person from a non-traditional background. Almost a third of our team has made some significant professional leap in joining Textio — which may be part of why, 2.5 years into the company, no one has yet left after joining. I know that won’t last forever, but it’s something we’re really proud of. When you take a risk on someone and commit to helping them become what they want to become, they’re often willing to take a risk on you too.
Here are just a few of the professional transitions people have made in joining Textio:
The stories go on: recruiters who have become sales people, corporate engineers who have leapt into our startup environment, and other academics who, like me, thought forever that they wanted to be professors and then changed their minds.
One of my favorite examples is my co-founder and CTO, Jensen Harris. When I first met him many years ago, I was surprised to learn that he had gone to art high school and majored in music composition in college. After all, I knew him mainly as the product mind behind most of Microsoft’s successful enterprise UI. But when he walked me through the ways in which creating UI feels to him like conducting an orchestra, something clicked.
Despite the positive impact career-changers bring, many are overlooked by traditional screening methods. How do you make an environment that is not only open to career-changers, but actively seeks them out? You change the way you look for people — both principles and tactics:
I love coming to work every day with all these career-changers. There is something special about the hunger for personal reinvention that they bring. That hunger reveals both an appetite for risk and the genuine openness that is required to learn in a new environment.
It may derive from my own personal story, but this is by far my favorite thing about the team we have hired. Eager learners who seek out changes in course are open, creative, and they substantially change the work your team can do.