Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [101]
1. A Gutsy Girl Breaks the Rules
There seem to be hundreds of rules in existence about careers. If you want to get hired by a tony law firm, you have to have attended an Ivy League school. If you want to make it as a television reporter, you have to start at a small station “out of town.” If you want to work for such-and-such company, you should send your résumé directly to the human resources department.
Most of these rules exist for a reason. They reflect reality, the experiences countless people have had. But each rule is based on the odds. It may have been true for most people—but certainly not all of them. What a gutsy girl knows is that many of these rules will limit her if she chooses to follow them. To make as much headway as possible, she must break the rules or at least go around them.
The first thing you must do is question every rule you hear about the field you're in and what it takes to be a success in it. When I think back on my early career, I realize that I automatically bought into so many of them, as if I'd been brainwashed by the career control squad. I've come to believe that some of the rules actually are perpetuated because people in certain industries are extremely greedy and like to make their fields appear impenetrable. When I was thinking of making a career shift to the television industry in my twenties, I attended several seminars on the TV business, and every thirty-year-old producer began his or her presentation with this rule: “The TV business is almost impossible to break into.” It was as if they wanted to discourage anyone else from competing with them for the best jobs.
Though I took for granted many of the rules I heard, I soon spotted a few gutsy women who didn't. One of these women joined the articles department when I was at Glamour and had a profound effect on my thinking.
First, a little background on the rules of publishing. The main one I heard when I visited the personnel departments of magazine companies when I was twenty-two was that to break in you “absolutely have to start as a secretary slash editorial assistant.” I balked at the idea, but acquiesced when I saw that I wasn't going to get in the door without going that route.
Within several years I'd been promoted to a feature writer, working with a bunch of other young editors and writers who had paid their dues the way I had. One day we heard that a new writer was joining the staff. And you know what? She was fresh out of college. She was also the author of an article that would soon appear in the magazine.
She and I became fast friends and the first thing I wanted to know from Amy was how she'd pulled it off. It turned out that through a contact at journalism class, she had landed an interview with the managing editor rather than having to go through the personnel department, as everyone else had (Broken Rule Number One). Then, when the managing editor gave her the start-as-a-secretary spiel, she asked how someone got hired as a writer rather than a secretary. The editor explained that you had to have written something. Amy went home and wrote a charming article on how to survive living with your parents when you're just out of college and looking for a job. It had a youthful irreverence that made it different from traditional Glamour articles. I still remember this funny line about how she'd spend Saturday nights reading and picking at her pimples while her parents entertained downstairs (Broken Rule Number Two). They accepted the article and gave her a job as a writer rather than a secretary (Broken Rule Number Three).
Listening to her saga, my first thought was how naive I'd been never to challenge the conventional wisdom. My second thought was that I'd never do it again.
Once you've heard a rule and questioned it, ask yourself what are the possible ways to get around it. Be creative, be adventurous, be daring.
2. A Gutsy Girl Has One Clear Goal for the Future
One of the mistakes