Smart Talent Graveyard: Where Executive Careers Go to Die

Smart Talent Graveyard: Where Executive Careers Go to Die

I am an Ivy-league graduate, but I am smart enough to know that going to a highly reputable school is not the magic ticket to success.

In fact, my top four mentors in my professional life have had the following backgrounds:

• In my early luxury hotel career, I worked for a woman who was a top San Francisco restaurateur who did not graduate college in a typical 4 year fashion. She taught me the ability of making something out of nothing. I have used it every day since.
• During my recruiting career, I learned the business from a gentleman who had a rough childhood, essentially on his own at 16, and never graduated high school – he taught me how to be a master candidate-company matchmaker. This enabled me to go on to being a successful top producing recruiter.
• As I grew my executive resume business, I learned how to market my business from an auto mechanic-turned-successful-internet-marketer who was never a “school person” but one of the most brilliant marketing technology minds I have encountered. He taught me so much about business marketing that I could not begin to list it here…
• As I increased my vision of how I can better serve clients and my family, I hired an executive coach who has shifted my mindset 180 degrees in a polar opposite direction with her gifts – enabling me to help more people in a more concrete meaningful way. She did not finish college, but she’s one of the most well-read people and more intuitive than anyone I have met… I think her services should be a national past time so the world can be a better place.

Am I advocating tossing higher education out the window?

Hell no…

However, I have been shown many times in my life that success does not always have to follow a traditional education path.

It is how you market what you have, promote your story and deliver results using your gifts—that’s it.

On the contrary, I do see people that think because they have a particular pedigree of elite credentials they inherently think they are entitled to success. And if it doesn’t come, they become downtrodden and dejected.

It’s subtle… But I see these very credentialed people become disillusioned if their credentials are not landing them the jobs they want…

And here is the thing: Those credentials will open the door, they won’t seal the deal.

Effective story-telling, results and resiliency seal the deal.

I am very grateful for my Cornell degree. It has opened many, many doors for me.

But some of those doors swung open freely on their own because of the elite degree and others I had to pry open with a crowbar.

I hardly ever had the red carpet rolled out for me to walk through the door simply because I have an Ivy-league degree.

Yet I have seen colleagues, Ivy-league friends, and well-credentialed prospects become depressed when the success path is not linear.

And if they don’t catch themselves or get help, their career can stall or start to fall apart.

I call it the smart talent graveyard—where smart, but disillusioned, people go when their career is stifled by forgetting story-telling, resiliency and results (and not just pedigree), matter as you progress in your career.

No top tier school graduate is immune.

If this struck a chord with you, then you may possibly be on the path to the smart talent graveyard.

Resting on your laurels and not promoting your results?

Let us show you how to stop going down this path and shift to a path of ongoing prosperity:

Go HERE and hire us to help you stay resilient and results-focused, no matter what your academic or professional upbringing.

Let’s do this!

Lisa

Lisa Rangel – Executive Resume Writing Services