I sat down intending to write a post titled something along the lines of "What Working In For-Profit Admissions and for a Non-Profit Taught Me" But turns out I had another story to tell first to lead me there.
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Five years ago, I was doing okay. I had been steadily
advancing through the world of Event Management and was working for a
beautiful, fine dining facility on the Mississippi River planning mostly
weddings and other social events. I absolutely loved what I did and, for the most
part, the team I worked with. (Because who loves all their coworkers, all the
time, right?) In January of 2011, I earned my CMP (Certified Meeting
Professional) designation. In order to be accepted to sit the exam, you
have to have so many years in the industry, a certain level of education and other qualifications. The exam
is thorough and, being in a relatively small town (compared to my current
location in the Twin Cities) there were no study groups and very few other resources
available to prepare. And of course, it all cost money.
My company did not offer to pay for the exam or offer reimbursement, but
I was dedicated to my “craft” and thought the investment would be worth it and
make me a more valuable employee. I was so proud when that letter came in the
mail telling me that I passed and I was pleased to put those three letters
after my name, even if most people in small town Wisconsin didn’t know what the
meant. Often times, they asked, and it opened up a wonderful dialogue about the
intricacies of the profession.
Then, in July of 2011, the Monday after Independence Day
weekend, our GM asked me to meet with him for a talk. It was like being called
to the principal’s office. I joked with the other women in the office that if I
didn’t come back, they could have my “nice pens.” (Uniball Vision Fine Point,
still my favorite) I walked in to one of my banquet rooms where he was there
with another female member of or staff. I think she worked in Accounting, we
didn’t really have an official HR department, and I was unceremoniously let go.
To this day, I don’t know officially
why, but I was offered a severance package and told that they would not fight
unemployment, which led me to believe that this termination was no fault of my
own.
It certainly didn’t make it any easier though. I was still
unemployed…and stayed that way for nine months. Admittedly, I didn’t jump on
the job search bus right away, I used a little bit of the summer to enjoy the
few beautiful days we get in Wisconsin and not work nights and weekends. I was
nurturing a new relationship and thankful that he didn’t think I was some sort
of massive loser for losing my job. We had only been dating 3 months, and there
was no reason he had to deal with that. I worked part-time as a server, got back
into theatre (yay, nights and weekends free again!) and eventually started putting
in resumes.
I eventually found myself working in Admissions for a
for-profit school. There is no secret that Admissions, when it comes to
for-profit schools, is really Sales. I
never considered myself a “sales person," I was certainly more focused on customer service, but
the pay was decent, the school had other branches that provided growth
opportunity, and the hours were okay (well, they were presented to me as okay).
I saw a similarity in being a part of a very important part of someone’s life
(it used to be weddings, now it was college). I truly believed that I could
take all of the things I knew about good customer service (Make Eye Contact and
Smile, Provide Immediate Guest Recovery, Welcome and Thank Each Guest amongst
others….I had some magical guest service training ;) and they would make me
successful in Sales.
I wasn’t. I went through all the steps and did everything
that was asked of me. I spent hours redialing and followed the script to a T because that was what was expected and I wasn't looking to rock the boat. I
was told to “Think Corporate, Act Corporate, Be Corporate” by those that
trained me, but when I was back on campus, my immediate supervisor essentially
told me to throw all of that out the window. “Throw everything to the wall and
see what sticks.” was his epic advice at offering enrollment to students. It was a balancing act, and I never officially got on board. For profit schools have a pretty bad
reputation. However, I consider myself to be fiercely loyal and tried really
hard to understand how this business model fit in our society. Most of the
students at these schools are non-traditional (meaning not straight out of high
school) and they have non-traditional needs. They have full time jobs and
families that they need to work classes around. They may have been out of
school for a while, or never in school, and really benefit from extremely small
class sizes where there is a lot of attention to walk them through this new and scary path. These things you may have
to a pay a premium for, I got that, and I could feel okay about that. But it
wasn’t the non-traditional students that I was hired to recruit. This school
decided that they wanted to tap more into the high school market. Several of us were hired across the company
to focus only on high school students….and several of us got laid off a short
time later when the school realized that maybe this campaign wasn't really working. I don’t think any of the schools
have a high school only team anymore. I was let go but told I was rehirable in
another department.
So began another six months of unemployment, but I hit the
ground running this time and it became more and more disheartening the longer I
went between jobs. Finally, as my last unemployment check was looming, I was
offered a position in a non-profit organization….as an Employment Coordinator.
My job would be to help people find jobs. I had a lot of experience being
unemployed, I had a lot of empathy, and I thought I would be really good.
And I was. I loved the job. It was rewarding, challenging,
the people I worked with were amazing, the schedule was flexible, I had what is
still to this day the best boss I’ve ever had, and the benefits were great. I
got paid like I worked at a non-profit, but it was manageable and the consistent
if small raises kept me feeling good about future possibilities. I worked there
for a couple of years, things were fine. And then my boyfriend and I broke up.
While I loved the job, there was some debate whether or not
we would get grant funding for next year and I was extremely nervous to become
unemployed yet again. I liked my town, I had some friends there, many of them I
met through my ex. I had a couple of close high school friends nearby, we had
dinner monthly, but we weren’t daily fixtures in each other’s lives. My family
was also close, but maybe too close J
and I’d moved thousands of miles away before. I lived at home for a few months
while I figured out my plan and realized that I didn’t have anything keeping me
in town anymore. I’d always wanted to get back to a little bit of a bigger city
and there weren't big enough reasons not to do it now.
I got hired as a Catering Sales Manager in the Twin Cities. Essentially
full circle, nine months before my CMP was set to expire. I earned it and then
promptly left the Industry. When ones earns a CMP, they have proven a number of
things including possessing a comprehensive body of knowledge and a certain
level of standards, practices and ethics. Just because I left the industry for a few
years, doesn’t mean that I didn’t continue developing knowledge, standards,
practices and ethics that would continue to help me in the event industry. In fact,
I learned things working in sales for for-profit education, and as an Employment Coordinator for a non-profit
that I may not have been able to learn any other way.
To Be Continued….
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