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- Year Of Graduation: 2017
- College/University: DePaul University (Chicago)
- Major: Economics
What do you do for a living? Can you share what a typical day at work looks like? Do you enjoy what you do?
Officially, my title is Senior Project Consultant. I work for an overseas firm, but most of the clients I work for are in the US, and I do a mixture of accounting, IT, and supply chain work. In a typical day, I have a couple of clients whom I primarily support. A lot of them are in the utility, energy, and transportation space, but at the moment, it’s mainly utility clients. I do a lot of ERP-related work. If they need to fix anything in their Enterprise Resource Planning system, they want new controls implemented, or if I find any problems with the system, I’ll help with that. It typically goes like, “Hey, your system appears to be doing this. It’s triggered by this. You should go in and fix X, Y, and Z.” Then I’ll actually open a ticket and work with their IT department to fix it.
That’s probably about a third of what I do. Another third is more traditional financial reporting or ad hoc data analysis. So they want to know something about their data, and I’ll look into it. The final third, it’s kind of an odd thing, but you’d be surprised at how little communication there is in organizations. So I almost serve as a project manager or just a subject matter expert. For example, they’ll ask me questions like, “Hey, we want to run this type of statistical model, do you know anything about it?” So, that’s kind of a gist of my day. Any one of those three things takes up all my time.
I do enjoy what I do. There’s always a problem to solve. The clients come to us with either problems they have or a specific task they want done, and we help them find a solution or get the task accomplished.
Why did you choose your undergraduate major?
I took AP micro and macroeconomics in high school, and our economics teacher showed us a documentary and gave a lecture on student loans and how they work. From that class, I knew I wanted to do as much as I could to have as little debt or no debt from college. When studying AP micro and macro, our teacher also told us a bit about the career paths and the skills you can learn studying economics. Specifically, econometrics and a lot of the modeling and data work. So, I kind of knew in high school I wanted to study economics.
Two years prior to going to DePaul, I took classes at my local community college. I felt that the community college had a reputable program, and here in Illinois, they have relationships with the four-year colleges. So basically, you get an associate degree, and they wipe out two years of your undergrad curriculum. You don’t have to do it at a four-year school. My parents also fully supported this decision and encouraged it.
It sounds like you really knew what you wanted to study, but in terms of a career path, were there specific jobs that you were seeking going into this field?
I wanted to do transportation modeling and logistics. Actually, one of the more formative career experiences I had was while I was at DePaul. I started applying for internships, and one of them was with an aerospace parts wholesaler/distributor firm, and it was one of those interviews where you meet multiple departments in the company. I sat with FP&A, accounting, supply chain, and I think marketing and HR. The supply chain guys actually told me, they said, “We love all of your data management knowledge, but what would really set you apart is if you had a computer science background, like you knew SQL, you knew Python, and you knew how to work with SAP, the actual software.” And then the accounting guys told me, “We love that you understand the bookkeeping side of things. If you would just get a CPA or something like that, or you had that in your path, you would be a great fit.” I didn’t even end up getting this role, but it was very kind of them to give me this feedback, and that experience really set me up for continuing education.
After my bachelor’s, I actually got two additional degrees from my two-year college in computer science and accounting, and I did it because of that interview. I kind of saw where the gaps were, and I started to fill in those gaps. That career path started from there.
Can you tell me about your experience finding a job after graduation? Are you happy with where your journey has led you thus far?
I was working in fast food in high school and through college, at Jimmy John’s and Panera Bread. Fortunately, I did have assistant manager roles at Jimmy John’s, so I was actually doing inventory management and basic cash management at the store from a younger age. That gave me some confidence in my skills. The other thing I did in college, which I highly recommend, was the speech team. It’s not done everywhere, but I highly recommend a speech team or just learning to communicate, because if you can communicate, the interview process goes a lot smoother.
To answer your question, though, the hard part for me was just getting the interviews, and getting the resume seen. Junior year was rough, but I did have an interview with that one aerospace company we talked about. The next year, I want to say I had three or four interviews that were pretty solid. One of them was the firm I ended up working at. I was told they chose me because I seemed interested in the type of work they did. They’re an architectural engineering firm, but they had a group that focused on economic and real estate development who wanted somebody who knew GIS, which was a type of software I learned at the community college, and they wanted somebody who knew economic theory. So it all just kind of aligned. I found the role on Glassdoor, and I just applied for it. It was partially luck, and I know it can be very frustrating to apply.
If I asked you when you had first graduated, what goals would you have hoped to achieve by now?
Looking back, I’d say if you have opportunities, take them and make the best of them, because you’ll be surprised where you end up. When I was 22, I didn’t think I was going to be doing what I’m doing now. I thought I was going to be doing statistical models my whole life, doing econometric modeling. I was initially thinking I would get a master’s in economics, and it turned out I was so busy with other things that I just never pursued the master’s. By learning new skills and then kind of looking for opportunities where you learn adjacent skills, one thing leads to another. It kind of compounds.
For your field of work, would you say a master’s degree is necessary? Do you think work experience plays a big part in getting one of these roles, even your first role?
It’s tricky because there are certain firms I’ve worked for where it was highly valued, and a lot of the people I worked with had a master’s. I only got in because I started at the lower level. In my experience, if you have a very specific skill or set of skills, or you bring an exceptional service to the firm, I don’t know that a master’s is really necessary.
I understand, though, that if you have a hard time breaking into an initial role, maybe a master’s is a differentiator. It depends on what you want to do. For what I’m doing right now, most of the people I work with do not have a master’s degree. At the first manufacturer I worked for, the data science team, some of them were PhDs. In general, though, I would say it’s more important to learn skills than a master’s degree. If you know the skills very well, you can really become invaluable.
In terms of work experience, I don’t think I would have gotten any interviews had I not had the prior experience in fast food. In my experience, you need self-confidence, communication abilities, and the ability to deal with people in a customer-centric kind of way. It’s valuable to be able to approach situations like, “Okay, I’m trying to do something for my customer or employer. How can I accomplish the task they want in a way that makes them happy?” That mindset is a differentiator, even more so than a master’s degree or PhD.
I’ve sat in on interviews at the firms I’ve worked at, and we’ve had very bright people who have a master’s degree in statistics, and they talk about all of these models they built, but they can’t communicate or articulate how that work impacts anything. They don’t realize the people they’re talking with aren’t understanding it, and it’s not relevant to the task at hand. So I would say entry-level work experience is very important. It helps you learn how to talk with people, and that could be as simple as fast food, retail, or anything like that.
How important is it to have a purpose-driven life? Why or why not?
I think it’s important. If you’re only going after a higher salary or you’re chasing material possessions, I don’t think you’ll ever find contentment. When we’re all working jobs, we’re contributing to society. The money is just how we allocate the resources that we all produce, so it’s like, “How can I be as efficient, kind, and make as positive an impact on my community as I can?” Because if I help the community, I’m also helping myself. It’s a win-win situation.
What’s your biggest struggle right now?
I’m in a fortunate position right now where I would say there aren’t any significant struggles. I have found that the biggest stresses for me come more from the personal and the family side, just navigating dynamics and navigating when there are conflicting interests. I’m naturally more of a peacemaker, so when there’s conflict, that’s when I’ve been the most uncomfortable. You can try to be consiliatory to everybody and as kind about it as you can be, but somebody may not be happy with your decision about something. The personal dynamics are sometimes more from the heart rather than the brain, so it can get complicated, you know?
What interests/hobbies bring you the most happiness?
I do speech team judging and coaching, which is a very nice activity. You could put it under the umbrella of volunteering, technically. Giving your time or sharing your knowledge and then seeing other people grow from it over time, or benefit from the knowledge, is rewarding. In general, I think it’s good to just talk with other people. If people put their phones down more and just smiled and talked to somebody else, they would find that they have a much better headspace throughout the day. I go to an exercise class regularly, three to five times a week, and I talk to people there. I like the class structure a lot because you can chat and interact.
What do you want to spend more time working on?
Relationships are one aspect I’ve kind of neglected to some extent, both familial and romantic. I focused more on education, career, and hobbies than I did on dating, for sure. If I were choosing between going to set up a date with somebody or going to a speech tournament, in my 20s, nine times out of ten, I would have gone to the speech tournament.
If we traveled five years into the future of your life, what do you want to achieve?
I hope that I have the opportunity to mentor more people at work. If I work with people who are maybe a little bit junior to me in terms of experience, I hope that they can learn from me and I can learn from them. I would like to grow more as a speech coach as well. I’m really learning focused in my goals.
What’s the biggest lesson or piece of advice you wish you had known earlier?
First, I would say focus on the things you can control, and if you did the best with what you had, let the rest go. It’s sort of like do the best with the hand you’re dealt, accept the things you can’t change, and what you can. I spent too much time, and I think a lot of people do, worrying about things that ultimately I couldn’t control. If you’ve done your best, that’s all you can do.
Secondly, I wish I had been more social than I was in high school because I was more on the reserved side until I started working at Jimmy John’s and doing the speech team. I started to talk to people more and got their perspective on things. For example, I have a friend who’s very mechanically inclined and works on cars. Had I met him earlier, I probably would have taken an interest in that and learned more about it. So, just connect with other people earlier on. You can learn something from everybody, whether it’s a mistake they made, or they’re sharing their knowledge, or just communicating an idea.
Connect With Joe:
- LinkedIn: @JoeVitone
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