1/3 - How did it start?

What is this about?

My name is Ken David, and I started my second career after spending 6 years in diamond jewelry production. The purpose of this blog, will be to share my experiences while trying to find the next step in my career, including the challenges and successes I had encountered along the way. Let's jump right in!

Early Life

From a young age, I was set up for educational success by my parents. They had a great reverence for the value of education, and taught me to read before I got to elementary school. This was a huge benefit, as I was able to enjoy the earliest years of school, and found the work to be easily handled. I was able to get excellent grades, with a strong focus on education, and my parents consistently shared their pride in my scholarly achievements.

This commitment to quality school work carried me all the way through High School, and helped me get into Cornell University. While there, I realized I would be able to get A's without putting forth an excess of effort, which seemed great at the time, but derailed me from a quick start to a real career. With the extra time I had available to me, I committed the majority of my energy to learning the intricacies of poker, taking numerous casino trips & partying as much as I possibly could. I have a feeling that a lot of college students come out of High School without a sense of purpose that college can satisfy, which is a great shame. I think I could have captured a great deal more value from college if I had started working straight out of High School, then gone to college when I knew what professional direction I would have wanted to pursue. That said, things tend to happen for a reason...

When I graduated from Cornell a semester early, I had not yet begun the job search in earnest. I attended a couple of finance sponsored recruiting events, but was not able to make a connection with any of the representatives that had been sent to our campus. My next thought was to interview at Bloomberg. My cousin had been working at Bloomberg for many years and was able to put in a good word for me, and I felt that my business background was a perfect fit for their new graduate program. I was called back for (at least) 4 interviews, but for some reason the process did not seem to be moving forwards, and they wound up not choosing to offer me a position. This was painful, and I didn't feel like I had many good options. That said, I didn't look for what options could be available, and just decided to stick my head in the sand and hope something would come along. I think this had something to do with the autopilot mentality that came along with being "successful" for 16 years of education.

Without a job offer, and feeling as though I would not receive any favors, I tried to make poker my profession while living at home. After all, I was able to consistently make some money, and I didn't need anyone else's permission to pursue it. After a few months of this, my Mom became extremely frustrated with me. She felt I had so much potential, and was wasting it sitting in my room and at casinos playing poker all day. She appreciated that I did not have much luck interviewing up until this point, and her primary concern was that I had literally no social life. For this reason, she insisted that I try my best to get onto a Birthright Israel trip. After some arguing (I was in the habit of always saying "no"), I agreed to try to get on the trip, and was granted a spot.

This trip was the best thing that could have happened to me at the time. I met lots of great people and made some lasting friendships. One of the people that I met even invited me to her sister's graduation party in Connecticut. Since I had no job and no social life, I thought, "Sure, why not?" It was on this trip that I met Eli Savransky, who turned out to own a diamond jewelry company in Manhattan, and had had great success hiring Cornell graduates. At this party, we had the opportunity to speak for a bit, and he offered me to come in for an interview sometime in June 2005.

First Job

I made the trip to 555 5th Avenue to interview for a Production Manager role at Sol Savransky Diamonds in June 2005. By the next week, I had received a phone call letting me know that I was being made an offer! I happily accepted, and found out the office would be closed for the week of July 4th. I started the following week, and my first paycheck even compensated me for the week of vacation. I was on top of the world.

During my time at Sol Savransky, I was able to learn:

• How to communicate with clients via phone, e-mail and in person
• How to manage a production queue, and work with suppliers to hit key deadlines
• How to leverage VBA within Excel and Access to automate otherwise tedious tasks
• How to work with software developers to streamline process and make the day to day as automatic as possible

All of this learning is fabulous, however, I learned everything I needed within the first year or two. At this point, I became comfortable, and settled in. What I didn't know at the time, is that comfort in your job is the fastest way to get nowhere in your career. I was happy to receive my modest annual raises from my entry level salary, and take on whatever additional responsibility I was presented with.

In the background, the company struggling to compete with various factors such as vertical integration of diamond companies selling direct to retail, high quality jewelry being made available from numerous vendors, the fluctuating prices of gold and diamonds, as well as the massive pressure that companies like Sam's Club are able to apply to smaller jewelry vendors. Since this was a small, family owned operation, the pressures fell squarely on the shoulders of Eli, and it made life in the office stressful at times.

This difficult industry continued for my entire tenure at the company, and led to layoffs, pay cuts and the fear that the company would one day be forced to shut its doors. I stuck around, however, because I had a great fear of the unknown, and a track record of 0 success when interviewing with large companies.

In mid 2008, I met Judith, who came to understand my work situation, and thought it urgent that I seek other opportunities. My anxieties about trying to apply to other jobs, interviewing and my dream of one day becoming a poker pro all prevented me from taking action on her urgent advice. This led to numerous arguments over time and put a significant strain on our new relationship. I occasionally dabbled in the idea of pursuing an advanced degree, but I didn't see the value in an MBA, and wasn't fully committed to Computer Science, especially without any real technical experience. This led to me waffling back and forth without a clear direction, and no real path forward.

We were married in 2009, and the arguments continued on an irregular basis. In 2010, Judith hit the accelerator on her career by pursuing and receiving a job at Google. This made me extremely jealous, and I felt strongly that I would never have the opportunity to work anywhere as wonderful. My 'stuckness' got even worse, as I wanted my next step to be a job at Google, but I was not at all qualified for any technical role there, and Sales was certainly out of the question for me. I actually did interview at Google for a couple of roles in 2010, but my severe lack of any relevant technical experience held me back from being considered for an offer.

Though I had given up on my own career possibilities, Judith would never give up that easily. In February 2011, while juggling her immense workload, and pursuing her MBA at NYU, she had a brilliant idea to help me out. She discovered that NYU has a School of Continuing and Professional Studies, which offers classes without requiring an application process or any prerequisites. You just pay the fee and show up. She found a class for me called "Database Design and Development" which immediately piqued my curiosity and I signed up right away. As soon as I sat in the first class, I knew that this was the missing piece in my career puzzle. This was the first opportunity I had to directly apply my "book smarts" and technical aptitude to an endeavor that could open up career opportunities in technical roles. That night, I was so excited that I decided to sign up for another class starting later in the week. I was choosing between Python and PHP classes, but chose PHP since the Professor was named (believe it or not) Ken Davidson!

Within 10 weeks, I had completed both of these classes and loved every moment! I had learned enough to both understand databases and start creating database driven web applications! This was a lot of fun, but it also meant that I could actually have a shot passing an interview for a technical role. I developed a great working relationship with Professor Ken, who wanted to get me a job as a developer at Pepsi Bottling Group. At the same time, he referred me to Michael Hornby, who was a recruiter in the tech industry. Ken was able to set up an interview for me at PBG in Somers, NY, and Michael was able to find me an interview for a support position at Medidata Solutions in Edison, NJ. At this point I was really seeing the light at the end of the diamond jewelry tunnel.

Within a couple more weeks, I had a hard offer from Medidata and a soft offer from Pepsi. I made the decision to move on from Sol Savransky, and decided to go with Medidata, as it appeared to have more opportunities for growth and learning. In July 2011, I started as a Tier 2 Technical Support Specialist at Medidata and could not have been more excited!