It seems like everyone with an online store or business has the letters C, E & O in the biographies of their social media profiles. That acronym is a Gen Z’ers way of saying that they are the big boss and in the age of social media, everyone wants to be the boss. The acronym CEO has a certain mystique to it. At the very least, it has a better ring to it than ‘Owner’. Of course, those 3 letters together actually mean Chief Executive Officer and are typically associated with large corporations that have thousands of employees, investors and a board of directors. Don’t worry; this isn’t going to be a five (5) minute exposition bashing on Internet entrepreneurs. In fact, if you own your own business, you could call yourself Master Pokemon Trainer and that would be within your right. It is your business after all. Rather, this is meant to highlight what I learnt from exploring the resumes of 100 CEOs of fortune 500 companies, more specifically, the bottom 100. Why the bottom 100, you may ask? No reason. It was completely arbitrary.
This is something of a conundrum because I also believe those who seek power usually aren’t worthy. Nonetheless, being a Gen Z’er myself and wanting to be a boss, I thought to myself, “Who becomes CEO? How did they become CEO? What degrees do they have?” Exploring traits such as intelligence, work ethic and charm aren’t exploring. In my opinion, those qualities are mandatory for consideration.
Jump, Jump Around…
After looking at most of these executives’ LinkedIn profiles and reading through company biographies, one of the things that jumped out at me was how many different companies were on their resumes. It is typically frowned upon to move from company to company, or this is the impression I have gotten in every job interview I have ever done. This makes perfect sense from a company perspective. However, as evidenced by these individuals, jumping from one company to another is an indication of a career on the rise. To be clear, moving from one company to another should result in increased responsibility. Assuming a good track record is being left behind, this is a testament to their adaptability. From what I observed, these 100 CEOs changed positions roughly every 2–4 years. Further, even if you don’t have any desire to make it to the C-suite, it has been shown that…
