Page 140 - The Way to the Top

Scott McWHINNIE

President and CEO of PEZ Candy, Inc.

Choose a single-minded career goal, stick to that goal throughout your
career, and stay within your chosen functional area and industry.

Selecting such a goal early in your working life will greatly ease the

process of making career decisions. Of course, one of the hardest parts of
this plan is to figure out in what field you will be the happiest—
accounting, marketing, finance, manufacturing—and therefore probably
where you will excel. This decision should be made either after some work
experience in which you naturally are exposed to a variety of careers, or

through business education, which can range all the way from reading
business books and newspapers to entering an MBA program.

Once you choose your field, I think that, in most cases, you will be more
successful in the long run if you stick to one functional area and related

industry. Of course you can move around, and in some cases this could be
successful; however, you can imagine a potential employer or headhunter
looking at a résumé and wondering why you couldn’t make a decision and
stick to it or why you weren’t smart enough to know what you wanted to

do in the first place. And it is likely that if, for example, you have been in
finance your entire career, you are probably better at it and can offer more
to the potential employer than someone who has moved around and never
really became proficient at anything. Make sure that all of the moves on

your résumé have a logical progression. Sometimes it is very tempting to
take a new position that is off the beaten track because it pays more, but it
will probably be better in the long run to take a job that represents
progression and really fits your previous career track, even at less money.