Ms. Tobelmann begins her career, intending to be a corporate banker. But that changes quickly.
Completion of school, marriage, new home, new job — with all these life events occurring in a short period, I omitted the must-read career-finder book “What Color is Your Parachute?” by Richard N. Bolles from my to-do list. It was an unfortunate omission, for commercial lending just wasn’t my color. My strength was analytics – not relationship sales.
The career erratum became apparent in less than a year. Perhaps my colleagues noticed that they had a better rapport with Bruno than I. Or perhaps my professional mentor detected the sweat on my brow when we met at our periodic lunch meetings and he asked how things were going. Or then again, perhaps it was that I seemed to enjoy being holed up in my cubicle more so than shadowing a commercial lender on a company call.
My career with National City changed one summer day in 1988. The manager who supervised the trainees summoned me to her office on a late Friday afternoon. I assumed the worst. Over the past year I had seen several of my trainee colleagues fired this way: end of day call to office, termination in the presence of personnel manager, clearing of desk, and so forth. On Monday morning, that person’s name was like Lord Valdemort’s in “Harry Potter”: the name that should not be spoken. It was with this fear of the worst that I entered my manager’s office:
“Hi Sandra, you wanted to see me?” I asked while trying to hide my trepidation. I looked around; the head of personnel was not present.
“Yes, Diane, please sit down.” I couldn’t tell if that was a smile on her face or a grimace.
My cheeks were warming. Suddenly, visions of donuts at Amy Joy Donuts, a favorite Cleveland hangout of mine, permeated my mind. Freshly-baked donuts were my comfort food as well as the temperature of my cheeks at that point; and Amy Joy would openly welcome me when this ordeal was over — as long as I could get to the store by six.
My cheeks were no doubt a rosy red. My composure, or lack thereof, was totally exposed. “At least,” I thought bravely, “I’m not crying.”
Sandra continued, “I wanted to make you aware of a job opportunity in Strategic Planning.”
What a welcome left-field response! My donut visions and cheek color concurrently disappeared.
Sandra explained the attributes of the job, which fit my analytic personality well. National City was hungry to expand its product-offerings and its geographic footprint. As an analyst, I would be brainstorming ideas, sifting through the realistic ones, and then assessing their financial impact to the bank. It was an exciting opportunity to which I embraced.
Gushing thank-you’s followed. I returned home without an Amy Joy stop.
During my three years there, I analyzed financial statements, created earnings forecasts and leveraged those years of college finance classes to calculate a company’s selling value. I met really smart investment bankers — which must sound like an oxymoron now – who taught me even more about assessing a company’s value. And I met Maurice.
