Worried about getting a job?

It all started during investment banking recruitment week earlier this semester. Suit-wearing, resume-toting, anxiously self-important interviewees appeared all over campus. An outsider might have suspected a change in dress code.

I was among the undergraduates trying to explain my decision not to apply for interviews without sounding lazy or worse, unqualified. I felt as though every conversation revolved around post-college plans. It was then that panic set in: was I the only one who hadn't yet found my passion? Was I unrealistically confident that I would find a career that I would love? What could I do with an anthropology degree anyway?

At the annual Princeton Women in Leadership Conference dinner at the end of that week, in a room full of successful alumnae and some fellow undergraduates, I saw a unique opportunity to exchange war stories. I cautiously raised the topic of how one goes about realizing one's career potential after Princeton. The alumnae at my table were immediately engaged and eager to share their stories. Among them was this week's interviewee, Karen Magee '83.

These alumna's diverse experiences, choices and lucky breaks convinced me that most careers are episodic rather than linear and that the vast majority of people do not have it all figured out by 22. I hope to use this biweekly column to give students the opportunity to learn from career successes and missteps of alums who have gone before them.

Magee was an ORFE major who wrote her senior thesis on magazine renewal rates and has an MBA from the Wharton School. For the past five years, she has served as senior vice president of strategic planning for Time Inc. and Time Warner. She is also a member of the University Board of Trustees and chairs the Princeton Women in Leadership Initiative. She sits on the board of PlanetOut, Inc. and was co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's board of directors. Day: When you were in our shoes as an undergraduate, how did you visualize the career opportunities before you?

Magee: I was pretty directed by my junior year. I arrived at Princeton thinking I was going to be an astronaut. I was going to major in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and I was interested in developing artificial living space systems. There was a famous professor at Princeton then, Gerard O'Neil, who had written books on the subject. As I made my way through my first year at Princeton, I realized that I was not going to graduate in the top of my class in the engineering school. I talked to Professor O'Neil who explained that given governmental constraints, the space program was going to be more about defense than exploration in the coming years. So I realized that my visions of a Star Trek-like career in aerospace engineering was unlikely to come to fruition. I decided that I was going to be a business person. I stayed in the engineering school and switched into what is now called the Operations Research and Financial Engineering program. I believed that an engineering education would provide great experience in defining and solving problems, and the ORFE program was an excellent bridge to the business world.

During my sophomore year, I applied to a gazillion different summer internships in business. I wasn't focused. I couldn't get a summer job because they usually don't hire people for business internships when you're that young. Fortuitously, my mom ran into an old college boyfriend in Penn Station who said, "Karen can come work for my company for the summer." It was a magazine publishing company. I got a job "fact checking" scientific articles. Being a Princeton person in the sciences they said, "well, she must be able to write too". That summer, though I was doing an editorial job, I really fell in love with magazine publishing — the product, the kinds of people associated with it and the various roles they played. I spent time with people at the company who said that, given what I was studying, my skill set would be very valuable in the circulation area of the business, which involves marketing magazines to consumers. During my junior year, I went out looking for a job in a circulation department. I got a summer internship with Times Mirror Magazines in their circulation department and got them to agree to let me use their data to write my senior thesis on forecasting renewal rates. AD: Was that the major impetus behind your choice to spend your career in magazine publishing?

KM: Yes. I had my thesis on my resume and two summers of job experience in magazine publishing by the time I was applying for a full time position.

Career Services was not particularly well equipped to help somebody who wanted to get into the business side of publishing — they only had editorial internship programs. So I sat in the U-Store in front of the newsstand and copied down the magazine presidents' names from their mastheads. I just wrote to everybody. I interviewed at Time Inc., Newsweek and others, but my first job was with Esquire.

I thought I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial, and Esquire hired me to bring personal computers to their workplace. When I started working, PC's and spreadsheet programs were just beginning to used in business. I was hired to work with their fulfillment company to set up personal computers for the first time in their circulation department. I took that job over jobs that I was offered in larger companies because I was worried about the bureaucracy of a big company. But Time Inc. kept calling me, and they finally sent over a guy — also a Princeton engineer, about four years older than I – to take me to lunch. He persuaded me to move over to Time Inc.. AD: What made you go to business school subsequently?

KM: I went while working at People Magazine – the company paid for it. I did it because the person that I worked for said that he thought it would be important that I had an MBA as my career progressed. Because much of the Operations Research program overlaps with business school, it was not something that I was thinking about. In retrospect it was a really good decision. The way I did it, while I was working, although extremely grueling, also didn't take me out of the workforce for a couple of years. AD: That sounds difficult.

KM: It was! You have to say to your friends and family, "I'll see you in two years", because you do a full-time M.B.A. program on the weekend while you have a full-time job during the week. But I'm still incredibly close to my study group from Wharton more than fifteen years later. Some of them are still amongst my best friends. AD: Do you feel that your career path was fairly linear?

KM: I might be a little unusual in that I got direction by the middle of college, but it was a lucky break. If my mom hadn't run into her old boyfriend in a coffee shop in Penn Station, who knows what I'd be doing today? AD: What warnings would you give undergraduates as they enter the "real world"?

KM: It is possible to worry too much about your career and the next step. Careers are like life: they take crazy twists and turns. It is important to find a job that you enjoy and that leverages the things that you're good at doing. You spend a lot of time working, and you will do well at the things that you like to do. Sometimes I hear young people talk about going into investment banking because they think they can make a lot of money as bankers. Investment banking is great for some people, but you need to choose it for the right reasons. I think it's really important to think about what you enjoy doing. If you're a person who likes interacting with other people or you really like to write or be creative, make sure you're thinking about jobs that allow you to do those things.

Once you're working, you should focus on doing your best. You get promoted or you get new opportunities because you're producing results. As an executive, there's nothing that makes me crazier than people who come in and say to me, "How do I get promoted?" I just want to say to them: "Go to your desk, do your best, and good things will happen." I think it is really all about focusing on producing results.

That said, it is also important to have good networks because networks create opportunities. Get involved in many activities, and reach out to people who are senior to you in your organization. It is not about clawing your way ahead, but about asking, "How can I learn more about what you do and what makes you successful?" Some argue that those who network like crazy and have a lot of good connections get ahead, and others think you just have to produce, produce and produce to get ahead. I think you have to have a good balance of both of those things. AD: What do you look for in somebody that you might hire?

KM: First I look for raw intelligence. I always like to hire really smart people. I think that's more important than specific experience. But of course relevant skills are necessary too. In many of my hires I have sought people with strong quantitative skills. I look for people with good interpersonal skills, who are comfortable in their skin but not obnoxiously confident. Then I look for a track record of leadership roles and really getting things done. At different points in your career those things might demonstrate themselves in different ways.

If I'm looking at graduates just out of college, I'll examine their extracurricular activities and leadership roles there, and then look for some passion about the prospective job. If somebody comes into my office and they haven't done anything related to magazines and media, I'm a little suspicious. I'll be looking for them to have written for a college magazine or newspaper or for them to have been business manager at a publication. There has to be something that says to me that they're sincerely interested in my industry. It doesn't necessarily have to be that they've had an internship, but there must be reasons that make it logical that this person is talking to me. I've hired a lot of senior people out of investment banking and management consulting. For them the question might be, "Did you have media companies as clients and did you fall in love with the business that way?" AD: Beyond your successful career, what are the most important parts of your post-Princeton life?

KM: My relationship has been extremely important to me. I have a partner of almost 21 years. Always making time for each other is important. Next, the volunteer service opportunities that I've been involved in: the Princeton Board for one, and before that I was chairman of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. It was nice to get reengaged with Princeton and to leverage my career skills. I've been involved with the Princeton Women's Center and the Princeton Women's Network in New York. I was also the chair of GLAAD for four years. Whether it's GLAAD or Princeton, I've met so many people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. It is key to networking. I've learned from colleagues and made friends. By working with nonprofits, you get to take on leadership roles earlier than than you might in your professional career. I really encourage people to get involved with nonprofits because you're not only doing good for the world, you do good for yourself too. AD: What other advice would you give to undergraduates about post-Princeton life?

KM: Beyond focusing on doing a good job and networking, you have to maintain some balance in your life in terms of your other interests and making time to see your friends. I think most Princeton students are good at balancing lots of commitments, but a lot of people look at me and say, "Where do you find time to do all of these things?" I sleep six or seven hours a day, which is a lot. It's just about being organized. Somehow you miraculously find time for the things you love. They all end up being interconnected somehow and investing time in one thing helps somewhere else. Time Warner is a company that's very invested in service, and the people that I've worked for have never minded my taking time out of the office for board activities. Some of it is about making sure that you're in a culture that holds similar values to yours. Life is too short to swim upstream. Not to say that work isn't hard, but you want to set yourself up for success.