Blog
Have you noticed the recent LinkedIn trend of people using their past affiliation with well-known employers as their headline?
With this mindset, I am Isaak Tsalicoglou, “ex-Proceq, ex-Hilti, ex-ABB”. And yes, it’s factually true; I have worked for these organizations – but what does that headline really tell you, if anything?
In fact, associations with previous employers are proxies, mere indicators of possible competence related to what the market thinks about the brand one ex-brags about.
What if the company’s brand has soured in the meantime?
What about the sheer variability of competence across a company’s roster?
You at $COMPANY, that coworker of yours at $COMPANY who wasn’t pulling his weight, and that other coworker at $COMPANY who you were on the fence about: at some point in time, all three people will be in a position to “brag” about being “ex-$COMPANY”.
Ex-bragging about companies is a weak signal, especially the larger ex-$COMPANY is; the Central Limit Theorem means that the population of the company becomes increasingly similar to the larger population of the population pools it pulls employees from, as the headcount increases, of course with some skew due to imposing some (dubious) hiring criteria.
Mentioning your alma mater(s) is better than mentioning past employers; and, even so, in the end, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is your work’s quality and value, not in the places you studied at.
Turning the mirror on myself: yes, I’m proud of having studied at and graduated from ETH Zurich and IMD with excellent grades.
But it’s also true that I don’t hold the same high opinion of all of my classmates at either institution. And that’s not conceit, but the reality of human relationships and perception.
So… You, the ex-Google, ex-McKinsey, ex-this or ex-that: when the layoffs happen or the “up or out” decisions kick in, how many others with the same or similar self-labels are you un-differentiating yourself with?
