The final Youth Cafe of the semester was also one of the best we have had. Jad connected with the students wonderfully and regaled us all with funny anecdotes from his very non-traditional career. Jad is currently the SVP at 24/7 media where he works on creating data that makes content management more efficient.
But Jad’s beginnings were in a totally different field and place. Jad got his first job with Alcatel in Indonesia ! Very little work coupled with a beach lifestyle made this time of his life look right out of a movie. But eventual unrest because of not being able to do what her really wanted, a tech based job, made him leave this job. He started his own company, making CD roms. Apart from the rigors of running a start up, it was a pleasant experience for Jad, he had his name on a product which was reason to rejoice ! This was his 2nd first job as he likes to call it 
His 3rd first job led him to USA, where he wanted to work. He spent 3 months in the summer here, just networking, went back to France, did odd jobs on movie sets until his summer networking paid off and he got a call from Sony. This bit of his life has a lot of lessons for students. The power of personal networking is much stronger than impersonal web-based networking. It has tangible and reliable effects. Also doing something is always better than doing nothing. Jad says he is still in touch with the film crew he worked in and theres always something people can help each other out with.
Jad then spoke a bit about hiring practices. Jad says he looks for people who know about the company, are smart, their level of curiosity and also their background interests. According to Jad, school teaches you only enough to not be useless, but the real world is totally different. You tend to learn on the job at most jobs and hence the importance of being smart. Jad has a very simple philosophy about business, its all about creating products at a lower cost than the next guy, not about re-inventing the wheel.
Some Lessons:
- asserting what you want. know the company, offer them insight, lets them know you know what you’re doing.
- networking is important, works when its real and personal.
- 1st job doesn’t matter much. doing something thats completely different from what you think you want. tells you what you don’t wanna do.think of where you are and figure out how you can make it better. get a job, thats more important than not having one. make a list of what you want.
- you can pick up skills all around
We would like to thank Jad for making our Friday evenings much more pleasant than usual and for a very fun and informative talk. We look forward to seeing you around the Greenhouse because we love to have tinkerers and curious people to hang out. Also Tanuki thrives on it too !
