I left Bacolod because I wanted to preserve my dream.
There is no doubt that all I want to do in life is to be a marketer. Push me to whichever company but there is nothing that I would want to do but build brands and be able to connect to the consumer. That was just a dream before. A reality now.
It was around SEVEN years ago, a few months after graduation from La Salle Bacolod that I had the opportunity to take a qualifying exam for the JG Summit Management Training Program. Where I am now is a product of my employment by the JG Group.
People call it destiny, fate, whatever. In my own simple way, I would like to believe what Coelho believes in -- the world conspiring with
what your heart desires.
I desired and prayed -- maybe prayed some more -- for Him to lead me in the path where I could become a very good marketing practitioner. I knew that my dream would not take place in Bacolod or wherever it was in Negros. There were just too little jobs and a few, if none, big companies to practice what I learned in college.
One day, there was some posting from the Job Placement Office for some big national company hiring fresh graduates. I almost did not take the exams because it was at friggin' eight in the morning and it will take me an hour to travel from my place to school. Then Marty, one of my batchmates, just urged me to go and insisted that I just should take the blasted exam because all of them will. And so, I went. And I was late.
I passed the exam and went on to final interview. A few weeks after, I got an email from Atty. Noli Del Rosario, then JGSHI HR Director that I was not chosen.
It was a very sad news to receive considering that all my pending applications seemed to have taken a hiatus. I emailed back and still thanked them for the time they spent to interview me and wished the whole company success in their endeavors.
Another week passed and I received a call again telling me that they are accepting me because someone backed out from their initial shortlist.
I have never been happier.
The JG Summit Management Training Program ran for eighteen months; six months for every business unit under the JG Summit Group of Companies.
My first rotation was in Universal Robina Corporation, in the Beverage Marketing Department -- where C2 Green Tea belonged -- in all its glory.
And of course the rest was history. I never got to finish my Management Training Program and pursued my first step towards the attainment of my dream -- to be a marketer. And what better opportunity would it have been than to be in the most popular product during that time
I learned a lot -- and I loved every eensy, weensy bit of it. I loved creating marketing plans, talking to the consumers, experimenting on new products. I couldn't have asked for more.
I spent some good two years in URC. But of course, there will always be crossroads. And the continuation of my journey happened to lead me to Canon where the path still continues for almost five years already.
In Canon...
... where everyone's family (almost the same as URC).
... where marketing is prestigious, notwithstanding how reluctantly I try to conform to it.
... where most of all, my marketing ideas come to life.
It's an amazing feeling -- to practice what you dreamt of. To make it a reality, inch by inch.
But the story does not end here.
I'm sure there will be more crossroads to come. I hope I take the one less traveled by.That I won't go for the easier one -- because of bandwagon, because of pressure or because it would be an easy way out.
I would take the road that would further bring me closer to the reason why I am here in the very first place.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long as I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth,
Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim;
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh,
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
xx,
Corporate Junkie (a repost from 2010)
