Matthew Warford

What is the one piece of career advice you wish someone gave you when you were younger?

My career would have progressed at a faster rate had I known the value of becoming more professional in regards to speaking with others. What I mean is I tend to be to the point, dislike acronyms, and find little value in exaggerated titles and terms. I never worked on being delicate since that was how I was trained, get to the point, and do it quickly. Acronyms to me may be considered more efficient, which by the way I highly value efficiency, unless you are in the presence of people not familiar with your industry or company so then you either have to explain the acronyms or even worse others do not ask and fail due to not knowing what they mean. In regards to exaggerated titles and terms I find them similar to acronyms where they could be beneficial if everyone knew what they were, but most times if broken down to basic levels everyone involved could quickly understand them. For example during my career at Sysco I held the position of Sales Services Manager for three years. For most of those three years and still to this day I sometimes have to explain what that job was. Come to find out the more standard title should have been Sales Operations Manager.</p> <p>I have found that speaking more professionally gives whomever I am talking with a feeling of validation about my knowledge and skills even though the validation might not be needed. I now tell others I wish I had become more polished earlier as it is sometimes hard to break old habits of being too pointed, ignoring people who rely on acronyms to sound important, and finding less value in people's knowledge and skills when they try to appear smarter by using big and complicated terms.

What is the biggest challenge you had to overcome to get to where you are now professionally? How did you overcome it?

Being a high school drop out who did not get his college degree has been the biggest career challenge I have had to face. Employers tend to look down on you in interviews and in many cases I have not been able to get interviews because of not having a college education. About six to seven years ago a trend at large employers started where they were making a college degree mandatory to be promoted to executive positions. While I have not completely overcome this challenge I make progress every day by being a hard worker, constant learner, and going out of my way to help others. I have often considered going back to college to get my degree even though I already have over 17 years of relevant experience.