Elizabeth Griffin
Elizabeth Griffin is proof that an internship can turn into a job offer and that looming layoffs aren't the end of the world the end of the world. After her second year at the University of Michigan for a dual MBA and master's in Natural Resources program, she spent the summer working for the utility company National Grid. When she graduated in 2010, she moved to Syracuse, New York, to work for the same company. She took a voluntary severance package after a bad rate case led National Grid to lay off 20 percent of its non-union workforce in the United States.
"People were saying, 'It's like we're being decimated,' but decimation was when they killed one of of ten prisoners. They were killing two out of ten of us," she said. Ready to leave Syracuse, Elizabeth's voluntary severance package included four months of her salary. Her parents had recently moved to New York City, so she followed and began an aggressive job search.
"That was when I was like the networking queen. I would go to events all the time, multiple days a week, just call anybody who heard of anybody, really working the phones."
Listen to the interview to learn how Elizabeth's dedicated networking led to her analyst position with Con Ed, how living in Syracuse can help you pay off your student loans, and why she decided to transfer from the University of Southern California to Georgetown University as an undergrad.
Highlights
No grad school regrets: I don't look back on my graduate school experience and have regrets and wish I would've done things differently, and so I think that that's what matters.
Working for a utility company: One way to think about utility companies is that they're basically giant construction companies that also deliver energy, because you have to maintain this huge infrastructure, all the power lines (whether they're above ground or underground), all the gas infrastructure...you're always building new things. You're always fixing things.
The importance of work experience: Coming out of school as an undergraduate, I just don't think I really understood what the different rules of a company do...I think that's something that you can learn about in school to a certain extent, but until you're working in an office and really seeing how the machine runs, then it's going to be behind a veil."