Doing the Right Thing in Your Career Always Pays Dividends

It was a rainy, windy, freezing cold afternoon in Melbourne. I was on my way to visit an old friend. While the label I use now is ‘friend,’ it wasn’t always the case. We worked together in a former life and things got ugly. I was young, dumb and thought that no one could beat me in sales.

Every morning I would tell him how great at sales I was based on the sales board. Until one day, he’d had enough. He told me that if I kept talking down to him, he was reporting me to HR. I was shocked and simultaneously in complete awe of him during that confrontation. The fact he would have the guts to call me out and in the process teach me a valuable lesson meant the world to me — at the time, I wasn’t fully aware of the value of the lesson.

Walking to the agreed meeting place, I thought about him and how we had bonded. A few years prior, he was attempting to get into a few prestigious American Universities and all he needed to complete the application form was a reference from his former employer. His two managers from that company refused to write him a reference.

In a sheer last minute panic, after trying every avenue, he reached out to me. He asked if I could help convince these two former managers to give him the reference. With no questions asked, I rang each of the managers and pleaded with them to give him the reference. Their response? “We don’t have time.”

After digging a little further, it turns out that both managers thought his performance and work at the company were excellent, but they still were not willing to help him.

I rang him back with an idea:

“What if I was your reference instead? I mean I was your mentor when you first joined and I can vouch for how excellent you were at your job.”

In his reply, you could hear the emotion in his voice. He accepted my offer to help. During this period of my career, I was incredibly time poor and while I offered to help, to an outsider, there seemed as though there wasn’t much point. As we got into the process, I realized that it wasn’t a simple phone call or email with a recommendation.

The universities required me to write a lengthy letter and answer a whole series of questions. Basically, I had to write an essay on my former colleague, which I felt completely unqualified to write. There was no option to turn him down, though, because I was his last option.

Late one afternoon, we sat in an empty meeting room at my workplace and began writing the essay. All was going smoothly until I came across a question that asked me to talk about a confrontation or issue that we faced together. The only example I could think of was the one where he had threatened to take me to HR, and we’d both become friends in the process because of him having the tough conversation with me.

I answered the question, without needing to exaggerate or make up stories because the truth was, he was the real deal. Once my essay was written, I thought that my job was over and my friend said I did a really good job and was a natural.

My job wasn’t over. I had to coach his second reference in how to respond effectively to the questions the university asked and present the responses in an essay format. After a week of going through this process, both references were ready along with the rest of the application. My friend submitted it and we waited anxiously to find out the result.

His top two choices of universities were a decline. 

His third choice said yes and he was over the moon.

As a result, he could now leave Australia, go to his dream university, do his study and do something he had always dreamt of. When he rang his father with the news, he was also over the moon. His dad was so proud of him.

Walking to the meeting place where my friend was waiting, to see him after he completed his study overseas after all these years since the original application, was nerve-racking.

Since I’d helped him with his university application, he’d got married, had a baby, finished his study, done an internship and become an adult.

As I crossed the street, he yelled out, “Over here mate.”

I shook his hand and was glad to see him. We walked together and found a local cafe to escape the rain. Inside the cafe, he shared with me many stories about what it was like to study and work in a new industry that he was in love with. The conversation quickly turned to what was happening with me.

At this stage in my life, my career was in a bit of a mess. I explained the last few months and some of the challenges that were had. He was asking me about what was next and I described to him what my goals were and what area I’d like to pivot my career to. In this same conversation, I mentioned a few names of companies I was chatting to. One such name stuck out to him.

It turns out one of his friends worked there and could help me understand what a career at this company might look like without all the polish of a website, beautifully crafted vision, pictures of staff having the time of their life, and job descriptions that don’t tell the full story.

Without having to ask, he insisted on introducing me to his friend and it ended up being the single most important step in my quest to change career.

The reason he wanted to help me was that I had helped him all those years ago with his university application and never asked for anything in return. He wanted to pay it forward and the difference he made meant so much more to me at that time in my life than he would ever know.

Doing the right thing always pays dividends.

Unlike this particular story, sometimes those dividends happen in secret, and can mistakenly be described as good karma.

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