Tag Archives: Alex Douzet

TheLadders Q1 Metrics: Taking 2013 By Storm



TheLadders is the leading job-matching service for professionals.  As a privately owned company, we do not disclose our financials. However, because we are constantly asked about our growth and performance by our outside stakeholders, we have decided to share with the outside world – for the first time — selected company metrics on a quarterly basis.

First Quarter 2013 Highlights:

  • Jobs Posted by an Employer: In the first quarter of 2013, we have seen the number of jobs posted by employers on our site increase 116% year-over-year and 21% quarter-over-quarter. Jobs postings soared in Q4 2012 with our move to a free search and post model.
  • Targeted Hiring Alerts (THA): THA are jobs sent via an alert from employers to a select group of professionals that matches the requirements of that specific job. This metric represents growth in both jobs and candidates. Since revamping that product in Q4 2012, we have experienced explosive growth.  THA have increased by 368% year-over-year and 47% quarter-over-quarter.
  • Number of Employers using TheLadders to find the best candidates has increased 86% year-over-year and 21% quarter-over-quarter.

First Quarter Benchmark:

  • At TheLadders, we serve the entire market of career-driven professionals, but today, we are best known for helping candidates and employers find and fill jobs that are $80K and above.  At this salary level, we mostly compete with LinkedIn. Our benchmark analysis highlights our performance vs. LinkedIn Corporate Solutions Customers.

Strategic Announcement:

  • With the anticipated launch of our native iPhone app for professionals, we expected to release data in Q3 about our app downloads and, later, about our monthly mobile active users.

 Alex Douzet is CEO and Co-Founder of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

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JobMobile New York



After many weeks of careful planning, my colleagues and I were proud to launch our inaugural JobMobile event in New York City last night. This was the first in a series of nationwide events that brought together the talent acquisition community to discuss major innovations and strategies in mobile recruitment. It also served as a festive platform for us to honor the top 1% of recruiting professionals in New York, better known as TheLadders ELITE.

Our CEO and Co-founder, Alex Douzet, gave a keynote presentation on the ever-increasing demand for mobile solutions across a broad spectrum of sectors, including recruitment. It’s estimated that within the next twelve months, employers can expect 50% of their web traffic to come from mobile devices. This shift in our businesses creates many opportunities, but also comes with its challenges.

Employers cannot simply transform their companies’ web experience to an iPhone screen. Mobile requires an intuitive design and user experience that brings convenience to the job seeker with functions like “one-click apply.” With that in mind, Alex discussed TheLadders’ latest projects, including our mobile-responsive site redesign for job seekers; the introduction of our proprietary, competitive-analysis tool, TheLadders Scout; and our impending mobile app that will allow job seekers to find and apply to the right job on the go.

I had the honor of moderating a diverse panel discussion featuring industry thought-leaders Karen Miller, vice president of people for Seamless; Jack Kelly, managing director and co-founder of the Compliance Search Group; Karsten Vagner, director of people for ZocDoc; and Melissa Enbar, director of recruiting for Birchbox.

Our goal was to have an honest conversation about mobile recruitment and discuss what’s working for their organizations and what challenges remain. This group did not disappoint! Not only did they share their best practices and common gripes, but they also talked about the differences in their approaches. For instance, corporate recruiters look for synergies between their product and marketing teams to build a mobile recruitment strategy that fits their brand and shows off their corporate culture; whereas agency recruiters tend to utilize mobile and social in different ways to attract the right type of candidates to suit their clients’ needs.

What I learned from this lively conversation is that every professional interprets mobile recruitment differently to suit their business needs. From the utilization of social media, to developing mobile-optimized career sites and mobile apps, to incorporating Skype and texting into the interview process, organizations can find large and small ways to attract the right candidate pool.

After the panel discussion, TheLadders Director of Client Relations, Employer Marketing & Sales, Thomas Murphy, honored TheLadders ELITE and presented them with their awards and ELITE jackets (I have to admit I’m jealous – those jackets are great)!

The night ended with cocktails and conversations. As always, it was a pleasure to meet so many great people and get a chance to chat. I want to thank everyone who was able to attend and give a special shout-out to our wonderful panelists for their participation. If you’re a recruiting professional who lives in Chicago, San Francisco, or Atlanta, keep your eyes peeled – we’re coming to your town soon!

Amanda Augustine is the Job Search Expert for TheLadders, the online job-matching service for career-driven professionals. She is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC) and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) who provides job search and career guidance for professionals looking to make their next career move. Have a question for Amanda? Submit your question here for a chance to have it answered in her weekly column, and be sure to follow @JobSearchAmanda on Twitter and “Like” her on Facebook for up-to-the-minute job-search advice.

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A Look Back at NYU…Towards the Future



Hot on the heels of attending TED2013 in Long Beach, CA, I flew back last weekend to deliver a “Founder Talk” at the 2nd Annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival, a two-day event to promote and support entrepreneurship across the University. As a proud NYU alumnus, I was invited to be a keynote speaker to share my stories of success, along with the challenges overcome along the way, with the rest of the NYU community.

Additional presenters included founders such as Dan Porter of OMGPOP and Paul Berry of RebelMouse, as well as Rachel Sterne Haot, Chief Digital Officer to Mayor Bloomberg’s administration and the City of New York. She spoke about various initiatives underway in New York to cultivate local technology talent for the city’s innovative community. Fellow NYU alumnus Jack Dorsey, founder & CEO of Square and creator of Twitter, made his way back to New York University for a fireside chat with Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures.

You can follow the conversation about the NYUEF on Twitter here.

Tom Post, Managing Editor at Forbes, interviewed me on stage for almost an hour, before taking questions from the audience. Below is the agenda of topics I discussed with Tom:

  • The Road Towards Entrepreneurship: From Golden Arches to CEO
  • TheLadders is Born to Address an Unmet Need
  • The Business Model Comes Full Circle
  • A Year of Fine Tuning
  • Re-envisioning TheLadders with a Mobile-first Lens

You can watch the entire keynote presentation here.

I had a great time at the NYU Entrepreneurs Festival, and very few other reasons would incentivize me to cut short my stay at TED besides the opportunity to speak at my alma mater. I look forward to doing it again.

Alex Douzet is CEO and Co-Founder of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

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My Week at TED2013



Last week, I flew to the TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in Long Beach, CA, my fourth visit. As CEO & co-founder of TheLadders, I attended TED as a guest, rather than a speaker, which is the only show I attend in this more passive role. Although TED is an excellent platform for networking, the main reason I attended the conference was to hear about and learn from outstanding presenters.

Because most of the TED speakers do not work directly in my industry, the immediate implementation of my learnings from there are not obvious. However, there are some amazing moments when I absorb so much from these speakers that it is a humbling experience, demonstrating that a captive audience can learn from practically anyone. Whether a scientist, street-musician, artist, fashion mogul, serial entrepreneur, or a high-school graduate, these categories of “teachers” commonly demonstrate that their ideas are worth sharing. Additionally, I returned home with the feeling that challenges such as climate change, poverty, or job creation can, indeed, be solved. As human beings, if we have a purpose and put our minds to the task, we can be incredibly resourceful and creative.

Bono projects extreme poverty rate of zero by 2030

I highly recommend these three TEDTalks once they become available online:

1. Taylor Wilson, teenage nuclear scientist: Solving the world’s energy crisis

At 14 years old, from his garage, Taylor Wilson became the youngest person to achieve fusion with a reactor. Now, he wants to solve the world’s energy crisis with a safe nuclear fusion reactor. With a $100,000 grant from PayPal’s Peter Thiel, Taylor is skipping college to start a company that will manufacture a safe, non-replenishable fusion reactor (at least for 30 years) that either can be buried or sent to space. His newly designed reactor can produce 10-times the power of a traditional nuclear plant, with the intent of being commercialized in three to five years.

2. Ron Finley, South Central’s renegade gardener: “Plant some shit”

Ron Finley grows a nourishing food culture in South Central LA’s food desert by planting the seeds and tools for healthy eating. He is a true urban farming hero who thinks outside of the box, and could not help but notice what was going on in his own backyard: drive-throughs and drive–bys, both contributing to the area’s high diabetes rate. Ron’s vision started with the curbside garden where he grows fruit and vegetables. When the city tried to shut him down, his fight led to a movement that provides nourishment, education, and health. Additionally, his plans for a green café will create jobs in his poverty-stricken neighborhood.

3. Phil Hansen, stroke-of-genius artist: Embrace the shake

As an art student, Phil Hansen developed an artistic style for extreme pointillism that ultimately caused a tremor in his hand and permanent nerve damage. Eventually, he dropped out of school and stopped creating art until a neurologist suggested he “embrace the shake.” This recommendation propelled Phil on a journey to invent a new approach to making art by embracing his personal limitations. However, suddenly faced with too many choices and resources at his disposal, Phil lost his creativity. To find it again, he challenged himself to create art, only using materials that cost less than $1.00. Phil taught me the biggest lesson from my week at TED:  “I had to be limited to become limitless.”

These are just a few examples of the fantastic TEDTalks during my week, epitomized by the following quote from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

Alex Douzet is CEO and Co-Founder of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development

 

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CEO Factory or Just Lucky



The backbone of every high-growth company is its people. In the knowledge economy, a strong team is the foundation for success and top talent is the driving force. As Jim Collins said in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, “Get the right people on the bus.”

At TheLadders, we will be celebrating our 10-year anniversary this summer. For the past decade, we have hired more than 500 people, constantly focusing on getting the “right person on the bus,” and constantly ensuring that they are sitting in the right seat on that bus. We always strive to hire the best and get the most from our staff. Coaching, just like in sports, is the key to empowering employees to reach above-and-beyond. Just as with Sir Roger Bannister, we want TheLadders to break the four-minute mile; achieve what they might perceive to be unachievable.

Not surprisingly, TheLadders alumni network in New York City is strong and vibrant. When we ask them what they miss most about working at TheLadders (besides Bagel Friday!), they say it is the people. Over and over, we hear from our current and former employees that what makes the difference are the incredible colleagues they have worked with or are working with.

At TheLadders, we do not expect our staff to work here forever. Eventually, we know that people will leave. Furthermore, we know that as much as we enjoy promoting from within, we cannot possibly promote every great hire to a Vice President or C-level position. That said, one measure of our success is to assess where our alumni end up, post-employment with us. It is always a great sign when one of them lands a top job. That is the way that Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, looked at his company. In the 90s, when a company needed a loan, it went to a bank. When a company needed a CEO, it went to General Electric, which minted business leaders the way that West Point mints generals.

Last week, I was thrilled to read in All Things Digital that Ware Sykes, TheLadders’ former VP of Sales & Services, became the CEO for NoWait, the OpenTable for restaurants that don’t take reservations. Ware joined TheLadders in 2006 as an MBA intern from Columbia Business School and worked his way up the executive rank.

Last month, when I heard that Jake Levine, General Manager at Digg, made Forbes’ iconic “30 under 30” list, I tweeted and posted the following link: http://onforb.es/Ws5iRZ. Prior to joining Betaworks/Digg, Jake did strategy work at TheLadders, directly reporting to TheLadders’ Founder Marc Cenedella and me.

Here are several other alumni who became CEOs and entrepreneurs after working with us:

  • Derek Pilcher, Managing Director and owner, TheLadders.co.uk
  • David Carvajal, Founder and CEO, Dave Partners, LLC
  • Michael McCurdy, Co-founder and CEO, TestingMom.com
  • Thilo Semmelbauer, President and COO, Shutterstock
  • Sheila Lirio Marcelo, Founder and CEO, Care.com

However, not everyone wants to be a CEO. We also have alumni who are function leaders at other successful New York City tech firms:

  • Alain Benzaken was Vice President of Technology at TheLadders for five years. He is now the Senior Director of Software Engineering at Buddy Media Salesforce.
  • Ofir Shalom was Vice President of Engineering at TheLadders for five years. He is now the CTO at Group Commerce.
  • Angela Romano Kuo started as a recruiter with TheLadders, working seven years before becoming Vice President of Human Resources. She now is the Vice President of Human Resources at SecondMarket, Inc.
  • Leslie Semegran started as a marketing manager at TheLadders in 2005 before working her way up to Vice President of Marketing and Engagement, reporting directly to me. She is now Vice President of Marketing at Care.com.

As previously mentioned, TheLadders also proudly promotes from within. For instance, I promoted two leaders to the executive rank, just last month:

  • Kyri Sarantakos was promoted to Vice President of Engineering at TheLadders. He joined the company in 2005 as a software engineer. During the past seven years, he has moved up the ranks to become a manager of core architecture and development, an application architect, and, most recently, a principal software architect.
  • Selena Hadzibabic was promoted to Director of Product and UX at TheLadders. After graduating from Dartmouth College, she joined the company in 2006 as a junior community associate, an entry-level position. Subsequently, she was promoted to product manager in our U.S. operation, and then became the sole product lead for two years in our former UK operation, where she was based in London before returning to New York in 2011.

If you are a tech professional in New York City and are looking for your next challenge to enhance your skills and your career, join TheLadders! Why?

You may say: “My friend is starting a company and I can be the VP of Technology and get a lot of options.”

Yes, that may be true, but is your friend giving you the leadership training necessary to succeed in that job? Will you be out of a job in six to 12 months because the company did not raise sufficient capital or you do not possess the skills required to lead and drive performance from a team? You will learn that skills on the job at TheLadders.

You also may say: “I have a generous cash offer from Amazon, Google, or Facebook.”

What is going to make you successful are the people you work with, the challenges you will face, the opportunity you have to influence the strategy, and your access to leadership. As a software engineer in New York working for Amazon, Google, or Facebook, you may never be exposed to Jeff, Larry, or Marc. At TheLadders, you will get frequent exposure to the CEO. At TheLadders, we won’t give you the answer to a problem. We will give you a problem statement and will ask you to determine the answers that fulfill our shared vision.

At TheLadders, your last interview will be with me, the CEO. You will hear directly from me that during the next four years of your life, you will experience tremendous professional growth. That is a guarantee that TheLadders offers. Your experience with us will take your career to the next level.

So, is TheLadders a CEO factory or are we just lucky? You be the judge.

Alex Douzet is CEO and Co-Founder of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development

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TheLadders Announces New Mobile Products at Job Central



What a day!

I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak at Job Central, Presented by TheLadders. The event, which was held in Grand Central Terminal’s beautiful Vanderbilt Hall, brought together thousands of professionals to network and gain valuable advice from dozens of career experts in the Tri-State Area.

As many of you know, I normally provide job-search advice through my weekly column on The Career Chronicles, and on Twitter and Facebook. So, it’s always a great privilege when I get the chance meet professionals face-to-face and answer their questions.

While I presented on one side of Vanderbilt Hall, the other side was occupied by a phenomenal speaker series. Among the industry experts was our CEO & Co-founder Alex Douzet, who announced exciting updates to TheLadders’ suite of products. Not only is TheLadders now device-agnostic, meaning it can be viewed from a computer or any mobile device, job seekers on TheLadders will soon be able to size up their competition using “TheLadders Scout.” Available only to Premium members, TheLadders Scout will provide job seekers with competitive information about anonymous fellow candidates in five categories:

  1. Years of experience
  2. Education level
  3. Areas of expertise
  4. Current title
  5. Current salary

With all the advances in technology, the recruiting process has become more mobile, competitive and cluttered. It’s TheLadders’ goal to give job seekers the tools they need to target their search and find their perfect match.

Thank you to everyone who made it to Job Central yesterday. For those of you who couldn’t make it, please visit www.theladders.com/jobcentral to see what you missed.

Amanda Augustine is the Job Search Expert for TheLadders, the online job-matching service for career-driven professionals. She is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC) and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) who provides job search and career guidance for professionals looking to make their next career move. Have a question for Amanda? Submit your question here for a chance to have it answered in her weekly column, and be sure to follow @JobSearchAmanda on Twitter and “Like” her on Facebook for up-to-the-minute job-search advice.

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CEO and Master Chef



If you’ve been following TheLadders Blog, you know that we are a company driven by entrepreneurialism, innovation, creativity, and food! From bake sales benefiting City Harvest to catered lunches helping local downtown restaurants plagued by Hurricane Sandy, our company knows that fueling the mind starts with a full stomach.

However, I was unprepared for what greeted me this morning. Sure, yesterday we received an email alerting us that we generously would be having breakfast – delicious made-to-order crepes:

  • Meat Crepe (ham, Swiss, tomato & herbs)
  • Vegetarian Crepe (Swiss, greens, walnuts, & Roquefort cheese)
  • Sweet Crepes
    • Nutella, strawberry & banana
    • strawberry, balsamic reduction & raspberry jam

Sigh. Decisions, decisions.

So, along with more than 100 of my colleagues, we showed up at 9AM sharp to place our orders and see who this mystery chef was.

You can imagine my surprise when I was greeted by our CEO, Alex Douzet, wearing an apron and swinging a spatula. He’s French and he’s full of surprises…I should have known better.

With two sous chefs, his eight year-old twin daughters Giselle and Gabriella, he swirled, cooked, flipped, and garnished crepes for the whole company for two hours.

Here’s what my colleagues at TheLadders had to say:

Who knew that the “C” in CEO could stand for cook? It was the perfect kick-off to a pre-holiday weekend, and just another way that TheLadders is keeping us on-our-toes…and fueled for success.

Happy Holidays!

Lisa Hagendorf is the Vice President of Public Relations for TheLadders where she is a huge ambassador of the brand in the office. At the gym. And on the street. She just can’t stop talking about TheLadders. Ever.

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Apple, Zappos and Rock’n’ Roll



Last week, I visited a few of our partners in Silicon Valley. First, I met with the recruiting team at Apple where we discussed trends in the online-recruiting industry, the impact of mobile disruption on recruiting, and TheLadders’ 2013 product roadmap.  As my next meeting, with Zappos in Henderson, NV, wasn’t until a few days later, I decided to spend the weekend in nearby Las Vegas and participate in the 26.2-mile “Strip at Night” Zappos.com Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon.

Despite running several marathons around the world, I found this event unique because the race started in the afternoon and finished at night in front of The Mirage Hotel in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip. Given the high altitude and dry heat, it was a challenging competition. Below is a picture of me at the start line.

The following day, I met with the recruiting team from Zappos, which is well-known for giving private tours of their headquarters to anyone interested in their culture and operations. I had heard about the tour after reading Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness.

In many ways, Zappos offers the typical culture of a start-up: young, informal, and with an open-plan. No one in the flat organization has an office, and food and drinks are free. Not surprisingly, you can find these attributes among many tech start-ups in both Silicon Valley or in New York City.

However, here is what I found to be most unusual about Zappos:

1. Nearly 3½ years after being acquired by Amazon, Zappos still operates fairly independently of its owner. In 2013, Amazon will take over the fulfillment and warehousing of Zappos’ merchandise in Kentucky, near the UPS hub. That is the only influence Amazon exercised over Zappos.

2. The Executive Corner is called the “Monkey Row.”  See below.

3. If you want the inside scoop on Zappos’ culture, you must read its annual culture book, which is produced by Zappos’ employees. The content, except for typos and spelling errors, is unedited, providing the public an opportunity to read about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

4. There is no standard, annual, base-salary increase for just “being there.” Learning, development, and self-improvement are highly encouraged, and acquiring news skills is the path to increasing your compensation. For example, their royalty program empowers employees, with the help of a full-time life coach, to “Get Off Your Butt” and go through a personal growth experience via a professional or personal challenge.

Once employees have achieved their goals, they get to be part of the “Goal Club Wall” in the company’s main staircase:

5. They do not track many KPIs. Their call center is not data-driven. They do not measure talk time or drop rate. In fact, there is little focus on profit, shockingly for a company that generated more than $1B in annual sales.

6. Finally, CEO Tony Hsieh’s number-one concern is employee satisfaction and improving his employees’ happiness.

Regardless if you agree with the Zappos approach, it is definitively a unique culture that is not for everyone. So, if you plan to work there, get ready to drink the Zappos “Kool-Aid.” But, what cannot be argued is the fact that they have built a phenomenally successful e-commerce operation that produces value for its stakeholders and its ecosystem.

Alex Douzet is CEO and Co-Founder of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development

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Rebuilding Together



It’s hard to believe that it’s only been two weeks since I reported on Hurricane Sandy’s impact to TheLadders office in downtown Manhattan. Since then, we’ve relatively returned to business as usual, but we fully realize that many people and businesses are still suffering from Sandy’s devastation.

I feel a deep sense of compassion for the loss of homes and, most tragically, lives. As a business owner and entrepreneur, I am empathetic for other business owners who have experienced damage from the storm.

I thought long and hard about what our company could possibly do to help with hurricane-relief efforts. We are an online job-matching service for career-driven professionals – how can we leverage our expertise to best assist job seekers affected by the hurricane? After some discussion with my talented and supportive team, we came up with the following plan:

  • Donate $300,000 worth of Premium job-search services to those impacted by the hurricane
  • Donate $10,000 to Hurricane Sandy relief efforts for those who have been heavily impacted and cannot take advantage of the above benefits
  • Support our neighborhood restaurants that were affected by the hurricane by fueling TheLadders’ hard-working employees with free lunch until Thanksgiving

Hurricane Sandy left a path of destruction in its wake, impacting Americans all along the East Coast. The responsibility of rebuilding and helping those in need is one that is shared among everyone. Skip your morning coffee and donate to the American Red Cross. Clean out your closet and put a pile of clothes together for those who have lost everything. Volunteer to distribute emergency-relief supplies to affected families. If everyone chips in, just a little bit, we can rebuild together.

Alex Douzet is CEO and Co-Founder of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

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Coming to America



Last Thursday, I spent two days in Raleigh, NC, at the Internet Summit 2012 where I spoke on two panels: “Designing and Optimizing for Multiple Screens” and “Internet Entrepreneurship.”

The most exciting part of my trip was that it was the first time in 20 years that I returned to the “scene of the crime.” This is a story that very few people know about me – one that took place long before my time as COO and Co-founder of TheLadders.

In 1993, I was a freshman at the University of Colmar, in Alsace, France, studying economics and business. I quickly realized that as a Frenchman preparing for a career in business, I had to speak English fluently if I wanted to be successful. Since I am not the type of person who can master a foreign language via classroom study alone, I engineered a bold move. I decided that I was going to spend the summer working in the United States and, therefore, learn English there. Like I usually do, I approached it with a sink-or-swim mentality.

Through a student organization’s intermediary, I was able to secure a working permit for the summer. I bought a round-trip ticket between Paris and New York, but first needed to decide on a final destination. As a teenager, I had already traveled with my family to the West Coast, so I targeted the East Coast. Strategically, I decided to avoid cosmopolitan areas for fear of working with too many foreigners, hence limiting my language practice. Therefore, I ruled out New York City, Boston, Washington D.C., Miami and Atlanta. In fact, I narrowed my options to Upstate New York, Vermont or the Carolinas. Because it was the summer, I also was seeking proximity to the beach to enjoy the warm weekends. Raleigh, North Carolina seemed to match everything I was looking for. Even though it’s not right on the water, it’s only a two-hour drive to the beach. I was sold!

In June of that year, I boarded a plane from Paris to New York. When I got to the Big Apple, I spent my first night at Columbia University before jumping on a 12-hour Greyhound Bus to Raleigh. At the time, I had very little: $300 in cash, two bags and a piece of paper saying that the McDonald’s at 3710 Western Boulevard was willing to hire international students for the summer.

When the bus finally arrived in Raleigh, the first thing I did was find a place that I could afford for one night; I knew no one and had no place to go. After I checked in to the hotel, I walked to McDonald’s, letter in hand, and asked the store manager for a job. Because I needed the money to survive on my own, I was anxious to get started and requested a start date of the very next day.

I needed to improve my English before being allowed a customer-facing job at the counter, so I spent a memorable summer in the kitchen flipping burgers and pancakes. When the manager kindly offered to introduce me to other employees, one of them offered me a room to sublet for the summer. I had a job, a summer home and an opportunity to practice English every day with Americans. Life was good.

I ended up spending the whole summer there before returning to school in France. Those two months in Raleigh became a life-changing experience for me, a truly pivotal movement that later gave me the confidence at age 22 to permanently move to New York City. The rest, as they say, is history!

For the past 16 years, I have traveled extensively across the United States visiting many cities and states, but last Thursday was especially meaningful…to come back for the first time to where it all began!

Alex Douzet is Co-Founder and COO of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

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