Just been 15 months..Why did I shift jobs?

An FMCG career (like most careers) is a lot about building you as a brand. You land up as a management Trainee in one of the FMCGs and your training period serves as a platform to meet heads of various departments, brand managers, trade marketing managers et al. This period is a make or break one – gives both you and the company a good time frame to build opinions about each other. Assuming you are good at what you do, your training period helps you cement your place in the company and in my opinion the training period is the incubation period for“YOU – THE BRAND”. Once you have cemented your place, why would it make sense to shift a company? Given that the eternal quest of most management trainees is to get into branding and the unproven fact that getting into branding is easiest from your first company why would it make sense to shift companies in the 1.5-2 yr time frame? I have three submissions:

1. Its now or never:
   1. In any FMCG company, brand/trade opportunities open up after 2.5-3 years (including training period). At about 1.5-2 years you would have finished anywhere between 10 to 15 months of pure sales experience. The new company you are moving into will also expect you to work for about 15 to 18 months in sales before giving you a trade/branding opportunity. This way you don’t lose out much when it comes to your shot at trade/branding. On the other hand when you have completed anything more than 2 years sales experience (post training) it becomes a huge baggage and you will not be able to shift. The branding light will always be there at the end of the tunnel..
2. You get exposed to newer categories and practices
   1. Sales is no magic. It’s mostly about efficiencies and execution. But branding concepts are drastically different across categories. By exposing yourself to a different category you give yourself that all important exposure to a new consumer thought space, a different consumer decision making process. For example: what kind of cross promo’s work? When does it make sense to give a bundle scheme to the trade and when is a consumer offer the best bet?  I am not saying that by being in sales you will get to know all this gyaan, but yes, if you are keen enough, you will put your grey cells to work. This could prove extremely valuable and also add that little extra to your resume.
3. You are well poised to make middle managerial level changes
   1. The experience of your previous company combined with the market research you would have done during your management trainee stint about various other FMCG companies would have given you a lot of insight into the procedures/programs/trade marketing structures in play. And the best part about sales is your end consumer (the trade) unlike the end consumer (aam aadmi) for marketing  has a very similar decision making process across categories. So you can easily put to use that extra bit and create a  definite edge over the incumbent employees.

Note: this is not a post-decision rationalization effort, but an attempt at starting a discussion.

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