The most important thing about being at any job is the quality of the people you work with. Most of the learning you have at a job happens from your interactions with the people around you. That said, SNP has an extraordinary collection of gifted individuals. In addition to the exposure to the SNP gang, you work with executives that are leading the way in their own organizations. In what other job can someone a couple of years out of college work with CXO- and VP-level people on a regular basis? The learning and exposure you get from this is invaluable for both your career and personal development.

Important to understand that SNP is not for everyone. If you are looking for a job with low responsibility and the limited accountability that comes with it, it's not a place for you. Bureaucrats and people who aspire to middle management jobs need not apply. If you are looking for a place where you can contribute on a daily basis, work with exceptional people, learn at a ferocious rate and be accountable for your projects, SNP is the right challenge. I would term it an exceptional place for exceptional people.

For me the time I spent at SNP armed me with some of the most critical elements of what has allowed me to be successful since I left SNP. These include:

• Customer-centric mindset. Since my time there I have been successful in a range of roles from operations, sales, channel management and product development. The key to this has been to always keep the customer at the center of what you are doing and not allow internal priorities distract you from what your customers need.
  
• Listening. Seems silly to say, but the ability to shut-up and listen to people is not something that is touted everywhere. Yet if you really want to understand what is happening, you must be able to do that.
  
• Candor. Telling the truth is not something you will learn in a big corporation, but there is no better way to separate yourself from the weeds than by being the person in the room that is not afraid to tell the truth.
  
• Executive presence and presentation skills. You can take this for granted while you are there but once you leave you realize that these skills really help set you apart. I hope Maureen is still making everyone, including the finance folks, participate in the in-house classes.
  
• Perspective. As Maureen (Taylor, SNP’s President) used to say, “we are not saving kids from landmines.” It’s important to take your work seriously but you also have to be able to stand back at moments of chaos and have some perspective on what you are doing.
  
• Persistence. Maureen and Renn have the unique ability to see opportunity in almost every situation and they back it up with a never-quit and never-give-up attitude. From being around people like that, you learn that often the line between success and failure is simply defined by effort.

President Theodore Roosevelt said “What I am to be, I am now becoming.” I think this speaks a lot about what SNP is like: you really get to become the person you were meant to be.

Mani Zarrehparvar  

Director, Global Mobility Services

AT&T