眼下，毕业生找工作的形势很严峻，不管是本科，还是研究生。所受的一切教育，所有的高谈阔论——追逐你们的梦想，未来属于你们，繁荣由你们延续——都迎头撞上了自汤姆•乔德(Tom Joad)咀嚼“愤怒的葡萄”以来最恶劣的经济形势。
有什么可以安慰即将经历这非凡痛苦的学生们，以及他们忧心忡忡的父母？嗯，一些全球最伟大的企业就创建于经济形势低迷的时期。微软(Microsoft)和联邦快递(FedEx)成立于上世纪70年代中期经济严重衰退的时期。在19世纪70年代末的经济衰退时期，托马斯•爱迪生(Thomas Edison)创建了通用电气(General Electric)。
从某些方面来说，衰退是创业的理想时期。租金低廉，供应商很好说话，招聘人手也相对容易。但如果你只是想找一份平平常常的工作，情况就不太妙了。
麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院(MIT Sloan School of Management)教授安托瓦内特•舍布尔(Antoinette Schoar)对一些经理人的职业生涯进行了研究，这些人在经济周期的不同阶段开始参加工作。她发现，在经济衰退时期开始参加工作的首席执行官(CEO)，一般都花费了更长的时间才当上CEO；他们更多是在一家机构内部一步一步升上来的，从其它行业或公司空降过来的比较少。
此外，他们多数是中小企业的CEO，他们的管理风格往往更为保守，在经营中更少举债，更侧重于投资内部业务，而不是通过收购实现增长。
舍布尔教授还发现，在经济衰退时期开始参加工作的CEO们拥有更多学位，这可能是为了避免最恶劣形势而拖延进入就业市场的结果。
说起来可能不太公平：你在20岁出头到25岁之间遭逢的经济形势，可能影响到你在25年后的成就。但舍布尔教授不是唯一这么说的人。耶鲁管理学院(Yale School of Management)的经济学家莉萨•卡恩(Lisa Kahn)去年在一篇论文中得出这样的结论：“大学毕业时遭遇恶劣的经济形势，会对工资产生长远的负面影响”。
个中确切原因不甚明了。一个原因可能是，在经济衰退时期找到工作的人，职位和起薪往往低于在繁荣时期找到工作的人。最初的差距，在整个职业生涯中可能都很难消除。还有一个原因可能是，由于起步比较低，你会把时间浪费在掌握日后可能毫无用处的技能上，而不是迅速地掌握高级管理技能。从最底层起步，可能会让你对一家公司的业务有很好的了解，但这也意味着，你在经济繁荣时期的升职之路要比别人漫长。
沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)的滚雪球理论也可以解释。你越早知道自己的技能、才干和抱负，你让它们滚下坡的时间就越长，由此累积的规模和动能也就会越大。把早年宝贵的时光用在找工作上，然后滚下没雪的山坡，是在浪费光阴，而且随着时间的推移，这种浪费会显得越来越大。
舍布尔教授向即将参加工作的学生和雇用他们的公司提出了一些建议。对于新近毕业的大学生，她表示，别让你得到的工作或者恶劣的经济形势束缚你的手脚。这种时期参加工作的人，需要更长时间才能当上CEO，一部分原因在于，经济繁荣时期参加工作的人轻易就能够获得的丰富经验，他们无法得到。有鉴于此，新人们应该积极地去获取各种各样的经验，即使身处正在紧缩的企业，也应该主动要求去掌握丰富的经历。申请调到各个不同的部门，从事不同领域和职能的工作。在这种时期，企业难免会兴起保守之风，别受它影响。你个人的职业生涯肯定比经济低迷时期长久得多。
对于企业，舍布尔教授告诫称，应该明辨个人成功的原因。在繁荣时期获得成功的人或许履历光鲜，成就斐然，升职迅速。但他们真的优秀吗？或者只是因为形势太好？企业大可去物色在2001年网络泡沫破裂时期开始参加工作、在2008或2009年帮助某些企业走出困境的管理者，加以重用。这些人的履历可能没那么耀眼，但他们值得起用和赏识。
根据我个人的经验，世道艰难对所有人都有益。制造麻烦的正是那些出身繁荣时期、思想激进的的猎手，他们推高杠杆率，构建对风险错误定价的模型，还自欺欺人地让自己和投资者相信：好时光将永无尽头。
在当前形势下参加工作不是好玩的事。但对我们这些希望未来经理人能够理智行事的人来说，他们参加工作时已经打了预防“经济狂热症”的疫苗，这不失为一件好事。
译者/杨远
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035187
These are rotten times to be graduating from school, undergraduate or graduate school and trying to find work. All that education, all those high-minded speeches about pursuing your dreams and inheriting the future and boom, smack into the worst economy since Tom Joad chewed the grapes of wrath.
What solace is there for students going through this particular agony, and their anxious parents? Well, some of the greatest businesses in the world were founded during dark economic times. Microsoft and FedEx were started in the depths of the mid-1970s recession. Thomas Edison founded General Electric during the slump of the late 1870s.
In some ways, recessions are ideal times to start a business. Rents are cheap, suppliers are biddable and hiring should be a cinch. Unfortunately, if what you have in mind is a more conventional career the news is not so good.
Antoinette Schoar, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has studied the careers of managers who start working at different points in the business cycle. She found that chief executives who began their careers during a recession took longer to become CEO and were more likely to have risen through the ranks within one organisation than to have moved over from other industries or companies.
They also tend to be CEOs of smaller businesses and to have more conservative management styles, using less leverage and investing more in internal operations than on acquisitions.
Prof Schoar also found that CEOs who start their careers during a recession have more graduate degrees, likely a consequence of delaying their entry into the labour market in the hope of escaping the worst of it.
It may seem unfair that the economic climate that greets you in your early to mid-20s affects where you end up 25 years later. But Prof Schoar isn’t the only one saying it. Lisa Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, wrote a paper last year that concluded that “graduating from college in a bad economy has a long-run, negative impact on wages”.
Why exactly isn’t entirely clear. One reason may be that people hired in a recession tend to start in lower positions and at lower wages than those who start in a boom. Even over the course of a career, that initial gap can be hard to eliminate. Another reason may be that by starting lower down, you waste time investing in skills that may be of no use later on, rather than quickly acquiring senior management abilities. Starting at the bottom may give you a good view of a company’s operations, but it also means you have a lot further to climb than someone in the boomtime rotational programme.
Warren Buffett’s snowball theory is also relevant here. The earlier you can define your skills, talents and ambitions, the longer you have to let them roll downhill, accumulating size and power. Spending those early, precious years groping for work and then rolling down snowless ground is a waste that compounds over time.
Prof Schoar has recommendations for both those starting work now and the companies that hire them. To recent graduates, she says, don’t let the job you’ve been given or the bad economic times limit you. Part of the reason that those starting out now will take longer to become CEO is that they don’t receive the broad set of experiences easily available to those who start their careers in good times. The cure for this is actively to pursue those different experiences, to demand them even in companies that are in retrenching mode. Ask to be moved to different departments, territories or functions. Don’t be inhibited by the conservatism that naturally affects companies in times like these. Your career will long outlast the gloom.
For companies, Prof Schoar warns against misattributing success. People who have thrived in good times may have glittering CVs, awash with surging numbers and promotions. But were they really any good? Or were they just lifted by a rising tide? It is important for companies to look for and reward the managers who started their careers in, say, the dotcom bust of 2001 and then helped stabilise failing businesses in 2008 or 2009. They may seem less glamorous on paper, but they will be good hires and deserve greater recognition.
In my own experience, a dose of hardship is useful for anyone. It’s the wild-eyed, boomtime gunslingers who cause the trouble, levering up, building models that misprice risk, persuading themselves and investors that the good times will never end.
It can’t be any fun starting a career today. But for those of us hoping the managers of the future behave sensibly, it’s good to know they are starting out with a large inoculation against economic madness.
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