Scott Isenhart estimates that he’s followed a half dozen career paths. He started as an engineer re-tooling factory equipment. He enjoyed a stint as a recruiter before returning to lead an engineering team. Fascinated by marketing, he moved over to climb the ranks in brand management. Today, he heads the North American recruiting team at Procter & Gamble – the only employer he has known since graduating from the University of Illinois 27 years ago.
In fact, Isenhart jokes that he “got his MBA at P&G” through hard-won experience. His path is hardly an anomaly at the firm. P&G’s CEO, David Taylor, worked his way from plant management to brand management to the c-suite. Their journeys illustrate a differentiating approach at P&G: MBAs can customize their career paths because the firm operates from a “Develop-From-Within” philosophy. Here, they are viewed as the company’s most indispensable asset – and the training and day-to-day reality is geared to this talent strategy.
FIRM’S FOUNDATION IS DEVELOPING TALENT FROM WITHIN
“We need to hire the best-of-the-best,” Isenhart emphasizes in an October interview with Poets&Quants. “We can’t just rely on going out into the workforce and hiring people at different levels in their career. By developing people from within, we get the best people early on so we can coach, develop, and mentor them. That just plays itself out in the culture at P&G. We have to be inclusive and collaborative because if we’re not, we won’t keep our best talent.”
The company is serious about grooming employees internally, with the vast majority of its c-suite and department leadership teams rising up through the ranks. In fact, P&G is often referred to as a “leadership training ground,” based on the sheer number of alumni who’ve gone on to lead blue ribbon firms like Coca-Cola, Hershey, Levi Strauss, and Johnson & Johnson over the years.
What’s P&G’s secret to leadership? Not surprisingly, the firm invests heavily in formal training to continuously broaden their MBAs’ skill sets, build their leadership acumen and expose them to the best practices. However, the firm also maintains a coaching culture, which stems from its top-to-bottom world class leadership team.
Scott Isenhart, North America Talent Supply Leader at Procter & Gamble
IMPACT STARTS FROM DAY ONE
It is a strategy that’s heavy on hands-on learning and support. P&G operates from a 70-20-10 model, where 70% of training is based on experience, with the remainder devoted to coaching and classroom learning. The big wrinkle, however, is that MBAs take the reins on high profile brands and campaigns from the get-go, enabling them to learn faster and make an impact from the start.
“For interns and new hires, you’re given a high level of responsibility immediately and you’re surrounded by people who will help coach and develop you,” Isenhart explains. “We believe the majority of your training is through experiencing it – and experiencing it right from day one. MBAs even expect it more since they already have vast experience before they started their MBAs. Coming to P&G and being given a chunk of the business and running part of it as a manager is what they’d expect and that’s what we give them.”
Making it to Procter & Gamble has always been the mission for ambitious marketers. From fabrics and fragrances to soaps and supplements, P&G has been a staple in households around the world. Just look around your house. You’re bound to spot a dozen or more popular brands like Crest, Gillette, Tide, Ivory, Scope, Cascade, Puffs, and Old Spice in your cabinets. The company’s reach is almost immeasurable. While P&G once used soap operas to package its messaging, the firm is increasingly emphasizing social messages, such as its acclaimed Do Things Like a Girl campaign, which resonated with over a half billion people by championing the aspirations and individuality of young women.
Indeed, good citizenship has always been a core tenet of the larger P&G brand. Over the years, it has grown into a commitment to diversity and an inclusive culture. For Isenhart, meshing diversity – attracting the right mix of talent – and inclusion – leveraging their unique perspectives – has been a long-time passion. It is part of a winning business strategy that aligns with the company’s purpose, values, and principles (PVP, for short) – a code that emphasizes transparency, responsibility, and community in fostering culture.
YOU CAN TEACH MARKETING, BUT YOU CAN’T TEACH INTEGRITY
Another part of PVP involves integrity, Isenhart explains. While P&G naturally values leadership and intelligence, their hiring process also focuses heavily on uncovering character. Part of that, he says, is being a straight talker who is always looking out for the company’s larger interests. “As we’re making decisions,” he notes, “we want something holistic; we want the whole picture. If you believe we are doing something that isn’t in the best interest of the company, speak up – even if you may not be a leader. Straight talk is clearly embedded within our culture; it fits with all of our values: integrity, ownership, passion for winning, trust, and the leadership.”
Make no mistake: it isn’t easy to land a job at P&G – and that’s by design. Each year, the firm hires 100-150 American MBAs for full-time positions. However, each goes through a vetting process that includes several online and in-person tests that evaluate candidates’ figural reasoning skills and alignment with the P&G’s five core skills. For those MBAs who are chosen, the sky is the limit at P&G. “We look at that hiring decision as not only an entry level job, but something that builds into something with multiple roles and hopefully a career,” Isenhart explains. “Being a develop-from-within company, we’re making a very selective choice of who we bring in.”
The first step to getting on P&G’s radar, says Isenhart, is connecting with the company. He points to the firm’s MBA Brand Management Camp, which will be held for incoming first years next year from July 22nd-27th. An all-expense-paid program held in the Cincinnati headquarters, the camp enables MBA candidates to act as brand managers – with many receiving internship offers by its conclusion. In fact, most MBAs at P&G started through an internship at the firm. “We try to fill most of our needs through our internship programs, at least at the entry level,” Isenhart adds.
P&G Employees
What skills does P&G value most? What can MBAs do to improve their odds during the recruiting process? What are P&G’s expectations for new hires? Find the answers in our exclusive in-depth Q&A with Isenhart on how P&G recruits and develops MBAs.
P&Q: What do you look for in a resume and background that many candidates might not know?
SI: One thing they don’t expect is that we hire for character as much as we’re looking for the leadership and intelligence. It’s very obvious when you’re engaging with a candidate in an interview or looking at their resume whether they have the complex leadership skills and experience. That’s the visionary and entrepreneurial leadership that we’re definitely looking for. We’re also looking for the intelligence: strategic thinking and data analytics, for example.
However, P&G is known for our purpose, values and principles (We say PVP internally). And we’re looking for people whose own PVP is congruent with those of our company. So we’re seeking people who want to make a difference and can promote diversity. But it also gets back to that character piece. When I say character, I mean integrity – and not just people who don’t lie or cheat. We’re looking for the more subtle aspects: the ability to build trust and being open and honest. We’re big on straight talk – we say what we do and we say what we mean. That’s what really sets P&G people apart.
So if I had to wrap it up in a bow, we hire for character as much as we hire for leadership and intelligence. On a resume, you can tell just by the words. Did they help? Did they coordinate? Did they manage? Or, did they lead? Did they champion? Did they envision? I am amazed how often you can get a good clue on a candidate just by hearing the verbs that they use to describe their experience. That’ll come out in an interview – same with intelligence. We also have assessments that weed that out. But those purpose, values, and principles – that’s pretty hard to pull out of a resume. We get that through the different questions we ask in an interview. We get that through our online assessments.
Clearly, corporate citizenship – someone who’s out there doing good by society and the environment – fits with our principles. Our values are “integrity, leadership, ownership, a passion for winning, and trust.” Some of those could come through in an interview or resume, but we also like to get at that in-person and through assessments.
P&G building at night.
P&Q: Describe the P&G Culture. What distinguishes it?
SI: In one sentence, if I had to describe our culture, I would say it is an inclusive and developed-from-within culture. That harkens back to our purpose, values and principles. What’s unique about P&G is our develop-from-within philosophy. From day one, you’ll see that you, as a person, are P&G’s most important asset. Given that we’re primarily a develop-from-within company – that’s our foundational talent strategy – we need to hire the best-of-the-best. We need to coach and develop our talent; we can’t just rely on going out into the workforce and hiring people at different levels in their career. By developing people from within, we get the best people early on so we can coach, develop, and mentor them. That just plays itself out in the culture at P&G. We have to be inclusive and collaborative because if we’re not, we won’t keep our best talent.
I’d also add straight talk into how I’d describe our culture. As we’re making decisions, we want something holistic; we want the whole picture. If you believe we are doing something that isn’t in the best interest of the company, speak up – even if you may not be a leader. Straight talk is clearly embedded within our culture; it fits with all of our values: integrity, ownership, passion for winning, trust, and the leadership.
P&Q: What kinds of skills does P&G anticipate needing in the coming years that the company may not possess now?
SI: Every five years, P&G takes a very active look at the skills we value internally. We just went through that. Less than a year ago, we launched a new skill-based assessment called PEAK. There are five core skills: Lead with courage, innovate for growth, champion productivity, execute with excellence, and bring out our best. That was taking a current and future forward look at what we believe are the skills we need to hire for and grow in order to be successful as a business. If I take a look over the next five years, I see those factors continuing to be important. However, I’d also start thinking more about agility, speed, simplification, tenacity, and emotional intelligence. I think those all play into it. But what do we need to be doing differently? We just did it in our revamp with the five core skills.
I’ve been with the company for 27 years. This is my fourth or fifth version of different performance factors and competencies that you assess talent on. One thing that hasn’t changed is our PVP – purpose, values, and principles. That’s been consistent, though the skills that you go after, of course, have evolved and changed.
As far as PEAK is concerned, it has changed the formula for MBAs and every employee. That’s not to say leadership, for example, wasn’t there. We had a leadership factor before, but now it’s called lead with courage so that latter part is a new twist to it. In coming up with these new skill areas, it has a ripple effect in our recruiting process. For example, when we go through our online assessments and interviews, we’re probing for these new areas very differently than the nine skills we had two years ago.
P&G Core Strengths
Overall, MBAs match up very well with PEAK. Leadership is definitely driven home from an MBA standpoint more than with undergraduate students. Clearly, higher levels of complex leadership skills are what sets top MBA talent apart over average MBA talent – whether it is leading with courage or visionary and entrepreneurial leadership. A lot of people set direction, engage, energize, and execute as leaders. For MBAs who come into our brand management organization, we’re looking at them as our next general manager. Being as such, they need to have that higher level of leadership; they need to be that visionary leader if they want to lead a category within the company.
Most of our MBAs come into our brand management, finance and accounting, and our consumer and market knowledge areas. In the U.S., about 25% of our hires in these three areas are MBAs. It is probably 100-150 interns and a 100-150 full-time employees that we hire in the U.S. just for MBAs. Our internship program is our strategic top talent program for entry level. Of the interns that we have here in the U.S., I’d say 80%-85% of them will get a full-time offer coming out of their internship. Depending on our equity and the landscape of competitive offers, the net effect of all of that is that we get 50%-70% of our full-time hires who are former P&G interns. We try to fill most of our needs through our internship programs, at least at the entry level.
Editor’s Note: This is how Scott differentiates Brand Management from Consumer and Market Knowledge.
Brand management, of course, is the dual hat. It is running the equity of the business, the brand, and the multi-functional aspects of running the business. Brand managers also wear the hat as the marketer.
We see Consumer and Market Knowledge as the voice of the consumer. That is the part of the brand organization that is getting into the head and heart of our consumers and shoppers. It is asking the question why and understanding the insights and unmet needs from our consumers. It is analyzing both from a product usage and in-store experience. It can also be understanding what consumers take away in their likes and dislikes of our advertising. It’s very much data-intensive, very analytical – it’s a combination of someone who is an engineer, psychologist, and business major all-in-one. It is someone who has a passion for understanding consumers, really asking the “why, why, why” question, and getting at those insights in the form of interviews and data analysis.
P&Q: What advice would you give to students who have their hearts set on working for you? How can they enhance their job prospects?
SI: My answer comes from being a recruiter and also having gone through the process 27 years ago. The first thing I would say is be passionate and persevere. If you get a hiccup or something gets in your way, don’t let it derail you. If P&G really is your dream job, then go after it. Don’t get discouraged for fighting for it.
The reason I say that is my offer, to me, looked like a regret letter. It was really a hold letter. So I spent a lot more time and energy trying to network. Of course, life was a lot different in 1990 than it is today in the recruiting process. I made sure I got myself in front of all the recruiters who were on our campus and really sold myself. So to all the marketers out there who are getting their MBAs, look at the “brand of you.” How are you marketing yourself to get the job you want?
P&G’s clean water initiative in Africa – water before and after the water purifier was used.
The lesson of my story is this: don’t get discouraged. People think they apply and take our assessments and then somehow get lost in a black box. There are thousands-upon-thousands of candidates that we look at every year. There are recruiters like me who actively look at each-and-every candidate to make sure we are moving forward appropriately. This is a competitive landscape. Candidates don’t know how many people I’m looking to hire. When I have an open job, they don’t know if there is one job or a hundred jobs. With MBAs, there are tons of prestigious schools across the country that have top, top talent all competing for those very limited positions. The competition is really tight. We talked about internships. Honestly, that is your best way in. If you want to work for P&G, come to us and be an intern after your first year; that’s going to be your best approach.
Even for those people who are getting their MBAs, we have a pre-MBA program called Brand intern on the brand management side. It’s a week-long student program held in July prior to their first year. They come to Cincinnati and experience what it’s like to be a brand manager. Coming out of that camp, we’ll give a high percentage of them internship opportunities for the following summer.
P&Q: Recruiting can be a two-way street. What has P&G done to make itself more appealing to MBA candidates?
SI: When I’m looking at benchmarking surveys and student insights, I see ten things that MBAs are looking for. They’re looking for leaders who will support their development, challenging work, creative and dynamic work environment, professional training and development, leadership opportunities, high levels of responsibility, competitive base salary, prestige, and a good reference for a future career. When I look across these ten, I think our points of differentiation match up perfectly.
One of our biggest strengths is challenging and meaningful work from day one. Starting from your first day, whether you’re an intern or a new hire, you’re going to get work where you can make a real impact.
Take my first assignment. I’m a technical person who switched over to marketing and brand management and now I’m officially in HR. My first project as an engineer was back in 1990, when we first went into concentrated detergent. Basically, I needed to re-tool our five manufacturing sites to produce what is now known as a club store size for our laundry products. I didn’t know anything about our manufacturing systems, yet I’m responsible for re-designing $30 million dollars worth of equipment!
P&G Shopper
From a marketing standpoint, when I came into branding, my assignment was leading a bound regimen. We had Tide, Downy, and Bounce; it was the first time the company ever led a regimen with a fourth brand called Febreze. I was responsible for that initiative from a holistic marketing standpoint, from its formulation to the entire project delivery of that brand for North America. For interns and new hires, you’re given a high level of responsibility immediately and you’re surrounded by people who will help coach and develop you. We believe the majority of your training is through experiencing it – and experiencing it right from day one. MBAs even expect it more since they already have vast experience before they started their MBAs. Coming to P&G and being given a chunk of the business and running part of it as a manager is what they’d expect and that’s what we give them.
That speaks to the second area, which is around leadership. P&G is known as a leadership training grounds. There are plenty of former P&Gers who’ve been successful elsewhere. So we start with the very best people and grow and develop them through the amount of leadership they are given from day one and throughout their careers. At the same time, you’re surrounded by world-class leaders – highly talented people who are going to mentor, challenge, and coach you.
P&Q: If an MBA was weighing an offer from P&G and another firm, what would give you the edge?
SI: Naturally, we offer competitive salary and benefits – but that’s not the reason to join P&G. You join because you want to be part of this inclusive training and develop from within culture with a highly talented workforce that builds leaders who manage big global brands.
At the foundation of that is the purpose, values and principles. So I would focus more on our development culture whose PVP is congruent with who you are. From day one, you’ll see that people are truly treated as our most important asset.
P&Q: Could you give us an overview of your MBA recruiting, interview, and onboarding process? What are the steps that students should expect? How can they make a good impression and stay on your radar?
SI: As far as applying for a job, our global attraction site – PGCareers – is where you start. MBAs will fill out an application, indicating whether they are interested in an internship or full-time and whether they want brand management, accounting, or consumer and market knowledge.
If they’re an eligible candidate who fits with what we’re looking for, they’ll be asked to take two assessments. One is a PEAK assessment that looks at the basket of skills that we’re most interested in. Then there is a figural reasoning test, which looks at the cognitive ability (The circle, triangle, and square and what comes next in the sequence). It’s from those two assessments that we select the best-of-the-best to do an initial interview. From there, we do two more interviews, usually in the form of a panel. There’s also an in-person test that goes through figural, numerical-based, and logic-based reasoning.
We make a hiring decision through all of those assessments, interviews, and resume reviews. It’s really a total assessment process that combines all of these elements. We ask candidates to do a lot versus our competition. We look at that hiring decision as not only an entry level job, but something that builds into something with multiple roles and hopefully a career. Being a develop-from-within company, we’re making a very selective choice of who we bring in. We can take a little more risk with interns. It’s a two-way street: We get to see them and they get to see us. Interns and full-time will go through the exact same recruiting process.
We’ve been very big on behavioral-based interviewing in the past. As of a year ago, we’ve combined five behavioral-based questions with two situational or hypothetical questions that get to two additional core skills that we’re interested in addition to the five core skills I mentioned earlier. In certain areas of the company, where we’re hiring for a specific experience, we may probe that through behavioral situations, but we don’t do case-based.
Why do we use figural reasoning? I’m not a psychologist, but according to them, figural reasoning is probably the fairest, most unbiased measure to get at someone’s cognitive abilities than other forms of assessment. We use it really as a predictor of how they will do on the in-person test that covers similar concepts. For every 200-300 candidates that look good, there is going to be one who gets an offer. In this funnel, it is about making choices about who we think is the best-of-the-best. These assessments help guide us in whittling down to who is the right candidate.
P&Q: What types of onboarding, training and ongoing support do you provide to incoming MBAs?
SI: Training starts on day one. It primarily starts through the on-the-job experiences. We use what we call the 70-20-10 approach. 70% means people learn best from experience; 20% comes from leveraging others – the coaching, mentoring, experts, communities of practice; and the 10% is the formalized materials and classroom training.
In developing leaders, it is really working through that whole 70-20-10. We also have a Leadership Academy, or what is called PGLA, P&G Leadership Academy, which is a best-in-class learning opportunity at all stages of an employee’s career to really build their skill sets.
New hires start with P&G Beginnings, to onboard MBAs into the company. In the brand management organization, you quickly go through ABM or Assistant Brand Management College, a week-long college to really verse yourself in the key skills and experiences that you’re going to need in order to be successful. There is other training on personal leadership and effective teams. There are also training colleges, such as ABM that I mentioned earlier, that happen at various points in your career (with the highest one being General Manager College for when you get promoted to senior leadership).
P&G Headquarters in Cincinnati
When you start at the company, we have a work and development plan that we call your “Five Rocks.” Rocks are your big priorities that you’re going to do over the next year. It’s really an expectation exchange with your boss and leadership around your work for the next year. There is plenty of other work – the pebbles – that will fit around that. And there are opportunities to change your rocks if your work evolves or you have an opportunity to step forward and take on something different. Either way, you’re going to be very clear on what is expected from your work and leadership in the part of the business you’re responsible for. Your five rocks account for 70% of your efforts.
By being given a high level of leadership and responsibility right from the get-go, that’s how you’re going to learn. You’re going to learn by doing and experiencing and that’ll be supplemented by the coaching and mentoring and formal programs like ABM College. As far as mentoring, there is formal and informal. It varies throughout an individual’s career. We have more formalized mentoring based on diversity and gender. Most individuals will be assigned mentors at various stages of their career, such as a new MBA entering the company. There is also a push-pull, where you are engaging and building your own network of mentors and sponsors. Early in their careers, we do match people up as best we can and at various points in their careers.
P&Q: When it comes to P&G, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that students may have about your organization (and your industry)?
SI: The first thing that comes to mind is “training ground for leadership” – but that’s more of a positive image and reputation. We don’t like saying that because we want to train and develop people and sometimes they leave because we do it so well. That’s just a face of life.
When you think of consumer products or fast-moving goods, I think people think of them as not being innovative. That’s a paradigm of because we don’t have a very technical-looking product – it’s not high tech – therefore we’re not innovative. As an industry – and P&G is part of that – we fight this notion that we’re not innovative. If people really understood the technology and innovation behind the products that we produce, they’d understand that there is a ton of technical and commercial innovation that exists even if it looks like a simple product. On the technical side, there is a heavy amount of things like patents and technology that goes into our products. Take a diaper for example. Being an engineer, I know there are around 240 different transformations that happen in one of our diaper lines. We make a diaper in less than a tenth of a second! In order for that to happen at lightning speed, the technology and engineering to develop the equipment it takes to do that is absolutely amazing.
From a commercial standpoint, take a brand like Old Spice. That once used to be your grandpa’s cologne. Our brand team re-invented that into being a mega-brand for Millennials. Not only did we invent brand management as an organization or a structure, but we’re constantly innovating from a commercial standpoint. We’ve been around for 180 years and innovation has really been at the core of what we do. We always say innovation is P&G’s lifeboat. P&G probably spends more on R&D and innovation than any other company in our industry.
Advertisement as part of Tide’s Loads of Hope campaign.
P&Q: What are your expectations for entry level MBAs? What are your most successful new hires doing to hit the ground running and quickly add value?
SI: There’s no easy answer. I think there are a multitude of behaviors and contributions that lead to that. Start with day one. Yes, you are a new hire. Yes, this is an opportunity to grow and develop. But this is also your opportunity to really make an impact on your business immediately.
How do you do that? You act as the owner of your work and your brand – and making decisions and taking actions that drive your business. We call it championing productivity: It’s how you act as the owner of your business. There is also the leadership component, leading with courage, visionary leadership, strategic thinking and decision-making and making critical recommendations to your management. It’s innovating. We bring the outside in at various levels of the organization. With new hires, you bring diverse experiences and different viewpoints to help drive and grow our business and innovate.
Ultimately, we use this model called PIE, which stands for Performance Image Exposure. A lot of what I just mentioned, of course, gets at the performance: What are your skills and how do they translate into contributions that grow our business? Equally important is your image and your exposure. Being new to the company, how do you make sure that you’re building that sponsorship and rapport, creating the ‘brand of you’ within the company? You can’t spend so much time focusing on marketing yourself, obviously. At the end of the day, the meat is your contribution and your skills. Sometimes, people who have all the skills and make big contributions aren’t always creating the image and developing exposure for themselves, so they don’t always progress as quickly as others. That’s why image and exposure are important to us.
P&Q: Give me an example of a student who really impressed you in the process.
SI: One example that quickly came to mind was a female undergrad chemical engineering major whom I interviewed almost 20 years ago. I was so impressed with her intelligence and character, but most of all her visionary leadership and entrepreneurial leadership. On her own, Sshe had recognized an opportunity for non-toxic crayons leveraging soy beans versus traditional petroleum based formulation. She researched, secured patents, and the rest. This resulted in in selling the rights to a small startup crayons company. WOW! This individual went on to be highly successful P&G engineer in R&D and Product Supply, and then highly successful switch into P&G Marketing and Brand Management. She is now the CMO at Fortune 100 company.
P&Q: What excites you personally about working for P&G?
SI: I have two responses. One is the people and that gets back to the purpose, values and principles – the high caliber and very talented group around you. The gentleman from P&G who picked me up at the airport in 1989 ended up becoming my best friend. Eventually, I married to a P&Ger. There is a common bond back to our purpose, values, and principles. You can enjoy a job, but if you don’t like the people you work with, you’re not going to last very long. The people that I’ve worked with have kept me here.
Secondly, looking at the career that I’ve had, I don’t know what other company would’ve allowed me as a mechanical engineer to come in and have that responsibility from day. As part of that, I took a broadening assignment and was a recruiter who hired engineers on our technical side. Then I went back to being a leader within our engineering organization. At a certain point, I said I’d had enough on the technical side and wanted to get more immersed in our business. Even though I didn’t have an MBA, the company said, ‘You got the visionary leadership and strategic thinking. Sure, you don’t have an understanding of marketing and brand building, but you have the core skills we want. We’ll bring you over and teach you that.’
By allowing me to switch into marketing, P&G gave me a huge opportunity to grow my skill sets in a very different direction. It was very scary. I was an expert where I was and this was a huge, huge step backwards to start over as an assistant brand manager. It was very humbling, but I loved that. Ultimately, I took a different fork in the road later in my career. I liked marketing and loved running the business aspects of it, but an opportunity came up to lead our employment branding It would be marketing the company to external talent versus marketing a product brand. It was a huge new opportunity and that’s what drew me back into the recruiting world. Since then, my role has evolved to leading our North American talent supply group. What company would’ve allowed me to take such a diverse career track of being an engineer, a recruiter, and a marketer? So when I look at that very customizable career, I love how P&G was able to balance what was in the company’s interest and what was in my interest. For that, I am who I am today.
Always “Like a Girl” ad
Going into the marketing organization, I feel like I got my MBA being on the job, but it’s much easier to come into P&G with an MBA. Our current CEO and Chairman of the Board was an engineer who rose to being the plant manager at one of our largest plants before he chose to do a broadening. He switched over to marketing as an assistant brand manager and has since worked his way back up to be our CEO. This goes back to our develop-from-within philosophy in placing such huge emphasis on building people’s skills. I don’t know what other company you can say that for. I saw how it all fits together and had the company not allowed me to take these different forks in the road, I may have left. I didn’t have to. For lack of a better term, I probably had 6-7 different careers – they just all happened to be with the same company in very different areas.
P&Q: Anything you’d like to add for our readers?
SI: Two things I would stress. First, P&G places a very heavy emphasis on corporate citizenship. In corporate America, MBAs are learning more-and-more how do you do good by society while at the same time doing good by shareholders. We value diversity and we’re highly inclusive culture. It’s a business strategy and it’s our way to win. When you think about environmental sustainability and the areas of climate, water, and waste. There’s gender equality, an area that’s become more pronounced in helping the world rid gender bias. The Always campaign that launched here recently has done a tremendous job to try to open people’s eyes and at the same time grow a brand and helping with gender equality. Those areas for citizenship are vastly important.
I want to talk a little more about diversity and inclusion. It is a commitment and a bias towards action that is undeniably our way to win. We believe it is essential. While we talk about diversity being getting the right mix of talent, inclusion is using that diversity to make us stronger. Many times, companies talk about one or the other. We connect both. We care very deeply about the impact that diversity and inclusion have on people’s lives both inside and outside of P&G. Sheryl Sandberg was just here recently and was talking about Lean In circles. P&G has the largest number of Lean In circles versus any other company. With P&G’s “Do Things Like a Girl,” she even commented that this campaign been seen by over 600 million people and that has done way more to help us with sexism than her book has done.
When you come to work for P&G, wherever you work in the company, your work plan is going to focus on areas like sustainability as well as growing our shareholder and market share. It’s really about doing both.
DON’T MISS: WHAT MCKINSEY SEEKS IN MBA HIRES
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