A Meteoric Rise From Receptionist To CEO

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/karen-kaplans-meteoric-rise-receptionist-230000173.html

Karen Kaplan (right) in the 80s.

When Karen Kaplan first walked through the doors of Hill Holliday, an advertising agency, in 1982, she had no experience in the field, or even the shorthand skills to work as a secretary.

The then 22-year-old was placed at the front desk as a receptionist — the bottom of the agency ladder.

Her first week on the job, two mean girls who worked hidden behind the closed doors of the switchboard room wanted to make sure Kaplan knew just how low she was.

“They come on my second day, and they stand in front of my desk... They’re looming over me with hands on their hips with their little headbands, and they were like, ‘Just so you know, just because you’re out here and everyone can see you, you are still on the bottom of the totem pole. You are below us, you are below the guy in the mail room, you’re below the guy who delivers the packages.’”

Shocked, Kaplan looked up from her square desk phone with four Lucite buttons. “I thought to myself, ‘We’ll see about that.’”

31 years later, Kaplan had just been promoted to become the CEO of that very same ad agency, which made approximately $184 million last year.

As a receptionist, Kaplan took advantage of the opportunities the desk offered: Everyone from secretaries to executives passed her desk whenever they needed the kitchen or bathroom, top clients and VIP guests made small talk as they awaited meetings, and bigwig's children and wives became phone buddies.

After a year, Kaplan threw thoughts of law school to the wayside.

With no knowledge of shorthand and a complete inability to type — even in spite of enrolling in three separate courses, one in high school, the other in college, and a third at night after working the reception desk.

Getting a promotion proved difficult. Kaplan was too unqualified to be a secretary.

So when an assistant spot in the traffic department opened, she grabbed it. It came with only one dreaded task: writing and distributing a 16-page, double sided, collated traffic sheet that had to be stapled and on everyone’s desk at 8 o’clock Monday mornings.

“I hadn’t told my boss that I couldn’t type,” Kaplan said. “So I would come in on Saturday to type it because I didn’t want her to see it took me all day.”

She’d come back again on Sundays to photocopy.

One weekend, after fixing a jam in the copy machine, Kaplan found an “accordion shaped, burnt, toasty piece of paper that was wrapped around the drum” that would change her career trajectory.

It was a pay sheet of every single senior officer and executive at the company.

“I didn’t even know that people made six figures in the whole wide world,” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow, I could spend some time at this place.’”

“I had the same 12 jobs that everyone has, I’ve just had them all at Hill Holliday,” Kaplan noted, which is very different from the current revolving door of ad jobs in which employees jump from agency to agency at a startling frequency.

Karen Kaplan now.
Wait.
Does she look younger now than in the 80s or what?

She’s now one of the most powerful women in the advertising world.

Now 53, Kaplan wasn’t surprised when she was named CEO. After 31 years, her only trajectory was to the very top.

“I don't feel like I now have the title and I'll plant a flag,” Kaplan said. “Among CEOs, there are good CEOs and better CEOs.”

She plans on being the latter.

This is hardly surprising considering that she has treated every position as if she was the CEO of that department.

“You can make your mark in every single job,” Kaplan said. “I still run into people today who remember me from when I was a receptionist who say, ‘You were the best damn receptionist in the history of receptionists.’”