Procter & Gamble: Opportunity of a Lifetime

Procter & Gamble Sales Management is, in my humble opinion, the best opportunity available for Harvard students interested in pursuing careers in business.

Being the critical thinkers that Harvard has taught you to be, you are probably asking, "Why, Paul, is P&G Sales Management such an outstanding opportunity?" Let me answer this by sharing with you some of the most powerful reasons why I have chosen Procter & Gamble from amongst the myriad of opportunities available to Harvard graduates.

First, some general background info. Procter & Gamble is the largest consumer products company in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world ($29.4 Billion in annual sales). For my money it is also the best. P&G is also growing very rapidly, with our international sales almost equal to those in the U.S. That is, we are a truly global company, with operations in over 140 countries worldwide. This is all well and good, but now let me tell you why P&G is so extraordinary.

In a word, our outstanding people are what sets P&G apart from everyone else. Procter & Gamble promotes only from within. That means that P&G is committed to finding, hiring, and retaining the "best and the brightest". This is no BS. If one of P&G's businesses is suffering, we cannot bring someone in from the outside to turn things around. We are truly dependent upon the quality of the managerial talent within our own organization.

P&G's commitment to promoting only from within has many ancillary benefits to those fortunate enough to be a part of the company. For one thing, it means that, should you choose P&G (and vice-versa), you can count on being surrounded by other outstanding individuals. In that sense, Procter & Gamble is much like Harvard. Another benefit of P&G's promotion from within is that Procter is firmly committed to the training and development of their people. This means that as an employee of P&G, I am surrounded by tremendous resources which the Company has made available to me to ensure both my professional and personal growth.

To look at it another way, the people we are hiring today are our future. They are the people who, by definition, will be running the business 15 years down the road. If you think about it, that is a tremendous statement. It means that the opportunities available to you at Procter & Gamble are boundless. Your advancement at P&G is based solely on your B-17