[Mullen]

FIRST has affected my career, and my career has affected my FIRST. For starters, I'll throw it out there that I am not an engineer, I am a market analyst.

FIRST has helped me get jobs. Going into the marketing world, I had to translate the skills I built in FIRST to a whole different group of people, usually people who never heard of FIRST. Companies loved the skills that I built in the program: time management, creative thinking, group work, multi-tasking, interacting with various ranks of people, research and planning, etc. I stood out from other marketing candidates because I was known as the robot kid.

My first job turned me into an auto analyst, and they loved the fact that I had connections to people in the automotive industry that I built up during my time in FIRST. The skills I picked up as a lead scout, strategist and drive coach made it 2nd nature for me to quickly and easily analyze the auto market and the impact new vehicles would have on the industry. However, they weren't very keen to the time commitment involved in FIRST. Sadly, I was unable to convince my boss to let me adjust my schedule so that I could stay involved. After 5 years of being involved in FIRST as a student and mentor, my participation got minimized to watching saturday matches at local district events for the next 4 years and living vicariously though my friends who were still involved. FIRST helped shape who I had become, and I still wanted to to help other kids experience the same things I did, they just wouldn't let me. This, combined with a plethora of other reasons, sent me looking for a new job late last year.

I was quickly swept up by a company that is contracted out by General Motors for analyst jobs. Most of my interview was spent talking about FIRST, even though I hadn't been involved for years. Not only were they aware of the skill set those involved in FIRST possesed, but they encouraged me to get back into it. Both my new boss and director have kids who participated in FLL and FRC, they knew exactly what kind of employee they were picking up. My time spent scouting robots has made me a pretty good analyst, and my time spent as an analyst has made me pretty good at scouting robots.