BROADCASTS.com

Like a savvy investor, Lucy Rutishauser built her early career by carefully tracking the activities of different companies. Sometimes, to glean better insights, she would actually cold-call a company and ask for the finance department. But Rutishauser wasn\u2019t looking to invest money\u2014instead, she was looking to invest that all-so-valuable commodity known as career-building years.

\u201cThe take-away here is that as you are growing your professional career and moving from job to job, it\u2019s crucial that the decisions that you make be valuable to a future employer and not just great for your bank account at that moment,\u201d says Rutishauser, who would join Sinclair Broadcast Group after placing just such a cold call back in 1998.

Providing some additional background on what led her to originally place the call, Rutishauser explains: \u201cI had been reading about Sinclair rolling up the industry and driving industry consolidation. They were located here in Baltimore, which is where I live. I figured that they were probably going to need an assistant treasurer, so I cold-called them and created a job for myself.\u201d

While Rutishauser had successfully identified a hiring hot spot inside Sinclair, she sensed that the growing company appreciated her willingness to open the door and take some initiative\u2014and would perhaps be open to more job creation down the line. \u201cI selected a job that filled gaps in my background because Sinclair, being a smaller company at the time, really let me do a lot more than what a traditional assistant treasurer would be doing,\u201d she recalls. In 2016\u2014nearly 18 years after she placed her cold call\u2014Rutishauser entered Sinclair\u2019s CFO office, where she has already helped the media company to open a new chapter of growth \u2013 one that only last month led Sinclair to triple in size.\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney

Subscribe to CFO Thought Leader Quarterly magazine or let us ship you our latest issue HERE

\xa0