Fortune 500 CEOs – Just Like the Rest of Us?

America’s Top Executives Recount Hourly Job Experiences

RICHMOND, Va., May 11, 2005 – Nearly nine out of 10 Americans have held an hourly job, according to a recent survey, and, as it turns out, many of the chief executive officers of America’s leading companies were clock-punchers themselves.

Now in high-powered positions as the leaders of Fortune 500 companies, some chief executive officers started their drive to the top by scooping ice cream, waiting tables and bagging groceries.

SnagAJob.com, the nation’s largest job site for part-time and full-time hourly jobs, recently polled Fortune 500 companies to find out how their CEOs got their start.

"The feedback from America’s top CEOs underscores the fact that hourly jobs can be a training ground for future career growth," said Shawn Boyer, CEO of SnagAJob.com. "These executives have achieved a level of professional success that most Americans will never experience, but we all can relate to the fact that hourly jobs often provide an opportunity to learn responsibility and a good work ethic."

Some anecdotes on the hourly job experiences of America’s top CEOs:

• Hilton Hotels Corporation (No. 438): Co-Chairman and CEO Stephen F. Bollenbach, who leads Hilton’s network of 2,200 hotels, resorts and vacation ownership properties, worked as a bank teller and scooped ice cream at Disneyland.
• Southwest Airlines (No. 310): Vice Chairman of the Board and CEO Gary Kelly was a carpenter for his first hourly job. Under Kelly’s direction, Southwest Airlines operates 2,900 flights a day.
• SUPERVALU Inc. (No. 99): Chairman, CEO and President Jeffrey Noddle leads a retail network of more than 1,500 stores, but he began work at age 16 as a bagger in a grocery store.
• Office Depot Inc. (No. 157): Chairman and CEO Steve Odland held several hourly positions during high school and college, among them a grocery store clerk, waiter and laborer for a construction company. Odland, new to the reigns at Office Depot, now leads a company that sells more office products to more customers in more countries than any other company. (Odland was chairman and CEO of AutoZone when contacted by SnagAJob.com.)
• General Mills (No. 186): Chairman and CEO Stephen W. Sanger, who leads a company with more than 100 U.S. consumer brands ranging from Cheerios to Betty Crocker desserts, earned hourly wages waiting tables, washing dishes and collecting and delivering laundry.
• Murphy Oil Corporation (No. 340): President and CEO Claiborne Deming chopped cotton for two summers in 1969 and 1970. Now the leader of a worldwide oil and gas exploration and production company, Deming worked as a towboat deckhand on the Mississippi River the summer of 1974.
• CarMax Inc. (No. 435): President and CEO Austin Ligon directs a specialty retailer of used cars, but his first retail job was as a cashier in a grocery store in Austin, Texas. Using a mechanical cash register, he had to memorize all of the store’s available items and their prices. Ligon also worked on an oil rig and taught at a daycare center for 3-to-6-year-old children.
• Leggett & Platt Incorporated (No. 397): Chairman of the Board and CEO Felix E. Wright, a native Texan, worked during his high school years running cotton gins, typically earning 50 cents an hour. Wright, who now runs a company that manufactures products such as bedding and furniture components, retail and point-of-purchase fixtures, aluminum, steel wire and auto seat suspensions, bagged groceries and worked as a farm laborer during his college years, generally earning between 75 cents and $1 an hour.
• State Farm Insurance Companies (No. 18): Chairman and CEO Edward B. Rust Jr. worked as an electrician early in his career. At State Farm, he oversees a company that insures more cars than any other insurer in North America.
• Valero Energy Corporation (No. 34): Chairman and CEO Bill Greehey stacked plaster board as it came out of a furnace in a gypsum mill in Fort Dodge, Iowa, as a summer job during his high school years. Greehey now directs a company with 20,000 employees that owns and operates 15 refineries throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, but he helped put himself through college by parking cars at a San Antonio hospital.
• Ryder System Inc. (No. 360): Chairman, President and CEO Greg Swienton, who now leads a transportation and supply-chain management company, held his first hourly job in 1966, earning $1.61 an hour. As a junior in high school, Swienton unloaded trucks and checked in merchandise for Allied Radio, a record store.

"Everybody has to start somewhere," said Odland of Office Depot. "And for me, these summer jobs taught me many lifetime lessons that, along with education and subsequent work experiences, cumulatively have led me to my current position."

About 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies responded to the SnagAJob.com survey, and of that group, 93 percent of CEOs indicated they once had held an hourly job, mirroring the 88 percent of Americans who have held an hourly job at some point in their lives.

SnagAJob.com conducted its CEO hourly job research as part of its Campaign to Hire America, an educational effort that launched March 1 with a guest appearance by Bill Rancic, Season 1 winner of "The Apprentice" and a former hourly employee himself. The campaign, which seeks to fill 50,000 hourly jobs by Memorial Day weekend, has helped about 44,000 job seekers find positions using SnagAJob.com in the last two months.

SnagAJob.com contacted Fortune 500 companies (2003) by a combination of e-mails, letters and follow-up phone calls to their corporate communications departments from Jan. 4, 2005 – March 17, 2005.

A telephone survey of 1,000 adults was commissioned by SnagAJob.com and conducted by CARAVAN® between Jan. 6 and 9, 2005 to determine how many Americans have held an hourly job.