How to Find the Best Jobs in Unlikely Places

I Went to One Career Expo in College.

Picture this. A big draft room packed with hundreds of sweaty college students nervously pitching themselves for analyst internships at Lockheed Martin, Siemens, and Marriott Vacation Club.

Credit: University of New Haven

That was the Career Expo at the University of Central Florida. And I attended exactly one in my entire college career.

I remember standing there watching my resume disappear into a stack of hundreds of others and thinking — there is absolutely no way this works.

So I stopped going.

Instead, I found my first internship in the most unlikely place imaginable.

Church.

The Internship Nobody Taught Me to Look For

I volunteered a lot back then through my church. And through that volunteering, I ended up working alongside a financial advisor.

Not just any financial advisor either. This was a Vice President with 15 plus years at his firm. And after getting to know him and sharing what I actually wanted to do — help real people with their money, not crunch numbers for a Fortune 100 company — he literally created a marketing position for me on his team.

Instead of being another anonymous intern lost inside Lockheed Martin, I was an active team member who could see every part of a real business from day one.

That experience set me up for everything that came next.

One of his clients ended up being the CEO of a logistics company, where my next role would be in sales at the company.

I was making $23 an hour as a 21 year old college student! That was way more than my peers at the time.

The Book That Reminded Me Why This Worked

I was recently reminded of this story while reading the Proximity Principle by Ken Coleman. His whole framework comes down to one sentence:

“In order to do what you want to do, you need to be around people who are doing it or have done it.”

Sounds almost too simple. But think back to my internship story. I skipped the stack of resumes entirely and jumped straight into a real role with real experience because I was in the right room with the right person.

You probably have a version of this story too. Think about a moment when knowing the right person at the right time helped you take a massive step in the right direction. That is the Proximity Principle at work.

Proximity to the right people creates opportunity. Distance kills it.

The 5 People You Need in Your Corner

Coleman breaks it down into five types of people every person needs in their orbit:

• The Professor — someone who teaches you and expands what you know.
• The Professional — someone actively doing what you want to do.
• The Mentor — someone personally invested in your growth.
• The Peer — someone on the same journey who keeps you accountable.
• The Producer — the decision maker who can actually open the door for you.

Most people have one or two of these in their life. The people who move fastest have all five.

Your Action Plan This Week

Since we’ve been talking about career moves and opportunities, here is your homework.

Pick one major goal you are working toward right now. Just one.

Then ask yourself these four questions:

1. Who in my life is already playing one of these five roles?
2. Which roles are completely empty?
3. Who specifically do I want to get to know to fill those gaps?
4. How can I get into the same rooms as those people — not just at a random mixer, but in a real and consistent way?

This is the kind of thinking that leads to small changes that compound over time. Volunteering at church on a Tuesday night turned into the most valuable career experience of my college years. That is not luck. That is proximity.

The right people change everything.