How Helping a Stray Cat Got Me a Dream Marketing Job at Coca-Cola

Opportunities come from where you least expect them

This is a modern-day corporate Cinderella story that actually happened to me 8 years ago. It proves that opportunities can come to you unexpectedly, even when you’re not looking, and some success stories happen against all odds.

One day, coming out from a normal workday, I saw an injured cat in the lobby of our office building. There were some people around it, but nobody could take the cat home.

My mother runs an animal shelter, so I went over to help. A woman saw me and asked for my number. She said she wanted to contribute towards veterinary expenses and help me find a home for the cat.

And she did. But not only that. She also got me an interview invitation for the hottest job in town!

It was a long process from there, but I eventually got the job after multiple rounds of failed interviews. The woman is still one of my best friends today, and I call her my Fairy Godmother.

An unemployable dreamer

When this story happened, I was a 28-year-old Cultural Criticism graduate with a Masters in Journalism who failed to get into every single job she had aimed for before and ended up working as a Finance Journalist during the 2008 Financial Crisis due to a lack of better options.

When the crisis depended, I moved back to Rio de Janeiro, my hometown, from the U.K., where I’d been studying and working for the previous 07 years.

I was in search of a better life than the one I had in London but realized quickly that I was virtually unemployable in Brazil.

No local editors would hire a journalist who hadn’t studied in Portuguese, and no multinational company wanted a Cultural Critic turned Journalist who had never managed to last more than a year in any given job.

I worked shortly for an NGO for almost zero money, did some translations from home, and had just started a new finance gig to pay the bills.

The Coca-Cola building in Rio was next to where I was working, and I kept seeing their employees walk past and imagining how cool it would be to work there. I had always had a soft spot for the Coca-Cola brand, and a job in Marketing sounded like really good fun.

But that was just a faraway dream.

A job one can only dream of

A Marketing Manager-job at Coca-Cola in itself is something that everybody wants, but very few people get. There’s rarely an opening because the company favors internal promotions over external hires.

Your best bet is to start from the bottom, as an intern, and work your way up. Even then, your chances are extremely low because you’ll compete against hundreds of highly qualified candidates to get into their Internship Program.

A Marketing job at Coca-Cola working directly with the two major sports events in the world? Pfff… Forget it! It doesn’t happen.

But, thanks to this black cat, and my fairy godmother, that was exactly what I got — a Marketing Manager job at Coca-Cola working directly with the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games.

And… I had no background in Marketing.

A black cat in the lobby

Do you know how they say that a black cat crossing the street is supposed to bring bad luck? Forget that.

This particular black cat crossed exactly six lanes of a very busy highway to get where no other cats had ever been: our office lobby.

Unfortunately, some people in Brazil still use black cats for black magic rituals. It’s sad, but this cat had gone through that and escaped. We could see that his paws were burned in a fire.

I took him to the vet that same evening and discovered he was dangerously dehydrated. I brought him home and treated him with antibiotics for 02 weeks for a urinary tract infection.

As soon as he started to feel better, my fairy godmother came to my house with good news. One of her friends was touched by the story and wanted to adopt the cat.

It was our first happy ending: our cat (I call him Headhunter) had found a great family and the happy life he deserved on a farm on the outskirts of Rio.

And I was about to get my share of life turning events.

The most unlikely candidate

That same week, my new friend invited me to lunch. She wanted to say thank you for what I did for the cat. We were office neighbors anyway, so it was easy.

We started talking and realized that we had a lot in common. We had both lived in England and studied journalism and had both been engaged to an English man. She was now secretary to the vice-president of Coca-Cola, after having worked in marketing agencies all her life.

I told her how I ended up in Finance, despite it not having been my initial idea. I noticed that something clicked in her head. She paused for a moment, her eyes wide open, and said:

— “Would you like to work for Coca-Cola?”

— “Wait. Why?” I was surprised. Of course, everyone wants to work for Coca-Cola but…“Why me? Why now?”

— “There’s an internal position open, and you would be perfect for it!”

The position in question was Experiential Marketing Manager for the World Cup and Olympic Games. They were looking for someone with a mixed Communications and Finance background to oversee all presential brand experiences and take care of all the needs of hospitality guests that Coca-Cola would host during the major sports events.

— “Sounds like fun. But I’ve never worked in Marketing.” I said.

I didn’t want her to think that I expected something back for helping the cat, I really didn’t. Besides, I was already having cold sweats just thinking about the size of the challenge.

She didn’t give up. The following week she arranged an interview for me with my future boss. Since she seemed so excited, I couldn’t say no.

But I had no hopes.

A sweet sip of the future

I went to the interview feeling absolutely confident that I wouldn’t get the job. I guess that helped me relax. I was, however, super excited to be inside the Coca-Cola office for the first time. It was wonderful!

They had a Coca-Cola shop that sold the coolest branded clothes, their own restaurant where employees could eat for free, and a Coca-Cola fridge in every corner, with the entire range of Coca-Cola drinks, including energy drinks and iced tea, and you could take as many as you wanted — a poor person’s paradise.

I felt like a child. I wanted to go everywhere and try everything.

Then my future boss arrived. A super stylish, super fit, dark skin, gay guy. A character from a movie, wearing a suit with jeans and sneakers (I still call him Prince today).

It was love at first sight!

And it was mutual.

After a short casual conversation, we knew we had to work together. It felt like we had known each other from previous lives. At this point, it occurred to me for the first time that this could actually happen.

Despite our initial excitement, my future boss explained that I’d still have to go through all the formal interview process. There were going to be another 03 interviews, and they already had some promising candidates in the final stage waiting for final approval from the President.

— “Let’s do it.” I said. “It will be a good experience to have anyway.”

The bitter interview process

The interview process started with me meeting the Finance director for the World Cup project. A Japanese guy who looked like a geek. I was screwed.

Although I’d been working in Finance, I had no formal financial education. Everything I knew was from my days as a Finance journalist.

This guy wanted me to calculate the ROI for an imaginary online car dealership start-up. I had half an hour to go on Google, research the local market, and build the company’s financial plan for the next 03 years.

Needless to say, I failed.

The next step was with Coca-Cola’s Strategic Planning manager. A good looking woman in her thirties who seemed to have come straight out of Harvard.

She showed me a spreadsheet with actual data from previous hospitality events at Coca-Cola and wanted me to split the budget into their correct Accounting tabs.

I failed again.

The final interview was with the director of Hospitality, a friendly lady in her 60s, one of the company’s dinosaurs, as they say, who had been working there for more than 30 years.

My future boss was also present at this meeting. We had a nice chat. She first asked me about my editing skills in the Portuguese language since I’d be doing a lot of that. I was completely honest:

— “Look, my Portuguese is not bad, but I did my university in English so I am not really an editor.”

My future boss brought his hands to his face in desperation. Apparently, you’re not supposed to be this honest in job interviews.

An unexpected Christmas gift

By the time I finished my round of interviews, it was already the week before Christmas. A decision had to be made before the holidays, and the person who got the job would start on January 1st.

On Friday I got a call from my fairy godmother:

— “They are in the vice-president’s room right now deciding on who they’re going to hire. Send your future boss a message to reassure him that you can do this.”

I wasn’t sure if I could do this at all. But I sent the message anyway.

It was exactly what he needed to hear from me at that point. He still wanted me to work for him against the advice from all other directors and he needed to know that I was all in.

And he did it! The vice-president accepted his choice. My boss would have a huge weight on his shoulders for the next few months until he could prove it was the right decision but he took that risk for me.

I got a call straight after the meeting with the official news:

I was in!

The moral of the story

✋ Always choose to be honest, even if sometimes you’re a bit too honest

The position I was applying for involved managing a large budget and handling various high-value assets such as tickets to the matches, including the final of the World Cup.

They needed to trust the person in the job blindfold. When I was honest about my lack of editing skills, that actually worked in my favor, not against me.

✋ Be a dreamer, by all means, but a realistic dreamer

You don’t have to be overconfident and over-optimistic about anything. Be yourself. Good things will come your way when it’s time.

✋ Help animals in need

Do it because they need your help but don’t expect anything in return — other than the wonderful expression of gratitude on their faces. Just be kind and the world will be kind to you in return.

✋ Take risks

I took a risk going into a job that was way over my perceived abilities. It could have been a fiasco but it turned out to be a great success.

✋ Honor the people who put their trust in you

The first six months on the job were extremely hard with loads of new things to learn and a superhuman amount of work. I should have burned out from stress within the first couple of weeks but I kept going, night after night in the office to make things work. I could not let my boss down and that gave me the strength to carry on when my body and brain were exhausted.

✋ Be grateful for the wonderful people who cross your path

I’m eternally grateful to my fairy godmother but we never felt indebted to each other at all. It has always been an honest feeling of gratitude for the stories we share and admiration for each other’s hearts.

✋ Be prepared

Study, study, study. Read everything that interests you. Take that random course that has nothing to do with your career. Be curious, try different things, have different experiences, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time.

Opportunities come from mysterious corners and no acquired knowledge ever goes to waste.

Here is a small gallery of memories from the wonderful journey a black cat called Headhunter brought my way:

I hope this story brings hope and motivation to young professionals who are finding it hard to find a job in a time of crisis.

If that’s your case, you’re not alone and you might enjoy this article by Jon Hawkins titled I’m a Graduate Who Can’t Get Employed (Anywhere)

You might also like to read another one of my articles about a precious lesson I learned later in life when I left Coca-Cola during another financial crisis:

Thank you for reading.