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Pete,

I wanted to send you, and the Cameron-Brooks team, a note on how I appreciated the experience and my reflection on its impact a year after my conference.

I’ve been contacted by a few of my peers recently from West Point and Fort Campbell, KY as they begin their transition and are considering partnering with Cameron-Brooks. As I talk with them, I have to stop myself and assure them that I am not getting paid to convince them to partner with you, it just seems that way because I can’t speak highly enough of the experience!  I truly enjoyed everything you all had to offer and I know that I would have had an agonizing and poor performing journey trying to land a job on my own. YouTube and Google would have been my teachers and I would be delivering hourly answers for salaried positions.

I definitely think, AT A MINIMUM, the Cameron-Brooks partnership makes us a far superior interviewee than we could ever hope to be on our own. I’ll admit I was mildly cynical about the process especially as it ramped up at the conference. “Don’t rank the companies”, “have an open mind”, “your favorites will change throughout the day” seemed like you trying to convince me to just settle. I was so wrong and you were completely right… but you know that because that’s why you say those things! So as I talk to others about what they can expect, I drive that home just as you did because my rankings did change (yes I still ranked them, sorry). We really don’t know what we truly want or which companies we will want to work for until we interview with the company we never heard of that makes us forget that the Fortune 500 company with which we last interviewed even exists.

Which brings me to Pactiv. I remember listening to Austin Welty’s podcast during the DPP, looking Pactiv up, and thinking “No thanks, I don’t want to make containers. Boring.” Well, here I am and I’m loving it. I loved the interview with Kevin Quinn and Chuck Wittington, I loved the follow up interview that was so down to earth that it felt like I was already hired. I could tell that it was a company with the opposite of red-tape. You told us that we would interview with decision makers and that was clearly the case.

Even to this day the agility of Pactiv and it’s leadership is phenomenal and such a refreshing change from the sluggish and inefficient military. Now, I’m not in a role that really fits the mold of the traditional C-B candidate as I am an individual contributor working remote (even before COVID-19). That’s not to say I won’t find myself in an operations role eventually, but I have the technical/engineering route opened up to me now. I’m working an IT-centric job with no IT background solving new problems every day and learning every single part of this massive and diverse company. You taught me how to talk and sell myself.

So, I wanted to say thank you to you and the rest of the team. I know that you all know what you’re doing after decades of doing this, but I felt compelled to give my thoughts. Continue to send prospects my way because I love talking to them and have nothing but good things to say. I could write a lot more but I’m pretty sure you’re in the middle of a conference right now and this so far violates your guidance of keeping things clear and concise. Thanks again!