- Last September, Andy Didorosi beat nearly 1,500 applicants for a six figure head of marketing position at Basecamp, a 20-year-old software company that develops workflow management tools.
- Unlike the other applicants that were considered for the job, Didorosi didn't have a college diploma or corporate experience. In 2007, he dropped out of Lawrence Technological University after deciding that a $14,000 bill per semester wasn't worth it.
- Didorosi's dilemma resonates with the 45 million people in the US who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, according to the latest statistics released by the US Department of Education.
- In a conversation with Business Insider, Didorosi reveals how he landed the position and the résumé he used to do it.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Andy Didorosi was nearly two years into a four-year degree program at Lawrence Technological University when he decided a $14,000 per semester tuition fee just wasn't worth it.
He was studying to be an engineer and had racked up debt as well as a number of course incompletes. He also found himself heading down a career path he didn't enjoy. So one day during his first semester as a college sophomore, he decided to drop out. He took a full-time internship that paid only $500 a month, and he never looked back.
Didorosi's dilemma resonates with the 45 million Americans who collectively owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, according to the latest statistics released by the US Department of Education. College tuition fees are getting more expensive, surging more than 538% since 1985, and many people debate whether the debt accrued from a four-year degree is really worth it.
But Didorosi's career is proof that you may not need a four-year degree to be successful.
Last September, the college dropout beat nearly 1,500 applicants for a six figure head of marketing position at Basecamp, a 20-year-old software company that develops workflow management tools. The starting salary for a head of marketing role at Basecamp is $181,000, although Didorosi declined to say exactly how much he earns in the role.
Unlike the other applicants, Didorosi, didn't have a college diploma. He didn't have a flashy corporate title either. Instead, the 32-year-old entrepreneur relied on his scrappiness in bootstrapping businesses to land the position.
He came up with his first startup concept at age 16 — remodelling old cars bought from auctions and reselling them for higher prices. Didorosi said he was side hustling and brainstorming business concepts even during his brief year at Lawrence Technological University. He launched four small businesses before launching Detroit Bus Company in 2011, a city tour and public transit company. It was the first idea he's had with a financial payoff, he said.
Didorosi is still the CEO of his startup while simultaneously running marketing operations for Basecamp.
"I never once felt like it was about a degree," he told Business Insider. "There's no degree for leadership. For you to be able to lead something, you have to dig in you, understand [your company's] goal, and really believe that you can make it happen. No outside force is going to authorize you to make that real."
Here's the exact resume and strategy Didorosi used to land the position.
Didorosi used narrative storytelling to highlight his non-traditional background and experience in his résumé.
Jason Fried, CEO and cofounder at Basecamp, told Business Insider that he previously met Didorosi at an Adobe conference in 2014. Fried was impressed by the entrepreneur's scrappiness and his can-do attitude in launching Detroit Bus Company, even when he didn't have prior experience in the transportation industry.
"Here's the thing — a lot of people have ideas," Fried said. "Everybody has ideas, but it stops there for most people. We often overthink and talk ourselves out of things. But Andy had an idea and he did something about it. He just did it."
Didorosi wasn't initially what Fried had in mind for the leadership role at Basecamp. He said he was looking for someone with a more traditional background.
Didorosi also submitted a résumé for the job that's far from traditional. It's not a one-page document crammed with bullet points that highlights his education and experience. The 32-year-old said it's hard for him to summarize his experience in one document, so he decided to write a narrative about his life instead.
In total, the document is four pages long. Didorosi used much of the first page as a personal introduction. To put in that extra touch, the résumé font is the same as Basecamp's website. Though he might not check all the boxes as a perfect candidate, Didorosi said he gave it his best shot and leveraged some outside-the-box thinking to show he's done the research.
Fried said the company received thousands of applications, and many applicants had vice president and C-suite titles. As the hiring team whittled down to the top 20 and eventually the top four candidates, Didorosi remained among the frontrunners for the job.
He came up with an unusual marketing plan.
Even when he was in the final four, Didorosi followed his instincts. The finalists were assigned a project with a prompt to write up a company marketing plan with a $1 million budget.
"I thought I can either write what I think they want me to write — with key performance indicator numbers and net promoter scores — or I can do what I'd do for [my company]," he said. "If [Detroit Bus Company] was marketing at this level, how would we pitch it?"
While the competing applicants came up with formalized and campaign-like plans that spent all the money to the dollar, Didorosi's proposal utilized a more casual approach, Fried said. Didorosi suggested smaller experiments first to see what sticks. One idea he had was to contact new companies that'd be interested in software tools. It was overall a very direct and on-the-ground proposal, Fried said.
"I like [Didorosi's] way of taking many swings versus one big swing," he said.
Nevertheless, Fried wanted to see how Didorosi would respond if he asked for a different strategy. Fried reached out two days later and asked for a revision.
"They said [my proposal] didn't really have any big concepts — that it didn't have a big idea," Didorosi told Business Insider. "I made some tweaks, but I told them I didn't have one. There's no big idea. They probably expected me to spend all the money. It's just not my way."
Two hours after Didorosi's response, Basecamp reached out again with the job offer.
The 32-year-old could have come up with an expensive marketing plan, but he stuck with what he learned from experience. He applied a small business approach to a corporate setting, and his strategy earned him a hire.
"A small business of any kind is really marketing at its very core," he said.
Rather than dwelling on what he thought the company was looking for, the entrepreneur redirected his focus to what he had to offer. He leveraged his unique experience in bootstrapping small businesses from scratch to outshine his peers.
He leveraged his experience bootstrapping small businesses.
Didorosi believes his strength is his ability to overcome past business failures.
"There's way too much focus on prerequisites because that's what we've been told our whole lives," Didoros told Business Insider. "There's no single path to success. I [tried] the path of promised reward, certainty, and structure. But it's not what I envisioned and it's not where I wanted to go."
The 32-year-old said that each business he launched — and most stemmed from his passion for race car shops — taught him how to find a niche, and it also helped him understand the importance of budgeting habits. It gave him the power to have complete ownership over his career.
"Many people will disagree with me and that's good," he told Business Insider. "The way I did it — I own literally everything. I have no debt. I own all the tools, and I own all the buses. But I started with one school bus [for Detroit Bus Company]. I learned how to drive it and fix it. I learn to run payroll."
That's Didorosi's advice for aspiring business leaders — plan to do it yourself first. Once you prove you got a business, hire help.
Ultimately, the entrepreneur's hands-on mindset paid off. Resilience is taught through experience. The business leader went through four startup ideas before he profited.
His unique experience turned out to be exactly what the company was looking for.
Didorosi is Basecamp's first head of marketing. Fried explained this hiring process was particularly hard because he created a role and didn't have anyone to compare the candidates to. Hence, he thought he wanted someone with classic marketing experience.
"Sometimes, the shopping process helps you figure out what you want," Fried said.
Of the four finalists, one was entrepreneurial, and the other three worked in marketing for large companies. The hiring team ultimately realized that Didorosi's scrappiness was more compatible with Basecamp.
"Whenever you hire someone, you're just placing a bet," Fried told Business Insider. "The other three finalists were great, but we felt like Andy was the better bet for us."
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