The college class of 2010 entered a brutal job market upon graduation, the unemployment rate for college graduates under the age 25 was 9% and the overall national unemployment rate was a staggering 9.7%. By 2012, 284,000 college graduates were working at or below the minimum wage, which is over double the amount from 2006. Yet, Matthew Rubinger landed a six-figure job after he graduated from the Vanderbilt University with a degree in European History. Through networking, experience, persistence, luck, and an entrepreneurial spirit-he was able to become one of the most successful college graduates in his class.
Heritage, the largest auctioneer of collectibles in the United States, hired him after his girlfriend’s father got him a courtesy interview with the company’s president, Greg Rohan. Of course, simply meeting with the president would not guarantee him a job. Rubinger spent two hours impressing him by talking about his experience, knowledge, and his skills in trading handbags. Rohan recalled “I quickly discovered that he was a walking encyclopedia with entrepreneurial zeal.” They met again the following day and spent another hour discussing the handbag business at Central Park in New York City. After that, he met with Rohan’s partners and after just fifteen minutes, they were convinced that they should launch a handbag department within the company and hire Rubinger straight out of college to lead the new division.
Extraordinarily, the risk Heritage made paid off. During Rubinger’s first year at the company, Heritage sold $4 million in handbags. In 2012, he doubled that amount in three auction events that generated nearly $9 million in sales. Later on, he was featured in stories by Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. In 2014, he was named 30 Under 30 in Marketing & Advertising by Forbes. Reflecting on his accomplishments, Rubinger explained “Baby boomers think we are lazy, that all we do is text each other. But we are a very creative group of people and we are thinking of how to change the status quo.”
– Matt Appleman
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