Signs you should take a new job, according to former Facebook exec

“It became very clear that there was a lot to learn in
this new role at Facebook,” said Libby
Leffler.
Steve
Maller

• Libby Leffler, a former Facebook executive and Google
  employee, is now the vice president of membership at
  SoFi.
• Leffler initially turned down the opportunity to work
  at Facebook when the company approached her in 2008.
• She changed her mind when she realized she’d be able to
  learn and experiment a lot in the new role.

In 2008, Libby Leffler was offered a job at Facebook.

At the time, Leffler was an account strategist at Google — which,
she told Business Insider, was a much more established and
recognizable company in Silicon Valley. She turned Facebook down.

A few weeks later, Leffler called Facebook back and said she’d
had a change of heart: She wanted the job.

Today, Leffler is the vice president of membership at personal finance company

SoFi. She spent about seven years at Facebook, then left in
2015 to attend Harvard Business School.

Leffler said she did a lot of “self-reflection” in the weeks
after declining Facebook’s job offer. The factor that ultimately
changed her mind? “It became very clear that there was a lot to
learn in this new role at Facebook.”

She’d be working as a client partner, but she’d never had any
formal sales training. “This was a great opportunity for me to
dive in and see what I could do,” Leffler said. “My instinct at
that time was very clear to look for and move into new
opportunities where I could learn skills that I wasn’t familiar
with.”

After less than one year at Facebook, Leffler was offered a role
as a business lead to the company’s chief operating officer,
Sheryl Sandberg, Leffler wrote in a LeanIn blog post.
(Sandberg also previously worked at Google.)

Leffler’s advice to anyone thinking about next steps in their
career is to look for opportunities where you can learn — even if
that means making a lateral move.

Throughout her time at Facebook, Leffler said, “I was really
always drawn to things that intrigued me, gave me the chance to
learn as much as I could, and gave me the opportunity to learn
something new, with plenty of room for experimentation.” Her next
role at Facebook was as a strategic partnerships manager.

Leffler added, “As I consider the time I spent at Facebook, I was
always looking for, ‘Where is an opportunity for me to contribute
and make an impact at the company?'” She said she approaches her
work at SoFi the same way.

Another piece of wisdom that has guided Leffler’s career is
simply to listen to your gut. She said, “I’ve found that the best
decisions I’ve made are ones in which I’m really true to what my
instincts are telling me.”

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