Long Island native Max Hill is a seasoned financial analyst with an impressive career as a published contributing author and founder of the Built in the Bronx podcast at Lehman College. With humble beginnings growing up in a working-class family, he knew what the stakes were to compete at the top level of business. In this interview, he reflects on his career journey, emphasizing the necessity of building a strong online presence and network to succeed in the current job market.
Where were you born and raised?
I was born and raised in Nassau Country in Long Island, New York. It is just a short train ride outside of New York City.
Can you describe the cultural and community influences that you had growing up?
I grew up in West Hempstead, it is a working-class town. We had nothing, neither of my parents graduated from college so at the time it was really hard for them to get good-paying jobs. My father was a mailman for the post office and my mom worked in sales for small, medium-sized companies. On a global scale, we had a lot, but in New York terms, we had almost nothing. It took time for me to understand our situation. It is weird because it was a working-class town, but two miles to the north there was one of the wealthiest zip codes in the world, and then two miles to the east of that, was one of the poorest zip codes. In Long Island, you can go for a two-hour walk and experience three different kinds of urban life.
What were you most passionate about growing up?
I was a passionate athlete. I played quarterback for my high school’s football team and loved it. Being a quarterback was like the closest thing a civilian could get to battle. I played ice hockey, football, and lacrosse but by the time I was a junior in high school, I knew college football wasn’t in the cards for me. I ended up playing lacrosse and got a partial scholarship to play. From a young age, my dad told me all he wanted to teach me was one word, “scholarship,” because he knew how expensive college was going to be. I think that was my biggest passion, being an athlete.
Who were the biggest influences on the person you’ve become today?
I would probably say my high school football coach and also my uncle. My uncle was a really smart guy, I looked up to him in many ways and I think he challenged me to be better. Then my football coach because he was a leader and taught me that if you want to build a strong team, it is all about building bonds and connection through shared struggles. So wherever you have a team, whether it’s a corporate world or higher education or sports, those shared struggles build very strong teams. I’ve become that cliche guy giving football team analogies, but I truly learned a lot playing football.
Can you talk about your experience working in finance?
I was a financial analyst at one of the largest digital security companies in the world and it was quite the experience. Being a working-class kid from a small town, it was a life-changing experience and life-changing money. It forced me to grow personally and professionally and I think I tested my limits. There were a couple of points during that time where I had crossed the line of my limits because it’s high finance- the stakes are high, it’s competitive, and it requires all of your attention. It’s not the most healthy environment, but I learned a lot. The way I look at it is that I built muscles in finance. I work with a lot of students these days who say they don’t think they’re qualified for a role, but you don’t know until you try it. The reality is that every successful person was unsure at one point too, but they don’t usually just wake up one day and decide to be destined for something.
I dealt with workplace politics, and a lot of times, you don’t see it coming. It can be very challenging but I learned a lot. There were nights when we worked so hard that I would stay in the office to sleep because it was after 10 pm and I had to be back in the office at 7 the next morning. This is the beauty of remote work because it’s huge time and money savings. That was also the first time I worked at an international company so I met people from a lot of different cultures. I had to manage a schedule with different time zones which teaches you to be good with your time management skills.
What would you say was the greatest lesson you learned from that phase of your career?
I would say that everyone has to look out for themselves. Companies, especially the bigger companies, look out for the bottom line which does not mean you, the worker. I was a budget manager so my job was to know what everyone in the company makes and it was clear that you don’t get what you deserve. You have to negotiate, even if it feels uncomfortable because companies will take advantage of you if you let them. I don’t want to vilify some of these bosses, but you have to treat yourself like a mini corporation.
Can you talk about your current project and podcast Built in the Bronx?
Built in the Bronx is a podcast I started at Lehman College. One day I was just walking around campus and one of the professors told me that they have a podcast studio and that after the pandemic people stopped using it. My friend has a podcast that has reached 60 million downloads so I’ve learned a lot from him and suggested that we create a podcast where we promote our students and get them in front of recruiters at the companies we’re trying to place them at. I started reaching out to some students and a lot of students were afraid because you’re putting yourself out there and opening yourself up to judgment, but I emphasized that it’s important to put yourself out there somehow. A lot of jobs these days are not just about your merit or you’re resume or the school you went to, it’s about if you are visible and if people know who you are. I think this is a personal brand, really.
We got a couple of students interested and then it morphed into getting recruiters or CEOs to come onto the podcast which starts a conversation now with those companies. It’s like being in sales and doing outreach where you’re asking for a favor, or you’re trying to get a meeting. If I just reach out to a hiring manager at a tech company that has a hundred million dollars in revenue, no one would consider hiring my students. They’re likely to say they’d like to but why should they if they have hundreds of other schools that want their students at their company- it’s a fair question. When I do my outreach, if I say “Hey CEO, or “Hey hiring manager, would you like to come on the Built in the Bronx Podcast to promote your video game company?” or say “We’ll share this with our 19,000 students at Lehman College, half of which are hopelessly addicted to video games,” then they will want to talk to me.
So this podcast is a combination of things; on one hand, I am providing them with free PR and the other thing is that podcasts are wildly popular but it’s rare to be asked invited onto one. It’s like when I was a kid it would have been cool to be on a TV show, or earlier times a radio show. The technology changes, the platform changes, but ultimately it’s just a conversation between humans talking about something notable, and so we’ve had a lot of fun with the podcast. I think everyone should have a podcast. If you want to have an extraordinary career, you have to put yourself out there on the internet these days.
What is something you wish you could have advised your younger self that might help others?
Don’t go to an expensive college. I would have gone to a CUNY, which is a community college where I am now. The other thing is travel because it wasn’t until my 30s that I started traveling extensively because we didn’t have the money growing up to travel. We went to Florida a couple of times or to the Bronx for Yankees games, but that’s not really travel in my brain. Traveling to me is not going to the same places that everyone else is going, I don’t even think travel is necessarily physical. It’s about a mindset and experiencing new things. To me, traveling is being exposed to different cultures and that’s an education that no classroom will ever be able to teach because when you’re out there on your own, you have to problem-solve. I traveled to Iceland, London, Paris, Portugal, Rome, Greece, Havana, Colombia, and most recently Dubai- it’s the best education. Travel while you can because it gets harder and harder the further you get into your life and your career.
Make sure to focus on building your professional network because I thought that my work was good enough to speak for itself, and that’s only true if your name is someone like Elon Musk. Everyone else has to have a network, especially because these days layoffs happen all the time- it’s no longer a stigma. If you’re in a competitive industry, it’s not a question of if you’re going to get laid off, it’s a question of when and when that day comes you want to fall back on your network.
