“We are at our happiest when we have a job that’s a size too big… I like to think of it as the way you would shop for shoes for toddlers—always a little bit bigger.”

When you picture an entry-level job for a recent college grad, what do you see?

Maybe an intern making coffee or filing an endless stream of paperwork? An assistant doing repetitive computer tasks and taking office calls. On a good day, maybe this intern or assistant has an opportunity to join a team meeting or chime in on small business decisions.

Sounds like a fairly relaxed, even boring, entry into the world of work – and it’s an entry most of us are familiar with. But this ‘pay your dues, put in the time, and slowly earn your way up the corporate ladder’ mindset isn’t for everyone… and it certainly wasn’t the path for Liz Wiseman.

Liz is the founder and CEO of the management research company, The Wiseman Group.

But long before she founded her namesake firm, Liz got her start as a technical trainer with Oracle, which was then just a medium-sized startup.

That experience taught her a valuable lesson about why the ‘perfect fit,’ may not always be the ‘right fit.’