For many high school students, the memory of taking the ACT or SAT might feel like a fever dream: Waking up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning, heading to a local high school, and sitting in a room full of strangers—with nothing but a No. 2 pencil and test booklet to focus on for the next three hours (or, more recently, a computer screen).
While at the time, it may have felt a waste of precious time better spent sleeping in or hanging out with friends, in reality, the test has opened doors for millions of students to pursue their dream schools and careers. For ACT test takers over the past 35 years, you may have Janet Godwin to thank
Odds are, you probably have never heard of the Midwestern Gen Xer, but she has devoted her career to education; after first joining ACT in 1990 helping to write test questions, Godwin was named CEO in 2020 and became part of an exclusive group of leaders, including General Motors’ Mary Barra, Walmart’s Doug McMillon, and Nike’s Elliott Hill, to have spent their entire careers working their way up the same ladder.
“I came in thinking I’d be here for a couple of years, and here I am, 35 years later,” she tells Fortune. And while proponents of job hopping might view Godwin’s path as complacent, she sees it as resourceful. In fact, she recalls some of the best advice she ever received as a young employee was to quit focusing on what’s next in your career—and instead put your energy into what’s present.
Gen Z’s love of job hopping could backfire
Traditionally, workers have dedicated their careers to a job and company they enjoy—and settling down to steadily climb the ranks.
But as the cost of living has increased, wages stagnated, and people took to working longer (making it harder for younger workers to progress into senior roles), professionals today aren’t waiting for their boss to promote them. Instead, many Gen Zers in particular have taken matters into their own hands and job hop—with 56% of Gen Z finding it acceptable to hop every two to three years.
But it could backfire.
Godwin’s boss once told her: “If you’re so busy thinking about what you’re going to do next, I guarantee you you’re not putting enough energy and time into what you’re doing today.”
“You need to make sure what you’re doing today is running the best,” she recalled. “You need to learn and mature in your current job before you have your eyes set on something else.”
Now, looking back on her own career, the 59-year-old agrees.
“There’s some truth to maturing with what you have, and not just constantly grasping for the next thing on the ladder,” Godwin says. “Because you might not have built the skills yet to be really ready for that next thing on the ladder.”
It’s a message echoed by chief executives across the business world. Sarah Walker, Cisco’s U.K. CEO, said young people need to not expect a raise or new job title every year: “You just need to be patient in the journey.”
“Don’t take your current job for granted,” Walmart’s McMillion added in an interview with Stratechery last year. “The next job doesn’t come if you don’t do the one you’ve got well.”
The power of climbing the same ladder, ring by ring
Like many Gen Z grads, Godwin wasn’t sure where to take her career after obtaining her bachelor’s and master’s in English from the Universities of Oklahoma and Iowa, respectively. Her dream job was to one day be a novelist—but she instead reasoned that it would be better to use her writing skills to earn a living wage.
While she never expected to stay at the same company her entire career, she says simply being curious and seeking out new challenges is far more useful than trying to map out one’s future resume at a young age.
“Don’t be afraid to learn new things, and don’t be too rigid on what your path is,” Godwin says.
“That’s what I mean about being curious. Because if you think you know where you’re going to be 10 years from now, you probably don’t.”
At ACT, Godwin said she took on a new role every two to three years—a round robin that helped her gain experience in nearly every department and was invaluable by the time she was tapped to lead the entire company during one of the company’s biggest existential crises: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overnight, the company’s future looked all but dim as testing centers shut their doors and online testing was seemingly far down the pipeline. But after years of writing questions for students to answer, she found that being willing to ask questions was key to getting through the tough challenges.
“If you think you know it all and have all the answers, you don’t. One of the strongest leadership skills is the ability to ask for help, to know ‘man, I don’t know everything,’” Godwin says. “I might have a CEO title, but I guarantee you I do not know everything.”
