Sir James

Posted on Tue, Sep. 20, 2005

Making career changes paying off
Ex-pilot, ex-coach hit ground running in banking industry
By Sherry Slater
The Journal Gazette

Andy Yergler was an airline pilot who left the industry after the Sept. 11 attacks. Now he works for Wells Fargo Bank.

Andy Yergler whiled away summer days dreaming about flying through the big, blue sky.

“Ever since I was 1, 2, 3 feet tall … little … I was fascinated with airplanes,” he said. “All I ever wanted to be was an airline pilot.”

He was one of the lucky ones who had the skills to make it. But Yergler’s career hit serious turbulence when the airline industry made major cutbacks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made business executives and pleasure seekers alike cancel their travel plans.

The 35-year-old Fort Wayne man didn’t wait for the ax to fall. He left his pilot’s uniform in the closet and pounded the pavement. Luckily, Yergler had listened to a college professor who advised aviation students to get a marketable degree as a backup.

“By God, I needed it,” he said.

Persistence pays off

Yergler earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, as well as a certificate from the university’s Institute of Aviation.

So when he went out job hunting, Yergler embraced his business courses and concentrated on financial institutions, brokerage and investment firms. He’d always enjoyed managing money.

“I did what I always did, I went out there and tried to make something happen,” said Yergler, who ended up choosing from three job offers, even at that difficult economic time.

Yergler landed in banking as a business relationship manager. He spends his days meeting with commercial clients, advising them on a variety of financial matters.

Gone are the days when a family’s breadwinner reported to work at the same office or factory for 40 years, working toward that gold watch waiting at the retirement finish line. Not only are employers less loyal – making layoffs when sales slump and moving jobs to save money – but the workers themselves are less likely to remain in the same job.

But completely changing careers is rare, according to John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based employment research and recruiting firm.

Changing industries is more common, he said. Such a change might include, for example, a salesman who works first for a steel manufacturer and then goes to work in the health care industry for a pharmaceuticals maker. Challenger estimated that only 5 to 10 percent of people change career paths – as Yergler has – after they turn 30.

Regardless of how many people are changing careers, each person has to make his own way.

After he’d finished one interview, Yergler remembered that he’d heard Fifth Third Bank was advertising to fill several new positions. The Cincinnati-based financial institution acquired Old Kent about six months earlier. Yergler noticed the Tillman Road branch across the street from where his appointment was.

“I had on my suit and had my resume at the time, so I thought, ‘What the heck,’ ” he said.

Ray Webb, now president and chief executive of Fifth Third Bank, Ohio Valley, remembers the day well.

“Andy kept coming into the teller line insisting that he talk to HR,” Webb said from his Huntington, W.Va., office.

The human resources manager finally agreed to meet with the drop-in applicant and was so impressed that he asked Webb, the branch manager, to meet Yergler that day as well.

“It was his engaging personality and his willingness to do whatever it took to get (the job) done” that impressed Webb, the executive said.

Yergler admires Webb’s attitude.

“Ray Webb was smart enough to know it’s really the individual that counts, not the experience,” he said.

Rae Pearson, founder and president of Fort Wayne-based Alpha Rae Personnel Inc., endorses that philosophy wholeheartedly.

“I think personality and attitude is everything,” she said. “You can’t go anywhere without that.”

Someone willing to learn can be taught the details of a job, Pearson said. “Being a lifelong learner is a good thing,” she said.

Pearson thinks many workers need to reassess their lives because too many people wake up on Monday mornings dreading returning to a mundane job.

“My opinion is that change is good,” Pearson said.

Hitting the ground running

While Yergler was training with Fifth Third, he was also going out and banging on the doors of prospective clients. In one case, Webb said, the fledgling banker persisted by taking lunch to the prospective client’s staff in an effort to win the account.

Webb, who worked with Yergler for only about three months, said he thought the bank would be a great success if all his staff worked with the fervor of his career-shifting protege.

Webb followed his career path to West Virginia while Yergler followed his to a local competitor.

Yergler joined San Francisco-based Wells Fargo’s downtown office in November, three years after he entered banking with Fifth Third.

Ron Hostetler, Wells Fargo’s Fort Wayne business banking manager, now supervises Yergler.

“He’s very self-motivated and self-driven,” Hostetler said, adding that those traits can help people succeed in many arenas. “He learns new things extremely well.”

Even though banking is a challenging business – rife with processes, procedures and regulations – Hostetler sees the career as a perfect fit for people who are good at building relationships. That’s why he’s more open to looking beyond the typical fresh-faced accounting and finance graduates to more … well, unconventional hires.

Doug Noll, former Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne men’s basketball coach, might fall into that category.

Noll, 50, started with Wells Fargo in mid-July after being fired from IPFW in January for leading the team to a 40-119 record in 5 1/2 seasons.

The coach arrived in Fort Wayne after amassing a winning record over seven seasons at Spring Arbor University in Spring Arbor, Mich. That same spark didn’t ignite for Noll in Fort Wayne, however.

After doing some business development work for an old college friend, Gary Woolman, Noll bumped into his destiny on the golf course. Greg Winkler, Wells Fargo’s manager of business bankers for Indiana and Ohio, knew Noll because his son had attended one of Noll’s basketball camps.

A career rebound

After the two talked over lunch with Hostetler, Noll realized the job sounded like 75 percent people skills.

“The rest of it was learning the banking business, and they felt confident they could teach me that,” the new business relationship manager said.

Hostetler, who was encouraged by Yergler’s successful transition, feels more than up to the challenge.

“I can teach somebody credit analysis and number crunching,” he said. “But I can’t teach someone how to work a room.”

Noll, who sits in a desk beside Yergler, knows something about business basics as well. Running a Division I college basketball program with three assistant coaches requires a good deal of delegation, he said.

Noll holds a bachelor’s degree in business management. And he previously held part ownership in a real estate office and a shoe store.

But banking is a different animal. Yergler, Noll and all new bankers participate in structured classroom training, in addition to learning from mentors.

“The learning curve is huge,” Noll said.

For example, Wells Fargo embraces acronyms, he said. But Noll was still amazed when a colleague who offered to copy a glossary to the initials handed him 19 pages.

“If you look at the big picture, you get overwhelmed,” he said.

For now, Noll is taking it one day at a time, building relationships and returning to corporate clients with prompt answers to questions he’s not yet trained to handle solo.

Not traveling for basketball games leaves Noll able to be more involved with his family, including his recently widowed mother, who lives in Berne. Because of their family ties, Noll and his wife plan to retire in the area. He wouldn’t be tempted, he said, by a coaching offer elsewhere. Noll is committed to Wells Fargo.

“I love going to work every day,” he said. “I really believe (the coaching) part of my life is over.”

Yergler, the one-time pilot, said he’d consider an offer to fly again if one came along in a few years. But the active father had already begun to feel disenchanted with his first career because he spent too many holidays alone in hotels, away from his two children and his wife, who is a nurse in Lutheran Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The couple are parents to 8-year-old Sydney and 5-year-old Alex.

Jennifer Yergler has been able to retain her part-time status even though her husband still hasn’t achieved enough success after three full years as a banker to match his previous salary as a pilot.

Noll has also had to adjust to a new income level during the past several months. But despite the numerous challenges of changing careers, he’s not nervous.

“There can’t be things too much worse,” he said, “than looking down the sideline and seeing (Purdue coach) Gene Keady scowling at you.”