Key Experiences

Learning from experiences is a major component (70% learning by doing) to prepare Associates for future roles. While skills provide a depth of knowledge, experiences provide you the opportunity to apply the skills.

You can gain experiences a variety of ways:

1. A role can provide you with more than one experience.
2. Roles at the same level can provide additional scale and scope, helping you gain more depth and breadth.
3. Projects or individual assignments can also provide you with these experiences. You don’t always need to change your role to explore varied and new experiences.

Consider the following as you explore this matrix:

1. As you grow your career, you can pursue experiences at more advanced levels of influence (i.e., higher up in the matrix)
2. You’ll likely spend most of your career gaining experience in the “Depth” and “Business” layers.
3. For senior roles, you need to demonstrate more experience in the “People” and “Breadth” layers. We aim to develop Mars Leaders with a broad spectrum of cross-category, cross-functional, and (where applicable) international experiences.
4. Some senior leaders need to have especially robust experience across these “Depth”, “Business”, “People”, and “Breadth” layers. Broadly speaking, a local finance leader needs 1 experience in each of these four layers, a cluster/regional leader needs 2 experiences in each layer, and a division/segment leader needs at least 3 experiences in each layer.

Download our Plan Your Career Self-Reflective Workbook PDF to keep track of Key Experiences you are already familiar with, and those you’d like to explore further.