As a former district manager for the human resource software company ADP (Automated Data Processing), Adam S. Hout helped make sure employees throughout the country were getting paychecks. You’re welcome. He wasn’t writing the paychecks, but he was part of the sales staff of the small business division at the international company’s San Diego office.
Adam graduated from PLNU in 2014 with a B.A. in business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurial finance. Currently he is a financial advisor at a San Diego based wealth management firm.
After graduating from PLNU, Adam took a job as a sales representative with ADP. Having explored the range of opportunities available in a business career, he wanted to get his feet wet with sales because, "Ultimately, sales are the spearhead of a business; it’s the revenue generator, and without that there is no business" he says. His sales position led to an opportunity to join the company’s leadership development program, a globally recognized training program for management in the industry.
The management side of sales provided new career growth for Adam. He would be responsible for developing the sales employees’ strengths towards the team’s shared goals: building relationships and growing the company. Adam says it’s all about building relationships regardless of your role or title.
He imagined his employee team members as he was when coming into the job right out of college. As a District Manager, he worked to differentiate less tenured employees from other sales representatives by helping them develop their strengths and weaknesses. “You have to differentiate yourself and add value. That was part of my management style. A good manager helps develop workers,” he says.
Before coming to PLNU, Adam played semi-professional ice hockey in British Columbia, Canada. As a 16-year-old, his hockey team won the National Championship for the United States. With his athletic background, he says sports and teamwork are transferrable to business: everyone has an individual role and the team (like a company) has a shared goal. He likens being a manager to a sports coach, managing the individual roles to deliver the overall goal.
The native Southern Californian wanted to attend PLNU’s business school, and as a 21-year-old freshman, he was well aware of his career goals. “While at Point Loma, I was very fixated on either having an internship, working, or networking,” he says.
Adam says the word entrepreneurial has a lot of definitions, but that having an entrepreneurial finance education means having the technical and fundamental knowledge of financial vehicles and industries but putting that knowledge to use in a unique way.
Adam is extremely goal oriented, and he likes keeping busy and that was evident when he was a student. He had internships in finance including private equity, worked for the Fermanian Business & Economic Institute on campus, played intramural sports and was the president of the on-campus club called SIFE, which stands for students in free enterprise. As the president, he was responsible for putting on networking events that all PLNU students could attend. Those opportunities to take what he learned in class and apply it in his career has been invaluable for Adam.