Nothing’s guaranteed except change, and in business (as well as more than just a few non-profits) that means a churn of possible mergers, consolidations, and acquisitions. Across the country biotech companies, financial services firms like asset managers, hedge funds, venture capital and private equity firms, and any number of companies in other sectors are all scrambling – some to stay alive, others to grow by acquisition.… Read the rest
[Jurassic Park] The New Big (Company) Kid on the Block
I drove to my client, a company on the Peninsula, past what was formerly Genentech Inc. (acquired by Roche) in South Francisco, on the same day that General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
If I had driven further south I would have passed buildings that formerly housed Bay Networks and 3Com, long gone former or diminished competitors of Cisco, and by a location that was Informix (subsumed by IBM), Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle), and Silicon Graphics , a leader in computer graphics in the mid-1990’s and a recent bankruptcy participant, acquired by Rackable Systems.… Read the rest
[Life Back West] May 2009 – The Ties that Bind
This Sunday approximately 3,500 people, many of them strangers, will hop on their bicycles or take up their ride support stations and start a 545 journey that will last seven days from San Francisco to Los Angeles for AIDS LifeCycle 8 . It’s the 16th such undertaking dating back to the mid-90’s to raise money for AIDS support groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco.… Read the rest
What Should You Know BEFORE the Headhunter Calls?
It’s tough to play well without knowing the rules. The employment game is no different: jobs may not always go to the best, but rather the best who know how to play the game. For those people who are in roles where positions are usually filled by companies using search firms, knowing how "executive search" works, particularly knowing what to do and what to avoid, can propel you throughout your career.… Read the rest
[New Rules] Stay or Quit: Which One is the Greatest Job Risk to You?
Quitting a promising job is tough, and it’s made even tougher in a choppy economy. The fact of the matter though is that sometimes the greater risk to you is to stay at a job rather than quit and hope you find something else.
Though the stink of Enron has mostly faded, former employees of one of the biggest corporate scandals still feel the effects from having that firm’s name on their resume.… Read the rest
[Land O’Spin] If You Only Had ONE Job Interview Question to Ask?
While interviews can seem hard on job candidates, they may actually be harder on hiring mangers. Apart from recruiters, most people – unless they’re an ineffective “interview and burn through people manager” – don’t interview enough to make interviewing second nature. As a result, instead of focusing on the candidate, hiring managers can get lost in thinking about their next question to ask, engage in a little white knuckle time while interviewing, and actually sweat and pray they’ll finally interview well.… Read the rest