Category: Career Planning

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[Reading Tea Leaves] Candidate Job Fair Suggests Job Market Uptick

As someone who worked with a quantitative asset management firm – Barclays Global Investors –  I know the value of seeing data in terms of broad patterns. But as someone who has worked extensively with the research and development side of biotech, I’ve also learned to note signs and signals by the ones and twos. This is the latter.

BioSpace.com, the country’s leading news and jobs/career web portal for biotech / pharma is hosting a job fair on March 9th, 2010 in South San Francisco from 2-7 PM.… Read the rest

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[High Potential Employees] How Do You Choose the Chosen Few?

The question from my client was common: who do you spend limited resources  for coaching and development of high potential employees? And, even harder, how do you know it’s money well spent?

The  takeaway from working in and around corporations for almost 30 years is that most of the efforts spent on high potential employees – employees who their employer has deemed as having the skills, abilities, and interest to move to more senior positions with the corporation – is a waste.… Read the rest

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[Tips for Entrepreneurs] The Secret(s) to Your Start-Up

Things are bubbling in the technology start-up world: not 1998 frothy, but clearly bubbling nonetheless.

And even while there is sobering reality – for example Tom Abate’s piece yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle Why Silicon Valley Faces Fresh Threats – there are telltale signals that things may be changing.

Signs of a cautious optimism can be found from the uptick in the amount of venture capital investment – noted courtesy Chubby Brain here in the highest number of deals occurring in the US in Q4 2009 at US$5.5 B with an aggregate of US$20B for the year – to articles such as Dharmesh Shah’s in OnStartups.com… Read the rest

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[CFO Job Hunters Version] What Do Employers Really Want?

One mystery for more senior job hunters is the  question of “What do employers really want?” in terms of backgrounds, skill sets and experience.

Thanks to one executive search person you can get one good answer – particularly if you’re looking fill a Chief Financial Officer role.

Karen Quint of Spencer Stuart addressed the San Francisco chapter of Financial Executives International,  the preeminent association for CFOs and other senior finance executives last month.… Read the rest

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[Things to Avoid at Work] How To Say Goodbye

The adage “You have only one chance to make a first impression”  has a sibling: “You have only one chance to make a decent good-bye.”

I thought of both when I saw Sun Microsystem CEO Jonathan Schwartz’ farewell note as he terminated his employment with the completion of Sun’s acquisition by Oracle [Disclosure: Jonathan and I are nodding acquaintances in our Dolores Park neighborhood of San Francisco].… Read the rest