Category: Career Planning

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[New Rules] The Accidental Executive: Will It Be YOU?

Some people plan all their lives to become a senior executive – and it never happens. Others, through talent, timing, hard work, and or luck, become one though it was not something they sought, or even to which they aspired.

What will be in your future?

I think of these latter types of folks as “accidental execs.” I should know – I’ve been one as a Senior Vice President of Human Resources with a US Fortune 15 corporation – and any career planning behind the occurrence is as precise as the path of a butterfly on a warm, windy San Francisco day.… Read the rest

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[Updated] Time To Be Greedy: Your “Brand”

Maddie Grant has passed along a thoughtful piece written from a panel in which she participated on the topic of personal versus corporate (or "company") branding. The link is here .

Posts from this end on the topic are Time to be Greedy: Your Brand , (More) Time to be Greedy: Why You Need A Brand Called “You” , and (Still) Time to Be Greedy – Why Your Firm Needs a Brand Called “You ”.… Read the rest

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[New Rules] Why Your Next Job is (Also) a Temporary Job

It might be nice if you found a job that lasted you for the rest of your life. It’s unlikely to happen –

even if you’re in a profession like a teacher of doctor – and even less likely for anyone who holds what we think of as a “regular” job.

The reality, as career guru Richard Nelson Bolles has said, “is that every job has turned into a temp job — whether people are conscious of that or not.… Read the rest

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[Career Planning: Mergers & Acquisitions] What Do You Do When the Rumors Start?

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

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[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

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What Should You Do WHEN the Headhunter Calls?

The call on the line is from a headhunter: now what?

Richard Nelson Bolles has noted that the best proven job hunting method is when a job hunter takes time to sit down and do some really good work on figuring out who they are and what they have to offer. And working your personal and career network is still the best way bar none to find work opportunities once you’re clear about who you are and what you have to offer.… Read the rest