[Life Back West] December 2012 – “Mr. Watson, come here. I need you.”

Colorful Door

Life’s choices and chances come to you in so many ways that if you’re not looking you most likely miss more than you catch.

More often than not you focus on what you’re losing or lost, not what you could have gained.

The passing of a year, and meetings with some former colleagues this week reminded me of one simple fact; we regret more what we think we’ve lost than what we’ve likely gained.… Read the rest

The Talent Secret: The 4H Club

Tech valuations are popping (frothy is the well-used word) in the San Francisco Bay area. And the requirement to have high performing talent to quickly scale and produce a winning product may drive it all.

The scalp price for hiring or retaining top engineers was recently tabbed at $500,000 and the talent acquisition strategies of firms like Facebook includes the purchase of small start-ups only to shut them down and employ the newly acquired talent.… Read the rest

Sorry? Say So Effectively!

Last Friday the 13th (somehow fitting) was “sorry” day at  Back West’s world headquarters; three occasions that someone said to me “I’m sorry.”

How effectively those apologies were tells you the things that make a sorry work, and how saying you’re sorry can also make the situation even worse.

Here’s the three:

  • Stephanie Smith, the person who cuts my hair was a no-show (as in the lights were off, the door locked, and no one in her shop) for my appointment late Thursday afternoon.
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Are the “Best Places to Work” Really the Best Places to Work?

The San Francisco Business Times announced its Best Places to Work in the Bay Area for 2011. This year’s ranking brought nominations from 301 companies representing employees in 12 counties around the greater Bay Area. The eighth annual Best Places to Work awards recognized the top employers in five categories based on company size.

Are the “Best Place to Work” the best places to work?Read the rest

Your Career: How to Say Goodbye

There are few things that are more important than first impressions (that tagline: “You only have one chance to make a great first impression“), the time in-between, and leaving that lasting impression by how you say goodbye.

People can forget at times a lot of bumpiness in that in-between period if the bookend hello and goodbyes are done well.

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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