A lesson from the 9/11 memorial, which still does not exist
June 28th, 2006
The most conflicted memorial just got more conflicted. The New York Times reports that the relatives of those killed on 9/11 will not endorse the World Trade Center memorial plan unless the names of the dead are categorized by where they were working. Relatives don’t just want the company name, though. They want the tower …
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How to pick your leadership style
June 27th, 2006
I am doing research about women in sports, and one of the most memorable statistics I have come across is that nearly four out of five women executives played sports growing up. So I called Jennifer Crispen, to talk about her work in this field. She said that there has been a lot of research …
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How to reach the new American dream
June 26th, 2006
American dream has changed. It used to be a college education, a steady job, a nice house (and a family to fill it), and a better financial picture than your parents. There is a new American Dream that is still about “doing better than your parents” but not in a financial sense. This dream is …
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How to get along with difficult co-workers
June 26th, 2006
People with good social skills can get along with almost anyone, and if you want to be successful in your career, you have to make people like you: Figure out what matters to them, what makes them tick, and then speak to that when you interact.
The key to being likeable is to be able to …
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Take your pet to work day
June 23rd, 2006
Today is take your pet to work day. In New York City, pet owners are carrying around doctor’s notes that say their dog is a medical necessity — as in the psychological benefits of dogs — so that store owners legally have to let the dogs come in. I can see that doing this at …
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Training is essential, so make sure it’s a perk you receive
June 19th, 2006
The new workplace currency is training. Title is not important if you’re not staying long term. And salary increases of three or four percent are ceremonial. So use the clout you earn to get training; it will make a difference in your life in a way that salary and title cannot because training can fundamentally …
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Big news for Episcopal Church, and we all benefit when one industry shines
June 19th, 2006
Overheard at synagogue: “I would like to grow up and become a rabbi like you, but my dad doesn’t think women should be rabbis.” From the head rabbi’s seven-year-old daughter to the assistant rabbi who is a woman.
Religious groups seem to be one of the last standouts — along with coal mining and construction — …
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Howard Stern’s lesson in customer loyalty
June 16th, 2006
Howard Stern has lost most of his audience. I’m not a big fan of his. I like public discussion of sex that is more interesting and productive than Howard offers. But I’m not above learning from him, and how can you not learn a lesson or two from a guy who has lost almost 11 …
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Improve your career by moving the candy dish
June 13th, 2006
Here’s news in the category of good-looking people have better careers:
Now you can blame your co-worker for your tanking career and science will support you: A candy dish at work can make you fat. But a candy dish that is more than 6 1/2 feet away from you will be less tempting. Measure your co-worker’s …
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Even on steroids, you have to be nice
June 13th, 2006
Barry Bonds, the recently crowned home run king (and the less recently crowned king of steroids) was incredibly rude to the press for most of his career, and he is suffering for that now because the crowds are booing and the press is writing only parenthetically about his record-breaking performance.
You know the lesson here: You …
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6 tips for job hunting online
June 12th, 2006
The job market is good, the Internet is buzzing, and optimism is high. Still, the best jobs require talent before you walk in the door — you need to know how to search. Here are seven tips to help you:
1. Big job sites cater to keyword-focused applicants.
Only three to five percent of job seekers find …
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Snoop on other people’s careers to gain self-knowledge
June 12th, 2006
We are bad at predicting what will make us happy, so the best way to pick a career is to study people to see if you like what their life is like. If you do, then try their career.
This is not very efficient, though. I mean, you can’t study that many people. So New York …
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Is it the weekend if the week never ends?
June 10th, 2006
A friend told me that most professional bloggers don’t blog on the weekend. I didn’t realize this, because every piece of advice on blogging that I’ve read says you have to blog very regularly to blog effectively as part of your business.
So last night — Friday — instead of blogging, I read blogs looking for …
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Job hoppers have the best vacations
June 9th, 2006
The best thing about changing jobs is the vacation in between jobs. Most companies give two weeks vacation, which is about the amount of time you need to take off from work in order to keep your life running, e.g. flooded kitchen, dental appointment, weekday baseball games.
On top of that, most people aspire to the …
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Me at the M-A-C counter: Timing is (almost) everything
June 8th, 2006
I was in Bloomingdales today, investigating possibilities at the M-A-C makeup counter, when one of the people there asked me if I want to be in a Today Show segment.
“We’re doing a makeover on TV,” said one of four tall blond women.
I said, “I’ll do it if you’ll mention my blog on TV.”
Apparently the scheduled …
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Hold CEOs accountable for their parenting
June 8th, 2006
Fortune magazine ran an article titled “The Welshman, the Walkman, and the salarymen,” which asked if the CEO, Howard Stringer, can fix Sony. At the end of the article, Stringer, who is married with two children is quoted as saying at company meeting, “I don’t see my family much. My family is you.”
GIVE ME A …
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The official announcement of my blog
June 7th, 2006
Today is the official announcement of my blog. I actually started blogging three months ago, when I was doing interviews for my recent column about blogging. It became clear that anyone who is very serious about their career should have a blog, and I didn’t have one.
It turns out, it is not that easy to …
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Visualize success like a major league all-star
June 6th, 2006
I read in the Boston Globe about this guy, Jim Fannin, who is a mental coach for hundreds of people, including twenty-two major league baseball all-stars. So I decided to interview him, thinking that I’d be able to implement his program for my own goals.
Most of what I know about mental coaching comes from my …
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Advice from my mom about job hunting
June 3rd, 2006
Here’s an email I got from my mom, who is an information technology manager at a Fortune 100 company:
Sweetie,
I was reading through a pile of resumes that human resources gave me, and there was one resume that was so good, but the guy was too high level for what I needed.
Then I though to myself, …
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Good negotiating skills decrease stress
June 2nd, 2006
If you want to know the inside dirt on being a top-flight waiter, Waiter Rant is the blog to read. Yesterday he wrote about the stress of the Memorial Day crowd. I am always shocked by the insane and totally out of line antics this guy has to put up with, which is why his …
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Get married first, then focus on career
June 1st, 2006
Women who want to have kids should make it a high priority in their early twenties to find a partner. This week’s Newsweek cover story, Marriage by the Numbers, says is okay to wait until after 35 to get married. Newsweek is revising the saying that a woman has more chance of getting hit by …
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Avoid off-shoring by being creative
June 1st, 2006
None of you should be concerned about jobs getting shipped off shore. That's because the jobs going off shore are jobs you wouldn't have wanted anyway. The highly creative, innovative, thought-leadership jobs are staying right here in the United States.
In an interview, Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind told me we are in …
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