Penelope Trunk

Archives

6 Tips for being a CEO without ruining your kids' lives. I hope.

Posted to: Entrepreneurship | Money | Parenting
April 29th, 2009
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I get questions all the time about how I manage having kids and a startup at the same time. After trying to answer the question a few times, I realized that there’s the pretty-much-BS answer about how it’s all about being clear on your values. Or there's the complicated, too-long-for-interviews answer.
To really get tips for …

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How to deal with reference checks

Posted to: Interviewing | Job Hunt
April 28th, 2009
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Reference checks used to matter a lot. Fifty years ago. When people only changed jobs twice in their life, and they didn't know anyone outside of their company, it made sense that the second company called the first company.
Then, when it became clear that the first company could say one, tiny bad thing and then …

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How to blog about a co-worker (or someone else close to you)

Posted to: How to blog | Office Politics
April 27th, 2009
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What you know the most about is what you can offer the most insight about. And you probably know that telling stories is always more compelling than talking in generalities. But if you tell stories, you need people to be in the stories. So if you want to write insightfully, then using stories about people …

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Does it work to mix work and dating?

April 24th, 2009
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I met D at a party. I was there with Ryan Paugh and a few bloggers from the Brazen Careerist network, and because it was SXSW and it was all parties all the time, I was pretty partied out. But the party was for Kirtsy, and I love the women who run Kirtsy, so I …

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Take Your Child to Work Day should be cancelled

Posted to: Diversity | Office Politics | Parenting
April 23rd, 2009
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It's time to admit that Take Your Child to Work Day is an outdated relic of 1970s feminism, and we can put the whole thing to rest.
Do you remember that the day started as Take Our Daughters to Work? It was the 70s, and women wanted their daughters to know that they could do anything. …

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Reality check: You’re not going to make money from your blog

Posted to: How to blog | Journalism
April 21st, 2009
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Almost everyone should forget about making money directly from blogging. It’s so unlikely that it’s a total waste of your time trying. I am actually shocked at how ubiquitous the idea is that blogging is a get-rich-quick scheme. Or even a get-rich-slowly scheme. It’s not. Blogging is a great career tool for creating opportunities for …

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4 Frequent questions about Gen Y answered (via a PR disaster)

Posted to: Management
April 17th, 2009
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I do a lot of public speaking, mostly on the topic of how to bridge generational differences in the workplace. And I field tons of questions from corporate audiences. Here are four of the most common questions:
How can you tell if a member of Gen Y hates his or her boss?
You can't. This is a …

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Gold digging Web 2.0 style

April 16th, 2009
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The guy I'm sort of dating asks me, “Do you know Glenda Bautista?”
I say, “No.”
He says, “We're trying to hire her.”
So I check out her blog and dis her and he says, “She was dating Matt Mullenweg.”
I say, “Really.”
He says, “Yeah. I was talking with my business partner and we both thought it must really …

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The new post-college prestige job is retail

April 15th, 2009
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It used to be that the best post-college jobs were the ones that gave you a sense of security (law, medicine) or financial windfall (banking). But the finance industry and grad-school route are both dead ends at this point.
The New York Times reports that we're experiencing a sea change in the career department because the …

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I hate David Dellifield. The one from Ada, Ohio.

Posted to: Fulfillment | Women
April 13th, 2009
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This past week was Spring Break and toward the end, somehow my ex and my nanny fell out of the picture, and I was doing a lot of taking care of the kids, which, I have said before, is not what I'm great at. I wish I were. I tried for four years to be …

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Twentysomething: Gen Y is better than everyone else at marketing themselves

April 7th, 2009
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This is a guest post from Dan Schawbel. He is 25 years old and already, the New York Times has called him a “personal branding guru.” Dan’s book is Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and it just came out today.
Personal branding describes a process where individuals differentiate themselves …

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The G-20 is Complete BS for Women

Posted to: Women
April 5th, 2009
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What is up with the constant photo ops of the wives of the men running the financial universe? What about the two women in the G-20? Do we put their husbands in the midst of this group of women? No. It would look insane. And that is exactly the reason that all the other women …

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