My Global Career
Advancing your career in the global economy.
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Upward Mobility is So 1970s
Here are three telling data points which, when properly assembled, paint an unflattering picture about working in America today: The wealthiest 1 percent sees their income dramatically outpace others; Men in their 30s today earn less than their fathers did in the 1970s; A parents’ economic success is one of the biggest pointers to their children’s future economic success. Those are key findings of a study that evaluates economic mobility, or the ability of a person to move up or... |
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Engage Workers By Letting Them Think
“If you see a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot by watching” are some of the many one-line quips of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. Yogi’s comments are both fun and a blinding flash of the obvious that often draw us back to simple truths. My favorite is “The future ain’t what it used to be.” One blinding flash of the obvious that is often missed, and that could be extremely pertinent in the age of employee engagement,... |
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Pink’s Whole New Approach to Career Guides
Daniel Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need is anything but a simple comic book, even if it closely resembles one. Aimed primarily at recent (and impending) college grads, Bunko is a graphical story told in illustrated panels. Pink says it is the first US business book rendered in the Japanese “Manga” style - an entertaining, fanciful yet unintimidating way to assimilate information. Pink’s hero is stuck in a dead-end job.... |
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Training to Excel in a Multinational Company
Recruiters and hiring managers say that the demand for executives to globalize business operations and tap worldwide markets has exceeded the supply of globally experienced executives - at least in America. As business schools race to add global curriculum, dozens of new alumni-education programs and executive education courses suggest that there is a market waiting to be served - expensively and immediately. One of the more interesting new programs stems from a firm that has been evangelizing... |
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Gen Y’s Retention Deficit Syndrome
We recognize the signs. A young employee shows up late at work or for meetings, misses assignments or takes sick days when they’re on top of their game. As a boss your first instinct is to rattle their cage. But what will that accomplish? Employers fret about holding onto Gen Y workers who may be less inclined than previous generations to stick around through thick and thin. Given the cost of recruiting young talent, employers are understandably concerned about return on investment - keeping... |
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Is It Risky To Work With Friends?
They don’t teach this in management school, but learning how to build and maintain friendships in the workplace is a skill that can take you a long way in your career. Just ask the founders of Google and Yahoo! But then again, when friends ‘break-up’ at work, whether it’s a legal partnership, two chefs at a bistro, or heads of a public company such as Disney, it can cause a permanent rift in the relationship. The truth is it’s risky to work with friends. Yet it... |
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Show Me the Rewards, Boss
When you go above and beyond the call of duty at work, you expect a reward for your efforts. But the payoff is often delayed - or worse - and it’s rarely what you were expecting. What’s typically at stake for employees is a cash reward and heightened organizational stature - a big step toward a promotion. If the organization fails to come through even star employees head for the exits. Unfortunately, HR experts say two pervasive problems undermine employee trust in rewards programs.... |
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Counter-Intuitiveness Comes of Age
Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success is one of the rare career books that is often counter-intuitive in its guidance yet stays with you a little longer than expected. I was both amused and engaged by chapters entitled “Be a Sponge,” or “Assume the Job Description Was Wrong” or “When Writing Your Resume, Don’t Be Too Honest.” A former professional beach volleyball player, software executive and IPO survivor, Trunk reinvented... |
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Injured Veterans Find New Career Opportunities
Though we hear media reports about casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there is no spotlight shining on the thousands of U.S. soldiers who are unable to return to the jobs and careers that they had before the war. Even less well understood are the steps that government and corporations are taking to help retrain or prepare these brave men and women for the next phases of their professional lives. Even as the injured veterans undergo treatment or therapy, the Walter Reed Equal Employment... |
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Are You Happy With Your Work/Life Balance?
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the term work/life balance? Perhaps it’s the time you leave the office? Or maybe it’s the total number of hours you have worked in a week? Or is the time your colleagues leave the office compared to you? Have you ever asked yourself whether you have achieved good work/life-balance? What criteria do you base your answers on? Most people tend to connect work/life balance with time or hours spent at work. While that can be part... |
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Is Social Networking a Career Safety Net?
There are endless reasons to build a strong network of professional contacts. But perhaps none is more compelling in 2008 than the goal of establishing a career safety net. In a recession jobs are last to get hit, yet are the slowest part of business spending to recover. This is the time to develop or revise an escape plan to insulate you from possible downturns or unforeseen changes at work. “I don’t know if I would go so far as to call social networking a safety net,” says... |
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Do You Have the Right Mindset for Success?
Carol S. Dweck, author of Mindset, the New Psychology of Success, contends that your success or failure in life, career and relationships is attributable to a fixed or growth mindset. The fixed mindset believes that your personal qualities - intelligence, personality and character - are set in stone. The growth mindset believes that your qualities can improve with effort and experience. A fixed mindset can sidetrack your career - especially if you’re working for someone who views his or... |
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Job Seekers Will Walk Away
You show up for a job interview at a company you care about. But the interviewer is ill-prepared, ill-mannered or clueless. Do you take the job anyway if it is offered to you? I would take a job if I liked the position, the upside and the company. That is, assuming that the interviewer I disliked isn’t going to be my boss or his boss. But that puts me in the minority. Two-thirds of respondents to a survey of 6,000 staffing directors, hiring managers and job seekers, conducted by Development... |
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Can You Bulletproof Your Job?
Have you been distressed lately about the economy, your job or your boss? If so, you wouldn’t be alone. When times are toughest, most of us tend to wait out the storm rather than seek out other, perhaps even riskier opportunities. In his new book, Bulletproof Your Job, author Stephen Viscusi says that your “primary objective” at work is to protect your job because it is “your most valuable asset.” Forget the financial crisis; the issue is more primal than that. “Here’s... |
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Workplace Bullying: Overblown or Overlooked?
Everyone knows a bully. It’s the schoolyard tyrant who swoops in on a target, pushing him around while spewing threats and belittling him in front of others. But childhood isn’t where it stops - it’s also on display in the workplace.”Workplace bullying” is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of a person through verbal abuse, behavior that’s threatening, humiliating or intimidating, and/or sabotage that prevents work from getting done, according to the Workplace... |
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The Invisible Rise of Cross-Border Telecommuters
Fernando Ara faces an extreme virtual commute from his Orange County, CA office to Madrid, Spain. Ara is in the vanguard of worldwide cross-border telecommuters. Ara is the U.S. country manager for Redkaraoke, a social networking website, but works out of his California-based home office and travels when necessary for meetings. Ara’s colleague, Justin Abbott, based in Baltimore, MD, heads up business development for the company. Another manager, Jose Miguel Segurra, lives in Japan. They... |
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Dawn of a New Career - Globalizing Websites
Have you ever visited a poorly translated foreign website and wondered why the company hasn’t bothered to get it right? Building a “culturally-customized” website is not an action item for most businesses, except for those seeking an edge in global commerce. Effective global websites require much more effort than simply translating content: from rewriting marketing pitches to reflect different cultural values; to reconceptualizing website design and colors; to getting small details... |
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Three Key Principles of the Blitz Approach
We saw it this week: the economy hiccups, companies restructure and employees scatter in search of shelter and protection for the career they’ve fought so hard to build. In times like these, many are faced with difficult decisions. Should I stay with my company or seek another position in another company? Should I go back to school to learn new skills and ride out the wave? These are not easy questions to answer. Mostly because they imply considerable additional effort to maintain... |
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Don’t Lose Sleep Over Employment Tests
If you’re applying for a job at a global company, you may be asked to take an aptitude or personality test. Hearing this, you may be nervous about your test-taking or language skills. Don’t be. We spoke to several experts in global testing, and here’s what they told us. What Companies Want to Know. Companies use tests to determine either aptitude (such as your skills as a Java programmer) or to rate personality traits (such as your ability to work within a team or under intense... |
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Updating Your Way to Higher Status
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re writing graffiti in cyberspace? I get this disconnected feeling when I post a status update on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. There’s certainly an art to writing a one sentence blurb that expresses something about your life, perspective or the world around you. But is there a point to status updates? Is it merely a social convenience or could it advance your career? The basic idea of a status update is to say something of interest about your... |