Weiye Loh's Library tagged Career → View Popular, Search in Google

Feb

2012

Are Successful People Nice? - Art Markman - Harvard Business Review

Career success also involves being critical. While some managers may want to surround themselves with people who obediently agree, most want those who will find the flaws in a plan before it is implemented. Less agreeable people are prone to give this kind of criticism.

Of course, this is not license to be a jerk at work. The data also suggest that people lacking agreeableness are more likely to lose their jobs than agreeable ones. There is a big difference between being disagreeable and being unpleasant.

blogs.hbr.org/...re_successful_people_nice.html

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Critical Critical Pedagogy Career Success

If you are more agreeable, go out of your way to find the flaws in plans that you hear. Put aside your personal relationships and think about what can go wrong. It helps to imagine that the idea is going to be implemented by another company, to help separate the people from the ideas. Next, find ways to express your concerns. People can be upset with you for a day if they recognize the long-term value of your advice. Express your concerns with empathy, but directly. Try practicing giving negative feedback with a friend first, before doing it for real.
If you are more disagreeable, balance criticism with empathy. Remember that it is difficult to hear criticism of your ideas and your performance. You can be firm while still recognizing the impact of your message. If you think you're developing a reputation for being unsympathetic, practice giving bad news to a friend. Find out which parts of your delivery are causing people to bristle. A strong leader can guide without being mean.

Dec

2011

BBC News - Banking 'can be an ethical career choice'

Idealistic youngsters with ethical values should opt for a banking career

www.bbc.co.uk/...education-15820786

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Career Banking Finance Ethics

Aug

2011

Balderdash: Don’t Follow Your Passion

If you want to run a successful café — and enjoy it — you need to love a lot more than coffee. You’ve also gotta get some kind of pleasure, even grim satisfaction, out of the daily grind.

gssq.blogspot.com/...dont-follow-your-passion.html

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Passion Work Career

Feb

2011

Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume | Recruiting & Job Search, New York City Start-up blog by Marc Cenedella

www.cenedella.com/...leonardo-da-vincis-resume

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Career Resume Art

in 1482, at the age of 30, he wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.
you can click on the image below to see the full-size version.
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- What a fantastic piece of personal marketing! There’s none of his famous backwards-mirror writing here — this letter was intended to be read and to persuade.
- You’ll notice he doesn’t recite past achievements. He doesn’t mention the painting of the altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard; he doesn’t provide a laundry list of past bombs he’s built; he doesn’t cite his prior employment in artist Andrea di Cione’s studio.
  
  No, he does none of these things, because those are about his achievements, and not about the Duke’s needs.
  
  Instead, he sells his prospective employer on what he can do for him.
- that’s exactly what your resume needs to do, too. Not the laundry list / standard bio that talks about you, but the marketing piece that talks about the benefits to your future employer and how you fit into his or her needs and desires.
  So it turns out that even 500 years later, this remarkable fellow, Leonardo da Vinci, can even teach us something about the modern job hunt…
  What a genius…

Skirting the Line | Psychology Today

www.psychologytoday.com/...skirting-the-line

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Work Gender Stereotype Gender Equality Career

What to wear? Female office workers may not suffer the confines of ties and wingtips, but they too have a narrow strait to cope with: that intangible line between looking too manly and seeming too cute. Unfair though these perceptions may be, their impact is all too real.
We are less judgmental of women who wear provocative clothing if they're doing low-status jobs, finds Peter Glick of Lawrence University. However, when people are shown a photo of a woman in sexy clothes and told she is a business manager, they say she seems less intelligent and less competent than suit-wearing execs.
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- Women who wear excessive makeup are seen as trying too hard, says Sherry Maysonave, a career coach and author of Casual Power. But studies show people of both sexes rate women who forgo makeup as less committed to their jobs.
- competitive female coworkers often relish a rival's wardrobe faux pas
- Even brainy women aren't above a little titillation. A survey of female M.B.A.'s found half had worn revealing clothing, sent risque emails or told male coworkers they look "hot" to garner favor. But such strategies tend to backfire: Studies show nonflirtatious workers earn 25 percent more and receive an average of three promotions while their brazen counterparts only earned two.
- Both sexes perceive women with long, straight, blond hair as being sexy and those with short, highlighted hairstyles as smart and confident, but not sexy, finds Marianne LaFrance, a Yale psychologist. "More hair equals more femininity, but also less intelligence," she says. Likewise, high-maintenance hair makes others suspicious about a woman's competence.
- When male executives are asked what holds top women back in the workplace, appearing too masculine is always in the top five, says Benton. Most men think women should be business-like, but should not try to join the boys' club.

Plastic surgery is the next must-have career tool. Maybe | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

blog.penelopetrunk.com/...xt-must-have-career-tool-maybe

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Career Looks

the most thorough compendium of research I've seen about how good-looking people get more of everything. The book is Looks: Why They Matter More than You Ever Imagined, by Gordon Patzer, professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago and former dean at California State University.
It is well-documented that good-looking people make more money than everyone else. Taller men make more money than shorter men. If a woman is just 13 pounds overweight, she is penalized at work. (Hat tip: Recruiting Animal.)
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- We are hard-wired to treat good-looking people better and it's pretty much impossible to overcome this tendency. Patzer shows that this salary discrepancy is true even in law firms, where the partners doing the hiring are acutely aware of how illegal it is to favor good-looking people. Researchers at University of Texas, found that even mothers treat good-looking children better than average-looking ones.
- Before you complain about how unfair all this is, Patzer shows that good-looking people are actually better for the company's bottom line. This is because highly attractive people actually earn more money for a company than average looking people. One study in Holland, for example, showed that companies with better looking management consistently billed more hours at higher rates than companies with average looking management.
- So what should you do if you are not good looking?
  
  1. Stay out of sales and management.
- 2. Be honest with yourself.
  The more honest we are about where looks matter a lot, the less time we'll waste doing something we probably won't excel at.
- 3. Get plastic surgery. Maybe.
- soon we will all capitulate to the undeniable evidence that we have more opportunity in life if we are better looking, and it's relatively easy to buy good looks. So we will.
- Plastic surgery will be for the go-getters and career-minded. Just you wait and see.