Soft Skills - Ask a Wharton MBA
Develop Soft Skills – Work Smart & Live More
On the one hand, the official unemployment rate has gone up to 9.9% as of April 2010, from 9.7% the first 3 months of this year. Did you know that 46% of those unemployed have been out of work for 6 months or more? Did you know Asian has the lowest unemployment rate (6.8%) of all major races – whites (9.0 percent), blacks (16.5 percent), Hispanics (12.5 percent)? and Women have a lower unemployment rate 8.2 percent as compared to men (10.1 percent)? ...
The last few weeks have been stressful. I have been juggling five projects/initiatives at the same time on a 32 hours a week schedule. Unexpected project issues are coming up left and right; requirements are misunderstood; customer experience risks are newly uncovered, etc…
The end result is I have been taking my stress home after work. Thinking about issues in the shower and waking up with solutions to yet another unexpected problem. My daughter runs to greet me in the morning and sometimes I feel half there because I am already planning in my head how to tackle the day. Some days I don’t even feel like going to work. Does any of this sound familiar? ...
Nowadays, you can find career advice just about anywhere – online, offline, from friends, colleagues, your parents, mentors, bosses, career coaches, and anyone with a public blog :-). So how do you know what career advice is good and appropriate for you?
My answer is only you would know what is good career advice for you. Career advice is just opinions. If you ask anyone for career advice, they will attempt to provide it, but that doesn’t mean they are all created equal. ...
What is your reaction when you see this post title? Is your response “of course, I have a very good work life balance”? Or is your response “I wish I could, but I have to work a lot to make money, get ahead, take care of family. I have to wait to enjoy life later. What choice do I have”? If you are more like the latter, this is a story for you. ...
Just because you got turned down by a company for a job, it does not mean it has to be the end of the story. A friend interviewed at a company for a Paid Search Marketing position. He went for several rounds and everyone liked him but they turned him down saying they wanted someone with more experience. While he was disappointed, he graciously thanked them for the opportunity and continued his job search efforts. ...
In the baby boomer era, the myth was “if you are loyal to a company, the company will take care of you.” Many believed that until they were laid off at 55 after 20 years of service with no good prospect to find work again. Then for Generation X (people in our late 20s to 30s), it became “if you perform well, you will be rewarded.” To some extent this is still true until the financial market crashed and even very talented people remain out of work. ...
I was taught the definition of success in business school. We just finished 4 weeks of pre-term (refresher courses on math, accounting etc..) before my official 1st year at Wharton began. My accounting professor used most of the time in our last class to give us a lecture on success and what it means. ...