Tips on How to “Cold Call” a Distance Contact

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“Cold Calling” anyone is never easy. I had to learn it early in my career. A year after college, while working for McKinsey, I had to “cold call” competitors of our client to find out about their expansion plans in China. I was shocked when I first got the assignment. I remember thinking “how am I going to pull this off? I have to call complete strangers. I can’t tell them the name of my client, but I have to be honest and tell them that my client is their competitor.” ...  read more

4 Ways to Make an Outstanding Resume

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How to makes your resume outstanding? First, I think a resume must have the basics to just stay in the competition. See my post on top 10 effective resume tips first. Assuming you have done that already on your resume, then an outstanding resume is one that is TAILORED t to the job you are applying. Yes, to stand out, you have to tailor your rsume for every type of job you are applying for and preferrably every single position if time permits. ...  read more

We can all learn from a 1 year old!

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My daughter is 1 year old and just started walking. I am amazed how relentless she is at learning how to walk. Every day she would fall down many times and then get right back up again to try again. Her face is full of excitement as she takes more steps and now only after a few weeks, she has gone from only walking a few ginger steps slowly to practically running down the corridor. ...  read more

Seven Career Killers

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I came across a great article on Yahoo Finance called Seven Career Killers. I highly recommend it. #2, 3, and 4 are especially good points.

Many MBAs from top name schools experience #2, a sense of entitlement. Just because you have experience and have a good MBA doesn’t mean you have a right to be arrogant about not doing certain tasks. Many times the entitlement attitude kills opportunities. I know I have steered away from putting MBAs on my teams that have “attitude issues” even when they are super smart. Their sense of entitlement unfortunately makes them high maintenance team members and would require a lot of management time. That’s not what a manager need on their team. ...  read more

The Perfect Candidate

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You may think “wow, I wish my resume or experience is more perfect. Then my job search would be so much easier” Well, think again. One of the top six pet peeves for recruiters today is a “Perfect” candidates – someone with all successes on their resume and often times can’t see any more ways to improve other than to work less. ...  read more

Salary Negotiation Tactics – 6 Practical Tips

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Perhaps it’s because I am Chinese or because I loved my negotiations class in business school, I firmly believe no matter what the circumstance is for your initial job offer, you should negotiate for more (as long as you do it right!).

It does not matter whether the economy is booming or not, once you get a job offer – negotiate. Just two months ago, a friend got an 20% increase in his contractor rate after he negotiated. In this case, his client low-balled him as many would do during the recession because it’s an employer’s market. Many people are so thankful that they were offered anything that they forget to ask for a fair compensation. It’s still smart and okay to negotiate even in a tough market. ...  read more

“When should I go to Business School?”

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Timing is everything and this is true as well when you think about when the optimal time to go to business school. Most people go after having 2-8 years of experience.

If you work in consulting, anytime between 3-5 years is optimal. If you work in corporate, it really depends on your experience and how well you can build a good case for your readiness for school. The average years of experience for top schools are around 5 years for all students (3-4 years for consulting or banking folks and 6-7 years for corporate folks). ...  read more