On the career path, fast food is a stepping stone most people rush to hop off. Now the industry is working harder than ever to change that. Tired of the scramble to fill openings and the high cost of training new employees, fast-food chains are offering benefits that were unheard of 10 years ago — [...]

Across America, there’s a newfound respect for one of the earth’s oldest professions — sales. Once considered a career for business majors who didn’t fit elsewhere, sales is now viewed as the engine of economic growth, the grease that keeps the wheels of business turning — and a place for the truly talented. You can’t [...]

Three years ago, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, noticed a recent M.B.A. graduate still hanging around campus. As it turned out, the former student was running a business from the office of a faculty member who was on vacation. “So I was thinking: A guy like [...]

Mentors and education are keys to promotion. Casting stones won’t shatter the so-called “glass ceiling,” but college degrees will. In the first in-depth, cross-cultural study documenting the career paths of highly successful senior-level women and minority executives in corporate America, education and mentoring were found to be the critical keys to a highly compensated, “fast-track” [...]

Academics find success as corporate trainers. Academics in search of extra cash, or just keen for a change of pace, are taking their talents to the corporate sector. The critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills they developed inside the ivory tower are highly valued elsewhere. Academics straddling both worlds say the trick is to [...]

Employee volunteers can make a difference. Employees want to impact more than just the bottom line; they want to know if their hard work is making a difference in customers’ lives. More and more people are also looking to make an impact in the world around them–and companies are giving them the chance to do [...]

The surprising skill set of today’s tech professionals. Liberal arts majors go to college, graduate, and then have to forget all they’ve learned. That’s what people think. But, in today’s hot job market, liberal arts majors may be better qualified than tech graduates to meet the needs of an IT career. What IT Takes Universities [...]

Political apathy on America’s college campuses. For 22-year-old Katherine Bishop, it’s politics as usual. After graduating from James Madison University in May, the speech communication major took on her current job as deputy press secretary for Mike Easley, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate from North Carolina. “I couldn’t pass up this opportunity,” she said. “I wanted [...]

The right way to conduct an annual review. Any musician knows that practice makes perfect. Play a challenging piece often and it becomes smooth and graceful. Try it once a year and it’s hard even to finish–there’s no confidence, no understanding. The same applies to the “annual evaluation,” an event that, ideally, lasts all year. [...]

Imagine being summoned to your boss’s office. He or she stands ceremoniously behind the desk and announces you’ve been “reclassified.” It’s not a promotion or raise, but a demotion to a lesser job and lower pay. “Reclassification” is the latest word in businesspeak. Corporate America already ran through terms like selected out, placed out, dehired, [...]