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, [...]

Downsizing, rightsizing, reorganizing, reduction in force. No matter what it’s called, the result is the same if your employer is about to go belly up and decides your salary will help cut costs and increase profits. How did this happen? Just two years ago, your organization was growing, highly profitable and seemingly stable. You and [...]

John Agoglia was managing editor for a trade publication in New York City when his wife decided to attend graduate school in Massachusetts. Agoglia promptly polished up his resume and began a new job search. “I went in to see my boss in and told him that I was moving–of course I had already sent [...]