Career 01 (Sep 08 - Mar 10)

[mojo_]

Lena,

Phase 8:

[millionairemind]

Oct 14, 2009
Bosses not honest: poll

NEW YORK - A MAJORITY of US workers do not think their bosses are honest, said a survey released on Tuesday, and one in four would fire their boss if they could.

Only four in ten workers would take their bosses' jobs if offered, according to the survey conducted for Adecco Group North America, part of Zurich-based Adecco Group, a human resources and placement company.

Two-thirds of workers, however, would not change anything about their relationship with their boss, the survey found.

It found 53 per cent of workers do not think their boss is honest, a similar number do not think their boss is fair or patient and two-thirds do not think their boss is loyal.

A quarter say they believe their boss is dishonest about their job security, and 28 per cent would lay off or fire their boss if given the opportunity, it said.

By a wide margin of 89 per cent, workers think their relationship with the boss is important for job satisfaction, the survey found. -- REUTERS

[kennynah]

By a wide margin of 89 per cent, workers think their relationship with the boss is important for job satisfaction

probably from the pool of secretaries....

[iam802]

Four Rules to Rise to the Top of Anyone’s Mental Rolodex

http://www.keithferrazzi.com/blog/four- ... l-rolodex/
==

The true art of memory is the art of attention. – Samuel Johnson

These days we’re overwhelmed with information. So when you’re trying to create a new relationship, what does it take to break through the white noise of information overload?

Becoming front and center in someone’s mental Rolodex is contingent on one invaluable little concept: repetition. Here are four rules of thumb to engage your personal VIPs and then keep them interested.

1. People you’re contacting to create a new relationship need to see or hear your name in at least three modes of communication—by, say, an e-mail, a phone call, and a face-to-face encounter—before there is substantive recognition.

2. Once you have gained some early recognition, you need to nurture a developing relationship with a phone call or e-mail at least once a month

3. If you want to transform a contact into a friend, you need a minimum of two face-to-face meetings out of the office.

4. Maintaining a secondary relationship requires two to three pings a year.

Using the above rules should give you an idea of what it’ll take to keep your own network humming. I make dozens of phone calls a day. Most of them are simply quick hellos that I leave on a friend’s voice mail. I also send e-mail constantly. When it comes to relationship maintenance, I’m on my game 24/7, 365 days a year.

There’s no doubt you have to bring a certain vigor to this part of the system. But hey, this is just my way of doing things. You’ll figure out your own way. The governing principle here is repetition; get organized and find a way to ensure that you’ll contact people regularly without putting too much strain on your schedule.

Planes, trains and automobiles work for me, but that’s because I travel constantly. What’s your best time for dedicated pinging?

[winston]

Don't Let Anyone Tell You What You Can -- or Can't -- Do By Michael Masterson

"I'd love to be in the communications business," Sarah, an accountant, told me. "But I'm an introvert. Plus, I'm boring. So I studied accounting in college. And though I'm doing something I'm good at, I hate my job."

"Who beat this girl up?" I wondered. "Where did she get the idea that you have to be an extrovert and interesting to be successful at communications?"

Most of the successful writers I know are introverts. And some of the most popular public speakers I know (you know them too) are just plain boring when you sit down and talk to them.

I blame those stupid personality tests given by guidance counselors for Sarah's self-imposed limitations. The idea that you will be happier and more successful if you know "who you are" is bunk. It's just pure bunk.

You can become good at anything that appeals to you. It doesn't matter what your "personality" is right now. That will change over time with the confidence you will get from learning and growing and acquiring skills.

Study the field you want to go into and figure out what it is that successful people in that field do. Break down each thing they do into its component parts, and practice each part till you get good at it.

If you put in 1,000 hours of work (less if you have good coaching), you will be on your way to success in any career -- even if the "experts" tell you that you have zero talent for it.

Source: ETR

[helios]

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The ideal background for a technology commercialization professional
It is often said of technology commercialization is that you need a pretty diverse skill set to succeed. The mantra is that you have to know about law, science and business. I think we often pat ourselves on the back a bit too much. We are pretty well rounded compared to some of the scientists we work with who are ultra-specialized (how else would they get so good in one field?), but compared to the average middle-management-type in a Fortune 500 company, we're not really any different. They have to have some mastery of different areas too. We probably think we're quite well rounded because many of us come from a science background where the norm is to be ultra-specialized, but that's just my guess.

Truthfully, we don't dig that deeply into the business and the legal side of things. At my university, we do much more than the norm in terms of product development, but what we're doing still just barely scratches the surface of truly "knowing the business". Ditto for the legal side. We end up being knowledgeable about patent and contract law, but no more so than someone working for Microsoft is aware of anti-trust law.

We spend most of our time working in the scientific domain and without some scientific understanding, the knowledge of business and law is moot. The science understanding doesn't need to Ph.D. level, but I think you need to have some. The telling thing is not so much that someone has a B.S. in a scientific discipline, but that having that degree indicates that they were probably playing with model rockets as a kid and continue to have interests in science to this day. They are likely to have always had an inquisitive mind and probably have at least one nerdy/scientific hobby.

I also think it is very helpful having some sort of post-graduate degree. Technology commercialization professionals spend their whole day working with Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s. I have an MBA and that is honestly viewed like it is an advanced degree in nose-picking, but at least I can speak about "graduate school" when we have to go around the table and introduce ourselves. Fair or not, some faculty can be judgmental and will tend to class people with mere bachelor degrees as beneath them.

That being said, the absolute safest way to hire entry-level professionals for a technology commercialization office is to go with people with a science background. Your hope is that you can then train them in business and law. It would make sense that you could also hire attorneys with an undergrad in History and train them in the science, but this does not work as well. Remember, we spend most of our time working in science!

You also have to consider what happens if your entry-level people don't "get it". This is a real problem and it seems like the "failure" rate for entry-level professionals is ~50%. Ouch! So, you have to consider what you are left with if candidates "wash out". If you hire a Ph.D., you are still left with someone who can understand the science and can evaluate inventions for patentability even if they don't really enjoy negotiations or learning patent law.

If you hire an MBA type who washes out and refuses to learn science and law, you're going to end up with a bunch of commercialization plans for technologies that don't work (or at least are FAR from proven) or are not patentable. They will be excited because "cancer is a huge market" even if the technology in question has little hope of success. With an attorney who washes out, I'm not sure what you have. The legal office probably won't want them to practice law from the technology commercialization office. I guess they could function as a contract paralegal and review licenses and MTAs.

There is a special circumstance of hiring patent attorneys and this is a different matter completely (and one I'll discuss later).

You also have to consider that various degrees are self-selecting in terms of the types of people who are attracted to the programs. How many Ph.D. graduate students think they will be rich and running the whole show by the time they are 30? Not many! For better or worse, the typical Ph.D. is patient. But many MBAs and JDs want to run the show when they are 25 and have been on the job for 2 weeks. Stereotyping is dangerous, but it is a certainty that you will have more discussions about "career development" with MBA and JD type employees. Its not necessarily a good policy to GE-type competitiveness in a technology commercialization office unless you are going to have GE-type management systems to reward the top performers and eliminate the poor performers.

What about salaries? MBAs and JDs see some of their classmates get $100K plus first year packages. That is really expensive for unproven technology commercialization talent that has a 50% failure rate. You can hire young Ph.D.s for much less. A big problem with technology commercialization is that offices are not properly staffed. Cheap talent goes a LONG way to fixing that problem. Of course, you can't just operate a sweatshop because if these folks prove themselves, they are immediately attractive to any other technology commercialization office in the country, so you MUST have a plan to rapidly raise their salaries or risk losing them.

So, my only recommendation is that technology commercialization offices be generally staffed with Ph.D.s. Hire them straight out of graduate school or after they've done a post-doc for a few years. If they take to the job, you'll have good professionals. If they don't, at least you'll have a raft of people who can screen new technologies and handle the scut-work so that their more well-rounded peers are freed up to do their thing.

Dean Stell's blog: http://technologycommercialization.blog ... ology.html

[kennynah]

So complex...

[AirFlownAussiePork]

Agree and disagree on the blog post. Being an MBA and PhD, I won't hire an MBA knowing that it is money in, students out type of education. The MBA is a money spinner for the business schools. My lecturers were telling us that before they were assigned to teach the MBA classes, their instructions were Give "A"s if can, some "B"s, a few "C"s if really needed. Only fail them when absolutely necessary. It doesn't help when the lecturers' scores have to be send to the Business School Office where they modify the graphs to pass all.

MBA thinks they know too much and are worth too much. I would rather head hunt some great company senior executives than to pay exorbitant sums for MBAs.

PhDs do really earn their degree, try writing an 80 000 words thesis and you get what I mean. My MBA time was great for improving golf handicap, but PhD really handicap you. But such training means that they are only into their fields and nothing else. For that I agree, hire a few of them and let them do the technology side, do install a few auto feeders, some do need them more than your pets. My take will be to hire the two categories separately. PhDs can't perform commercialization and MBAs can't perform technology. Just hire the two separate kinds and ensure that they can work with each other. Few people are capable of both.

I also think it is very helpful having some sort of post-graduate degree. Technology commercialization professionals spend their whole day working with Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s. I have an MBA and that is honestly viewed like it is an advanced degree in nose-picking, but at least I can speak about "graduate school" when we have to go around the table and introduce ourselves. Fair or not, some faculty can be judgmental and will tend to class people with mere bachelor degrees as beneath them.

[winston]

Kids as young as 9 to receive career advice

LONDON (Reuters) - Children in British primary schools as young as nine are to receive advice via internet sites such as YouTube on their future career paths under a new scheme, the government said on Monday.

Under the program designed to help children of all socio-economic backgrounds realize their goals, students will be given mentors, have the chance to visit universities, and be given counseling on what subjects to study via social networking sites like Facebook.

A recent study showed that 75 percent of 11-year-olds wanted to attend university, the government said.

"Parents tell us they want to see an end to the old boys network that means only children from privileged backgrounds get their foot in the door," Ed Balls, schools secretary, said in a statement.

"It is often too late for children to start thinking about this at 14 when they are influenced from when they are seven, eight and nine," he said.

The program, which will be trialed in 38 schools is designed to encourage pupils to think about their work aspirations at a young age, the government said.

The pilot schools will be located in Bristol, Coventry, Gateshead, Manchester, Plymouth, Reading and York.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEno ... ddlyenough

[kennynah]

"It is often too late for children to start thinking about this at 14 when they are influenced from when they are seven, eight and nine," he said.

i dont mind sharing here that when i was 11, i decided to get into university....

what about you?