On Tuesday, the S&P 500 and the Dow closed at nominal all-time highs. Three days later, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added a shockingly low 88,000 jobs in March. How bad is 88K? Well, put it this way, we're theoretically in the midst of an accelerating recovery, and 88K new jobs per month won't get us back to full employment for another 20 years, or more. (The Atlantic)
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The job quest often feels a little quixotic: Even getting your resume read by a human (or a robot) requires exacting, errorless presentation – and then there's the whole courting process of the interview. Then there's the hiring managers inundated with apps, given few signs to distinguish signal from noise. So you, the jobseeker, need to stand out. Cookies help; so does technology. (Fast Company)
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All companies today are trying to do more with fewer people, which means that everybody is short on time. That's why it's crazy to load up your documents (e-mails, brochures, websites, etc.) with fancy-sounding business cliches, and unsubstantiated opinions. Nobody has time to wade through biz-blab. (Inc.)
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The history of Latin American emigration is best told over lunch. Taco and tostada stalls have spread across the United States because 12m Mexicans have settled there. In Madrid, steaks sizzle on parrillas tended by Argentines who fled the economic crisis of the early 2000s. To wash such delicacies down, bars in any big city serve mojitos mixed by Cuban exiles. (The Economist)
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Lurking behind the question of jobs – whether there are enough of them, how hard we should work at them, and what kind the future will bring – is a major problem of job engagement. Too many people are tuned out, turned off, or ready to leave. But there's one striking exception. The happiest people I know are dedicated to dealing with the most difficult problems. (Harvard Business Review)
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Twitter is becoming the new job board. It is also becoming the new résumé. Fed up with traditional recruiting sites and floods of irrelevant résumés, some recruiters are turning to the social network to post jobs, hunt for candidates and research applicants. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Bringing people together is awesome. But like most social interactions, there are unwritten rules. First Round Capital partner and superconnector Chris Fralic spells them out. (Fast Company)
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Let's agree that gender stereotyping still exists. We may try to suppress the subconscious image of political leaders, doctors, and CEO's as male, but that's what pops into our heads when we hear those professions. What's ironic is that I'm the CEO of an investment company, so, if I struggle with this, I suspect others must too. (Harvard Business Review)
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When you are trying to keep a retail outfit afloat amid hyperinflation, it helps to have a sideline. "We had a business selling crocodile skins to Hermès and Gucci for shoes and handbags," says John Koumides, chief executive of Innscor, a conglomerate based in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. The currency earned from this exotic export was a lifeline for the firm’s other arms, including its SPAR stores, when Zimbabwe’s shops were short of stock in 2008 as its currency collapsed. (The Economist)
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When the business school at the University of California, Davis, started its master's program in accounting last year, administrators expected to attract aspiring accountants from nearby colleges. What they got instead was a wave of interest from overseas: Roughly two-thirds of the 189 applications received for last fall's entering class came from Chinese citizens. (The Wall Street Journal)
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New business school accreditation standards, including tougher curriculum requirements for ethics, sustainability, and the global marketplace, are on the way. The changes are the most significant to the AACSB accreditation standards in a decade and come after two years of discussion and analysis.(Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Business schools, as we report in Thursday’s Journal, are fielding huge demand from Chinese students for their specialized master’s programs in subjects such as finance and accounting. Their appeal is obvious: The quick–these programs usually last about a year–U.S. credential gives China natives a competitive edge in the hot finance market back home. And schools like the healthy revenue stream these programs bring in. (The Wall Street Journal)
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He received the award from the Multicultural Forum on Workplace Diversity, during the 25th annual Forum April 10 in Minneapolis. Wells, a past chairman on the NBMBAA Board of Directors, as well as current Board Member and NBMBAA Lifetime member, was honored for his tireless commitment to diversity and inclusion during his career, from his time as VP of Diversity for the St. Paul Companies to the work he’s done and continues to do to encourage, support and build the Multicultural Forum.
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Merchants don't have much say in how they accept payment, and that's a big problem that gets passed onto consumers. LevelUp founder Seth Priebatsch takes a closer look. (Fast Company)
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Back in 2010 Mark Zuckerberg made a very bad decision. Instead of building separate apps for iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys, Nokia devices, and, yes, even Microsoft phones, he put his engineers to work designing a version of Facebook that could operate on any smartphone. In effect, he was betting that as different operating systems jostled for control of mobile devices, standalone apps would go away and soon we would surf websites on our phones, just as we do on PCs. (Fortune)
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PC sales certainly haven't been good over the past year or so, but this past quarter was record-setting bad. Shipments of PCs fell 14% worldwide last quarter, according to IDC. It was the worst yearly decline since IDC began tracking the data in 1994. (CNN/Money)
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As workplaces become more diverse and more companies do business globally, the opportunities for cultural missteps are also increasing. Cultural diversity expert and executive coach Gayle Cotton says today's many forms of communication have created many ways for missteps to happen. (Entrepreneur)
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Online review sites, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, can be a boon for your business. But you need to take an active role in generating and making the most of positive comments. While it isn't ethical to solicit good reviews, you can encourage customers to leave their feedback, whether positive or negative, on both your website and review sites. (Entrepreneur)
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Far fewer Americans are getting fired or laid off these days than they were in 2009. In fact, layoffs are back at their pre-recession lows. That said, new hiring remains weak. (CNN/Money)
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A crush of apps allowing us to do discrete tasks for small sums of money might be the future. But the atomization of paid labor leaves workers vulnerable. (The Atlantic)
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It's college touring season, and many parents are on the road with their teenagers, driving from school to school and thinking about the college application – and financial aid – process that looms ahead. Many baby boomers have already been through this stage with their kids, but because the generation spans about 20 years, others still have kids at home. So how should boomers plan to pay for school when, on average, students graduate from college in the U.S. with $250,000 in debt? (NPR)
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U.S. lawmakers are looking for ways to carve up the $70 billion-a-year home mortgage interest deduction. What they’re finding is a political challenge that might not yield much revenue for reducing the budget deficit or lowering tax rates and may not be worth the outcry from taxpayers making between $75,000 and $200,000 a year. (Bloomberg)
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Banks have been shedding risky assets to show regulators that they are not as vulnerable as they were during the financial crisis. In some cases, however, the assets don’t actually move – the bank just shifts the risk to another institution. (The New York Times)
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It may cost less to do business in places where there's what some people call a culture of health. And that's put Colorado, which has the lowest rates of adult obesity in the country, on the map for companies looking to relocate or expand. (NPR)
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President Obama is no longer pressing to raise income tax rates on the rich. But that doesn’t mean he thinks the wealthy are paying enough in taxes. Outlining his budget proposals to Congress on Wednesday, Mr. Obama pushed to raise more than $600 billion in new revenue, mainly by curbing deductions for the most affluent taxpayers and forcing millionaires to pay a minimum rate of 30 percent. (The New York Times)
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The U.S. Postal Service has backed off a plan to halt Saturday mail delivery, saying that Congress has forced it to continue the service despite massive cost overruns. In a statement released Wednesday, the USPS Board of Governors said restrictive language included in the latest Continuing Resolution, which keeps the government operating until September in lieu of a budget, prevents it from going ahead with the plan. (NPR)
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A colleague asks you for feedback on a report. A LinkedIn connection requests an introduction to one of your key contacts. A recent graduate would like an informational interview. New research from Wharton management professor Adam Grant reveals that how you respond to these requests may be a decisive indicator of where you will end up on the ladder of professional success. (Knowledge@Wharton)
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Within moments of seeing white smoke billow from the Sistine Chapel, media outlets were inundated with a slew of reports about the former Cardinal Bergoglio. The Vatican PR machine noted that Pope Francis was an incredibly humble Cardinal who, as was befitting a Jesuit, had an abiding concern for the poor, rode the subway, and cooked his own meals. Oh... and that he was missing most of one lung. This certainly runs contrary to conventional wisdom about how best to conduct impression management; i.e. "Put your best foot forward." (Harvard Business Review)
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At a certain point, we mature past eating food on a dare. If someone describes something by using the phrase, "That's crazy," you generally wouldn't put it in your mouth. But some food companies are making money hand over fist on products that they freely admit you have to be kind of nuts to eat. Why does this work? (Fortune)
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When Sheryl Sandberg returned to Harvard Business School for a talk in 2011, her pointed answer to a question from an audience of MBAs drew stunned silence. "If current trends continue," Sandberg said, "15 years from today about one-third of the women in this audience will be working full-time and almost all of you will be working for the guy you are sitting next to." (Poets & Quants)
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