March typically marks the beginning of the spring-cleaning season, when we start to shake off the winter doldrums, open up the windows and roll up our sleeves to scrub away the dirt and cobwebs. But cleaning house right now may not only be good for your abode – it could also prove beneficial to your career. (Fast Company)

For years the international energy sector has struggled to attract enough engineers to keep up with rising global consumption. But management talent is increasingly needed to handle the complexities of a large and expanding market. Nowhere is demand greatest than the cyclical oil and gas industry, which has suffered from a near 50% plunge in the price of crude oil, altered by a surge in US shale output. Other areas, such as renewables and technology, are also promising. (BusinessBecause)

Alan Buckelew, chief operations officer of Carnival Corp., moved to Shanghai last September so he could help the world’s biggest cruise-ship company expand in China. He still supervises five executives at its Miami headquarters. A heavy workload forced Mr. Buckelew to conduct year-end performance reviews for three of those deputies via videoconference but he wasn’t happy about it. (The Wall Street Journal)

Have you ever been driven crazy by a coworker’s persistent questioning of what the team is doing, and why, and whether things could be done more efficiently – or have you been driven crazy by a colleague’s refusal to address those crucial questions? Have you ever worked with someone who met deadlines and followed through for the team, but for some reason, couldn’t move forward on the goals they set for themselves? Or perhaps does that description fit you?

When 15% of U.S. workers detest their job, what’s holding them back from finding what they love to do? Certified career coach Cheryl Palmer says that the perfect career is one that taps into your passions, but is also viable in the future. That’s easier said than done, especially if you have a multitude of passionate interests – or none. Ask yourself these questions when you’re trying to find a new path. (Fast Company)

Spending four years and hundreds of hours studying for a finance certification may not be worth it. A much larger share of managing directors at banks worldwide have master’s of business administration degrees than Chartered Financial Analyst designations, a recent study shows. (Bloomberg)

Just a few weeks ago, fears that Greece might exit the euro union subsided when Europe extended its financial bailout. But as a new war of words escalates between Athens and its creditors, talk of a "Grexit" is heating up. In the last several days, European and American banks, think tanks and ratings agencies have issued a fresh round of warnings and studies calculating the damage to the currency union if Greece were to default on its debts or stop using the euro. (The New York Times)

China's economic slowdown has pushed policy makers toward stimulus measures, spurring analyst concerns about whether long-sought reforms may fall by the wayside. "While structural reforms remain at the top of the policy agenda, the recent cyclical slowdown has made advancing them less urgent than was the case six months ago," Barclays said in a note Tuesday. (CNBC)

Don’t have the stats to get into one of the best MBA programs? Are the acceptance rates simply too daunting given your profile and work experience so far? Well, there’s another way to get a prestige MBA degree on your resume. It’s to apply to a school’s part-time program and, if you want, to trade up into the full-time program later on. The dirty little secret of MBA admissions is that acceptance rates to part-time programs are two to four times those of the full-time versions at the same schools. And the average GMAT scores for part-timers can be as much as 100 points lower than they are for full-timers. (Poets & Quants)

The phrase "It's not what you know, it's who you know" may be particularly relevant to the most recent crop of MBAs. When it comes to explaining their success, ​recent business school graduates attribute more of their achievement to their connections and networks compared with graduates from earlier classes, according to a February report ​from the Graduate Management Admission Council. (U.S. News and World Report)

As a valued supporter of the National Black MBA Association’s legacy, we invite you to join us on Friday, June 12, as we celebrate 45 years of creating economic, educational and employment opportunities for Blacks in the business world. Plan now to attend this extraordinary event. Discounted tickets are available until March 31, so don't delay!

We're not big on setting resolutions only in January at Pluralsight. We believe it's important to strive for excellence year-round, rather than just once a year. That said, there's value in using the year's starter months to reassess your current skill sets and identify areas for improvement, growth, and learning. (Inc.)

Clippy will soon get a roommate in Microsoft heaven or hell, depending on your perspective. This week, Microsoft announced that it will phase out its much-maligned web browser, Internet Explorer, beginning with Windows 10. The news came at the Microsoft Convergence conference this week, where marketing chief Chris Capossela announced IE's replacement: Project Spartan. (NPR)

Every entrepreneur knows that if you don’t have a sustainable plan for profitability, then one can easily fall into the category of "wanna-be-preneur." Shontaye Hawkins, Bottom Line Strategist™ of Dallas, uses her financial prowess to "see through" the numbers by setting up her clients with profitable game plans of success. Highly skilled and laser-beam focused on busting down income barriers, eliminating money leaks, and identifying profit strategies, she loves and lives by her business mantra, "Because profit is sexy. Profit is a measure of success." (Black Enterprise)

African American communities are often seen through a narrow lens of negatives: unemployment, poverty, and crime. While those problems do plague majority-black neighborhoods, they often overshadow more positive trends in these communities, says sociologist Karen F. Parker of the University of Delaware. (CityLab)

A year ago, the oil industry's biggest problem was finding a way to deal with the "retirement tsunami" about to crash down on it as older oilfield workers hung up their cork boots to enjoy freedom at 55. Now, with oil prices still in the doldrums, many of those same workers are lucky to be hanging onto their jobs, while others have been booted from the payroll as an ugly wave of layoffs takes hold. (CNN Money)

In India, it is a leading electric utility, Jaiprakash Power Ventures, selling off facilities and negotiating with lenders to avoid a default, having increasing its debts thirtyfold in six years. In China, it is one of the country’s largest real estate developers, the Kaisa Group, threatening to pay only 2.4 cents on the dollar to its creditors in the face of corruption investigations and a mass resignation of executives, leaving countless would-be Chinese home buyers stuck in the middle of a multibillion dollar standoff. (The New York Times)

Education, employment, predatory lending, you name it: There are systemic forces that have worked against our ability to create wealth. As a financial journalist, however, it has been easy to see that perhaps a bigger problem is the mind-set some of these factors have helped to create...The image many of us have of ourselves as a group that is destined to struggle, and at the mercy of factors beyond our control. (Black Enterprise)

Every day seems to bring news of another hack that compromises your personal data. While you can't afford to get complacent, you don't need to panic about every leak. Here's how to know when to worry and what action to take. (Money)

Whether you call Edward Snowden a traitor or a whistle-blower, he earned one label about which there’s no debate: insider threat. Guarding against such risks is an expanding niche in the security industry, with at least 20 companies marketing software tools for tracking and analyzing employee behavior. "The bad guys helped us," says Idan Tendler, the founder and chief executive officer of Fortscale Security in San Francisco. "It started with Snowden, and people said, ‘Wow, if that happened in the NSA, it could happen to us.’ " (Bloomberg)

Scrawled on Starbucks cups, the words "Race Together" were intended to stimulate conversations about race relations in America, beginning just days before the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday. But the coffee company’s campaign has instead unleashed widespread vitriol and derision. (The New York Times)

Phone calls by fraud artists posing as Internal Revenue Service employees and demanding money have surged in recent months – enough so that the IRS named phone scams the No. 1 item on its 2015 "Dirty Dozen" list of tax scams. The smart response if you get such a call: Just hang up. And if the scammer calls back, hang up again. (The Wall Street Journal)

The Federal Reserve cleared the way Wednesday for raising interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis but said it was in no hurry to act as long as inflation was tame and economic growth moderate. The Fed dropped from its guidance the closely watched buzzword "patient," which it has used to describe its approach to raising the federal funds rate – one of the central bank’s main tools for stimulating or slowing the U.S. economy and a key benchmark for other interest rates. (The Washington Post)

All managers would like their teams to be more productive. Yet most companies are using the same old methods: strategic plans, goal-setting, streamlining operations, reducing inefficiency. Others are offering employee perks, such as on-site food, daycare, or gyms. Others are offering bigger bonuses or flexible schedules. (Harvard Business Review)

Any time I have a tough decision to make, I wonder what James Burke would do. Burke isn’t a household name, certainly not in the modern pantheon of entrepreneurial leaders like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. But that’s not surprising. Burke spent nearly 40 years with the same company – Johnson & Johnson (13 of them as chairman and CEO) – then went into public service as chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Neither role is "hip" to the modern entrepreneur. (Entrepreneur)