Category: Your Career (Page 60 of 62)

Lessons from the king-sized success (and failures) of Donald Trump

March 18, 2010 / Staff

People who want to learn about success often forget that many of these lessons are also about how to face gigantic problems and solve them. As Oscar Wilde famously said “Who are afraid to fail are afraid to succeed.” There is no better person to learn from than Donald Trump.

As a kid, Trump was obsessed with baseball to the exclusion of almost everything else so his parents had to send him to the New York Military Academy to sort him out. It worked and Trump pulled up his socks, graduating from one of the best business schools in the country, the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania. After an apprenticeship with his father, a successful real estate developer, Trump was ready to take off on his own. Trump has always thought big and told Millionaire Magazine “Always do something that you like, always do something that you enjoy doing, or you will never be successful. You will never be good at it,” However, it is Trump’s success in overcoming his gigantic problems that make him truly unique.

Trump made a multibillion dollar fortune only to see most of it wiped out in the real estate market crash. He was staring down the brink of the precipice with total debts of over $9.2 billion. His superlative negotiating skills and his astute business moves enabled him to recover. In his own words: “It’s always a great asset to be able to get along with people.” Over the years, despite some very tricky deals, I’ve generally been able to get along with people. You always have to let the other side think that they are also getting something out of the transaction. And, it’s often true that the best deals are the ones that everybody benefits from.”

Trump would be a winner anywhere, but he happened to choose the real estate business. He was also a master at using debt and keeping his options open. Certainly, one lesson you can learn from him on using debt is to investigate the use of elastic loans.

Your Career, Your Compensation

Keep your credit standing high

March 18, 2010 / Staff

A credit standing has many advantages. In the first place, you will gain access to a whole range of sources of affordable debt who will welcome you as a customer. In the second place, you will be able to obtain the best possible terms and interest rates in the market because of your credit history. Finally, your credit score says much about you as a person so whether you are dealing with a landlord with a potential employer, your credit history will speak for you.

In the last few years of profligate lending, the easy availability of credit seduced many people into borrowing far more than they could afford to repay. For many of these people, debt consolidation is now being touted as a magic wand to waft all the problems away. Nothing could be further from the truth. Debt consolidation is a platform on which to reorganize your personal debt on a one time basis, but it cannot be a long-term fix, unless you are prepared to rein in the sort of spending that led to your problems.

If you would like to take control of your life, a debt consolidation is a good way to look at your personal debt and to reorganize it. If you are like the average American, the chances are that you will have debt outstanding on several credit cards and possibly some personal loans. All of these are high-cost debt because they carry a high interest rate. You should aim at obtaining one single debt consolidation loan to pay off all these bits and pieces and to provide you with a single monthly repayment. If you are in a position to use your home equity as collateral, you should be able to obtain this loan on favorable terms and conditions thus potentially saving you thousands of dollars in interest.

Finally, having regained control of your life, aim to keep it that way, and a lifelong high credit standing will follow.

Your Career

CrunchBoard – Technology jobs at TechCrunch

February 13, 2010 / Staff

TechCrunch, the popular technology blog, also has a job board. We stumbled onto CrunchBoard surfing the web and it seems to have many excellent opportunities posted. Naturally, employers want access to TechCrunch’s huge and devoted audience. We saw all sorts of premium jobs listed, from business development, research engineer, software developer, product management and more.

There are tons of jobs boards out there, so there’s no shortage of sites to explore. But, if you want to get the most from your time, targeted jobs boards like this one can be a great tool.

Your Career

business development job boards tech jobs technology jobs

The lost generation?

January 10, 2010 / Staff

BusinessWeek recently had an interesting article on the challenges facing young people in this economy. Many of them just can’t land jobs.

Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can’t grab onto the first rung of the career ladder.
Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts, to college grads, to newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18%, from 13% a year ago.
For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of “lost generation.” Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.
Equally important, employers are likely to suffer from the scarring of a generation.

This danger of “scarring” seems real, but if you find yourself in this group you have to be proactive and NOT let this hurt you. That may sound easy, as options are now clearly limited. However, on the other hand, the dire condition of the economy can also be used to alter your perceptions of what you need at this time in your life. Many graduates expected to get a high-paying job immediately upon graduation, and now many of those job aren’t available. Yet is that what you really need RIGHT NOW?

In many cases the answer is no. Maybe you can now consider a cool internship that pays little but offers an incredible experience. Perhaps you can take a much-needed break and go on that backpacking trip that you dreamed of doing after college. This of course depends on your funds, though the cost of travel has plummeted.

Alternatively, you can be aggressive about doing something entrepreneurial or contracting out services online.

We know if sucks out there, but you have to make the best of the situation you’re facing. Get motivated, and good things will happen!

Your Career, Your Education, Your Network

entrepreneurs internships unemployment unemployment rate

Tough jobs report for December

January 9, 2010 / Staff

While the pace of job losses has declined dramatically, we haven’t turned the corner yet.

The job market remained in a deep funk in December, according to a government report Friday showing that employers view the economic recovery as too weak and too fragile to begin hiring again on any large scale.
The pace of layoffs has slowed sharply in recent months, but businesses still cut 85,000 net jobs in December, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent, but economists suspect this is only because hundreds of thousands of frustrated workers stopped looking for jobs.

The key is that the trend in is the right direction. The recovery is going to be a little choppy, but hopefully the trend continues in the right direction. If you’re unemployed, the key is to continue being persistent. Don’t give up!

Your Business, Your Career

Labor Department layoffs unemployment rate