According to Bloomberg, the students who are most likely to get signing bonuses -- one-time incentives companies dole out to promising new employees -- are those who majored in business, engineering, or computer science, according to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey of 260 employers. Chemical engineers are poised to receive the most generous bonuses ($5,250), trailed by their more general engineering peers ($5,107), computer science majors ($4,364), business majors ($3,958), and accounting majors ($3,682).
Bloomberg continues:
Worth noting: The majors that employers were most likely to say they'd give signing bonuses to are the same ones who felt least supported by faculty and least inspired to learn in college
The best way to get a new job is to apply for lots of jobs, and not to get emotionally attached to any of the opportunities. Plant a few seeds every day. Some of them will grow. Some will wither. You only care about the ones that bear fruit!
That doesn’t mean mindlessly lobbing applications and resumes into automated recruiting portals. That’s a waste of time. The best way to apply for a job is to
The book is a deconstruction and discussion of Adam Smith's other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Roberts does the heavy lifting in his book. He read Moral Sentiments in its original old-English style and has thought through the book, and his book is a well written, modern English, fun read on all things moral, philosophical and ethical from Smith's perspective.
In his critique, Rothbard in passing states that The Wealth of Nation's was a "grave deterioration" from Moral Sentiments.
That said, I am still working my way through Roberts' book and will have a full review later. But I do want to point out this paragraph in the book, now, which might be of value to anyone sending out job applications:
So many students show me letters that accompany their job applications that speak only of how much they've dreamed of working for company XYZ and how much working for XYZ will mean to them. They seem to think that their desire to work for XYZ is sufficient to make XYZ desire them in turn. I always encourage the students to address their employer's self-love and not just their humanity--- to come up with some reason XYZ will benefit from hiring them. How would your skills serve the goals of XYZ? Do you have any idea what these goals are? The idea that other people care about themselves is generally a good thing to remember if you want them to do something for you in return.
FlexJobs has just ranked work-from-home jobs that pay at least $90,000 annually. The list includes positions in a range of sectors, including technology, medical, and business.
10. Major gifts officer
Salary range: Up to $90,000 | People in this job solicit current and prospective donors for major donations. These jobs include frequent travel, according to FlexJobs, and the ability to work from home during non-travel times.
9. Audit manager
Salary range: $90,000-$110,000 | Audit managers lead, plan, and execute internal audits for customers and clients. They also work with stakeholders to help them understand the potential impact of an audit..
8.Cloud engineer
Salary range: $115,00-$140,000 | Cloud engineers help companies and clients implement and troubleshoot cloud-based solutions.
7. Director of business development
Salary range: $100,000-$151,000 | People in this position help drive revenue and sales for established clients and new businesses. They also oversee the sales team at some companies.
6. iOS developer
Salary range: $100,000-$120,000 | iOS developers create applications for Apple's mobile operating system. Some work with a company to create its app, while others work with a firm focused on application creation for a variety of clients.
5. Clinical regulatory affairs director
Salary range: $150,000-$151,000 | Clinical regulatory affairs directors work with pharmaceutical companies on a variety of tasks related to clinical trials, according to FlexJobs. They prepare and submit products for markets nationally and internationally.
4. Director of quality improvement
Salary range: $100,000-$175,000 | People in this job design best practices related to systems administration and data architecture. 3. Senior medical writer
Salary range: $110,000-$115,000 | Senior medical writers review medical information, write documents, and edit work by other medical writers. They work for medical publishers as well as pharmaceutical companies.
2. Senior software engineer
Salary range: $100,000-$200,000 | People in this position develop and run software programs, troubleshoot technical issues, and manage a team of software engineers.
1. Sales director
Salary range: $130,000-$200,000 | Sales directors develop programs for lead generation and revenue growth. They work closely with company stakeholders as well as clients,
I often speak about showing commitment to a job search. It’s never enough to just send out applications and go to interviews – you need to go the extra mile every single time.
Something which not many people do is follow up after an interview. As an employer, I always think highly of candidates who do this and I wonder why more of them don’t. Now more than ever, we are in a candidate-led market, which means you face high competition. If this is the case, you need to do everything in your power to stand out.
Of course, if you have got this interview through an agency, then most of your contact will be through them. You will generally have a feedback call with your recruiter after the interview, so make sure they pass on a message of thanks from you and convey your enthusiasm for the role. Most able recruiters will do this anyway but it’s still good practice from your side.
Adam Ozimek is an economist at Moody's Analytics. Given the advice he provides students who want to pursue a career in economics, it is obvious he doesn't get, or never read, Friedrich Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science.
In the book, Hayek details the case that economists who attempt to mimic the physical sciences through empirical study and complex mathematical creations, fail to understand the true nature of economics as a science. For Hayek, economic theory is a qualitative science not an empirical science.
Thus, the below advice from Ozimek (written for Forbes) would be rejected by Hayek (and also Mises and Rothbard)
One theme that was reflected in every panelists’ comments was the importance of learning how to program. Statistical packages are one particular kind of programming language, and it’s important to learn more than one of these. Among these my personal preference is Stata, but I’ve also learned R and Fortran in the past, and have dabbled in others. But you never know which you’ll have to use at your first job. So more important than learning any particular language is learning how to learn one. Your first programming language will be hard. Your second one will be easier. By your third you’ll be learning how to learn and it will be much easier.
If you have a chance learning GIS can be a big advantage too. In a similar vein, taking a machine learning class will really open your eyes to techniques for working with Big Data that are becoming increasingly important but almost always neglected in econometrics classes.
I want to go into a little more detail about what it means to learn how to do statistical programming. I don’t mean take the dataset your professor gave with all the variables organized neatly, run some regressions, and then interpret the coefficients. In the classroom this is often the approach, but in the real world finding, assembling, and manipulating the data will be a big part of the work you do. Today many researchers provide code on their websites so you can go from the raw data to the results in their papers. You will learn a lot by trying to recreate the results of a paper you enjoy without the code, and then reading their code and seeing how they did it. Take your time with this. Start by trying to do the whole thing from scratch, and if your answer is wrong (it will be), steal their first few lines of code and then try again to do it on your own from that point. Who knows, you may even find an error in a superstar researcher’s paper and then get famous.
In my personal experience, it also helps you really learn econometrics to program estimators from scratch. And by scratch I mean without even using pre-packaged matrix multiplication. Maybe this is just my own learning deficit, but I didn’t really understand method of moments estiamtion until I had to program it.
Tragically, in one important sense, Ozimek is correct, in that currently almost all major university graduate programs focus on this type of faulty mathematical and programming work. If you hope to get a major university graduate degree in economics, this is what you will have to waste your time doing. An alternative is to study economic history. Also, I believe that it is possible to get a graduate degree in sociology and pretty much do Austrian economics---as long as you don't call the work you are doing Austrian economics.
I offer no insight into the job prospects for those with doctorate degrees in economic history or sociology, I just don't know. They probably aren't great. But if you are driven to become a sound economist, despite limited job prospects in academia, then economic history and sociology are sound options. But you are going to have to be very inner driven to make something out of your career long term. with the academic approach. If you want a degree in economics, and want to avoid the mathematical programs, there are some schools out there, none in the Ivy league, where that is possible.
If you aren't hung up on getting a graduate degree, Gary North does make the case that you don't need one and this is probably true, but you will still have to be very driven to succeed.
By Laszlo Bock SVP, People Operations at Google I know myself, and employers know what they want to hire, but how do we explain that to each other efficiently and accurately? The marketplace for people and jobs is broken, especially for the small businesses that create the bulk of jobs in the United States. And it’s part of why so many people are out of work while simultaneously so many jobs are unfilled. Unemployment is an information asymmetry problem. And it’s the one thing I’d fix if I could. Information asymmetry is when one party has better information than another party. Let’s say I’m selling my car and I know the passenger door rattles when I drive over 65 mph. You are buying my car, and have no idea. That’s information asymmetry.
Job-matching efforts also suffer from information asymmetry, or what I call the Color Blue Problem. How do I know that when I see the color blue, it’s the same as when you see it? How do I know that when I describe myself to an employer, they know what I mean? And that when a hiring manager describes what she wants in a job posting, how do I know what she means?
In practice, it looks* like this:
Resumes stink. They’re a simply awful way of marketing yourself for a job. Some of that is our fault as job-seekers and can be fixed, as I wrote here and here. But an employer has no way of knowing
We've told you to skip "references upon request" on your resume, but you still want others to sing your praise. Including testimonials on your resume lets you get the point across that you're awesome.
Over at CareeRealism, they suggest adding a testimonial section to your resume:
Similar to how a resume may have a section for Profile Summary, Work Experience, and Education, add a Testimonials section for a bullet point list of 2-3 testimonials to support the case that you are the best candidate for the job.
LinkedIn lets you put recommendations on your profile, so this tip extends the idea to your paper resume. I've seen this done on resumes and I think it helps the reviewer understand your experience. You don't need to include a full paragraph, just a sound bite or two.
With the recent decline in the stock market, the possibility of getting out of control, now that Ebola is in my home state, and I have my Master's tuition coming up next week, would it be wise to save that tuition money, and keep some extra liquidity in case Ebola gets worse and the money supply crashes again?
My reply.:
In my view there is very little reason to set aside money for an Ebola outbreak. I side with Dr. Paul on this that the dangers are way overblown (SEE: Ron Paul Warns of Ebola ‘Overreaction’).
As far as putting money on the side in anticipation of a money supply crash versus paying tuition, I think you are looking at things very wrong here.
In your lifetime, you are likely to go through many ups and downs in the business cycle, as long as a central bank like the Federal Reserve is around. Some of them could be very severe cycles with very strong price inflation and potential destruction of the dollar.
Your Masters' degree question is a long term question about career moves over more than just the current cycle.
The question you should be asking is whether a Masters degree will make a significant difference in your ability to survive and prosper over these periods of crazed Fed manipulations of the economy.
I can't answer that question for you without knowing many more details about you. Just for starters I would need to know the college that you would be attending, your major etc.
The specific college may be very important. I would advise almost anyone who has the opportunity to go to Harvard, MIT, the London School of Economics, Stanford etc. to go. Largely because of contacts that can be made and because of the cachet that comes with a degree from one of these institutions. A degree from one of these institutions signals to most in the business world that you are smart, even if you are an idiot. It helps you get a foot in the door. And the contacts could be very important because they might provide access to money and brain power, while not everyone in the Ivy leagues is bright, there will be some that are very bright and you will be rubbing elbows with them. It is a great way to build a powerful, quality Rolodex, but, of course, there are other ways to do so.
Any other college or university would depend on your major. If you are attempting to learn a skill such as accounting or engineering, then an advanced degree may be valuable from almost any college or university. An advanced degree in English literature will be much less valuable, and an advanced degree in, say, gender studies might set you back to your thumb sucking infancy.
So you have to compare what a masters degree will mean specifically for you long-term versus alternative uses for the money. Holding back tuition money to prepare for an economic crash is unlikely to be a sound move. Preparing to protect wealth during periods of economic volatility is for people who already have significant money. Periods of economic volatility are very tricky and it is about trying to protect significant wealth rather than protecting tuition money.
On the other hand, there will be people who make major money from a small pile by correctly trading the business cycle, these people will emerge. But there will be very few of these people and it will be extremely difficult to pull it off, most who try will eventually lose most of their money from swashbuckling trading.
Tuition money could also be used alternatively for a business project. If you are the next Bill Gates and you have an idea comparable to Windows then it makes no sense for you to continue in college (as it didn't for Gates).
Another alternative is to do what James Altucher has suggested and use the tuition money to travel the world for a year and learn what is going on. A good part of eventually being a successful entrepreneur is to have many experiences so you individually get to see how different pieces of the world come together and how you might be able to rearrange a couple of the pieces for serious profit.
BOTTOM LINE: It is your world, make it interesting but think long term and take steps that will be important long term. For each individual these steps will be different.
Go here to see many pages of job openings for “Social Media Communications Specialists”.
These job openings cannot be filled by many, many, many people who lack the skills, the training, and the education. They won’t be filled by people who don’t even know such opportunities exist. They can’t be filled by those out of the market and sidelined for a wide variety of reasons. These jobs suggest that portions of the economy move on, even if many people do not and even if the government does not. These jobs show that economic development is uneven. There are still opportunities, but they need to be seen and found out. They need to be pursued. People must be willing to relocate, study, train, adapt and work. There is nothing that the FED can do by its bond-buying programs that will fill these positions. There is nothing that make-work government programs can do to fill these kinds of positions. Unemployment payments won’t fill these positions. Neither will minimum wage laws. How many more kinds of job opportunities are there like this one?
In the world of David Rockefeller, personal relationships are paramount. And he never let a dictator's misdeeds prevent him from doing business. Iraq's Saddam Hussein? Chile's Augusto Pinochet? Romania's Nicholae Ceausescu? He met them all.
"Even though I was totally unsympathetic to these regimes, I believed the bank should work with them," he writes.
In the process, he accumulated a truly gargantuan Rolodex -- a metal cabinet packed with more than 100,000 cards, alphabetized on a revolving carousel of trays. Press a few buttons and -- WHIRRRRRRR -- a tray pops up. A secretary pulls out Nelson Mandela's card.
Rockefeller started networking during World War II...To Rockefeller, it's like a game, like chess. "You have to think ahead, one move leads to another. You have to think ahead about how you're going to get from here to there," he said.
How many people are in your "Golden Rolodex"? David Rockefeller kept track of 150,000 people, on note cards. When he met with someone, he knew all the right questions to build the relationship.
Ronna Lichtenberg, president and owner of the management consulting firm Clear Peak Communications and owner of http://www.askronna.com, shared with FBC members at the May meeting the nine principles of business success she outlines in her new book, "It's Not Business, It's Personal":
"It pays to be personal." The genuine personal touch sets you apart from the crowd. What did David Rockefeller do with all those note cards? "His ability to get people to do something philanthropic or for his business, depended on his ability to say, 'Jennifer must have gotten out of her braces by now.'"
YOU CAN MEASURE DAVID ROCKEFELLER SR.’S wealth and power by taking a look at his stock portfolio, his real estate holdings or his art collection. Or you can take an elevator to the 56th floor of Rockefeller Center in New York and look for an alcove that encloses a massive Ferris wheel of a Rolodex. This 4-foot-by-5-foot contraption is the fulcrum of Rockefeller’s globe-trotting life at the age of 84. Here can be found everyone the former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank has met since he was an assistant military attach at the U.S. Embassy in Paris during the 1940s. It has 150,000 names.
This is not some museum piece. This is a working man’s toolbox. Though he retired as chairman in 1981, Rockefeller still uses it to develop new business for Chase. And he uses it to raise money for his innumerable charities–often mixing the two. We’re talking logrolling on a major scale, with worthy causes the ultimate beneficiaries.
Rockefeller confirmed his 100,000 plus Rolodex to CNN in 2002:
CNN: We use this expression Golden Rolodex, which seems utterly inadequate when it comes to describing yours. Is it true you have a Rolodex of 100,000 or so names?
ROCKEFELLER: There are a lot of names in it. I haven't ever counted them, but there could be that many. I have met a lot of interesting people.
Of course, you don't have to be a crony capitalist to make a powerful contact list payoff, but you have to start developing it with insightful notes about the contact and then not be afraid to use it. I have on occasion contacted people that I met 20 years ago, if it made sense to contact them--and I explained where we met,
BTW: University of Chicago economist Irving Fischer invented the precursor to the Rollodex.
Fisher designed a large revolving-file system to allow for their quick retrieval. When he felt he perfected his system, he sold a version of the idea that allowed the New York City telephone company to organize and quickly retrieve telephone numbers.
His concept eventually became the Rolodex system. When another business company merged with him to form Remington Rand, Fisher became a multimillionaire.
Fresh out of college, my first job was doing marketing research for McGraw Hill in New York City. I didn't know many people in the city and, to me, networking was all about finding new friends to hang out with. Networking was purely social.
What I discovered over the years is that networking is much more than that. It is an essential part of building a successful career, and if done strategically and intentionally, it can be very powerful.
Here are the seven secrets about networking I wish I learned in my 20s:
1. Effective networking involves focus, attention, and strategy.
Many of us network haphazardly. We join some industry groups. We meet coworkers after work for a drink, but we don't have a plan. We might even think the more people we meet, the better. But meeting the right people is most important. The right people are those that can help you reach your career goal. The right people are those people who are willing to speak up for you. You need to focus on people with whom you can build strong mutually beneficial relationships.
2. There is a direct relationship between networking strategically and increased income.
Upwardly Mobile, Inc., with the support of Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business Management, conducted research in April 2008 about how professionals use networking. They surveyed more than 600 high-earning "elite" professionals about how they use networking to cultivate richer relationships, gain more access and enjoy more success in their careers and personal lives. Their findings confirm that "networking is a key driver behind higher salaries and career advancement."
3. Keeping in touch with former alums and colleagues is money in the bank.
When I wanted to make a career move after having lost out on a promotion, I tapped into my network and let people know I was looking for a new opportunity. Almost immediately, a former colleague gave me information about an opening in her company. She worked in another business unit there and knew the management team. Not only did she give me the lead, but she pre-sold me to the key stakeholders. I interviewed for the position and landed the job. My income almost doubled.
4. Paying it forward pays off.
One important lesson I've learned is that the more you invest in your network, the more valuable your network is. Taking calls, responding to emails, offering to help people creates a strong bond. People trust that you will be there for them and are often willing to respond in kind. It's important to network proactively so you have these relationships when you need help.
I've recently landed a position as an Equity Research Associate and I'd like to thank you for your assistance over these last few years. I have absolutely no doubt that this post of yours (http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/facebooks-hiring-surprise-and-what-it.html) directly led to me getting hired. To be sure, there are many other helpful posts as well, but this one in particular really tied it all together. No doubt about it.
I read Browne's book the night you put that post up, made a few modifications to my application approach and completely revamped my interview style based on Browne's suggestions. The result: I was able, in 1 hour, to convince 2 research analysts to make me an offer.
I'm thinking of attending St.John's school of law. But the tuition is a whooping 46,400$ a year. For three years that almost $150,000. Is it a good idea to take on that amount of debt for a law degree? I watched the college conspiracy, and it seems like it's not such a good idea. Especially, since we have 43,000 law students graduating every year and we have lost 15,000 lawyer jobs since 2008! I don't know what to do, i want to change the law so that it becomes more libertarian in its practices. I'm Interested in the law and its foundations, i also have a knack for arguing and don't give up until [the other person] at least understand my view points.
I also don't know what else to do. Recently i started my own blog, and i think i could be a good writer. Maybe i should just be a waiter, save money and accumulate gold and silver until the dollar crisis comes about. WHAT TO DO!!
I don't really have enough information about you to give you a specific answer. I will say though that there is no blanket answer. I have seen the writings that say college is a waste of time, and for most it is, but not all.
It really depends upon your passion. It's not clear from your email, if you really want to be a lawyer. "I don't know what else to do" is not a good enough answer for going to law school. I know plenty of lawyers that hate being lawyers and only went to law school because of the prestige and the money one generally receives from being a lawyer. But once they are out in the real world of law they hate it, but because of the money they make they think they can't leave.
I honestly believe that you can make very good money doing almost anything, if you are very passionate about it. If you are passionate about something, I would skip whatever else you are doing and follow your passion, whether it is mountain climbing, scuba diving or collecting butterflies. If you think about it, there's a way to earn money doing whatever you want to do.
I am passionate about finance and economics, you can't pull me away from what I do. There's no procrastination for me in what I do. You have to pull me away from my economics and finance work to do almost anything else. I have given myself a great gift by following what I enjoy. If you are doing anything but your great passion, when you have a great passion, you are making a mistake.
If you dream every day and night about being the next Perry Mason AND have read every Perry Mason novel AND go to the library and read law journals because they are fun AND are amazed that you already know more law than lawyers you have talked to, then law school is probably for you. If you think you are going to go to law school and they will turn you into a lawyer, without ever thinking about law outside of what is assigned in class, forget about it. The same goes for medical school or anything else. You should really want it bad.
If you don't have a passion, than do what James Altucher recommends, just travel the world, stop in spots and find a way to earn money in those spots as a waiter or whatever. Do that for as long as it takes you to find a passion--even if it takes years. (Also see Gary North on college education and passion)
If you are a go-along and get-along person that has no driving passion, I would recommend finding a skill that is used in many industries but that others can't pick up fast---a software engineer comes to mind or a language translator. If you are a real bump on the log, fly out to Los Angeles and become a movie extra. People make good money doing that. You sit around all day and get paid to walk around for a few minutes in the background of a movie set. They take all shapes, sizes and age groups for extra work, but don't fool yourself into thinking you are going to be discovered. That's an entirely different game.
If law is what you really want to do, I am not as concerned about the money debt angle because I think that the Fed will most likely drive the value of the dollar further down and it will make the loans easier to pay off. And even if the Fed doesn't, if you really enjoy what you are doing, you will make more money at it and the loans will be easier to payoff. If on the other hand you are not driven to become a lawyer, the debt could become an anchor around your neck.
With regard to the number of lawyers out there. In any industry, there's something of a bell curve where 10% are really bad, 80% are mediocre and 10% are superior. If you are driven, you will be somewhere in that top 10%, so don't worry about the other 90%.
