Sheryl Sandberg thinks the world would be a better place if "half our institutions were run by women, and half our homes were run by men,” she told Kara Swisher at AllThingsD.

She's trying to do something about it. She's written a book due out in 2013 called Lean In, published by Knopf. It will be filled with anecdotes from high-profile women execs in Silicon Valley and lots of advice.

The lack of progress of women to penetrate the top echelons of the corporate world has been something Sandberg talks about frequently. She famously brought attention to the problem in a speech in 2010. At that time, she noted that only one-fifth of the top jobs in corporate America were held by women.

Her own company, Facebook, faced a lot of pressure about it too. Before Facebook's IPO, UltraViolet, a political group that fights sexism, was ticked off that Facebook didn't have a woman on its board of directors. Facebook eventually added Sandberg to the board, but she's still the only woman on the board.

Don't miss: BEYOND MARISSA MAYER: 25 Powerful Women Engineers In Tech

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Quick: Name the tech company with the toughest job-interview process.

Did Google come to mind? Facebook?

Wrong!

Both of those companies made Glassdoor's list of the 25 most difficult companies to interview at but they aren't at the very top.

Among tech companies, the hardest job interview happens at Thoughtworks, a software-development consultant with 1,800 employees based in Chicago.

Candidates says that the interview process includes tests, a coding exercise plus another technical interview, and an ethics interview, all over the course of a week.

A sample interview question: "How can we get more women in to technology jobs?"

Consulting firms dominating the top five spots (McKinsey, Boston Consulting, etc.) But almost half the list was made up of tech companies.

Here are the top 10 toughest tech companies to get into:

1. Thoughtworks

2. Google (expect multiple interviews including an IQ test and random math questions)

3. Unisys (expect multiple interviews with many people which could span a couple of weeks)

4. Rackspace (expect an especially difficult technical interview )

5. Cypress Semiconductor (expect up to four interviews to prove tech skills)

6. bazaarvoice (expect a difficult face-to-face interview like a personality quiz)

7. Juniper Networks (expect multiple rounds of interviews with the hiring team)

8. Sapient (expect multiple rounds of technical interviews including a written test)

9. Facebook (expect anything from a technical test to an on-the-spot request to design something)

10. Amazon (expect multiple interviews, some of them lasting all day)

Don't miss: 10 Tech Skills That Will Instantly Net You A $100,000+ Salary

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Price tags on the top law schools in America have reached epic proportions.

For those of us who can't afford to pay $50,000 a year or more, the National Jurist has compiled its sixth annual list of the Best Value Law Schools. 

This year's Best Value rankings take into account the following: tuition (25 percent of the score), cost of living expenses (10 percent), average indebtedness upon graduation (15 percent), the percentage of graduates who got a job (35 percent), and bar passage rates (15 percent).

As a disclaimer, it's important to note that several schools have recently been called out on incorrectly reporting their debt data, Above the Law has pointed out.

It's still interesting to see the rankings since National Jurist took other factors into account like tuition and graduates' chances of getting a job.

So is it worth paying over $50,000 per year to attend Cornell, Columbia or Harvard, or will these ten "value" schools do?

10. University of Wisconsin

Tuition: $19,683

Average debt for 2011 grads: $66,987

Employment rate: 77 percent

Two-year bar pass average: 99.61 percent

Source: National Jurist

9. University of North Carolina

Tuition: $19,012

Average debt for 2011 Grads: $76,642

Employment rate: 80 percent

Two-year bar pass average: 90.53 percent

Source: National Jurist

8. University of New Mexico

Tuition: $14,532

Average debt for 2011 Grads: $63,793

Employment rate: 78 percent

Two-year bar pass average: 91.55 percent

Source: National Jurist

Please follow Law & Order on Twitter and Facebook.

The August jobs report is out, and it looks promising – for most industries.

Although unemployment fell from 8.3 percent in July to 8.1 percent, the legal services sector lost some 1,400 jobs in August, erasing gains from the June-July period, according to the Labor Department.

While legal services jobs took a hit, the professional and technical services industry category as a whole gained 26,800 new jobs, the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog Reported.

That category includes legal services, accounting and bookkeeping, architecture and engineering, and computer systems design.

There's some good news for the legal services sector, though: jobs in the legal sector have increased by about 3,200 since August 2011. And they have remained at around 1.2 million since the beginning of the year, according to The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.

DON'T MISS: Meet The Highly Litigious Church Of Scientology's Most Trusted Lawyers >

Please follow Law & Order on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner talked with journalist Adam Bryant last night at the Director's Guild Theatre in Midtown.

The interview will be posted as the first video in the the New York Times' Corner Office interview series.

Weiner offered tons of insights on leadership, which we have summarized below (paraphrased except when in  quotes):

• Defining leadership: The ability to inspire others and accomplish shared objectives. It starts with vision and the ability to think about where you want to take your vision. It's about courage and conviction and the ability to communicate that vision.
• On prioritization: It starts with "if you could do only one thing, what would it be?" He learned that from the late Steve Jobs.
• He lives by Ray Chambers' 5 keys to happiness: Live in the moment, it's better to be loving than to be right, be a spectator to your own thoughts, be grateful for at least one thing every day and just be happy with what you get. Weiner tries looking forward to going to work in the morning and looking forward to going home every night.
• On management: Manage compassionately. Don't project what you view on others, try to see things through their lens. "After a meeting or speech, I always ask people what I could have done better."
• On intensity: It's "an asset I look for in people, but it has to be channeled in the right way." However, at the end of the day you have to be yourself and trust your instincts.
• On becoming a CEO: "I didn't ever wake up and say I wanted to be a CEO." He wanted to go into education and said that he didn't want the challenges that go with being the CEO of a publicly traded company where "you let the narrative get away from you."
• On education: "I didn't feel like I was educated to my potential." He wanted more experiential learning and that the U.S. educational system is focused to heavily on math, verbal and memorization. "I always thought it could be done differently."
• The LinkedIn mission statement: "To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce." He gets a chance to touch 175 million members and change their career trajectory. "We want to create economic opportunities."
• On coaching and leadership: "Coaching requires way more than problem solving." The natural inclination is to just fix things, but Weiner carves out two to three hours per day of buffer time to think and coach. "If you're inauthentic as a leader, people will sniff it from a mile away."
• LinkedIn's unofficial mantra: Next play. Every time Duke's men's basketball team completes a sequence on offense or defense, Weiner said, head coach Mike Krzyzewski always yells out "next play." Take a minute to celebrate success or reflect on failure but then move on. 
• On failure: "The most valuable lessons I've learned is what not to do. Without those experiences, I would not have learned what I learned and bring that to my company. Silicon Valley is littered with failures."
• On LinkedIn's culture: "It's who we are and who we aspire to be." Weiner was asked what kind of public company he wanted to run and didn't understand the question at first. "I thought about it and said nothing is going to change. We're going to measure ourselves against who we were as a private company."
• Career advice: "It starts with a very simple question: Looking back 20-30 years from now, what do you want to say you've accomplished?" Weiner said that many people don't know the answer to this question and that they're just going after the titles and the money. He says people should "know what it is you ultimately want to accomplish. The moment you know, you begin to manifest it. If you don't know it, optimize your passion and skill." Weiner also said to "surround yourself with amazing people." It's not just who you work for, but who you work with, he said. 
• On reading a room: A good leader has the ability to "read a room in real time," constantly taking ques and feedback and adapting.
• On humor: "Try to combine intensity with humor and don't take yourself too seriously." He said that "changing the world is hard work, so you better take some time to laugh along the way. Sometimes, Weiner values his workers' senses of humor more than their talent. "It can help the team come together and helps bond us."
• On email: Weiner doesn't send an email between 11 at night and 5 in the morning. "If I send an email at 3:30 in the morning, the person would think he needs to respond right away. It sends the wrong signal. I set the tone for the company."

Don't miss: 22 Executives Share The Best Advice They Ever Received >

Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

There are different reasons why individuals become investment bankers (ibankers).  

Why they yearn to practice the sacred art of investment banking (ibanking). Though there are people who enter this esoteric world of high finance by pure chance, and with little effort, they are anomalies. In the vast majority of cases deep-seated motivations propel the uninitiated to persevere until the gates of entry to that prestigious world open before them.

Most of those motivations can be grouped into a handful of categories (see diagram below for examples). They also explain why so many bankers agree to work unusually long hours, to put up with abnormally high levels of stress and to sacrifice personal and leisure time. Take a look at the faces of people who have been in the business for over 10 years, especially in a front office role. Many wear their sacrifice on their face – though too few of them realise this.

For those of you currently in the business, next time you attend the Monday morning meeting just take a nice, long look around the room at the seniors bankers present. Is it not unusual that many of them are probably 10 years younger than they look? I know it took me less than a year at the bank to give birth to most of the grey hairs I presently sport.

So why do so many people accept, amongst other things, the premature ageing that comes with the territory? Different reasons.

Hypnosis: dangling a shiny pendulum

In the case of university students it tends to stem from psychological attraction. Convinced to put forth an application after being mesmerized by the words and tone of voice of recent grads in polished suits at campus recruiting events. Never mind that the speaker has had stress-induced diarrhea for the past month, working round the clock to make a deal happen, and has been literally pissing out his @ss every morning at work.

Benjamins (US) / dosh (UK) / fric (French) / dinero (Spanish) / foulous (Arabic) / qián (Chinese)

Let there be no doubt that chief amongst the reasons is the motivation to earn a lot of money. See, for many bankers, and banker-wannabes, it’s a given that the entrepreneurial route is the path which ultimately leads to the greatest riches. However, entrepreneurship is beset with pitfalls and risks. Therefore, given the very calculating nature of bankers, the optimal choice is a career which is less risky than entrepreneurship yet at the same time relatively more lucrative than other roles.

If you consider it safe to be employed and risky to be an entrepreneur, then investment banking can be considered one of the best safe bets in terms of compensation.

There are bankers who spring out of bed at 6am every weekday to get ready for work as if called into a meeting by God. The raison d’être for this group is to toil through all the days of the year until one very particular day in the year. Bonus day.

Whether it is earned in €, $, £ or ¥, on a good bonus day it will feel as if God came down to earth and kissed him or her on the forehead.

On bonus day you may notice for the first time that some of your colleagues actually have teeth. Year-round glares turn into ear-to-ear smiles. During the year you’ll see colleagues get engaged, marry, become parents and take off on week-long holidays to the Seychelles. However, you will not see them wear anything remotely close, i.e. as BIG, as the smile they’ll walk into work with that day in anticipation of the handout. The stress, grey hairs, hair loss, stomach ulcers, eczema, skin rashes, to name a few undesirable aspects of the job, are justified by the paper handed to you which contains your bonus for the year. If it is a great handout then the day after the beneficiary will glow like a prophet. Let’s hope it’s a good year, ey!

The lifestyle: la dolce vita

From fine Asian restaurants serving mouth-watering black cod with miso and expensive French wine to luxury hotels nestled on hilltops in remote exotic islands, the list of activities enjoyed by bankers can be out of reach to some people in relatively lower-paying industries. Whether the bankers truly appreciate the $100 main or £275 bottle of red wine served at Chez Quelqu’un or rather enjoy the status associated with eating there when the restaurant next door offers more delectable food at a third the price, does not matter here. It’s the lifestyle the job affords that some gravitate towards.

Some chaps and chapettes want the opportunity to hang out with a Barbour jacket-wearing crowd or a Brooks Brothers posse. Makes them feel special.

For others the right lifestyle includes being able to send their kids to a school which will prep them for entry into Eton College (UK), Philips Exeter Academy (US) or Le Rosey (Switzerland).

Many like doing the rich person’s routine such as attending niche art exhibits where you’re served champagne, engage in inane small talk and pretend that you’ve done the rounds in art circuits since birth. Reminds me of an ex-colleague who’d always take half an hour to peruse art reviews online, jot down a few key phrases and throw them around at the events like he did a post-doc at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Let’s not forget the fine food:

“Yes, to start with I’ll take the caviar appetizer, followed by the veal fillet, cooked in aubergines, with confit of veal breast, with pepper and lemon, and…oh…as it appears divine I’d also like the artichoke and black truffle soup with the layered brioche and mushroom. Thank you.”

Status: symbol of financial success

For some it’s the prestige that comes with the job which matters most. Many bankers love knowing that their friends refer to them as a ‘high flying finance guy / gal.’ All of a sudden people around think of you as a financial whiz. Relatives and friends will call you and question you on how to get mortgages, successfully refinance loans, invest in gold, buy into a tech start-up or even how to tip in restaurants. Your opinion on all things monetary suddenly matters very much. That is, even if all you do in your day-to-day job is to give loans to handful of South African corporates and that in reality you’re as knowledgeable on mortgages or commodities as a tourist guide in Giza (Egypt) is about Norwegian forestry.

I’ve know some ibankers who’ll complain about the job on daily basis and carry their utter disdain for their work life on their foreheads. But when you run into them at a rooftop lounge on a Friday evening surrounded by an attractive young crowd of non-finance people you’ll hear them describe what they do as if they’re Thomas Crown.

True love

Some people know they want to work in finance from a young age. True, it’s rare but when you meet them in a bank you’ll recognize it right away. More often than not they’re very sharp. Everyone in the team will either love or hate them. There is no in between. At a junior level (i.e. analyst / associate) they are typically the guys who make far fewer mistakes in presentations and models, digest information and data the quickest and generally appear to feel most at home in the building. It is almost a given that they’ve breezed through their finance studies in university. Some of them probably could have joined a bank straight from school rather than attend university.

When these worshippers of finance walk across the trading floor or past the Head of M&A’s office they’ll fight hard to keep a stupid smile from manifesting itself. They cannot help it. The trading floor is like a playground for them. The Head of M&A’s office like a throne. And if they receive a nod of acknowledgement from the man inside that office they may rush to the bathroom, lock themselves in a stall and cry out of joy for the job they consider a blessing. They probably hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Spring) in their heads when they walk around the bank on a busy Monday morning, a difficult day for most humans. Or perhaps Beethoven’s Ode to Joy – the part where the entire ensemble comes together in joyous harmony.

For these special souls, the enjoyment they derive from reading the Financial Times on a Friday morning is tantamount to a sustained mini ejaculation.

I once spotted one of them in the bathroom. Thomas, who attended the UK’s leading boarding schools and spoke as if he were an earl, was an Equity Capital Markets (ECM) associate and we occasionally worked on deals together. He was probably headed over to chat to a Sales guy and decided to make a pit stop beforehand. He surely thought he was the only person inside the toilets. I was slightly out of his range of vision at the urinals. Anyway, he’d finished washing his hands and was now staring at himself in the mirror:

Thomas: “Star ECM associate ladies and gentlemen. Rain maker! ”

This catches my attention and I quickly notice he’s not on his phone. His smile reminds me of the smile on a friend’s face the day he became a father. He went on chatting to himself.

ECM associate: “Walkin down the trading floor. Smile at the FX guys, “hey Cyrus how’s cable*”, wave to the EM traders, ‘yo Ravi how the Abu Dhabi bonds doing?  Has the sheikh farted again?”
*note: cable is the exchange rate between the US Dollar and British Pound

He suddenly bit both lips and looked down. He was overwhelmed by it all. I nearly bit through my lower lip trying to hold myself from bursting with laughter.

Great expectations

For some, a career in finance is expected of them from a young age. That was certainly the case with Guillaume, a Swiss M&A analyst I met in London during training.

Guillaume: “Most of our family and friends are in finance. My father is a private banker. My older brother is a hedge fund analyst. The pay maintains the lifestyle we like. The lifestyle our friends also have, bien sur.”

He tells me this as he brandishes a ring with his family crest on it as if he were a 17th century musqueteer. Has anyone told him there are under 30-year old dotcom-ers who have made more in 5 years than his ancestry combined? And they wear flip-flops and Billabong shorts to work.

Tour of duty: Operations In & Out

The people in this group are those who’ve planned the mission from day 1. They have given themselves two or three years to immerse themselves in that world, work like a horse, learn as much as possible about finance, hone their presentation and Excel skills, add some eyebrow-raising bullet points in the resume / cv and get out before it’s too late. Once the tour of duty comes to an end they tend to head back to university for graduate studies, launch a start-up, spend a year backpacking around Latin America flirting with locals and smoking local herbs, set about writing an ebook they’ll make available for download on a personal blog for $39.99, move into an Ashram in Uttar Pradesh and massage each other thinking it will lead to enlightenment and practice minimalism, etc.

Sadly, only some of the people who swear an oath to the tour of duty on that very first day fulfill their mission. Everybody in finance reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about. To those in the business: how many times have you told yourself, ‘just one more year…just one more bonus’?  To those who have friends in the business: how many times have you heard them insist they’ll soon leave their job? Most end up MIA (missing in action). Once behind enemy lines and captured people slowly forget the original plan, which is easily overshadowed by the perks of the job inside the golden cage. That is precisely what happened to Carlos, a friend of a friend.

He was on a two year plan. So he said. Six years later – though you’d think it more like 15 years looking at his face and what’s left of his hair – he still insists departure is imminent. A few months ago I ran into him in a lounge in New York. Rihanna’s What’s My Name started to play and he began to dance.  You could call it that, if you were looking through a kaleidoscope. In some parts of the world he’d get violently beaten with a dead monkey and have his head shaved with a butter knife for looking that bad. He used to dance with a modicum of style I was told. But after sitting on a chair crunched over a computer 12+ hours per day modelling on Excel for six years shit happens.

The people

One attraction of working in an investment bank is that you’re sure to work alongside some bright minds. The reason for that is very simple: investment banking promises enormous wealth and an exciting career and, therefore, it attracts some of the sharpest, most intelligent and driven individuals in academia and the workplace.

I can’t deny that I’ve met some impressive people in the bank. Having said that, I’ve also met a great deal of legendary imbeciles.

Nonetheless, some ibankers join and stay in the business because of the people.

Chance, circumstance or the alignment of the stars

Some stumble into the business by sheer chance, much like one accidentally steps in dogshit. It just happens. They’re at the right place, at the right time, and opportunity presents itself.

It just so happens that nerds (intelligent but single-minded persons obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit) are most likely to have this happen to them. Why? They’re natural chess masters, have an engineering degree from a top-ranked global university and, most important of all, give off the exact impression a managing director wants to see in a potential recruit: “I’m a loser, will work like a dog, make few mistakes and rip open my scrotum doing the splits on two chairs like Van Damn if you ask me to.”  Hired!

Why I became an ibanker

My goal objective was clear from day 1: learn as much as I can; work with some very talented and intelligent individuals; gain the relevant skills; make the right contacts; work on large deals; and when the time is right jump and do my own thing.

Having investment banking experience on a resume / cv no doubt strengthens your profile in the business world.

Of course money and the element of prestige also played roles. Yet they were not the sole driving factors for me. Besides, the big money you read about in the media only goes into the pockets of a select few in banks. It takes some time before you earn the big numbers. Also, the banks will always give you just enough to make sure you stay another year, and another, and another.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Let’s face it, your boss might not be the most emotionally evolved mammal on the planet.

Chances are you will have to deal with (or have already dealt with) a boss that is all too like the chicanery you see from Dunder Mifflin’s leadership team.

No matter what you do, it’s never enough. Your results are never big enough or fast enough. Even though the boss is never there, when he does decide to show up he “second guesses” all your decisions and keeps asking “what the hell is going on around here?”

All the while you are using all your big people skills to not shout out the obvious answer — “You would know if you were here…”  But you shut your mouth and pretend to take notes on the clipboard you are holding.  Muttering to yourself if having a job is really all that worth it.

Not for bosses like that.

The extra stress and chaos does nothing but bring you years closer to your death.It's dan It’s not only stupid, it’s dangerous – to your mental and physical health.

So what can you do? Do you just slam the door, throw your boss “the bird”, and collect unemployment?  Maybe.

But if you play your cards right, you can find yourself in a better place (mentally, physically, and financially…) with just some good old-fashioned planning. Here’s how to handle the situation.

1. Do your job right now.

That’s the kicker. Don’t get sloppy. And don’t get lazy. Even the biggest moron bosses can spot a slouch from a mile away. You don’t need a target on your chest while you are plotting your escape, so do your job.  And do it damn well. You don’t gain a thing from cutting corners or trying to game the system in your favor.

Your boss owns your ass for the eight hours (or more) that he is paying you to be there. Jackass or not, he owns you. That's right. If you are taking his money then you owe him effort. Don’t make things worse by shirking your responsibilities.

2. Don’t pick sides or get petty.

The only way that moron bosses can have friends (temporarily…) is by pitting employees against each other. They will draw you into a discussion and try to get you to complain or poke holes at another person that you are doing business alongside. Then once you are out of the room they do the exact opposite to the other person  – except this time it is aimed at you. Don’t fall into that trap.

Be polite but insist that you don’t have anything to say bad about your peers — even if you do.  What you don’t know is that it’s not a level playing field.  If you take the high road you’ll avoid the traps.  And by the way, you need your peers to help you with your next steps, so don’t burn bridges. Be fair. Don’t be petty.

3. Plan your exit expertly.

Find out what you want to do next and make it happen.  Have a budget. Know exactly how much money you need to keep your dream alive.  Write down the one thing you would do if money were not an option.  Start doing that thing after hours (instead of watching TV). Volunteer if you can’t paid to do what you love.

But most importantly, be an expert about your future. Money. Time. Location.  Know everything about what and where you want to be.  You don’t want to make an uninformed decision and find yourself crawling back to a bad boss — just because that’s the only thing you can get paid to do. Create a plan. Put the steps on a calendar. Start executing. You’ll be out of there in no time.

4. Don’t repeat your past mistakes.

If there are personality types that annoy you then avoid them — at all costs.  If you can’t work for man bosses, then find a female leader to work for. This is where you need to be really clear about what made your boss such a moron in the first place. Was he offense? Crude? Obnoxious? Unfairly demanding? What are the 2 or 3 things that make the situation unworkable from your perspective?

By the way, a lot of bosses are perverts. They talk about God and how much they love their wives, but two weeks later they are trying to play “grab ass” with you. Talk to other people who work there. Buy them a beer. They will tell you everything you need to know to make an informed decision. Whatever you do, don’t leave just to leave. And don’t take another job just because it’s not the one you have right now.

5. Get physical along the way.

Frankly, this whole situation sucks. Big time. Stress and panic and chaos are never good ingredients to add to your lifestyle.  The resulting product is sure to look pretty worn out. You need to plan extra “stress-relieving” into your schedule.  And that doesn’t just mean more sex.  It means physical exercise.  You hitting something or running somewhere or sweating.

There is something empowering about working through your frustrations.  It’s healing.  And that’s what you need a lot of.  To keep a level head and to execute the other steps we talked about you need to be a warrior.  Focused.  On message.  Ready to spring into action at the right moment.  Get in shape.  You’ll need it.

This is always tougher to do than to talk about.

You can only fix you. So focus on that.

Remember that. There will always be jerks and morons. But you don’t need to work for one.

You’re better than that. Get out.  But do it your way.

Don’t let frayed emotions and stressed decision-making force your hand into doing something that is hard to recover from. Play it cool. Have a plan.

Find someone else who appreciates your talents.

The truth is that they are out there looking for someone like you.

Please follow Careers on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Our career paths seem so cut and dry when we're children.

When asked what we want to be when we grow up, our responses are simple: teacher, firefighter, doctor.

But as we grow up and head to college, we're exposed to all sorts of other career options in fields we never have had exposure to in a direct way. While we work to earn degrees in fields we're interested in pursuing, we're still left a bit unprepared for the corporate world upon graduation.

Here are 10 facts your college degree didn't prepare you for when graduating:

1. You're not limited to jobs in the field you got your degree in. If you have a degree in journalism, you might assume that means your only option is becoming a journalist. But armed with great communications skills, you could also qualify for jobs in PR, marketing, or business administration. It's all how you play your cards and where you get your experience.

2. Your degree isn't always that important to employers. Despite what you'd like to believe, many employers won't care where you went to school, or even what you earned your degree in. They'll focus instead on your skills: whether or not you seem trainable enough for the job you've applied for. They'll also look at experience. You'll have the hardest time in regards to experience just out of college, as you won't yet have much detail on your resume. Focus on getting internships and volunteer positions to round out the experience employers will be looking for.

3. Some employers won't even require you to have a degree. This can be an eye-opener to anyone who's spent four-plus years earning a degree, but again, employers look for experience and trainability. And while having a college degree does display your ability to be taught, it's not the only path to a professional career.

4. There are jobs you've never even heard of in your field. Like many college grads, you probably received a brochure listing all the amazing careers you could consider in your field. But there are often many more beyond that list. If you have a degree in English, you've likely already considered the obvious option of teaching or writing, but publishing, proofreading, speech-writing, or becoming a paralegal might not have crossed your mind.

5. Grades don't matter. It is highly unlikely an employer will ask for your transcript, at least not to check out your grades. That's not to dissuade current college students from trying their hardest, but the fact is: employers don't care about grades.

6. College is about networking. Make the most out of your alumni network and see what opportunities there are for you professionally. Speak to professors in your department about what they'd recommend for you career-wise.

7. Some degrees pay better than others. And liberal arts degrees aren't at the top of the list. Biomedical engineering, math, and science, however, are. Something to consider when planning the massive amounts of money you'll make ... with your philosophy degree.

8. College does not prepare you for a job. Nothing but job experience can do that. And, of course, you need job experience to get a job. It's a vicious cycle to which you've got to find your own solution.

9. Employers don't want to train you to do a job. That's why they're more likely to hire people not fresh out of college. Do yourself a favor and take on an internship or two during college so that you've already gone through the experience of being in a work environment and having some experiences to help guide you. This will make you more hireable after graduation.

10. It's okay to change your mind. Many graduates start working in their field of choice only to find out it wasn't what they expected when they were cracking the books on the subject. It's okay (see no. 1). You don't necessarily need to start over and get another degree; just open your mind to other career options your degree might make you eligible for in the future.

Please follow Careers on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

In Hollywood, many child stars fall victim to the curse of fame. 

Young starlets Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Bynes have had various legal troubles over the years. Former teen heartthrob Corey Haim died of an overdose two years ago. 

Even Drew Barrymore struggled with substance abuse before becoming a major starlet. 

But that doesn't mean that every former child star went on to have a troubled future. We found several child actors who grew up to have successful careers outside of show business.

Winnie Cooper from "The Wonder Years," Danny Lloyd from "The Shining" and Rider Strong from "Boy Meets World" have all found success outside of the spotlight. 

From teachers to martial artists to firefighters, you'll be surprised to see what these stars are doing. 

In 1996, Jonathan Lipnicki played Renee Zellweger's adorable son in "Jerry Maguire." He also starred in the "Stuart Little" films.

Today, Lipnicki is looking buff. He's a successful competitor in the martial art Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen grew up playing the role of Michelle Tanner on "Full House."

Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook.

The following is an excerpt of a Wealthfront post that promotes a new tool for calculating average startup salaries. We've extracted just the tips, but you can read the full post at Wealthfront.

It may sound strange for the CEO of an investment management firm to say this, but managing your career well is much more important than managing your investments well.

Good investment management – using low-cost ETFs and low-fee advice – can mean higher returns in your investment portfolio. Over time, that might add up a lot of money, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars on larger portfolios. But the economic rewards that follow from good career decisions in the technology industry are potentially much larger.

When I was a venture capitalist, one of the first things I discussed with my CEOs was setting a budget for salaries and equity, using what we knew about typical pay at companies in the Valley.

For each position and at each level, there’s a range of compensation and, of course, a mean.

The CEO decided where his or her particular firm would fall compared with other firms. For instance, would the company pay in the 60th percentile for salaries, and in the 40th percentile for equity? (That would be typical for an already successful company, which is likely to pay higher-than-average salaries and offer lower-than-average equity).  Never would a company offer both above-market salary and equity.

That leads to my first suggestion for managing your career well: Pay the most attention to the quality of the company when you are deciding where to apply or which job offer to accept.

Find The Right Company (Or Pie)

Choosing the right tech startup to work for is the single most important factor for maximizing the return on your career. Choice of company trumps position, salary and even the size of your equity package. A small equity stake in a big success is exponentially more valuable than a big equity stake in a failure or a minor success.

I illustrate the importance of growing the size of the pie to one’s share of pie to my entrepreneurship students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business by reminding them of the formula for a circle’s circumference versus its area. The formula for circumference (a proxy for share of pie) is linear (2 πr) vs. the formula for area, which is quadratic (πr²).

The single most important factor in a company’s big success (growing the size of the pie) is the size of the market the company ultimately addresses. Other signs of a future big exit that pays off for employees: a scalable business model and an unfair advantage (such as intellectual property, a unique business model or a proprietary relationship) that allows a company to earn high margins.

Those things might not be obvious from the get-go because so many successful technology companies pivot. Sometimes, the best clue to a company’s future success is the team’s ambition. The team will work on a big problem because that’s what’s important to them. I can’t think of a better example than my colleagues at Wealthfront, many of whom joined us because they wanted to work on an important problem: democratizing access to sophisticated financial advice.

Get What’s Fair, But Don’t Negotiate Too Much

You’re talking to a great company, and they’re offering you a job you love. Now it’s time to figure out how you’ll be compensated.

If the company asks you to name your salary first, ask them what they believe is fair. You can use our Tool to determine where the offer falls in comparison with the market. The mean cash compensation across all tech startups in all the markets was $112,000.

If at some point during the negotiation you’re asked to name an amount or an equity stake, you can use our Tool to decide on reasonable numbers. Don’t ask for an amount that is far above the average; the company most likely won’t break its budgets to hire you, and you will have damaged the relationship right from the beginning.

If you’re going to ask for a reasonable increase in the offer, ask for more equity. Getting another .1% can lead to a hell of a lot more money than another $10,000 of salary. The mean equity compensation across all tech startups across all maturities in all the markets was .072%.

Based on my experience, most companies will offer you a fair wage and a fair equity package. Those that don’t are those you don’t want to work for.

The Bottom Line

Managing your investments well is important. Managing your career well is even more important, because the stakes are so much higher.

When technology companies win, they win big. There’s no way to predict exactly how much you’ll make if you work for one of those winners when it goes public, but I can give you a sense of the value. Consider: the typical successful public technology company generates revenue of $500k per employee, and is valued (that’s its market capitalization) at 5 to 10 times revenue. To find the value per employee, we multiply the revenue per employee by the typical market capitalization/revenue ratio. We can then multiply that number by .15 – the percent of shares that employees excluding executives typically own.

It’s a rough calculation, but it gives us $375,000-$750,000 for the typical employee in a typical IPO. That’s more than three to six times the average pay at a tech startup – $112,000 in 2011, according to our data.

With any luck, and if you join a tech startup in the early years, the payoff can be much larger.

Here's the startup salary and equity calculator tool Wealthfront released today. It's a good benchmark for employees at startups of all sizes:

Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

The year I joined the bank I befriended another new joiner named Takeshi, a Japanese student who sailed in from Harvard Business School. We had just completed a week-long session of intensive financial modelling training and rather than head home – it was 11:30pm – we decided to grab a few beers.

So exhausted were we from the week that by the time we knocked back our third Peroni both of us were borderline drunk. We cheerfully discussed a variety of topics on the mind of all new male bankers: bonuses, women, holidays, suits, watches, etc. This was an exciting time for us.

At one point the conversation went quiet and neither of us uttered a word for a good 30 seconds. One of Madonna’s songs was playing in the background and we found ourselves bobbing our heads to the beat. Takeshi looked my way and opened his mouth slightly, as if about to speak, but then hesitated, gave up and looked away. “What’s on your mind,” I inquired with a smile. He looked me straight in the eye and without hesitation he said something I’ll never forget, “we are now Samurais.” I smiled and raised my glass. He followed suit and we drank to that.

A beer later we were both officially drunk and Takeshi began philosophizing aloud. According to him, an investment banker lived by a code of honor. This was predicated on unquestioned obedience to one’s master, acceptance that work duties constitute part of the highest good and the practice of constant self-sacrifice. ”The bank is my master. No, my line manager is my true master. Excel will be my Katana (Samurai sword). And I will give up my social life for the next five years.” He was not silly enough to touch on frugality and loyalty – we are bankers after all and will a) spend and b) go where we are paid the most.

A week later Takeshi went away to work in our Tokyo office and, because an investment banker’s job sucks like a leech and priorities are violently re-shuffled when you join, we lost touch. It wasn’t until nearly half a year later that I witnessed first-hand, in the lobby of our building, an event which reminded me of Takeshi and that funny phrase of his. The trigger was a discussion between a recently fired analyst, Paulo, and a senior managing director in the Capital Markets team, Steve.

Paulo was an emaciated Italian whom everyone believed was anorexic. Every day after lunch he went straight to the bathroom and if you happen to be inside when he entered then you heard enough to suspect something was wrong. I didn’t like Paulo for two important reasons: firstly, you could never trust him; secondly, he spoke behind everyone’s back and, therefore, I was sure mine as well. But that’s another story altogether. Steve was a highly intelligent man with strong credentials though he certainly gave himself far too much credit. An Oxbridge grad, all it took was one look to see he was the arrogant yet scrawny, social inept kid in school everybody, including girls, slapped around for fun. He grew his first chest hair only after he became an investment banker.

So one day we all receive the customary e-mail forewarning us that, given the difficult times ahead, the firm was going to fire more than a handful of peons. Well it so happens that Paulo was one of those unfortunate souls summoned to the firing line shortly after we received the notice. The scene I stumbled upon was a discussion between Paulo and Steve a few hours after the former was given the terrible news. Paulo stops Steve.

Paulo: seemingly distressed. “Steve I would like to speak to you for a second. Please.”
Steve: preferring to avoid this discussion but knowing Paulo has a right to address the matter. “Alright. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Paulo: “I was made redundant.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s cool. That’s business. That’s life. I understand that. What I don’t understand is why me. I work harder than everyone on my team. I stay two or three hours longer than the other analysts. Every day! I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at my desk.” He takes another deep breath and begins to get teary-eyes. “Steve, I missed my grandmother’s funeral because I was working on a deal for our team.” His hands clasped in prayer moving forward and back. “Do something for me please.”
Steve: acknowledges Paulo’s sacrifice with an earnest nod. “Paulo, I can appreciate the sacrifices you’ve made.” Pointing to himself. “I missed my father-in-law’s funeral last year because of a deal. But this is not about you or me, it’s about the interest of our firm. We know you’re a hard worker. Look, I will do my best to place you in another area of the bank. I gotta run.”

I imagined the day Steve would get fired. He’d tell his superior, probably the CEO, that he sacrificed so much for the bank and even missed a relatives’s funeral. In turn, the CEO would respond by saying he could empathize and that he had missed his wife’s funeral to close a deal.

Samurais and investment bankers do share things in common. Bankers obey their masters, put work above all and sacrifice a great deal. But if you miss your grandmother or father-in-law’s funeral you’re not a samurai in my book. You’re a first class loser.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

My daughter started kindergarten last week. She’s in the system now and -- if all goes well -- will graduate in thirteen years as a proud member of the class of 2025.

My smartphone alerted me to an incoming Twitter mention as I watched her stride with excitement (and a little anxiety) to her classroom on her first day, and I couldn’t help but think how much mobile devices and social technology will completely change the world by the time she finishes high school.

College

To start, business intelligence and recommendation engines will make the process of selecting a college radically different. Think Amazon’s recommendations are impressive or the jobs LinkedIn suggests for you are a fit? Give the technology another decade and observe how colleges market to kids on social networks based on personality and affinity.

Certainly, my daughter and her classmates will still factor in reputation and brand identity of stellar schools like Harvard and Stanford, but more important will be the extent to which a school makes a personalized case for itself on Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest (or the next generation versions of these sites) and demonstrates why its curriculum and culture are an ideal fit for the student’s personality, needs, and interests.

Summer Employment

While getting ready for school, my daughter will probably want to find a summer job to have some spending money for school. After talking to her friends in a group video chat and inquiring where they’ll be working, she’ll consider a referral from one of her friends and then launch an app that asks her to let it use her address to find nearby jobs.

She’ll accept and the app will provide a personalized listing of all nearby part-time positions suitable for a 17 seventeen year old who plans to attend college at the end of the summer. An opening for a YMCA Summer Counselor will rise to the top, because the app will know from my daughter’s social profile that she’s enjoys swimming and gymnastics and used to take classes at that same YMCA when she was in grade school.

Interview

My daughter won’t need to provide a resume or attend an in-person interview, because the interviewer will have access to her LinkedIn HighSchool profile, but she will be asked to complete an online assessment test and answer a few questions through video chat. While she completes the assessment and answers questions that can’t be studied for in advance, an HR analyst at the employer will run a social reputation check. The screening diagnostic will take in and analyze the massive digital footprint my daughter has created over her entire life -- all the public posts, comments, likes, activity on gameworlds, pictures, videos, lists, and more -- and give the sum a rating, not unlike a credit score. The assessment algorithm will return a Pass/Fail, and since my daughter passes, she’ll be invited to move on to the final phase of pre-employment screening.

Gamified Testing

To gauge situational fit and competencies that can’t be forecast by analytics, my daughter will access a software game customized with workplace scenarios. She might have to manage a room of virtual children who are misbehaving and manage the situation, based on resources and priorities. Or she’ll supervise the pool and need to demonstrate what she would do if a swimmer has a medical emergency and goes under water. She might be testing with one or two other candidates, and if so she’ll have to decide if she’s better served by teaming up or going it alone. All of the simulations will measure her organizational skills, leadership, cooperation, and adversity quotient. 

When my daughter completes the simulation, a smiling representative from Human Capital Management will thank her for her time and let her know that a decision will be forthcoming, even though a sophisticated algorithm has already made the hire decision. Walking home, my daughter will pass a preschool and observe a group of children, who will start kindergarten in the coming fall. She’ll glance at her mobile and begin to wonder what changes are in store for these kids -- the class of 2038 -- when a message flashes onscreen informing her that she got the job.

Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

These are hard times on Wall Street. Bank of America has announced massive job cuts, Deutsche Bank is doing the same, and we're pretty sure bonus season is going to be dreary.

But according to eFinancial Careers, the Street still has needs, and you may be able to feed them — especially if you know something about technology.

Banks especially want "C and Java programming skills – allowing speed of execution, supporting large quantities of data and enabling firms do real-time simulation and modeling," and "SQL - the language most searched for skill for querying and manipulating databases."

But have no fear if you're not a computer nerd or a quant. Wall Street wants other types as well. Check out eFinancial careers' top ten list below:

1.Programming languages and databases*
2.Fixed income
3.Risk
4.Project management
5.Business Analyst
6.Accountant/Accounting
7.Operations
8.Financial Planner and advisor
9.Compliance
10.Quants

See? You've got to fit somewhere.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

A resignation letter accusing a boss of having sex at work with a female colleague went viral on Twitter and shattered the reputation of the manager. 

Kieran Allen emailed his resignation letter to the staff, and it was eventually posted on Twitter. Allen worked for MEC, a UK media company. 

Here's the letter. We took out the name of the boss and other employees for legal reasons and to protect their privacy. You can read the full version here. 

From: Kieran Allen
Sent: 25 September 2012 08:11
To: MEC London UK All Staff
Subject: Leaving

Hello MEC,

It feels quite strange to be writing my leaving speech after 2 1/2 yrs. of loyal service to the company. It’s the longest I have spent at a company and I owe MEC a lot for my training and development. I leave in a position where I can go and further my career in digital if I so wish and for that I pay MEC great tribute.

However I leave with a horrible taste in my mouth after my working life for the past 8months has been ruined by [REDACTED].

Background:
Joined MEC in May 2010. Soon after I started to receive continuous praise from [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] for my outstanding performance across accounts (mainly Specsavers) Inc. a commendation from [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] about my ability and contribution. I also received high praise from [REDACTED] (re general Specsavers performance and securing a PPC turnaround for Colgate inc a 100%+ YoY spend increase).

October 2011
I decide to hand in my notice and join another agency in order to further my development. [REDACTED] while initially cold to my departure rapidly changed tone and started to court me in order to stay.

January 2012
I retract my notice after [REDACTED] promotes me to Senior AM and gives me a substantial pay-rise along with the promise of rapid development.

However while all seemed well on the surface things were far from ideal in the background.

Oct-Feb 2011/12
My client load had been nearly trebled from 6 to 16 clients due to the departures of [REDACTED].
I was initially asked to help out in order to help service the clients while staff were recruited but I ended up being made the de-facto brand team manager along with my original client list.
The stress and strain took its toll and during late January - early February 2012 my health started to deteriorate rapidly.
I ended up breaking down to [REDACTED] that I couldn't take it anymore and that I was losing my mind under the pressure. Nothing changed although he knew I was beyond stacked.

Feb 21st I had to go to the doctors due to an imminent breakdown where I was ordered to stay off work indefinitely. I was signed off with Work Related Stress. I ended up needing over 2weeks off in order to recover.

On my return things went from bad to worse. [REDACTED] instead of welcoming me back and looking to make things right, instead attacked me and made me feel an outsider. I was made to feel that I had actually done wrong.

Soon after my return in early March [REDACTED]

- blocked my 2011 bonus due to
1)"poor performance in 2011"
2) "being given a pay rise and promotion in Jan 2012"
3) "things not working out as recently planned"
4) "being monitored after coming back from illness"

- Gave me an official company verbal warning for poor performance in 2011

- Put me on a performance review

All of this though after
- Praising me regularly throughout 2010/11
- Courting me to stay when i decided to leave
- Promoting me to Senior Account Manager
- Giving me a 15% payrise
- Describing my performance as “outstanding” as late as December 2011 to [REDACTED] when there was a lot of issues due to staff departures
and my ability to step in and manage the brand teams PPC activity...

The only thing that changed during Feb/March 2012 is that I had to take 2 weeks off work due to work related stress and that [REDACTED] was questioned as Head of Department as to why this had happened under his watch and instead of taking responsibility he instead decided to attack me and my reputation in order to discredit my time off and make himself look less liable for blame.

This type of approach would seem extreme from a decent man but this is [REDACTED] the "man" who openly in front of other team members

- Made jokes about the "Spastic Olympics" (referring to Para-Olympics)
- Openly claimed to be proud "not to have a drop of Jewish blood in him"
- Regularly made sexist and other bigoted remarks
- Took a female colleague out for a drink on the day he interviewed her, then later took her back to the MEC offices that night and had sexual relations with her in the meeting rooms on the 3rd floor

The above is all common knowledge throughout the team. This is [REDACTED]'s style of leadership and is gross misconduct on many levels. It is hard to fathom that such a man is responsible for the work wellbeing of over 30staff.

I am writing this message in order to expose these failings and protect others in future. I am far from perfect personally or professionally but I am a good human being who treats people with respect. In 2012 this behaviour is not acceptable and certainly not in a company which touts itself as being all about its people.
Not one thing on this email has been exaggerated or made up. This is my truth to you all.

No doubt I fully expect the above to be ripped apart but as long as the truth is out there then that’s all I can do.

Good luck to MEC and all those good people who strive to make her great.

Kieran

DON'T MISS: 13 Office Trends That Will Disappear In The Next 5 Years >

Please follow Careers on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

When you’re meeting new people, even in casual social situations, the topic of work is never far off. Maybe this is a general commentary on The Texting Generation’s lacking conversation skills, but I always find myself getting asked about my work shortly after being introduced to someone.

“Sooo… what do you do?”It's a question I never want to answer...

During the bad ol’ analyst days, I’d be at a friend’s apartment or a bar, trying to pound booze as quickly as humanly possible so for a precious few hours, I could transport my mind away from the endless vortex of minutiae that dominates the life of every junior banker on Wall Street. Despite my borderline sociopathic drinking routine, some chipper friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend would always find a way to spark up conversation. For whatever reason, the topic of that conversation always eventually pivoted toward work.

In between gulps of cheap beer and/or badly mixed whiskey and Diet, I’d catch on to the fact that the nameless mouthpiece currently distracting me from my systematic brain cell murder had a day job involving corporate sales, law clerking, or something else vaguely generic. After jabbering on about how awesome it is to live in New York City and how great living in the West Village is, inevitably, the ball would be volleyed back to me:

“Sooo… what do you do?”

During my time in investment banking, I answered this question hundreds of times, in as many different ways. As a third party, I’ve seen it asked and answered many times more than that. Generally, the answers were a variation on the following:

1. I’m in finance.[FYE-nance]

Usually, I was concentrating on getting my mind off work, not talking about it. Given that literally millions of New York City residents work “in finance” in some capacity, this answer could have been interpreted as “I am a bank teller at the BofA on Canal Street,” “I am the real Bess Levin,” “I am Henry Kravis and today is wig day,” or anything else in between. Frankly, it didn’t matter. I answered tersely, and with a “let’s talk about something else, please for the love of f*ck” type of tone.

2. I’m in finance.[fin-NANCE]

What a difference inflection makes. Sarcasm is like Tabasco – it’s meant to be used sparingly, but sometimes you just gotta lay it on thick. After replying with just the right dose of pomp, I’d launch into a long monologue about my days growing up in southern Connecticut, playing on the Exeter lacrosse team, and cruising through the Wilson school at Princeton before moving on to my current gig in banking. Of course, none of these things were true.

3. I’m in banking.When I was feeling polite enough to actually answer the question rather than 1) dismiss it, or 2) troll it, I’d still be pretty vague. The bottom line was, talking about work always led to conversations that led me deeper into the abyss of cynicism. What does one say to someone who’s essentially just told you he’s decided to celebrate his college graduation with 730 days of torture? In my experience, something equally depressing:

• My dad was a banker. I never saw him when I was growing up.
• You know, coffee stains your teeth.
• Really? I thought you said you were a philosophy major. How do you live with yourself?
• … or something so stupid it’s offensive:
• Oh, I hear you guys work a lot. Do you, like, do a ton of coke to stay awake?
• You work for a bank? Great! The other day, the ATM ate my check. Can you help me look into that?
• I think it is SO wrong that you guys don’t have to pay taxes. AND you got bailed out!

… or something infuriating:

• I know how hard that must be. I worked till 7 today.
• Hey, at least you get a free Blackberry!
• You must be learning a lot.

… or, perhaps most wrenching of all:

• Me too.

On the one hand, it’s depressing to see the sad, hollowed-out reflection of yourself standing in front of you. The downtrodden tone of voice, the rumpled dress shirt and creased slacks held up by a worn belt that’s one loop away from useless. Hell, you might even catch a glimpse of a laptop bag somewhere in the corner of the room.

On the other hand, you get the strong sense of camaraderie that comes with meeting another one of your own. There are thousands of analysts on Wall Street, but one of the worst parts of the job is feeling like you’re very much alone in the uphill battle of corporate survival.

Bumping into a fellow analyst is a reminder that there are others that understand where you are mentally and emotionally. I find that this is what binds the WSO community itself - young financiers reaching out to others in the same shoes, in search of a common bond forged through the shared experience of working on the Street.

As for me, I’ve been out of banking for awhile and I still dance around the topic of work. Aside from writing these columns about my experiences on Wall Street, I rarely broach the subject – as it was, I spent more than enough time at work already.

How do you respond to people who ask you about your work, and how do you feel about meeting other bankers on your rare nights off the job?

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Many of my invite-only gatherings aren’t for the faint of heart.

From zero-gravity flights to road rallies featuring exotic cars or even sabering champagne bottles, these events demand something different from attendees—and that is intentional.

In business and beyond, I’ve found myself to be a “catalyst” at creating collisions of smart people and bright ideas. I help co-create unique platforms to connect the select individuals who can help each other. In fact, one of my companies is a global network of successful entrepreneurs, Maverick1000, designed from the ground up just for this reason.

The idea for this sort of high-level “networking” may have initially happened accidentally, but it’s something I believe many other entrepreneurs can consciously take advantage of to become the hub of activity and grow their business networks organically.

These days, it’s not enough to just hold a dinner or event, so I make it a point to add experiential elements. Doing so creates stronger bonds, adds a fun element people don’t regularly experience, and gets them talking. Besides, it’s hard for someone to avoid bragging a little about a dinner where they were spinning fire on a beach in Maui—or on an excursion with Sir Richard Branson on his private island!

Here are a few ways to turn yourself into an authentic connector who is valuable to anyone’s network:

1. Don’t hog the spotlight. Connectors understand the necessity of creating value for others. If you want to be in the middle of the action, you must seek ways to enhance the lives of those surrounding you. The best connectors I know are extremely generous with introductions where they make sense. One of my favorite questions is, “What are you most excited about right now?” From that answer, I know who I can hook that person up with.

2. Be valuable. People value connectors for what they provide in terms of interaction and resource. In some cases, it’s because they create a space to bring together an elite group. And the person who is that “hub” is remembered when business deals are coming together. After all, how did these people get to the table in the first place? I’m always getting notes back or hearing from attendees of my seminar about deals they’ve created. Sometimes, they give me credit when I didn’t directly introduce them.

3. Be calendar-worthy. Everyone already has too much on their plates AND their calendars, so why should they attend or be part of something you create? Anyone can start meetup groups, dinner meetings, or curated events, but it takes some creative energy to make the event worth attending. Once you have people’s attention, you can stop networking and truly start connecting.

4. Let loose. This connectivity needs to be genuine and fun—I may or may not have been known to don a green Speedo or dress up as a circus ringleader on occasion. However, that might not work for everyone. The appeal is in the authenticity of the fun, so it’s important to find your natural personality and allow it come through in your dealings.

5. Play mediator. I work with many entrepreneurs with Type A personalities, so there’s inevitably some jockeying for top positions. When facilitating at a session, there’s a fine line between guaranteeing that everyone offers input and knowing when someone needs to be dialed down. If a situation requires you to step up, it’s best to start with humor and work toward a more direct approach when “calling someone out.” If one of the members takes too long with the microphone, I might hit a gong or shoot the person with a Nerf gun. He gets the point, and the crowd gets a laugh.

Yanik Silver is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully bootstrapped 8 different product and service ideas hitting the million-dollar sales mark from scratch without funding, taking on debt or even having a real business plan. He founded the Underground Online Seminar® and Maverick1000, a global network of game-changing entrepreneurs, and also authored several best-selling marketing books and tools.

NOW READ: 15 Signs Of Entrepreneurial Burnout >

Read more posts on Young Entrepreneur Council »

Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

By any measure, Facebook's Jocelyn Goldfein is successful.

"I feel really lucky, I feel luckier than most people," she told Business Insider.

As a director of engineering for Facebook, she is one of the tech industry's highest-profile engineers. Her teams are responsible for key Facebook features like News Feed, search, and photos. Before that, she was a power player at VMware, joining when it had about 350 employees and staying seven years through its growth to more than 10,000 people. At one point, she managed 400 of them.

The fact that she's a woman makes her doubly visible. That's because even though computer science is a hot career, women are ignoring it. Less than 12 percent of computer science degrees earned in 2010-11 were awarded to women and that percentage has declined over the past couple of decades.

Goldfein, 37, believes that the reason women don't go into the field is misperception. There's some cultural pressure that makes girls think they aren't smart enough.

"I feel like so many people are missing out on what's an amazing career because they get themselves psyched out," she told Business Insider. "The reality is programming is not that hard. If you can do high school algebra, you can do programming." (Goldfein qualifies that as applying to "most of what we do"; there's obviously higher-level math involved in some programming work, she says.)

But back in her college days, Goldfein had the same fears and doubts. She always enjoyed math but didn't do any programming as a kid. She thought that "math and science degrees would be too hard for me," she says, and chose computer science as a role of the dice, thinking it would be easier.

"Where did that fear come from?" she wonders today. "I had high SAT scores and got into Stanford."

Choosing computer science was just a stroke of luck. "It was really fun. I love to do Sudoku, I like Scrabble and crossword puzzles, as I think many women do. Programming is fun in that you solve a puzzle and you make something of nothing," she explains.

So as a mom of two young daughters, ages 4 and 7, she's taking her role-model status seriously. Along with Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, Goldfein is encouraging women to enter the computer-science field. She'll be speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, this week in Baltimore, she's involved with mentoring and she's overseeing Facebook's Grace Hopper scholarship award, which offers winners support and mentorship.

Both the award and the conference are named after Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the pioneering computer scientist who developed the first compiler for a computing language. Hopper also coined the term "bug," after a stray insect gummed up the works of a machine she was using.

Hopper was one of the creators of the technologies that eventually led to massive computing efforts like Facebook. Programmers like Goldfein who have followed in her footsteps get to build products that help people and change lives.

"This is on the scale of hundreds of millions of people," Goldfein says.

What other career offers that?

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

I’m pretty mediocre. I’m ashamed to admit it.  

I’m not even being sarcastic or self-deprecating. I’ve never done anything that stands out as, “Whoah! This guy made it into outerspace! Or…this guy has a best selling novel! Or…if only Google had thought of this!” I’ve had some successes and some failures (well-documented here) but never reached any of the goals I had initially set. Always slipped off along the way, off the yellow brick road, into the wilderness.

I’ve started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. I’ve invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others. I’ve written some books, most of which I no longer like (except the ones you get when you sign up for my newsletter on the right).

I can tell you overall, though, everything I have done has been distinguished by its mediocrity, its lack of a grand vision, and any success I’ve had can be just as much put in the luck basket as the effort basket.

That said, all people should be so lucky. We can’t all be grand visionaries. We can’t all be Picassos. We want to make our business, make our art, sell it, make some money, raise a family, and try to be happy. My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure. For every Mark Zuckerberg there are 1,000 Jack Zuckermans.

Who is Jack Zuckerman? I have no idea. That’s my point. If you are Jack Zuckerman and are reading this, I apologize. You aimed for the stars and missed. Your re-entry into the atmosphere involved a broken heat shield and you burned to a crisp by the time you hit the ocean. Now we have no idea who you are.

If you want to get rich, sell your company, have time for your hobbies, raise a halfway decent family (with mediocre children, etc.), and enjoy the sunset with your wife on occasion, here are some of my highly effective recommendations.

1. Procrastination: In between the time I wrote the last sentence and the time I wrote this one I played (and lost) a game of chess. My king and my queen got forked by a knight. But hey, that happens. Fork me once, shame on me. Etc.

Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing. When you procrastinate as an entrepreneur it could mean that you need a bit more time to think about what you are pitching a client. It could also mean you are doing work that is not your forte and that you are better off delegating.

I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that. In my first business, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head the first time I delegated a programming job to someone other than me. At that time, I went out on a date. Which was infinitely better than me sweating all night on some stupid programming bug (thank you, Chet, for solving that issue).

Try to figure out why you are procrastinating. Maybe you need to brainstorm more to improve an idea. Maybe the idea is no good as is. Maybe you need to delegate. Maybe you need to learn more. Maybe you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Maybe you don’t like the client whose project you were just working on. Maybe you need to take a break. There’s only so many seconds in a row you can think about something before you need to take time off and rejuvenate the creative muscles. This is not for everyone. Great people can storm right through. Steve Jobs never needed to take a break. But I do.

Procrastination could also be a strong sign that you are a perfectionist. That you are filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling your business. Examine your procrastination from every side. It’s your body trying to tell you something. Listen to it.

CHECK OUT:  "5 Great Things About Procrastination"

2. Zero-tasking: there’s a common myth that great people can multitask efficiently. This might be true but I can’t do it. I have statistical proof. I have a serious addiction. If you ever talk on the phone with me there’s almost 100% chance I am simultaneously playing chess online. The phone rings and one hand reaches for the phone and the other hand reaches for the computer to initiate a one minute game.

Chess rankings are based on a statistically generated rating system. So I can compare easily how well I do when I’m on the phone compared with when I’m not on the phone. There is a three standard deviation difference. Imagine if I were talking on the phone and driving. Or responding to emails. It’s the same thing I’m assuming: phone calls cause a three standard deviation subtraction in intelligence. And that’s the basic multi-tasking we all do at some point or other.

So great people can multitask but since, by definition, most of us are not great (99% of us are not in the top 1%), its much better to single-task. Just do one thing at a time. When you wash your hands, hear the sound of the water, feel the water on your hands, scrub every part. Be clean. Focus on what you are doing.

Often, the successful mediocre entrepreneur should strive for excellence in ZERO-tasking. Do nothing. We always feel like we have to be “doing something” or we (or, I should say “I”) feel ashamed. Sometimes it’s better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all.

Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

Not when we are rushing and panicking.

Check Out:  "Multi-Tasking Will Kill You"

3. Failure: As far as I can tell, Larry Page has never failed. He went straight from graduate school to billions. Ditto for Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and a few others. But again, by definition, most of us are pretty mediocre. We can strive for greatness but we will never hit it. So it means we will often fail. Not ALWAYS fail. But often.

My last 16 out of 17 business attempts were failures. I made so many mistakes in my first successful business I’m almost embarrassed to recount them. I remember one time I was trying to pitch Tupac’s mom that I should do the website for her dead son. I had a “CD” (what’s that?) of all my work. I went to Tupac’s manager’s office and he said, “ok, show me what you got”. The only problem was: I had never used a Windows-based machine. Only Macs and Unix machines. So I honestly had no idea how to put my CD into the computer and then view its contents. And I had gone to graduate school in computer science. He said, “you have got to be kidding me."

It was a $90,000 gig. It would’ve met my payroll for at least two months. It was a done deal until I walked into his office. I left his office crying while he was laughing. When I came back to my office everyone asked, “How did the meeting go?” I said, “I think it went pretty well.” And then I went home and cried some more. I roll that way.

Then I bought a Windows-based PC for myself and learned how to use it. I don’t think I ever bought a Mac again actually. It’s possible to learn from successes. But it’s much easier to learn from failures. Ultimately, life is a sentence of failures, punctuated only by the briefest of successes.

So the mediocre entrepreneur learns two things from failure: First he learns directly how to overcome that particular failure. He’s highly motivated to not repeat the same mistakes. Second, he learns how to deal with the psychology of failure. Mediocre entrepreneurs fail A LOT. So they get this incredible skill of getting really good at dealing with failure. This translates to monetary success.

The mediocre entrepreneur understands that persistence is not the self-help cliche, “Keep going until you hit the finish line!” The key slogan is, “Keep failing until you accidentally no longer fail.” That’s persistence.

4. Not Original: I’ve never come up with an original idea in my life. My first successful business was making web software, strategies, websites for Fortune 500 companies. Not an original idea but at the time, in the 90s, people were paying exorbitant multiples for such businesses. My successful investments all involved situations where I made sure the CEOs and other investors were smarter than me. I wrote a TechCrunch article on this titled “My Angel Investor Checklist”. 100% of my zeros as an angel investor were situations where I thought I was smart. I wasn’t. I’m mediocre.

The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results. The child that was so ugly nobody else wanted to touch it. Look at Facebook: combine the internet with stalking. Amazing!

And, by the way, it was about the fifth attempt at such a social network. Twitter: combine internet with antiquated SMS protocols. Ugly! But it works. Ebay, combine ecommerce with auctions. The song, “I’ll Be There." Combine Mariah Carey with Michael Jackson. If Justin Bieber sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” it would be a huge hit. I might even listen to it.

5. Poor Networking: I’m that guy. You know the one at the party that doesn’t talk to anyone and stands in the corner. I never go to tech meetups. I usually say no to very nice networking dinner invitations. I like to stay home and read. When I was running businesses I was often too shy to talk to my employees. I would call my secretary from downstairs and ask if the hallway was clear, then ask her to unlock my door and I’d hurry upstairs and lock the door behind me. That particular company failed disastrously.

But many people network too much. Entrepreneurship is hard enough. It’s 20 hours a day of managing employees, customers, meetings, and product development. And the buck stops here sort of thing. And then what are you going to do? Network all night? Save that for the great entrepreneurs. Or the ones who are about to fail. The mediocre entrepreneur works his 20 hours, then relaxes when he can. It’s tough to make money. Not a party.

6. Do Anything To Get A “Yes”: Here’s a negotiation I did. I was starting stockpickr.com and meeting with the CEO of thestreet.com. He wanted his company to have a percentage of stockpickr.com and in exchange he would fill up all of our ad inventory. I was excited to do the deal. I said, “OK, I was thinking you would get 10% of the company.” He laughed and said, “No. 50%”. He didn’t even say “We would like 50%”. He just said, “50%”. I then used all my negotiating skills and came up with a reply. “Okay. Deal.”

I’m a salesman. I like people to say yes to me. I feel insecure when they so “No” or, even worse, if they don’t like me. When I started a company doing websites we were pitching to do “miramax.com”. I said, “$50,000″. They said, “No more than $1,000 and that’s a stretch.” I used my usual technique: “Deal!”

But the end results: in one case thestreet.com had a significant stake so that gave them more psychological stake. And for my first business miramax.com was now on my client list. So Con Edison had to pay a lot more. I’m a mediocre salesman and probably a poor negotiator although I try to learn from the best. But consequently, I get more deals done, I get the occasional loss leader, and then ultimately the big fish gets reeled in if I get enough people to say “yes”. It’s like asking every girl on the street to have sex with you. One out of 100 will say “yes”. In my case it might be one out of a million but you get the idea.

7. Poor Judge Of People. The mediocre entrepreneur doesn’t “Blink” in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. In Gladwell’s book he often talks about people who can form snap correct judgements in two or three seconds.

My initial judgement when I meet or even see people is this: I hate you.

And then I veer from that to too trusting. Finally, after I bounce back and forth, and through much trial and error, I end up somewhere in the middle. I also tend to drop people I can’t trust very quickly. I think the great entrepreneur can make snap judgements and be very successful with it. But that doesn’t work for most people.

At this point, when I meet someone, I make sure I specifically don’t trust my first instincts. I get to know people more. I get to understand what their motivations are. I try to sympathize with whatever their position is. I listen to them. I try not to argue or gossip about them before I know anything. I spend a lot more time getting to know the people who I want to bring closer. I have to do this because I’m mediocre and I’m a lot more at risk of bringing the wrong people into my circle.

So by the time I’ve decided to be close to someone: a client, an employee, an acquirer, an acquiree, a wife, etc I’ve done a lot of work into thinking about them. This means I can’t waste time thinking about other things, like how to put a rocketship on Jupiter. But overall it’s worked.

“I thought being mediocre is supposed to be bad?” one might think. Shouldn’t we strive for greatness. And the answer is: “Of course we should! But let’s not forget that 9 out of 10 drivers think they are ‘above the median in driving skill.’” People overestimate themselves. Don’t let overestimation get in the way of becoming fabulously rich, or at least successful enough that you can have your freedom, feed your family, and enjoy other things in life.

Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.

NOW READ: This Is Why Multitasking Will Kill You

Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

This is part of our comprehensive ranking of The Best Law Schools in America.

With law firms cutting back, thousands of law school graduates are still unemployed while stuck with six-figure student loan debt.

Some students have filed class-action law suits against more than a dozen schools alleging that officials misled them about their job prospects after graduation. 

"The system of legal education is completely broken now," former Chicago-Kent College of Law student Richard Komaiko told us. "Almost everyone I know from law school is unemployed or seeking alternative employment."

We wanted to hear the truth behind the crisis, so we interviewed several recent graduates, including those who have gone into entirely different fields, and one who is living just above the poverty line.

Four years after graduating from law school, Erin Gilmer is on food stamps.

While in law school at the University of Colorado and the University of Houston, Gilmer developed a passion for health law and policy, but pursuing that passion has made it exceedingly hard to pay her bills.

Since her 2008 graduation, Gilmer has completed a variety of health policy-related fellowships and other advocacy work, but all have been time- and funding-limited. Since this fall, she has been on her own, attempting to build a practice, Gilmer Health Law, in the areas of patient advocacy and health care technology.

"I have literally never made it above about 200 percent of the federal poverty limit. It’s just stressful, really stressful," she says. "But it gives me a new angle to when I’m helping people. I can understand exactly what they’ve been through. I know how hard it is to apply for food stamps. I know how hard it is to apply for medical assistance."

Some ask her why she has stuck with her current career path, says Gilmer, who says she just doesn't see herself working at a typical law firm job. "Working in that kind of corporate culture isn't where I want to be," she says.

Still, at times she has her doubts. She remains on food stamps so her social life suffers. She can't afford a car, so she has to rely on the bus to get around Austin, Texas, where she lives. And currently unable to pay back her growing pile of law school debt, Gilmer says she wonders if she will ever be able to pay it back.

"That has been really hard for me," she says. "I have absolutely no credit anymore. I haven't been able to pay loans. It's scary, and it's a hard thing to think you’re a lawyer but you’re impoverished. People don’t understand that most lawyers actually aren’t making the big money."

Jordan Harbinger was laid off from his Wall Street law firm job and launched a business advising men on dating skills.

Harbinger had applied to law school on a whim, and ended up attending University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, one of the nation's top law schools.

"I didn’t know that there were law school rankings," he says. "Everyone is obsessed with these things. I found these after I got into Michigan. I had no idea. I figured Harvard law was top dog or something, but I thought who cares, what’s the big deal?"

After graduating in 2006, Harbinger landed a job at a Wall Street law firm, specializing in mortgage-backed securities. "At that time, you could kind of walk into a job on Wall Street if you graduated from a decent law school," he says. 

When he was laid off less than a year later ("they laid off their whole first year class," he says), he had little desire to look for another "boring" law job, instead deciding to focus on something he'd been doing since law school: advising other men how to pick up women.

During law school, Harbinger and a fellow Michigan graduate student had started an Internet podcast on the topic, called "The Art of Charm." It had become increasingly popular with thousands of regular listeners so after he was laid off, they decided to turn it into a business, which they advertised through their radio show.

Today, The Art of Charm offers a range of seminars and classes for men looking to increase their social skills, whether for dating or networking. Thousands of people from across the United States and the world have attended the school's programs, according to Harbinger.

While Harbinger says he doesn't regret his time in law school, he doubts he will ever practice law.

"I really thought I was going to be the worst employee in the world. It worried me to no end in college and law school and even when I was on Wall Street," he says. "Becoming an entrepreneur where your brain is always firing on all cylinders, now I'm finally like, 'Oh this is what I’m supposed to do.'"

Abby-Gail Chaffatt turned down several "Big 4" accounting jobs to go to law school, and now she's relying on contract work.

In 2008 Chaffat, a then senior finance major at the University of Florida, decided to turn down the job offers from several Big 4 accounting firms and attend law school at Boston University, driven by an interest in forensic accounting.

"I was really intrigued by the legal part of that so I decided to turn down those offers and go to law school, thinking that once I came out I would have my choice of what I wanted to do with my business background and doing a business focus at law school," she says. 

Once in law school, Chaffatt quickly realized that finding a job might not be so easy after all. After the economy crashed, the coveted well-paid summer associate jobs at major law firms became scarce. She and her classmates found themselves fighting for any summer law job, many of which were unpaid.

"I thought about not completing law school, but at that point, that was my plan and I didn't know what else to do with myself," she says. "I had already turned down these positions in the finance market so I had nothing to go back to so I stayed."

After graduating in 2011, Chaffatt took the Maryland bar exam and moved to Washington, D.C., in hopes of landing a job working in financial regulation. So far, she has been unsuccessful in her search and is relying on document review jobs (where firms pay contract lawyers to help prepare for the discovery process) to pay the bills.

"I’m in this limbo where no one wants me. It’s really difficult and thank god for doc review. That’s how I support myself," she says. "As for starting a career, at this point I have no idea when I’ll start my career and what I’ll be doing once I do."

Please follow Law & Order on Twitter and Facebook.

Well, at least they're unique.

If you want to work for Mellen Law Firm in California, you better bring your "A" game to the first day of auditions, er, we mean hiring.

In a Craigslist ad, first posted by Above The Law, Mellen tells lawyers to come to hiring days with their laptops, where they will be given assignments to complete and whoever does the best wins.

From the ad:

"Each day the candidate with the weakest work product will be cut until one candidate remains. This process will take one or two weeks until the final candidate is offered on-going employment. If you have seen reality television shows where contestants are cut from episode to episode such as Top Chef, Top Shot or Project Runway -- it will be like this. Do you have what it takes to be Top Associate?"

So basically, you fight for the death — symbolic death of course — on the off chance you'll actually win and reap the rewards. Sounds a bit like the "Hunger Games" trilogy to us.

Don't worry, you'll get paid $20 per hour for the time you spend on these assignments and the actual pay is $4,000 per month.

And with legal services unemployment the way that it is, we wouldn't be surprised if Mellen was flooded with applications.

DON'T MISS: While Law Grads Suffer, The Richest Firm In America Is Making Billions >

Please follow Law & Order on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »