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This Googler wants to create the 'Dilbert' for his generation

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Every Vowel

Jon Youshaei doesn't think millennials have enough frank conversations about their careers. 

That's why the twenty-something marketing manager at YouTube started the website "Every Vowel," a hub of work-centric content for his generation. (Take a closer look at his last name to figure out where the title came from.) 

But since he launched the site, the most popular part by far has been the cartoons that he tries to post every Monday. 

"People have called it the modern 'Dilbert' or the 'Dilbert' for Millennials and that makes me smile so much," he tells Business Insider.

For those who haven't seen Scott Adams' "Dilbert" cartoons, they satirize white-collar corporate America and grew popular during the early 90s. Youshaei's work is more geared towards a younger audience, but often take a similar irreverent tone. 

"The way people talk about careers and business is changing so much," he says. "If you can take your work very seriously but not your self very seriously, that's when you can find insight. I think the cartoons help get at that." 

Check out some of his best work here...

SEE ALSO: Google used this woman's name on all its Docs templates, and she's spent the last 2 years dealing with confused and angry messages

Youshaei says that his site really started taking off when this cartoon went viral on LinkedIn, racking up nearly 70,000 "likes."

He says that this cartoon was based on an experience during his first few months at Google. He sent a lengthy email and a boss responded that he sounded like he was fresh out of college. 

"But I am fresh out of college!" Youshaei said. To which his boss fired back: "Right, but doesn't mean you should sound like it."



Not all of his cartoons take inspiration from Google though. Youshaei gets a lot of his ideas from conversations with friends.



More recently, he's gotten ideas from strangers who've reached out after seeing his cartoons online.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

13 skills that are hard to learn but will pay off forever

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busy night working late

The best things in life may be free, but that doesn't mean they won't take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire.

That's especially the case when it comes to learning important life skills.

To ascertain which talents are worth the investment, one Quora reader posed the question: "What are the hardest and most useful skills to learn?"

We've highlighted our favorite takeaways, as well as a few other skills we thought were important.

SEE ALSO: 15 things successful 20-somethings do in their spare time

DON'T MISS: The 20 cities where Americans work the hardest

Mastering your sleep

There are so many prescribed sleep hacks out there it's often hard to keep track. But regardless of what you choose, establishing a ritual can help ensure you have restful nights.

Numerous studies show that being consistent with your sleep schedule makes it easier to fall asleep and wake up, and it helps promote better sleep in general.



Empathy

"You can be the most disciplined, brilliant, and even wealthy individual in the world, but if you don't care for or empathize with other people, then you are basically nothing but a sociopath," writes Kamia Taylor.

Empathy, as business owner Jane Wurdwand explains, is a fundamental human ability that has too readily been forsworn by modern business.

"Empathy — the ability to feel what others feel — is what makes good sales and service people truly great. Empathy as in team spirit — esprit d'corps — motivates people to try harder. Empathy drives employees to push beyond their own apathy, to go bigger, because they feel something bigger than just a paycheck," she writes.



Time management

Effective time management is one of the most highly valued skills by employers. While there is no one right way, it's important to find a system that works for you and stick to it, Alina Grzegorzewska explains. 

"The hardest thing to learn for me was how to plan," she writes. "Not to execute what I have planned, but to make so epic a to-do list and to schedule it so thoroughly that I'm really capable of completing all the tasks on the scheduled date."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Ivanka Trump reveals 3 things you should avoid when negotiating

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Business Insider sat down with Ivanka Trump to talk about her strategy for success in the workplace. Her father may be a billionaire and the Republican presidential nominee, but she has carved her own niche as a successful entrepreneur.

We asked her to share what she thinks are the biggest mistakes people make when negotiating.

Trump is the executive vice president of development and acquisitions at The Trump Organization, is the head of the Ivanka Trump lifestyle brand, and advises young professional women with her #AskIT YouTube series.

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A résumé expert reveals what a perfect résumé looks like

Ivanka Trump says working women are punished for having kids — and her dad has a plan to fix that

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Business Insider sat down with Ivanka Trump to talk about her strategy for success in the workplace. We asked about the issue of wage inequality for women and working mothers in America, and she said we can expect to hear about a new plan from her father soon on how he plans to address these issues.

Ivanka Trump is the executive vice president of development and acquisitions at The Trump Organization, head of the Ivanka Trump lifestyle brand, and advises young professional women with her #AskIT YouTube series.


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3 psychological tricks that will make you enjoy your job more

Here's the best piece of advice Sal Khan received from Bill Gates

The 26 trickiest questions you'll have to answer if you want to work at Goldman Sachs

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lloyd blankfein

To get a job at Goldman Sachs, you've got to know your stuff. But financial knowledge alone isn't enough to land you a highly coveted gig at the financial giant.

To make the cut, you'll need to prove you have the skills, experience, and motivation to thrive — and you'll also need to prove that you're a good cultural fit. In other words: You'll need to ace the interview.

We sifted through reports from Glassdoor to find some of the trickiest and diciest interview questions Goldman has to offer.

Whether you're applying to be a summer associate or a VP, here are a few questions to master before you walk in the door.

This is an update of a story originally written by Rachel Sugar.

SEE ALSO: 13 tough interview questions you may have to answer if you want to become a flight attendant

'If you were an object, what would you be?' — Financial-analyst candidate



'How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the US each year?' — Programmer-analyst candidate



'What is more important, creativity or efficiency?' — Operations-analyst candidate



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

6 steps to getting the job you're not 100% qualified for

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Confused laptop woman

Job postings usually begin the same way: first the overview of the position, followed by a list of required skills and desired qualifications.

It can be extremely frustrating to know deep down that you'd be great for the job, even though you don't fit all the requirements.

The good news, says Aliza Licht, author of "Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill It Your Career. Rock Social Media,is that it's still possible to get the job.

Here's what you'll want to do:

SEE ALSO: 3 common interview questions job seekers struggle with the most, and how you should answer them

SEE ALSO: Here's the avoidable mistake that can cost you a job

Don't count yourself out

Human Workplace CEO Liz Ryan writes on LinkedIn that the recruitment process of putting out job ads is "bureaucratic,""faulty," and "idiotic."

"The manager writes a job spec that describes an imaginary, magical person who doesn't exist on this planet. A compliant HR person takes the spec from the manager and publishes the job ad far and wide, no questions asked,"she writes.

As Scott Purcell, a Silicon Valley-based technology recruiter at Jobspring Partners, tells Quartz, a lot of job descriptions include everything the company could ever dream of having, which does include a list of things they need, but also includes things they may want to use in the future and every sort of technology in their environment.

"If you were to ask most hiring managers if they care about somebody that has every skill listed, versus somebody that has four or five [relevant skills] with a good attitude and a good work history, they're all going to say they care about the type of person, not some brand new technology skill," Purcell tells Quartz.

Unfortunately, the majority of people who don't apply for jobs say the reason isn't that they think they couldn't do the job well; it's that they think they won't get hired because they don't meet the qualifications.

But as "Great on the Job" author Jodi Glickman writes for HBR, they're missing a basic mathematical principal when deciding not to apply: rounding up.

If you're 60% qualified for a job based on its description, "Why round down rather than up when we’ve long been taught that a 0.5 gets rounded up to 1?" Glickman asks. She says that slight miscalculation can have huge repercussions in your professional life.

The bottom line is, if you think you're a fit for the job — and you can frame your skills to make a case — don't let an overly detailed job description intimidate you. It's likely you're more qualified than you think.



Understand the job and your skills

You always want to understand the job you're applying for — that's obvious — but when you're trying to position yourself outside of your normal area, it's even more critical than usual.

That's because you're selling your specific, transferable skills — not your previous titles. And the better you understand the job description, "the more you can hone in on what you know is important to that person," Licht explains. "You have to throw the skill set that you know they're looking for back at them."



Cut the jargon

Certain specifics may be very, very impressive to people inside your industry, but to people outside of it — like, say, the people in charge of hiring for the job you're trying to get — those details are (sadly) meaningless. Cut them from your résumé and cover letter.

Licht tells the story of a candidate looking to transition from healthcare PR to fashion PR — not, superficially, at least, a drastic career change. But her résumé was filled with the names of pharmaceutical companies and drugs, and those details weren't doing her any favors in fashion.

"The person in fashion is going to read this and think, 'OK, I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know these companies, these drugs mean nothing to me,'" Licht says. The thing the fashion people do care about? "The actual PR skills that she performed on behalf of these brands. That's the nugget that they're going to care about."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Why so many female CEOs have blonde hair

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Marissa MayerIt’s rare for a woman to make it to the very top of a large corporation these days, and it’s rare for an adult human to have blond hair.

But blond women are far more likely to end up a chief executive or U.S. senator than women with any other color hair, according to recent research from two business-school professors at the University of British Columbia.

Just 2 percent of the world’s population and 5 percent of white people in the U.S. have blond hair, but 35 percent of female U.S. senators and 48 percent of female CEOs at S&P 500 companies are blond.

Female university presidents are more likely to be blond, too.

Jennifer Berdahl and Natalya Alonso, who presented their research at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting early this month, say some of this blond overrepresentation can be explained by race and age biases in leadership pipelines.

Blond hair is primarily found in white people, and white people take up a disproportionate amount of space in the top tiers of business and politics, so it makes sense that there are a disproportionate number of blondes.

And children are more likely to be blond than adults, meaning the trait signals youthfulness. But whatever blond privilege may exist in the upper echelons of power, it doesn’t apply to men: A study published in 2005 revealed that just over 2 percent of male Fortune 500 CEOs were blond.

There would seem to be a paradox between the age-old stereotype of the dumb blonde and this preference for blondes in leadership positions. But on her blog, Berdahl suggests that the two concepts aren’t so contradictory after all—the dumb blonde paradigm might actually explain blond overrepresentation.

“Our data suggest that blonde women are not only assumed to be younger than their darker haired counterparts, but are also judged to be less independent-minded and less willing take a stand than other women and than men,” she writes. “In other words, Barbie can be CEO as long as she is young and/or docile, or being blonde might allow her to be older and more forceful than she otherwise could be.”

Of course, many women—especially those around the age of the average CEO or senator—dye their hair, so there are far more people with blond-looking hair than naturally occurs. Still, that dyed proportion wouldn’t come close to accounting for one in three female senators or one in two female CEOs being blonde. Berdahl told the Huffington Post that a beefed-up dyed-blonde population would do more to support her conclusions than disprove them.

Meg Whitman“If women are choosing to dye their hair blonde, there’s something strategic about the choice,” she said. “If the package is feminine, disarming and childlike, you can get away with more assertive, independent and [stereotypically] masculine behavior.”

In their research, Berdahl and Alonso got 100 men to rate photos of blond and brunette women on attractiveness, competence, and independence.

The two groups of women scored equally on the first measure, but blondes fared worse on the latter two.

Then, the men were shown photos of the same woman with blond hair and brown hair.

The majority chose to recommend the brunette over the blonde for a job as a CEO or senator.

But when the men had to rate dominant-sounding female leaders—photos of the same woman with blond or brown hair, paired with quotes like “My staff knows who the boss is”—they thought the blond woman was warmer and more attractive than her brunette twin. Berdahl’s blog calls this “the Glinda-the-Good-Witch effect.”

The conclusion of these studies—that people are better able to stomach a female leader if they perceive her to be gentler, less demanding, and weaker-willed than her dark- or gray-haired peers—aligns with earlier research on black men in positions of power.

A study published in 2009 found that black male Fortune 500 CEOs weremore likely to have baby-faced traits (a round face, large forehead, and smaller nose) than their peer CEOs, while a previous study showed that white men are lesslikely to make it to top spots in business if they had those traits.

Researchers posited that people felt more comfortable with a black man in charge if he had a “disarming,” “nonthreatening” appearance.

White men seem to be the only ones who can’t look or act too threatening for their positions of power, probably because we’re used to seeing them there. If someone says “my staff knows who the boss is,” I’d usually guess it’s the white guy.

SEE ALSO: The 50 best companies to work for in America

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9 ways to figure out what you want to do with your life

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thinking

"So what do you want to do with your life?"

If this question strikes terror into your heart and you're unable to render an answer, you're not alone.

Even some of the most successful people figured out what they wanted to do later in life.

Luckily for you — and anyone else who hasn't quite figured it all out yet — there are a few steps you can take to help you stay calm and move toward a career you'll love:

SEE ALSO: 19 highly successful people who prove it's never too late to change careers

DON'T MISS: 17 quick and easy daily habits that can significantly improve your life

Take a deep breath and know this is normal

Understand that the way to your dream career is not always a straight path, says Ryan Kahn, a career coach, founder of The Hired Group, and creator of the video course "How to Get Hired." What's important is that you're traveling in the right direction.

"You may find in your career that the journey getting there is more fun than the destination," he says.

If this advice isn't consolation enough, then consider the many success stories that began much later in life.

Julia Child didn't learn to cook until her late 30s, and she wrote her first cookbook when she was 50. And Jon Hamm was working as a waiter at 29, not a successful actor playing a philandering ad man in a hit TV show.



Lean into the uncertainty

In a LinkedIn post, Deepak Chopra, popular author and founder of The Chopra Foundation, said that he wished he embraced the wisdom of uncertainty at a younger age.

"At the outset of my medical career, I had the security of knowing exactly where I was headed," he wrote. "Yet what I didn't count on was the uncertainty of life, and what uncertainty can do to a person."

"If only I knew then, as I know now, that there is wisdom in uncertainty — it opens a door to the unknown, and only from the unknown can life be renewed constantly," he wrote.



Experiment

Following your passion sounds great, but when you don't know what that is, things get a little hairy.

Ivanka Trump recently told Business Insider that the best way to discover what you love is to try new things. Think less and do more.

"Passion is something that's hard to discover purely through introspection," she explains. "You have to have experiences — you have to learn real time and through experiences what makes you tick."

This means identifying the things that you could potentially be interested in and then just going for them, whether it's through internships or taking jobs in fields that could potentially be interesting for you.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The most popular college major on Wall Street

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tudents celebrate at the commencement of the 2014 New York University graduation ceremony at Yankee Stadium on May 21, 2014 in the Bronx borough of New York City. Janet Yellen, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, received an honorary doctorate and was the 2014 commencement speaker. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Ever wonder which college major is most likely to get you a job on Wall Street?

Business Insider turned to Emolument, a salary-benchmarking website that collects self-reported pay data, to find out which college majors are most common in finance.

It gathered data on 2,800 finance professionals in New York at the analyst, associate, vice president, director, and managing director levels.

Emolument found that, while the clear majority of Wall Street professionals studied something related to finance, there are definitely a few history and geography majors out there.

So, humanities students, don't give up hope.

SEE ALSO: This is how much you can hope to earn on Wall Street based on your degree

At the analyst level, accounting, business, and finance are by far the most popular majors for Wall Streeters. Economics follows in second place.



The same majors are even more common among associates on Wall Street.



Accounting, business, and finance majors are the clear majority at the vice president level, too. Of note, 3% of VPs were humanities majors!



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These are the worst mistakes we have seen young people make in job interviews

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head teeth jaws crocodile

At Business Insider, we have interviewed hundreds of job applicants.

We are usually impressed with the calibre of candidates. Most people we meet seem smart and accomplished, and applicants "get" our all-digital, fast-paced, antiboring way of handling business news.

But ... young people are human, too. They make mistakes. And the following mistakes have cost them the jobs their CVs and résumés otherwise said they were good for ...

23. Showing up 20 minutes early.

It may seem like a good idea to show up early, but it puts pressure on the interviewer to meet with you. A time was set for a reason. You should never be late, but five minutes is enough for showing up in advance.

Tip: Find a nearby coffee spot and hang out there until your interview time. 



22. Being too general.

You have one shot to demonstrate your knowledge and skills — so be as specific as you can when answering questions. Don't answer questions with "yes" or "no." The interviewer shouldn't have to feel as if he or she is carrying the conversation.

Tip: Review the projects you're most proud of before heading into an interview. It's easy to forget the details even if it's your own work. 



21. Not bringing a printed CV to your interview.

Bring a printed copy of your CV even if you previously emailed a copy. It shows that you're organised and prepared, and it's less work for the interviewer.

Tip: Bring several copies in case you are being interviewed by more than one person. 



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

These are the 9 best banks to work for on Wall Street

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wall streetThere has been big shift on Wall Street.

Vault.com just released its annual ranking of the best banks to work for, examining factors like culture, satisfaction, work/life balance, training, compensation and overall prestige. 

The career site asked about 3,000 banking professionals to rate their peer firms on a scale of 1 to 10, and used a weighted formula of their responses to come out with the list.

This year, Goldman Sachs came out on top, a spot it hasn't held since 2011. This is largely due to the swath of changes it's made to improve working conditions, which includes a no-working-past-midnight policy for interns, earlier promotions for its junior bankers and a more qualitative feedback system.

A number of boutique firms also moved up on Vault's list.

Here's the full ranking:

SEE ALSO: An acquisition to form one of the world's largest energy infrastructure companies will make bankers nearly $100 million

9. Moelis & Company

Moelis & Company jumped 7 spots to No. 9 in this year's ranking. It also broke into the top 10 most prestigious banks, jumping three spots to No. 10. 

Pros:
  • “Learning opportunities: a lot of deal and client exposure”
  • “Great pay”
  • “Exit opportunities”

Cons:

  • “Long hours”
  • “Work/life balance”
  • “Infrastructure”
The Buzz:
  • “Smart people, complicated engagements”
  • “Sweatshop; very hardcore and intense”
  • “Strong middle-market deal flow”
  • “Hires MDs left and right and left but not sure about their quality”


8. Perella Weinberg Partners

Perella Weinberg Partners was No. 1 for the best banking firms for benefits, and No.2 for the best banking firms for vacation policies. 

Pros:

  • “Smart, dedicated, high caliber colleagues that you enjoy spending time with and learning from”
  • “Fantastic small-firm culture means analysts and associates feel more connected to senior members”
  • “Working on challenging, high profile deals”
Cons:
  • “Hours can be grueling and unpredictable”
  • “Amount of responsibility can be stressful”
  • “Not well known internationally”
The Buzz:
  • “Great boutique”
  • “Just lost their restructuring team but still good in M&A”
  • “Good competitors”


7. Greenhill & Co.

Greenhill was No. 3 for best banking firms for hours, and No. 5 for best banking firms for LGBT individuals.

Pros:

  • “Tremendous amount of responsibility”
  • “Blue-chip clients”
  • “Excellent exit opportunities”
Cons:
  • “Hours can be long”
  • “Fewer back-office resources than larger institutions”
  • “Little opportunity for promotion at the analyst level”

The Buzz:

  • “Great boutique with a high quality M&A advisory business”
  • “Trending downward after a great run”
  • “Smart people, complicated engagements”
  • “Have fallen off in last few years”


See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The little guys are winning on Wall Street

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Ken Moelis

It doesn't take a position at a big investment bank to land a role on a big deal.

Smaller independent and boutique advisory firms have made a splash on the biggest mergers and acquisitions of 2016, working in seven on the top 10 deals in the first six months of the year, according to Dealogic.

They've hired some of the biggest names in the business, while also putting plans in place to develop their own talent.

And they're also great places to work, according to Vault's annual ranking of the best banks to work for. Smaller firms took five of the top nine places in the rankings.

Centerview Partners — founded in July 2006 by Blair Effron, Stephen Crawford, and Rob Pruzan — placed third in the ranking and took the top spot in 10 of the 19 quality-of-life categories that Vault ranks.

"Centerview Partners continues to land some of the largest and most high-profile deals on the Street and has quickly become one of the most prestigious firms for professionals to have on their resume," said Derek Loosvelt, Vault's senior finance editor.

Here's how the boutique firms stacked up:

SEE ALSO: These are the 9 best banks to work for on Wall Street

8. Peter J. Solomon Company

Peter J. Solomon Company was No. 13 on Vault's list and snagged the top spots for both the best banking firm for firm culture and best banking firm for hours.

Pros

  • "Great culture that values work/life balance"
  • "Working with intelligent and respectful coworkers, including top senior people"
  • "Compensation—better pay than the Street average"

Cons

  • "Vacation policy"
  • "No 401(k) match"
  • "Sometimes long hours"

The buzz

  • "Recently lost that one big partner"



7. Houlihan Lokey

Houlihan Lokey was No. 12 on Vault's list and was ranked second in client interaction and third in the ability to challenge.

Pros

  • "Great culture and great, smart colleagues"
  • "Challenging, interesting work and a lot of client exposure"
  • "High quality deal flow"
  • "Good work/life balance"

Cons

  • "Unpredictable hours sometimes"
  • "Learning curve is quite steep"
  • "Sometimes the expectations are nearly impossible to meet"

The buzz

  • "Best restructuring banker"
  • "Great in restructuring, not so great in other areas"
  • "Well-positioned for energy downturn"
  • "Not well known"


6. PJT Partners

PJT Partners, which spun off from Blackstone Group last October, was No. 10 on Vault's list. It was rated the best banking firm for client interaction and the third best banking firm for relationship with managers.

Pros

  • "Extremely bright and motivated people with integrity; senior bankers are intent on helping juniors learn the business"
  • "Tons of great client experience and exciting deal flow"
  • "Excellent exit opportunities"

Cons

  • "Hours can be tough and unpredictable"
  • "Name not yet established and definitely some growing pains with the transition from Blackstone"
  • "Fewer resources than universal banks"

The buzz

  • "Excellent, elite boutique"
  • "TBD after Blackstone spin-off — very new, but should be good"
  • "Great management"
  • "A bit of a Frankenbank right now — unclear if its plan will come together"


See the rest of the story at Business Insider

A CEO reveals 3 mistakes that could ruin your chances in a job interview

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We asked Zelnick Media Capital founder Strauss Zelnick about the biggest mistakes he's seen people make in job interviews. Zelnick, who is also the CEO of video game company Take-Two Interactive reveals three things people should avoid when trying to land a job.

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What to do if you forget someone's name immediately after meeting them

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networkingWe've all been in those situations where we've forgotten someone's name.

It's even worse when it happens immediately after meeting them.

How can you deal with it without being too awkward? 

Here are some helpful strategies.

This is an update of a story originally written by Maggie Zhang.

 

SEE ALSO: 12 passive-aggressive phrases you should never use

Ask them to put their number in your phone

It's the best way to get their name without even asking for it. Typically, they will enter both their first and last names, along with their number. It's a great way to stay in touch with them in the future and to assure you won't forget their name again.



Ask for their email address

Most people have their name within their email address, so it's an easy way to learn the information you need and gain a valuable connection. It will also show you care about reaching out to them in the future.

If they don't have their name, they might at least have a reference to their college, workplace, or favorite hobby within their username, so it can serve as a great conversation starter.



Introduce them to a friend

At a party or networking event, making introductions is expected. Find one of your friends and introduce them first, and then wait for your conversation partner to do the same.



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A startup CEO and Google alum shares what he thinks is the 'ultimate weapon' in business

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google

I’ve long believed that speed is the ultimate weapon in business. All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win.

Speed is a defining characteristic — if not the defining characteristic — of the leader in virtually every industry you look at.

In tech, speed is seen primarily as an asset in product development. Hence the “move fast and break things” mentality, the commitment to minimum viable products and agile development.

Many people would agree that speed and agility are how you win when it comes to product.

What they fail to grasp is that speed matters to the rest of the business too — not just product. Google is fast. General Motors is slow. Startups are fast. Big companies are slow. It’s pretty clear that fast equals good, but there’s relatively little written about how to develop the institutional and employee muscle necessary to make speed a serious competitive advantage.

"I believe that speed, like exercise and eating healthy, can be habitual."

Through a prolonged, proactive effort to develop these good habits, we can convert ourselves as founders, executives and employees to be faster, more efficient company-building machines. And, when enough members of a team exhibit this set of habits, and are rewarded with reinforcement, compensation, and promotions, the organization itself will gain velocity.

This is how category killers are made.

So let’s break this down. What are the building blocks of speed? When you think about it, all business activity really comes down to two simple things: Making decisions and executing on decisions. Your success depends on your ability to develop speed as a habit in both.

Making decisions

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week."

General George Patton said that, and I definitely subscribe to it. Do you remember the last time you were in a meeting and someone said, “We’re going to make this decision before we leave the room”? How great did that feel? Didn’t you just want to hug that person?

The process of making and remaking decisions wastes an insane amount of time at companies. The key takeaway: WHEN a decision is made is much more important than WHAT decision is made.

If, by way of habit, you consistently begin every decision-making process by considering how much time and effort that decision is worth, who needs to have input, and when you’ll have an answer, you'll have developed the first important muscle for speed.

This isn’t to say all decisions should be made quickly. Some decisions are more complicated or critical than others. It might behoove you to wait for more information. Some decisions can’t be easily reversed or would be too damaging if you choose poorly. Most importantly, some decisions don’t need to be made immediately to maintain downstream velocity.

"Deciding on when a decision will be made from the start is a profound, powerful change that will speed everything up."

In my many years at Google, I saw Eric Schmidt use this approach to decision-making on a regular basis — probably without even thinking about it. Because founders Larry and Sergey were (and are) very strong-minded leaders involved in every major decision, Eric knew he couldn’t make huge unilateral choices. This could have stalled a lot of things, but Eric made sure that decisions were made on a specific timeframe — a realistic one — but a firm one. He made this a habit for himself and it made a world of difference for Google.

Larry Page

Today at Upstart, we’re a much smaller company, and we’re making decisions that matter several times a day. We’re deeply driven by the belief that fast decisions are far better than slow ones and radically better than no decisions. From day to day, hour to hour, we think about how important each decision is and how much time it’s worth taking. There are decisions that deserve days of debate and analysis, but the vast majority aren’t worth more than 10 minutes.

"It's important to internalize how irreversible, fatal or non-fatal a decision may be. Very few can't be undone."

Note that speed doesn’t require one leader to make all the calls top-down. The art of good decision making requires that you gather input and perspective from your team, and then push toward a final decision in a way that makes it clear that all voices were heard.

As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve moved away from telling people I had the right answer upfront to shaping and steering the discussion toward a conclusion. I wouldn’t call it consensus building — you don’t want consensus to hold you hostage — but input from others will help you get to the right decision faster, and with buy-in from the team.

This isn’t a vote for rash decisions. I can be a little too “pedal to the metal” at times, and sometimes my co-founder Anna will say, “This is a big decision. Even though we think we know what to do, let’s give it 24 hours.” She’s saved us multiple times with that wisdom.

There's an art to knowing when to end debate and make a decision. Many leaders are reluctant to make the final call when there are good arguments and a lot of emotions on both sides. We intuitively want the team to come to the right decision on their own. But I’ve found that people are enormously relieved when they hear that you’re grabbing the baton and accepting responsibility for a decision.

Using the “CEO prerogative” — to make the final call — isn’t something you ought to need every day. As long as you do it sparingly, you can actually make your employees more comfortable, and engender more trust by pulling the trigger, logically explaining your choice and sticking with it.

In fact, gauging comfort on your team is a really helpful measure of whether you’re going fast enough or not.

"You know you're going fast enough if there's a low-level discomfort, people feeling stretched. But if you're going too fast, you'll see it on their faces, and that's important to spot too."

While I was at Google, Larry Page was extremely good at forcing decisions so fast that people were worried the team was about to drive the car off a cliff. He’d push it as far as he could go without people crossing that line of discomfort. It was just his fundamental nature to ask, “Why not? Why can’t we do it faster than this?” and then wait to see if people started screaming. He really rallied everyone around this theory that fast decisions, unless they’re fatal, are always better.

Executing decisions

A lot of people spend a whole lot of time refining their productivity systems and to-do lists. But within the context of a team and a business, executing a plan as quickly as possible is an entirely different concept. Here’s how I’ve learned to execute with momentum.

Challenge the when.

I’m always shocked by how many plans and action items come out of meetings without being assigned due dates. Even when dates are assigned, they’re often based on half-baked intuition about how long the task should take. Completion dates and times follow a tribal notion of the sun setting and rising, and too often “tomorrow” is the default answer.

It’s not that everything needs to be done NOW, but for items on your critical path, it’s always useful to challenge the due date. All it takes is asking the simplest question: “Why can't this be done sooner?” Asking it methodically, reliably and habitually can have a profound impact on the speed of your organization.

This is definitely a tactic that starts with individual employees first — ideally those in senior positions who can influence others’ behavior. As a leader, you want them to make “things I like to do” become “things we like to do.” This is how ideas get ingrained. I’ve seen too many people never question when something will be delivered and assume it will happen immediately. This rarely happens. I’ve also seen ideas float into the ether because they were never anchored in time.

You don’t have to be militant about it, just consistently respond that today is better that tomorrow, that right now is better than six hours from now.

There’s a funny story about my old pal Sabih Khan, who worked in Operations at Apple when I was a product manager there. In 2008, he was meeting with Tim Cook about a production snafu in China. Tim said, “This is bad. Someone ought to get over there.” Thirty minutes went by and the conversation moved to other topics. Suddenly Tim looked back at Sabih and asked, 'Why are you still here?' Sabih left the meeting immediately, drove directly to San Francisco Airport, got on the next flight to China without even a change of clothes. But you can bet that problem was resolved fast.

"The candle is always burning. You need leadership to feel and infuse every discussion with that kind of urgency."

tim cook

Recognize and remove dependencies.

Just as important as assigning a deadline, you need to tease out any dependencies around an action item. This might be obvious, but mission critical items should be absolutely gang tackled by your team in order to accelerate all downstream activities. Things that can wait till later need to wait. Ultimately, you can’t have team members slow-rolling on non-vital tasks when they could be hacking away at the due date for something that is make or break.

A big part of this is making sure people aren’t waiting on one another to take next steps. The untrained mind has a weird way of defaulting to serial activities — i.e. I’ll do this after you do that after X, Y, Z happens. You want people working in parallel instead.

"A lot of people assume dependencies where they don't even exist."

How can you turn serial dependencies into parallel action? As a CEO, I insert myself at different points in a process to radically accelerate things. For example, if we’re coming up on an announcement and time is of the essence, I might jump in and just write the blog post myself. It’s not that my team couldn’t do it. I just know it would be faster since I’m the one who’s picky about the content anyway. As a leader, it’s your job to recognize the dependencies and non-dependencies, and take action depending on how critical the thing is and when it’s due.

Ten times a day I’ll find myself sitting in a meeting saying, “We don’t need to wait for that thing, we can do this now.” That thought is so common. It’s just that people need to say it out loud more often.

Eliminate cognitive overhead.

Remember when you used to download lots of songs on iTunes? It was so painfully slow if you wanted to buy a whole album at once. You’d have to wait for one to finish downloading so they could all speed up. Projects are like this. Sometimes a project is so complicated that it feels like you’re downloading six albums at once so everything else grinds to a halt too.

I can’t even count the number of meetings I had at Google related to enterprise app identities versus normal consumer Google IDs. We launched a project to fix this, but it was so complicated that the first 30 minutes of every meeting were dedicated to restating what had happened in the last meeting. The cognitive overhead was mind boggling.

This is how I learned that if you can knock out big chunks of a project early, you can reduce the overhead of the remaining parts by 90%. You should always be on the lookout for these opportunities.

Often, it will be one tiny element of a project that’s adding all of the complexity. For example, our business at Upstart has to comply with a lot of regulations. There’s not a lot we can do until we know we’ll have legal approval, so we used to spend a lot of time dancing around whether something was going to be legal or not. Then we thought, why don’t we just get a brain dump from our lawyers saying, “Do this, this and this and not this, and you’ll be fine.” Having that type of simple understanding of the problem drastically reduced the cognitive overhead of every decision we made.

If you can assess, pull out and stomp on the complicating pieces of the puzzle, everyone’s life gets easier. The one I see the most — and this includes at Google too — is that people hem and haw over what the founder or CEO will think every step of the way. Just get their input first. Don’t get your work reversed later on. What a founder might think is classic cognitive overhead.

Use competition the right way.

Talking about your competition is a good way to add urgency. But you have to be careful. As a leader, your role is to determine whether your team is going fast because they're panicked, or if they don’t seem to be paranoid enough. Based on the answer, competition is a helpful tool.

At Upstart, we constantly say that while we’re working hard on this one thing, our competitors are probably working just as hard on something we don’t even know about. So we have to be vigilant. A lot of people say you should ignore competition, but by acknowledging it, you’re incentivizing yourself to set the pace in your market.

"You can either set the pace of the market or be the one to react. Whoever is fastest out of the gate is the one everyone else has to react to."

When we were launching Google Apps, we were coming out against Microsoft Office, which had this dominant, monopolistic ownership of the business. We thought about what we could do differently and better, and the simplicity of our pricing was part of it.

We offered one price of $50 per employee per year — compared to the wacky 20-page price list Microsoft would drop on you. We didn’t agonize over whether it should be $45, $50 or $55 — I think we decided that in a half hour. We just wanted to be able to tell people, “We may not be free, but we’ll be the simplest decision you ever made.” That was us re-setting the bar for the market and pushing it hard so everyone else would have to react to it.

Rally support for decisions.

Almost nothing in tech can be done in a vacuum. Basically, once you’ve made a decision, you’ll need to convince others that you’re right and get them to prioritize what you need from them over the other things on their plate.

Influencing a decision starts with recognizing that you’re really just dealing with other people. Even if it’s a vendor or another company you need to rally, it boils down to one person first. Given this view, you need to make a point of understanding this person, what their job is, how their success is measured, what they care about, what all of their other priorities are, etc. Then ask: “How can you help them get what they want while helping you get what you want?”

I’ve seen this done by appealing to people’s pride. Maybe you tell them that you used to work with a competitor who was quite speedy so that they have incentive to go even faster. I’ve also seen this done by appealing to human decency and being honest. You might say something like, "Hey we’re really betting heavily on this, and we really need you guys to deliver."

Whichever route you choose, you want to back up your argument with logic. You should gently seek to understand what’s happening. I tend to ask a lot of questions like: “Can you help me understand why something would take so long? Is there any way we can help or make it go faster?” Really try to get to the heart of the actions they're taking and the time they’ve carved out to do it. And if this works, be sure to commend them to their boss.

I highly recommend this over a brute force method of escalating things to the person’s manager or throwing competition in their face. That doesn’t serve them, and they’ll be much less likely to serve you as a result.

"How can you make other people look good? How can you make meeting your needs a win for them inside their company?"

All of this comes back to making things go as fast and smoothly as possible. When you feel things start to slow down, you have to keep asking questions. Questions are your best weapon against inertia.

To keep things moving along at Upstart, I ask a lot of hard questions very quickly, and most of them are time related. I know that we execute well and are generally working on the right things at the right time, but I will always challenge why something takes a certain amount of time. Are we working as smartly as we can?

Too many people believe that speed is the enemy of quality. To an extent they’re right — you can’t force innovation and sometimes genius needs time and freedom to bloom. But in my experience, that’s the rare case. There’s not always a stark tradeoff between something done fast and done well. Don’t let you or your organization use that as a false shield or excuse to lose momentum. The moment you do, you lose your competitive advantage.

SEE ALSO: Here's how Google employees are reacting to the huge changes at their company

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23 introverts who became extremely successful

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meryl streep hillary clinton

There are a lot of misconceptions regarding introverts.

Some people look at those they consider introverted and toss out all kinds of hyperbole, such as, "They are so shy they would not be able to deliver a speech in a public," or "She is so shy and introverted she does not like people all."

However, these almost prejudicial overstatements are rarely the case.

After all, introverts have been responsible for some of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind, as well as being some of the most successful business and political leaders in the world.

Here are 23 of the most successful introverts in history:

SEE ALSO: What 17 successful people read before bed

Albert Einstein

As one of the world's most recognized and revered physicists of all-time, Einstein has often been quoted as saying, "The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 and is best remembered as the founding father of the theory of relativity ... and so much more.



Rosa Parks

Parks became one of the most important Civil Rights-era figures in 1955 after refusing to give her bus seat up to a white man. In the introduction of her book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking," Susan Cain states:

I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers. But when she died in 2005 at the age of 92, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature. They said she was "timid and shy" but had "the courage of a lion." They were full of phrases like "radical humility’ and ‘quiet fortitude."



Bill Gates

The founder of Microsoft, philanthropist, and world's richest person, was once asked how to succeed in a predominantly extroverted world.

Well, I think introverts can do quite well. If you're clever you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert, which might be, say, being willing to go off for a few days and think about a tough problem, read everything you can, push yourself very hard to think out on the edge of that area. Then, if you come up with something, if you want to hire people, get them excited, build a company around that idea, you better learn what extroverts do, you better hire some extroverts, like Steve Ballmer I would claim as an extrovert, and tap into both sets of skills in order to have a company that thrives both as in deep thinking and building teams and going out into the world to sell those ideas.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

A Google exec recommends you ask yourself 2 questions before you take on a new job

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Google Glass Ivy Ross

Before she joined Google in 2014 to work as head of the company's secretive wearables division, Ivy Ross worked at companies as varied as the toy giant Mattel and the clothing conglomerate Gap Inc.

And before that, Ross was a jewelry designer whose work was placed in the permanent collections of some of the world's foremost museums.

It was her unorthodox path, though, that has taught her fundamental truths about setting your career path, she told new graduates in a commencement address at the Fashion Institute of Technology on Thursday. We spoke with her about her speech's main points after she gave it.

Ross explained that her résumé may look eclectic, but the thread running through it is that each job she took allowed her to be true to her identity as a creator and to simultaneously offer and extract value.

Before taking a new job, she asked herself two questions: "What am I going to learn?" and "Are they going to use me for what I do best?"

These two questions allow anyone to avoid what Ross considers to be the traps of five-year plans, which she believes are especially troublesome for 20-somethings beginning their careers.

After she achieved an unexpected level of success with her jewelry in her 20s, she realized that the joy that comes with your ego's satisfaction is fleeting and that "there isn't an end game," she said. "It's about the journey, and once you understand that, then it's about creating that journey."

Five years ago, Ross said, she never could have predicted that she would be heading up the secret Project Aura at Google, but her two questions have allowed her to be both flexible and true to herself.

"I think the ideal career path idea will not get you to the right place," she said. "The idea of tapping into who you are, the essence, will."

SEE ALSO: Google exec shares her best career advice for 20-somethings

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