Midway through the workshop I was teaching on professional reinvention, I gave participants an assignment: create a narrative citing your professional strengths. After the break, a woman named Alison raised her hand. "This one was difficult for me," she said. "I thought about what was special about me: I’m a strategic thinker, and I can get things done. But other people can do that, too. I’m not sure how I can really stand out as I’m applying for jobs." She isn’t alone. For many of us, it’s hard to identify exactly what about us – if anything – is valuable or unique. (Harvard Business Review)
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When I began my career, I had at best a hesitant understanding of my job requirements and the daily actions I'd be taking. Every day, without fail, I'd waste significant time doing monotonous tasks and fail to improve my station in life. After a while, I learned various ways to skip the drudgery by automating or eliminating awful tasks. (Inc.)
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Got a small project and a small budget? For some companies nowadays, the solution is simple: Rent an M.B.A. to do the work. A new breed of job sites has cropped up to match M.B.A.s and business-school students with companies seeking short-term help and project work. (The Wall Street Journal)
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The problem is that employment models have not kept up with how much our lives have changed since the 1950s and 60s. The post-war reconstruction-fueled boom meant that one breadwinner's salary could provide food and shelter for the whole family; as a result, the majority of women worked in the home. The key employment laws were established then, tailored to this specific construct. (Fortune)
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No one likes job hunting. Scouring through online jobs boards, spiffing up your résumé, prepping for grueling interviews – none of it’s fun. But perhaps the most challenging part of the process is writing an effective cover letter. There’s so much conflicting advice out there, it’s hard to know where to start. Indeed, in an age of digital communication, many might question whether you even need a cover letter anymore. (Harvard Business Review)
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Searching for a new career opportunity has become an increasingly social and relationship-driven experience. Here’s how you can leverage relationships and build connections to have the best chance at getting the job you want. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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When a Goldman Sachs employee unexpectedly wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Times in March 2012 about why he was leaving the investment bank, he painted a picture of a "toxic" workplace that embraced morally corrupt practices at the expense of their clients. (CNN International)
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February may be the shortest month, but it's the most popular for hosting meetings – many of which happen virtually because of the weather. Here's how to delete the mayhem and make them more productive. (Fast Company)
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The appointment of Indian-born Satya Nadella as Microsoft chief executive increases the diversity of those heading up Fortune 500 companies, but the top levels of U.S. business remain dominated by white males. Nadella, previously executive vice president of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group, joined Microsoft in 1992. He replaces Steve Ballmer, who last August said he would retire once a successor was found. According to figures from consultancy DiversityInc, Nadella will become the ninth Asian chief executive of a Fortune 500 company, bumping up the region's representation on the list to 1.8% of the total. (CNN International)
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As business schools tiptoe into the world of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, Harvard has a plan to sidestep the isolation of online learning – a problem that keeps most students from sticking with the classes. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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You’ve built a successful business or two, and you’ve decided to use your experience for good by volunteering in Ghana. But rather than paint houses for a few weeks, you stay for an entire year, helping local business owners grow their companies and turn them into wellsprings of social good. (Poets & Quants)
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NBMBAA's new website is almost ready to go live. Go in today and update your profile to take advantage of new features, like a résumé review and score! And while you're updating, why not take the time to give your résumé a quick refresh. Whether you're actively job hunting, or just keeping your network active, a current, vibrant résumé  is key to ensuring your future success.

With thousands of applicants applying for the same jobs, recruiters are only spending an average of six (yes, that's 6!) seconds scanning your résumé, Making it past those few seconds is critical.
Click here for tips on refreshing your résumé and login to your NBMBAA member account to update your profile.
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For an increasing number of Americans, access to high-speed Internet has become an essential part of our lives. We do work, email friends, find restaurants, watch videos and movies, and check the weather. And the Internet is increasingly used for important services, like video medical consults and online education, and is relied upon by businesses for critical operations. (NPR)
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A survey from Jobvite says many job seekers are turning to social media to find jobs. Watch out, because recruiters are looking at your social profiles, too. (Fast Company)
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Dolores Riley has many questions and few answers. Along with every other employer in New Jersey, she woke up on New Year’s Day to a new minimum wage – $8.25 an hour, up from $7.25. Even before the increase, Ms. Riley, who owns Gramma’s School House Childcare and Learning Center in Cinnaminson, had been operating on the razor’s edge. (The New York Times)
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As mom used to say, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." If you want to use your brand name as a domain name for a website – but someone else already owns that trademark – they can potentially dispute your use of that name online. Courts can and have, depending on the circumstances, ordered businesses to stop using a name and pay damages, when they determine that trademark has been infringed upon. (Entrepreneur)
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In Manhattan, the upscale clothing retailer Barneys will replace the bankrupt discounter Loehmann’s, whose Chelsea store closes in a few weeks. Across the country, Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants are struggling, while fine-dining chains like Capital Grille are thriving. And at General Electric, the increase in demand for high-end dishwashers and refrigerators dwarfs sales growth of mass-market models. (The New York Times)
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Mark Riley was 53 years old when he lost a job as a grant writer for an Arkansas community college. "I was stunned," he said. "It happened on my daughter's 11th birthday." His boss blamed state budget cuts. That was almost three years ago and he still hasn't found steady work. Mr. Riley, whose unemployment benefits ran out 14 months ago, says his long and fruitless search is proof employers won't hire men out of work too long. (The Wall Street Journal)
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The housing crisis didn’t hit all professions equally. In fact, construction workers and builders are the only group who increased their rate of home ownership in the years after the recession, new research shows. In an analysis of over 70 different professions before and after the recession (2007 to 2009, vs. 2010 to 2012), home ownership among construction workers rose 1 percentage point to 55.4% – the highest growth of any profession. (MarketWatch)
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A fair number of people, it seems, believe that "early retirement" is an unachievable financial goal for most Americans, or that it isn’t worth doing because retirement is akin to having no purpose in life. (MarketWatch)
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The price of oil rose Thursday as a positive report on the U.S. labor market and more cold temperatures boosted expectations of higher demand for fuel. (Daily Finance)
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Airline passengers complain dramatically more about large airlines than they do about discounters, even when the actual quality of the carriers’ performance is similar, according to a new paper that examined traveler complaints to the federal government over a decade. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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CVS, one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains, said Wednesday that it will stop selling cigarettes at its 7,600 locations in an expensive but calculated bid to boost its image as a full-fledged health-care provider rather than a simple purveyor of greeting cards and shampoo. (The Washington Post)
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We often think of leadership as a solitary task. Buying into Thomas Carlyle’s "great man" theory of history, we speak of leadership in solitary and personal terms. And certainly, history is filled with examples of men and women like Trocmé, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa who took bold individual action. (Harvard Business Review)
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I've been following your columns about promotions over the past year or so, and I finally got one. The trouble is, it comes with some nasty conditions. The person who had this job before me let my department's performance slide to an unacceptable low, mainly because he didn't want to fire anybody – even though there are a few people here who haven't done any real work in years. These same people have also influenced other team members, so their productivity has fallen too. (Fortune)
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There are no racial gaps between Blacks and whites when it comes to book reading. In fact, no matter what form the book comes in, Blacks are slightly more likely than whites and significantly more likely than Latinos to have read a book in the past year, according to a Pew Research study. (DiversityInc.)
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