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Join us next week in Indianapolis for the 34th Annual Conference & Exposition!! Visit the Conference website for events, details, costs and more. Not registered yet? You can do it in person on-site. Keep up with last minute changes and put the Conference at your fingertips by downloading the Conference App. See You in Indy!
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Making too many decisions about mundane details is a waste of a limited resource: your mental energy. In the late 1990s, Roy Baumeister (a professor at Florida State University) and colleagues performed several experiments showing that certain types of conscious mental actions appeared to draw from the same "energy source" — gradually diminishing our ability to make smart decisions throughout the day. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2012/09/boring-is-productive.html to view the full article online.
Career
Generation Y, of which I'm a member, is entering the job market in record numbers, and according to many commentators things are not going well. To many, the core problem of this generation is clear: we're entitled. I don't deny these behaviors, but having recently finished researching and writing a book on career advice, I have a different explanation. The problem is not that we're intrinsically selfish or entitled. It's that we've been misinformed. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/solving_gen_ys_passion_problem.html to view the full article online.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is doing away with two-year contracts for most analysts hired out of college, according to communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a Goldman spokesman. Analysts also won't get bonuses for completing the program, which has been around for a quarter of a century and has been viewed as a meal ticket to a lucrative Wall Street career. (Wall Street Journal)
Visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443524904577649830558256586.html to view the full article online.
Diversity in the Workplace
International
A slew of luxury goods retailers are leaving Argentina in response to import barriers, currency controls and soaring inflation. American designer Ralph Lauren was the most recent departure when it announced last month that it was closing three of its stores in Buenos Aires, including its flagship in the upscale Recoleta district, as draconian measures on imports have all but left it unable to stock its shelves. (Fortune)
Visit http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/19/luxury-brands-leave-argentina/?iid=HP_River to view the full article online.
Education
The world’s college business students have spoken: The single, most coveted job in the world isn’t with some big-name consulting firm or high-flying investment bank. For the fourth consecutive year, it’s with Google (GOOG), whose incomparable perks and startup-like culture have catapulted the search giant to a seemingly permanent place atop Universum‘s annual list of the most highly desired employers. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Visit http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-19/hot-jobs-google-kpmg-p-and-g-top-2012-ranking#r=hpt-ls to view the full article online.
Earlier this year, the University of Chicago awarded an M.D. to its youngest student ever – a 21-year-old who had become a college freshman at the age of nine. When Kurt Ahlm, the 38-year-old associate dean of student recruitment and admissions for Chicago’s Booth School of Business, is asked if he would ever admit a teenager to the school’s MBA program, he laughs. (Poets & Quants)
Visit http://poetsandquants.com/2012/09/09/the-gatekeeper-to-chicago-booth/ to view the full article online.
NBMBAA
Join the Indy Chapter for an amazing welcome event as they Showcase Indy, Wednesday, September 26, following the Welcome Reception at the 34th Annual Conference. Kick off your event with an night of networking with friends and colleagues at the Indiana History Center. Tickets are required and space is limited, so click the link below to secure yours now!
Visit http://showcaseindy2012.eventbrite.com/ to view the full article online.
Technology
Imagine every thousandth blood cell in your body has a tiny radio transmitter in it. Imagine that 10 times a second that transmitter sends each cell's location to a computer storing the data. Along with position, it also sends the concentration of a list of 10 chemicals encountered at receptors distributed at 10 sites over the surface of each cell. Now imagine following all those blood cells for an hour. That makes a billion blood cells being sampled 10 times a second for 3,600 seconds. Now imagine its your job to sort through all those numbers and extract something meaningful about the human body. (NPR)
Visit http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/09/18/161334704/big-data-and-its-big-problems to view the full article online.
Entrepreneurship
While many entrepreneurs would give their left toe to be on "Shark Tank," Mr. Tice and Ms. Hadeka declined. And they did so for an intriguing reason: In order to proceed, they were required to enter into an agreement with Finnmax, the show’s producer, that would have given Finnmax the option either to receive a 2 percent royalty on the operating profits of the company or take a 5 percent equity stake. (The New York Times)
Visit http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/passing-up-the-opportunity-to-appear-on-shark-tank/ to view the full article online.
The Economy
More than 12 million people in the United States are pounding the pavement, searching for a job without luck. This is fewer than a few years ago – we had a high of nearly 16 million unemployed in 2010 – but far more than at any point in recent memory prior to the Great Recession. Why are people out of work? Some economists have been arguing that today's high unemployment is explained by a mismatch between the skills that employers are looking for and the skills that the unemployed have. (The Atlantic)
Visit http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/low-skills-arent-causing-the-unemployment-crisis/262539/ to view the full article online.
"The best countercyclical indicator of the health of capital markets is when investment banks cut staff," says a senior banker at a large American investment bank. "We always cut just before the cycle turns." But what if the cycle doesn’t turn? An industry that once seemed to offer banks the opportunity to earn juicy returns and expand internationally is now in retreat almost everywhere. (The Economist)
Visit http://www.economist.com/node/21562925 to view the full article online.
Personal Finance
Thanks to the so-called Bush tax cuts, lots of folks qualify for a 0% federal income tax rate on long-term capital gains and dividends. You read that right: 0%. Even if your income is too high for you to benefit, you may have children, grandchildren or other loved ones who can. However, the 0% deal will automatically expire at the end of this year unless Congress takes action. Here's what you need to know to take advantage before it's too late. (SmartMoney)
Visit http://www.smartmoney.com/taxes/income/last-chance-to-pay-0-tax-rate-on-gains-1345471152089/?link=SM_hp_taxes to view the full article online.
As the economy continues to sputter – along with the balance sheets of many families – the Internet has supplied an abundance of online tools to help repair the damage. We've scoured the offerings and chosen our favorites for a variety of money-management styles. (Kiplinger's)
Visit http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/BudgetingSites2010/1.html to view the full article online.
Professional Development
Besides our choice of words and the volume and tone of a voice, gestures, posture and facial expressions all convey powerful messages to the people we are talking to, which is precisely why everyone pays close attention to other people's body language. What's more, some research suggests that your body language can even affect your hormones, which affects your decisions and attitudes to risk. In other words, how we say what we say to people is at least as important as what we say to them. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/your_body_language_speaks_for.html to view the full article online.
Leadership
Upton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon him not understanding it." If your business objectives aren't linked to employee compensation, it sends a strong message that they aren't a real priority, and motivation is adversely affected. The flip-side, however, isn't true. When business objectives are linked to compensation, motivation to drive for results is rarely meaningfully enhanced. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/stop_wasting_money_on_motivati.html to view the full article online.
Reggie Aggarwal is the founder and CEO of Cvent, which he used to describe as something like "Evite for conferences." (He doesn’t say that anymore, with Evite mostly obsolescent among young Facebook users.) It may sound esoteric, but the "meetings industry" is considered to be a $650 billion dollar industry – think of all those hotel expenses – and Cvent, which has 1100 employees and is profitable, has been doing a good job carving out its share of that cash. Before the fat times were extremely lean ones, though, as Aggarwal explains. And retaining habits learned in those lean times has made him all the more successful. (Fast Company)
Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/3001332/lessons-one-companys-near-death-experience to view the full article online.
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