Archive | career-life balance

The 20 best personal development books for 20-somethings

Categories: book review, career, career-life balance, Education, real life stuff

Hey, everyone. I’m posting a quick entry to share an article that was recently sent to me by Tim Handorf from the team at BestOnlineColleges.com. Tim thought that it would be tailor-made for the folks who frequent my blog because of many of you are in the middle of your formative career-development year. After reading it, I totally agree with him.

The interesting thing about the books in this list is that it isn’t all about career development. Instead, they take the idea of “personal development” and make it all encompassing. The books that they’ve chosen cover topics like … Read the rest

Work-life balance advice for a soon-to-be McKinsey intern

Categories: career, career-life balance, consulting, management consulting, professional advice

The email below came to me from a college junior who has scored a unique opportunity for a summer internship at McKinsey that is unlike any other that I’ve ever heard of. He found out about me through the interview I did for ManagementConsulted.com a couple of years ago and asked for my advice on how to maintain a work-life balance during his internship. In my interview, I mentioned that as one of the toughest parts about making the transition into the Consulting industry.

I have a feeling that he’ll be surprised by my response because it wasn’t as touchy-feely … Read the rest

College junior wondering how to find his career niche

Categories: About Marquis, career, career path, career-life balance, consulting, professional advice

Man, I love it when college kids hit me up with questions because I’m often surprised by how insightful those questions are. During my undergrad days, I didn’t have a clue about career issues and didn’t even know to ask about things that kids contact me about now.

The email below is from a rising Junior at the University of Minnesota who has a good academic foundation, but doesn’t know what he wants to do career-wise after college. I’m sure that this is a feeling with which many people can identify. His specific questions are about how I was able … Read the rest

Candidate interested in Consulting, but with concerns about lifestyle

Categories: career, career-life balance, consulting, management consulting, professional advice

This post is all about a topic that concerns a lot of folks who are targeting positions in Management Consulting, the lifestyle…Or, more specifically, the sacrifices in lifestyle that can come as a Consultant.

The email below came to me from a reader who is interested in going for a job in Consulting, but is worried about whether he’d have to sacrifice time with his wife and son in order to do so. Also, he’s curious about whether he’d be a fit for a top firm given his background and personality. Check out the text below to see my response. … Read the rest

Conversation with Tanisha Drummer, Strategy Professional and Former Management Consultant

Categories: Business, Business School, career, career-life balance, consulting, Conversations, entrepreneurship, Leaving job for Bschool, mba, my peoples, professional advice, Stanford GSB, strategy, transition

In this entry, you’ll be introduced to Tanisha Drummer, a Strategy professional and former Management Consultant. Tanisha is a friend of mine from my years at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and has done some really interesting things in her career. Tanisha is a former Management Consultant in Accenture’s Strategy Practice, where she focused on Marketing strategy for 4 years before business school and 1.5 years afterward. She’s been in her current Corporate Strategy role at US Cellular for over a year now and has been having tremendous impact.

I’m tempted to give you more background on her … Read the rest

Questions from an aspiring consultant

Categories: Business, career, career path, career-life balance, consulting, pre-MBA grad degrees

The email below came from a reader who found me through the interview that I did for ManagementConsulted.com about a year ago. During that interview, I shared several insights that I picked up during my time at McKinsey and tried to give some tips for other folks who want to follow a similar path. Since that interview, I have received several emails from people who had really good and specific questions about topics that I didn’t cover that day and the email below is another one of those. I’ll let you read this person’s questions below.

I’m not certain that … Read the rest

Conversation with Linda Abraham, Founder and President of Accepted.com

Categories: admissions consulting, Bschool admissions, Business, Business School, career, career-life balance, Conversations, entrepreneurship, mba, other blogs, other sites

In today’s entry, I bring you the third installment of the “Conversations” interview series, featuring a discussion with Linda Abraham, Founder and President of Accepted.com. Those of you who have applied to business school in the past few years or are currently applying likely know about Linda and her organization. Those of you who don’t should definitely start learning about her because she’s one of the best admissions consultants in the game today.

Since the mid-1990′s, Accepted.com has worked with tons of applicants to undergraduate and graduate programs over the years and has seen significant success with its focus … Read the rest

101 Tips for Becoming Your Own Career Coach

Categories: career, career path, career-life balance, interesting articles, other blogs, other sites, professional advice

In the past few months, I’ve posted several articles about the iffy job market and, at times like these, we all owe it to ourselves to be as thoughtful as possible about managing our careers. I’ve built my career the hard way by making a lot of mistakes and learning from them to improve, but, looking back, it really wouldn’t have been so challenging if I’d had someone to coach me (which is one of the reasons that I’m so passionate about sharing good career and education insights on this site). Unfortunately, most of us don’t have access to a… Read the rest

Message from a reader describing her comeback from "rejection" and pursuit of work-life balance

Categories: career, career-life balance, reader feedback, real life stuff, shout outs to me

What’s going on, y’all. I’m writing this entry with a big smile on my face because today was the second warm day in a row here in Chicago. That may be a weird thing to be happy about, but y’all weren’t here on those days when the temperature was in the -20′s a few months ago. Walking outside and not needing a coat here is amazing. I know that it’ll probably get ridiculously hot soon, but I’m loving the few days of Springtime weather that we’ll see in 2009. Even better, the folks outside just looked happier now that the… Read the rest

Balancing family life and the choice of a career path

Categories: career-life balance, real life stuff

Hey there, everyone. I hope you’re all having a great Sunday and are getting some decent rest in before starting another week of work. As for myself, I’m on my way out to check out the Chicago Ribfest to likely eat waaaaay too much and do some major damage to my swole. I’m going to have to hit the gym pretty hard tomorrow to make up for this afternoon. So far, the month of June has been pretty cold and rainy in Chicago, so it’s nice that we have a day in the 70′s and folks are outside in droves.… Read the rest

A couple of interesting articles sent to me by a reader

Categories: career-life balance, interesting articles, real life stuff

Hello all. Happy Friday! If any of you have been grindin’ hard like I have lately, I bet you’re really looking forward to the weekend. I’ve been doing so much traveling lately that I haven’t had a chance to rest, so this weekend will probably involve a whole lot of doing NOTHING…gotta love it, right?

As a nice way to start off the weekend, I’m posting a couple articles about real life stuff that I thought might interest some of you. One is all about following one’s passion into a career path and the other is about living a much… Read the rest

So what’s the big picture now???

Categories: About Marquis, career, career-life balance

What’s good, folk. Gotta love lazy Sundays, right? I’m especially relaxed this weekend after having witnessed the college graduation of my youngest sister, MYP. It had been a long road to graduation for her and my entire family came together to help her through it, so we were all incredibly proud to see her walk across that stage and be recognized for this accomplishment. Even better, she majored in Business Administration, so she just might follow my footsteps into the business world, which is pretty daggone cool. I don’t think she follows this blog, but, if she somehow sees this… Read the rest

Reader weighing corporate vs entrepreneurial options

Categories: career-life balance, professional advice, Reader comments, Stanford GSB

What’s good, peoples. Happy Cinco de Mayo!!!! I hope you all have a good time celebrating it tonight…I know that I will

Before diving into this entry, I’d like to thank everyone who responded to my last entry about why I don’t link to my archived entries in a supportive manner. It’s good to know that y’all understand where I was coming from and why I was as frustrated as my words made me sound. That said, I didn’t write the post for people to come down hard on “knight17″. Thinking back, he/she probably didn’t know any better and probably… Read the rest