Archive | interesting articles

An Oversight in MBA Programs: A Real Discussion About Creating Good Company Culture

Categories: Business, career, guest bloggers, interesting articles, organization

In today’s piece, Julianna Davies takes a look at good company culture, how it is created and fostered, and why it has little to do with earning an MBA. Julianna is a writer for http://www.mbaonline.com, a leading website with resources for future and current students interested in business and advanced business degrees. Here, Julianna investigates the factors that contribute to an effective and happy corporate culture, a topic that I’ve mentioned in a few of my blog posts in the past but have never had a chance to explore in depth.

I was really excited to see this guest … Read the rest

20 essential Six Sigma blogs

Categories: Business, Business concepts, interesting articles, operations, other blogs, other sites

A few months back, I received an email from Rose King, who manages content for Bschool.com, to pass along a link to one of their articles listing the top 20 blogs with information about Six Sigma.

For those of you who have never heard of the Six Sigma concept, here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of

… Read the rest

Milkshakes & Product Failures: A Lesson on Segmentation

Categories: Business, Business concepts, guest bloggers, interesting articles, Marketing, other blogs, other sites, strategy

Recently, my friend Eric Sforza, who some of you may remember from my video interview of him, reached out to share an article that he thought would be interesting to my readers. Eric studies a range of business topics, but one of his biggest areas of focus is at the intersection of customer orientation and strategy. In this article, he analyzes a case study of how customer segmentation helped to drive sales of milkshakes and shows how a lighthearted topic can lead to useful business insights.

If you enjoy the guest article below, please check out Eric’s blog at … Read the rest

Inspirational True Stories – Perseverance Triumphs Initial Failure

Categories: Business, guest bloggers, interesting articles, other sites, professional advice, Uncategorized

A couple of months ago, I started to become interested in the wide range of journeys that people had taken in their careers, particularly in the business world. I’m sure that we’ve all heard that there is a “right way” to be successful in business and I find it cool when people don’t go the “right way” and still do well. In response to this interest, I posted a few entries about some of the non-standard paths that well-known people had taken and received some good feedback on those postings.

After that, this notion continued to dwell in my mind … Read the rest

14 surprising first careers of famous people

Categories: career, career path, interesting articles, other sites, transition

In some of my recent issues, I’ve tried to share the lesson that people can come from a variety of backgrounds and still have successful business careers. Many visitors to this site are aiming for drastic career transitions into business, but conventional wisdom often leaves people thinking that it isn’t possible. Before I applied to business school, I remember hearing that people needed to major in Business Administration in undergrad and do either investment banking or management consulting afterward to have a shot at being a successful businessperson in the long-term. I’m so glad that I didn’t listen too intently… Read the rest

15 Famous CEOs Who Didn’t Major in Business

Categories: Business, career, Corporate executives, interesting articles, organization, other blogs, other sites

Back when I was applying to business school, I thought that I didn’t have a legitimate shot because I had no background in business. Until then, my professional career had consisted of several years’ worth of plugging away at Java code and an academic background focused on Technology. According to what I’d heard from other applicants at info sessions and on online message boards, business schools would never consider someone like me to be a viable candidate for admission to business school. I now know that those people were likely trying to pysch me out and throw me off my… Read the rest

Interesting notion…”Why an MBA Is a Waste of Time and Money”

Categories: Bschool experience, Business, Business School, career, career path, interesting articles, mba, professional advice

OK, I know what you might be thinking after seeing the title of this entry…”What the hell is Marquis thinking in saying that an MBA is a waste of time and money”. Before running too hard on that line of thought, let’s slow down and take a step back. I think it’s obvious that I don’t agree with that statement because I wouldn’t have spent two years and a lot of loan money to get a Stanford MBA if I did. Rather, that line is the title of an article that I recently came across that piqued my interest because… Read the rest

MBA Pay: Top B-Schools, Top Dollar

Categories: Business, Business School, business school rankings, career, Financing the MBA, interesting articles, mba, professional advice

The article below is about a topic that will likely interest most readers of this site: post-MBA salaries. Specifically, the article focuses on research that reveals a high correlation between attending top business schools and earning high post-MBA salaries. This idea isn’t exactly a new one, but I can’t remember ever having seen any analysis comparing total 20-year post-MBA earnings between schools. That said, the analysis isn’t perfect. The article does describe some potential issues with the source data set, but I still found the outcomes of the analysis to be interesting, especially as it relates to international students who… Read the rest

How to Plan Your Resume Content

Categories: career, interesting articles, job search resources, other blogs, professional advice, resume

Recently, I came across a blog produced by a young lady named Karen Flowers, who calls herself “The Resume Chick” and provides resume writing services for clients. After reading some of her entries, I’ve become a big fan of her site. I know that she’s technically a competitor of mine because we both offer resume review and advisory services, but game recognizes game… Read the rest and her resume advice game is strong. She’s providing her readers with some great tips and, as my long-time readers know, I care more about passing along useful information to my readers than holding that info back

The Art of Hiring to Build a Team

Categories: Business, interesting articles, my peoples, organization

What’s happening, folks. I hope you’re all doing well and ready to start the weekend…I’m counting down the minutes until 5pm as I type this (T-minus 15 minutes and counting). This entry offers up an article that is all about the concept of how to bring in the right people to make up a strong team. The article talks about it in a hiring and HR context, but, given the importance of teams in business and MBA programs, I thought it would be an interesting general topic for my reader community.

The article below was written by a former coworker … Read the rest

Interesting article about career paths of female MBAs

Categories: Business School, career path, diversity, interesting articles, mba

The article below is one that I thought would be of interest to my female readers. In it, the author explores the career paths of women who choose to pursue an MBA degree. Among the items covered in the article are the rise in the number of women earning the degree and the large difference in the types of jobs that female MBAs and their male counterparts want. It is the latter point that leads to some of the differences in median compensation that are mentioned.

I have several friends who attended top business schools and, instead of pushing hard … Read the rest

The MBA Marketing Machine

Categories: Bschool experience, Business School, Education, interesting articles, mba, other sites

I remember waaaaaaay back in the early 2000′s when the MBA degree was the thing to have. The MBA was supposed to be the ticket to a fantastic job in Finance/Consulting/Management that would be the first step on the road to eternal success in business, lots of money, and a network that most people would kill for. Getting into a top-20 business school was basically like winning one of Willy Wonka… Read the rest‘s golden tickets and being invited to play in his Chocolate Factory, which, in the case of the MBA, was supposed to be the Board rooms of major corporations

USNews.com: More MBA Graduates Will Get Jobs in 2010

Categories: career, interesting articles, job search resources, mba, recruiting

As many of you have likely read, the job market was incredibly tough for MBAs from the Class of 2009. In fact, I know of several MBA2009 graduates who are still searching for their first post-MBA job. In some cases, those graduates are being incredibly picky and are holding out for the “dream job”. But, in other cases, kids are applying to a wide range of opportunities and are willing to take salaries in the same range as their pre-MBA compensation…and, even with that level of flexibility, many of these kids are still job-searching.

Fortunately, according to US News and … Read the rest

Job-Seekers: Grab the Middle Seat on an Airplane

Categories: career, interesting articles, Networking, other blogs, other sites

When a friend of mine posted the article below on Facebook, I was about to ignore it, but the title caught my eye and I’m glad that I took the time to read it. As my longtime readers know, networking is sort of my “thing” and I spend a lot of time building and cultivating personal and professional relationships…because one never knows when a relationship can yield benefits. This article dovetails very well with the idea of networking as an important career building tool.

The writer of the article, Katherine Brooks, Ed.D, has been working in career services for the … 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