Category Archives: Two Cents

How to Win Princeton Pitch 2013

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To win the Princeton Pitch competition, you have to explain the value of your idea, the market for it, and the business plan – all in 60 seconds. And if you could do all of that, you still have to have the best idea.

Princeton Pitch, a program of The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, held its third annual event in Dodds Auditorium last night. Thirty-three aspiring entrepreneurs pitched their plans, some just mere ideas, and some already in execution to standing room only in homes of winning first prize of 1K. A panel of six (mainly VCs) judged the competition. Continue reading →

5 Workplace Predictions for the Near Future

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With the presidential elections less than a week a way, everyone’s making predictions. Today, I’m sharing some of my own predictions. They have nothing to do with who’s winning the race. But they’re pretty darn important in the context of a working person’s life.

1. Companies, large and small, will practice covert discrimination more. Now that it’s commonplace to google applicants, more people will face discrimination that exceeds beyond the physical (that is, not getting hired because of being severely overweight). Ruth Mantell writes: “Job seekers too should be aware that human-resources use online Continue reading →

The New Reality: To Have a Good Career, Keep Learning

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In yesterday’s New York Times article, Shaila Dewan writes, “The need to constantly adapt is the new reality for many workers, well beyond the information technology business.” That’s right, there is a new reality. You can lament that the old days are over – when you got a job after graduating from college and never went back to school again save for a few classes and workshops spread out over several years. Or, you can accept reality and keep yourself competitive by continually developing your skillset.

The good news is, there is an abundance of options for learning new skills or simply keeping up with your particular field. What’s more, many of them are free or pretty Continue reading →

Gender and Bosses: Does It Matter?

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Here’s a surprising find from a recent academic study: women in leadership positions aren’t improving prevailing workplace gender inequalities. (You can read the full MIT-led study here.) So, if you are a female employee working under a female manager, the odds of getting a certain coveted position or a raise are NOT any better than if under a male supervisor, according to this study.

As someone who has worked under both female and male supervisors, I can say that it’s difficult to judge how my career trajectory might have been different if my boss for job X had been male instead of female (or vice versa). Would I have gotten meatier assignments, Continue reading →

Small World Coffee Is Hiring Baristas

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If you’re a new college grad and can’t find a job in your industry, consider applying to be a barista at the indie café in Princeton, Small World Coffee. O.K., so you don’t live near Princeton let alone anywhere near N.J.? No problem! Find your local Starbucks or mom-and-pop coffee shop and apply there.

We college grads are often quick to dismiss the valuable skills you can learn from coffee-shop jobs. In fact, we don’t just dismiss the skills you can learn, we often assume that there’s nothing to be gained by working in a coffee shop beyond learning how to pour a cappuccino. Come on, you know you’ve said to yourself, “I didn’t go to college to work in a Continue reading →

Are You Ready to Be An Entrepreneur? Rethink Diving In Headfirst

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If you’ve read Tim Ferriss’s popular book The Four-Hour Workweek, you’re familiar with the concept of seeking independence in your work, being in control of your time, working remotely, and then using your free time to indulge in things you love.

Independent, footloose and fancy-free, risktaking. That may be the popular profile of a self-made entrepreneur, but it’s not the only one. In 2012, the word “entrepreneur” almost Continue reading →

Gen Z: To Find Work That You Love You Have to Stay Out of Debt

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It’s always easy for older generations to focus on what’s bad about the generations that come after them, but as Pam Majumdar suggests in her post last Friday, Gen Z’s predecessors might also benefit from taking some pointers from them.

For all of Gen Z’s downsides – poor social skills and boundaries to name a couple – they Continue reading →

Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg Shouldn’t Be Your Role Models

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Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo

First Anne-Marie Slaughter’s admission in The Atlantic that she knows she can’t have it all, and now Marissa Mayer’s announcement that she’ll only take a few week’s maternity leave from her new CEO position at Yahoo. I’m thinking that Mayer should get together with Slaughter for a talk. But it’s more likely that Mayer is looking to Sheryl Sandberg as her mentor.

Why am I writing about this on JobTalk? Well, here’s the deal. Because of Slaughter’s article and now Mayer’s announcement (and don’t forget Sheryl Sandberg’s advice for women), there’s a flurry of discussion about women holding high-level positions and whether or not they can be the moms they want to be. Many people are touting Sandberg and Mayer as role models, but I’d recommend that you don’t look to them for a working-mother model. They simply aren’t the average woman.

Continue reading →

Women Working with Men: It’s NOT a Man’s World, But It Sure Does Feel Like It Sometimes

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We all dislike the idea of stereotypes, but the truth is, some ideas survive because reality might do little to reject old-school notions. It’s the twenty-first century, but are we still living in a man’s world? Continue reading →

You Can’t Have It All, but You Can Have a Lot

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Yesterday’s tip-jar sign written by yours truly.

The inspiration behind yesterday’s tip-jar sign at Small World was a personal message from me that read, “I loved Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic.” Not only did I love the article, but the sign was also an attempt to publicize her recent “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” to our regulars, some of whom are Princeton University professors or administrators. Continue reading →