Career development

 3h

ECU Health's Community Pipeline Program Personalizes Health Careers - Instantly Interpret Free: Legalese Decoder - AI Lawyer Translate Legal Docs To Plain English


Toyta Kee's work is changing lives in eastern North Carolina by providing career opportunities in the healthcare field. This program not only helps job seekers but also addresses workforce needs as hospitals seek skilled employees.

Empowering the Community

The Community Pipeline Program, led by Kee, aims to offer new career pathways to individuals interested in healthcare roles. Many people... don't realize that healthcare jobs exist beyond clinical positions. This program helps participants see the variety of roles available to them. Kee works closely with each individual, guiding them from initial contact to job placement. She focuses on improving their résumés and finding positions that match their skills and aspirations.

"Seeing people who once faced barriers to employment grow into confident ECU Health team members with clear career pathways is very fulfilling," Kee said. This personal touch is a critical aspect of the program, as it encourages individuals to envision a future in healthcare, which many thought was out of reach.

The initiative is not just about filling job openings. It's about building a community of skilled professionals who can make a difference in their field. The program emphasizes enhancing both clinical and nonclinical skills, thereby creating a well-rounded workforce.

Journey to a New Career

Janon Hughes is one of the success stories from this program. She transitioned to the healthcare sector after working as a part-time bookkeeper. Although healthcare wasn't on her radar, a chance meeting with Kee at a nonprofit conference changed her path. "Toyta reassured me that she could help me find a perfect position," Hughes said. Her enthusiasm for the medical field grew, with Kee's support boosting her confidence.

During their conversation, Hughes shared her wish for a full-time job. Kee responded positively, indicating that prior medical experience wasn't necessary. The two quickly connected, and Hughes sent her résumé right from the conference. "She even helped me reword certain parts to highlight my skills," Hughes noted, illustrating the program's supportive approach.

Shortly thereafter, Hughes found herself matched with multiple job opportunities. She began her role at Outer Banks Health, feeling thankful for her supportive team. Her experience highlights the significant impact of personalized coaching in the job search process.

Growing in the Healthcare Field

Since joining Outer Banks Health, Hughes has embraced her new role. "Working at Outer Banks Health has been a great experience," she shared. She appreciates the chance to learn on the job and the encouragement she receives from her coworkers.

Hughes expresses gratitude for the program, stating, "I highly recommend the Community Pipeline Program, and I look forward to a long career here." Her story demonstrates the positive ripple effect of such initiatives on individuals and the community at large. As more people transition into fulfilling careers in healthcare, the industry benefits from a skilled and motivated workforce.

This program is an example of how local efforts can fill gaps in workforce needs while providing meaningful opportunities to residents. It not only uplifts individuals but also strengthens the community's overall health care system.

What this means for you

If you are considering a career change, or know someone who is, programs like the Community Pipeline can provide valuable support and guidance. Always remember that you may qualify for positions you never considered before. If you ever need to review employment contracts or similar documents, AI legalese decoder can help translate them into plain English in seconds. more

Career development

 3h

Clocked in: Navigating your first steps into the world of work


Leaving school can be daunting. It might feel like there are endless possibilities of where you could go next, making it hard to pin down where to start your journey.

We've put together our top tips for entering the world of work -- from finding the right job, to understanding your payslip, your rights as an apprentice and more. Here's everything you need to know ⤵️

Job hunting 🔎

If you're... struggling to find work, you're not alone. The number of 16-25 year olds not in employment, education or training has recently hit a 12-year high.

Although there are a number of structural issues that are preventing young people from finding work, there are still things you can do. Follow our 4 top tips to put you in the best position to find your next role:

1. Be cautious of using AI when writing applications

When you're feeling the pressure to get out as many applications as possible, it can be tempting to turn to AI to help you write your CV and cover letter or application form.

But employers can usually tell when you've used AI, and some may use AI detection tools when screening your application. It might put them off wanting to progress your application, so it's best to always use your own words.

2. Do your homework

Make sure you've done your research about both the role and the employer, and adjust your CV to align with the role you're applying for. You shouldn't lie on your application, but you may want to add more emphasis to certain skills and experience depending on the role you're applying for.

Employers will usually want to know why you're interested in working for them specifically, so take some time to look into who they are and their values as an organisation. Then discuss how they align with what you're looking for in a role in your application.

3. Make your CV stand out from the crowd by volunteering

We get it. You're trying to get your first job, but employers say they're looking for people with experience. But you can't get the experience they're looking for because you can't get a job without experience...

It's a frustrating cycle. But one way you can break out of it is to gain experience through volunteering -- to not only gain vital skills and work experience but also make a positive difference to people's lives.

For example, by volunteering in your local Citizens Advice service you could gain vital office experience and customer service skills to really make your CV stand out from the crowd. Find current opportunities in your area.

4. Look after yourself

Job hunting can take a real toll on your mental wellbeing. Endless applications, back to back rejections or worse -- being ghosted entirely -- can all chip away at your self-esteem and affect your mental health.

If you're finding it tough out there, there's help and support available. You can reach out to organisations like StudentMinds, YoungMinds or Mind -- you don't have to face it alone.

Starting your first job 🧑💻

Getting the phone call with that all-important job offer is always an amazing feeling. But there's still lots to think about even once you've found the right role. We can help you break it all down.

Getting paid

Most people who work are entitled to get paid at least the National Minimum Wage. This includes casual workers, people on zero hours contracts and agency workers.

If you're entitled to the minimum wage, the amount you should get depends on your age and whether you're an apprentice. You can use the National Minimum Wage calculator on GOV.UK to check whether you're actually getting it. If you're getting less than minimum wage, the calculator will tell you how much your employer owes you. If you're not getting the minimum wage when you should be, our advice can help.

Pay slips

Have you ever received a payslip and had no idea what any of it means? Us too! We can help you understand your payslip, and what all the different codes and numbers actually mean.

Pensions

A pension is money you'll use to live on when you retire. Most people get a state pension from the government which covers your basic needs. But it's also a good idea to try and save some extra money in a pension fund, so you can continue living your best life into older age.

Your employer has to offer a workplace pension scheme by law and they have to automatically enrol anyone who's eligible. Read more about workplace pensions on our website.

Starting an apprenticeship 🛠️

If you're starting an apprenticeship you'll be starting a role in the workplace where you learn, gain experience -- and get paid!

Make sure you have a formal apprenticeship agreement. This should set out what date your apprenticeship started, and when it will end. It should also tell you what you'll be paid, how many hours you'll work a week, and what skill or trade you'll be trained in, as well as the off-the-job training or college element.

Read more in our blog on starting an apprenticeship. more

Career development

 5h

Looking For A Job Has Become An Alienating Humiliation Ritual | Defector


The most haunting entry in Search Work: A Collective Inquiry Into the Job Hunt, a recently published anthology edited by Rachel Meade Smith, is also the most vulnerable: a collection of emails between games journalist and author David Wolinsky and anyone who can possibly help him find work. The tone and tenor of the missives will feel instantly familiar to readers who have ever found themselves in... a similar position. In the messages, Wolinksy is eager, kind, honest about his situation and what he's willing to do and, most importantly, open to opportunity, however it may present itself. Reading through the entries, which are sprinkled throughout the collection's essays, graphics, and other ephemera, it's clear that the process of how we find work is broken.

Wolinsky sends many followups that never waver in their tone -- unflinchingly polite and casual with just enough urgency to show that he cares -- toeing the line between follow-through and desperation. What Wolinsky, and the other contributors to the book, are really looking for is humanity and connection, two components that are, in 2026, absolutely necessary to a successful job search and seemingly in short supply.

Looking for work has always been tough, but in 2026 it feels abysmal. It is a daily humiliation ritual. Toggling back and forth between job boards, cover letters, and four different versions of your own résumé, tailored specifically to listings that may not even be real, tests your own fortitude and tolerance for pain. The slog of seeking employment -- looking at your email, closing your email, refreshing it, repeat -- is its own kind of labor that is only rewarded when you achieve what feels impossible, which is getting a fucking job.

In another entry in Search Work, Kelsey Yandura writes about the rituals of the job search itself, positioning it as a rite of passage: "a patterned set of movements shaped by repetition and cultural expectation that move us through transition." It's necessary to create rituals that counteract the actual rituals of looking for work; for Yandura, it was aura photography and some time in a Buddhist temple. For me (and countless others), it's an attempt to find commiseration and routine wherever it exists.

Computer time, wherein you sit at your computer with a coffee and some hope in your heart, feels productive and ritualistic, which is a two birds, one stone kind of situation. If I open my computer and spend some time pecking at various things, I at least feel like I am actively trying to solve my problem. Months of sustained computer time is not good for the constitution, though, and will inevitably lead you to seek anything that proves you are not alone.

Reddit, for better or worse, is useful in this case. The subs dedicated to the agony of looking for work are eye-opening at first. You're not the only person in this boat! If you think you have it bad, someone certainly has it worse. There's a community to be found, even if it's just angry and downtrodden tech workers who use Sankey diagrams to illustrate the futility of the search, in hopes of offering solace to others. On Reddit, the vibe is collegial (misery loves company), but if you're not careful, reading post after post of horror stories about ghost jobs, horrible recruiters, and disrespectful-at-best application processes will reinforce your despair instead of alleviating it.

I made the mistake of looking at TikTok a lot during the early stages of my job search, and my algorithm, normally populated by makeup tips, interior design influencers, and videos of seals doing stuff, took a sharp left turn toward the nightmarish world of recruiters and unemployment influencers yapping about how to trick the ATS into actually getting your résumé in front of a human being. I can't say I recommend this as a suitable ritual for the unemployed, but there is at least a small twinge of relief in knowing that other people are going through it, too.

Being unemployed for any length of time is demoralizing. What you need most when you're out of work is other people: to commiserate, yes, but also to help you get your résumé and information in front of a real human being with eyes and a functioning brain.

If other people are a necessity in the job search in 2026, then it is remarkably and notably horrible that the very platform we're expected to use for that search is a minefield of deceit. If you have not had the privilege of spending time on LinkedIn in recent months, please stop whatever you're doing for a moment of gratitude. It is a singularly depressing place -- a website ostensibly engineered for connection that instead breeds a yawning sense of alienation from the project of humanity at large. "Flat whites don't hide behind foam... They're simple. Intentional. No excess," reads a typical post. "B2B marketing could use more of that energy."

This sounds like AI, and might be; everyone on LinkedIn is absolutely obsessed with AI. Scrolling the main feed suggests that we are not nearly concerned enough about AI's impact in the workforce, for good or for evil, depending on the day and the poster. A 34-year-old tech CEO's 500-word musing about AI's immense capabilities for growing a multiple-stakeholder business fast and at scale is not information that I, or any other job seeker, needs. But it is increasingly the only kind of information available on LinkedIn, where smarm and self-aggrandizement are the currency. Each post is a screaming neon sign, begging for a click, promising usable, actionable insights below the jump. The most successful posts are essentially gotchas: Click in the hopes of finding anything usable, new, or otherwise interesting, and you will be rewarded with corporate word-salad slop, usually presenting a fictitious problem (your business sucks), a guaranteed solution (fire everyone and use AI), written in a manner that's highly suggestive of AI. It is a nightmare.

Nothing about this behavior, whether it's posting or engaging, is necessarily going to lead to a job. It's the potential that it could that keeps this engine running. Maybe I could be the person to bring flat white energy to B2B marketing. Maybe that's how I can make rent next month.

Part of the job search is understanding the difference between confidence and delusion; one is healthy, the other is not, and on LinkedIn the two are often conflated. Navigating this kind of environment, when all that you want to do is find one to five jobs to apply for before closing your computer and going outside, is immensely draining. Search Work functions as a necessary antidote to the mental poison that comes from staring at LinkedIn, if only because it exists as tangible and incontrovertible proof that this process sucks for everybody. "At night, I star my rejection emails then have conversations with myself about how they really are redirections," Raiesa Ali writes. "I cry in the shower anyway."

Smith's book is a balm for the loneliness and insecurity that arises from this process. Read all at once, especially in the middle of a job search, Search Work alleviates the despair, if only by proving the very obvious: If you're out of work now, you're not alone.

In a particularly resonant entry, writer Ọlákìítán Adéolá details searching for a job as an immigrant, a status which adds a particular desperation to the hunt for work since a visa is on the line. Adéolá, a poet and artist, writes, "I chased work I detested, running myself ragged for money because these laws convinced me so deeply that this is what I must do." Reframing rejection as a gentle nudge from the universe toward something better, even if you can't see it right now, is the best (and only) path forward, because every other alternative is a trapdoor, plunging you into immediate despair. "In retrospect, rejections from jobs I applied to were blaring horns for redirection," they write, a mantra of sorts that I've repeated to myself when moved to angry tears over the current state of my finances or after I've indulged in my new morning ritual of badgering my tarot cards for guidance. But truly, the only way to stay sane is to embrace that philosophy. It reinforces what I know to be true: The job that I want will be the job that I get. more

Jenson Lane


Career development 22h
Is job hopping every 2–3 years still the best way to grow your salary, or do employers see it as a red flag? I'm curious whether hiring managers and candidates view this differently.
1   

  • Paulie Duguay

    5h

    job hopping EVERY (2-3) years isn't ideal bc if I was the hiring manager I'd be weary of the lack of production. Now IF the case of an applicant's job... gap is (5-7) it's a completely different situation. Like for my company I'm only leveraging (2-4) employees IF at BEST  more

  • Melanchtone Anzala

    12h

    While jiob hoping may be beneficial to you in terms of increased remuneration, this is likely to raise eyebrows to your future employers.
    Further,... employers may be reluctant giving you strategic positions in their organisations for the fear of losing you especially during critical moments once you find green pastures.
    Kindly note that the practice taints your job fidelity.     more

    -1
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Career development

 5h

Justin Welsh: Solopreneur Case Study in the Creator Economy


Welsh did not arrive at creator work by accident or by luck. He spent more than a decade in revenue-side roles inside SaaS -- most notably as SVP of Sales at PatientPop, the healthcare practice growth platform, where he reportedly helped scale revenue from approximately $0 to $50M+ annual recurring revenue. Earlier roles included sales leadership at ZocDoc. The pre-creator résumé matters because... the operating disciplines Welsh now teaches -- funnel construction, content systems, repeatable processes, ruthless prioritization -- were the disciplines he ran inside high-growth SaaS sales organizations for a decade. The creator business is the same playbook applied to one operator instead of a sales team.

Welsh left the corporate track in 2019 after a personal-health reset. The early months produced almost nothing publicly. By 2020-2021 the LinkedIn audience began compounding, driven by a daily-cadence text-post discipline and the unusual willingness to publish operating numbers in public. The audience growth accelerated through 2022-2023 as the broader LinkedIn algorithm shift favored text content and as the solopreneur category began to find a real audience.

The product stack

Welsh's revenue runs almost entirely through two paid products and a tightly run affiliate program:

The LinkedIn Operating System

A self-paced course teaching the daily-cadence LinkedIn content discipline Welsh used to build his own audience. Reportedly priced around $150 (USD), the course has sold tens of thousands of seats since launch, generating low-eight-figures cumulative revenue. The course is the entry point for Welsh's audience -- a low-friction first product that introduces the operating philosophy.

The Content Operating System

A second course, focused on the broader content-creation system underneath the LinkedIn discipline. Priced similarly. Sold to the same audience as a logical second purchase. The structural insight: the two products complete each other -- the LinkedIn OS teaches the distribution discipline; the Content OS teaches the production discipline behind it.

The Saturday Solopreneur newsletter

A free weekly newsletter to 230,000+ subscribers. The newsletter is the audience-deepening layer -- the operating channel that converts LinkedIn followers into people Welsh can reach without LinkedIn distribution. Monetization runs through sponsorships and through warm-funnel pull-through to the paid products. The newsletter is, in effect, the asset class Welsh would still own if every social platform disappeared tomorrow.

The economics

Welsh has reported annual revenue in the multi-million-dollar range, with structural costs near zero. The financial profile that makes the case so striking:

* No employees. Welsh's wife Mikaela is the operations partner; otherwise the business is a one-person operation.

* No office. Remote, location-flexible.

* Near-zero marketing spend. The LinkedIn audience is the funnel; cost of customer acquisition is effectively the cost of Welsh's time writing posts.

* High-margin digital products. Course revenue carries no incremental delivery cost beyond hosting.

* Predictable through a daily content cadence. The revenue is not lumpy or seasonal.

The combined effect is a business that produces, on conservative public estimates, $3-5M+ in annual revenue at margins north of 80 percent -- operated by one person. The number itself is less important than the structural fact: this profile did not exist as a category before the smartphone-and-platform era. Welsh is one of the operators who demonstrated it could exist at all.

Why Welsh matters as a template

Three structural lessons sit inside the Welsh case that the broader creator economy now treats as canonical:

One-person businesses are real. The standard small-business assumption is that revenue scale requires employees, offices, and infrastructure. Welsh proved that for a specific business model -- text-led B2B audience building plus digital course sales -- the one-person company can scale to mid-seven-figure revenue without breaking. The category now has dozens of operators in the same revenue band and the same structural shape.

Daily cadence beats episodic brilliance. Welsh's content is consistent rather than spectacular. There is no viral home run in the archive. There is a daily LinkedIn post going back roughly six years. The compounding effect is the lesson -- most creators quit before the compounding starts. Welsh did not.

Publishing the numbers is a moat. Welsh's willingness to openly share revenue figures, course sales numbers, and operating decisions builds a kind of trust most creators avoid. The transparency is the differentiator. Audiences pay attention to operators who show the math.

The broader category Welsh helped create

The solopreneur category has now produced multiple operators running similar businesses -- different niches, similar structures. Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole built Ship 30 for 30, a writing-cohort business that has reportedly served tens of thousands of students. Matt Gray built Founder OS into a multi-million-dollar advisory business on a similar audience-and-courses architecture. Ben Meer runs System Sunday. Sahil Bloom built The Curiosity Chronicle to a million+ subscribers. The category is now large enough to support its own infrastructure -- community platforms like Circle and Skool, course platforms like Kajabi, and dedicated creator-economy newsletters.

Welsh was not the first solopreneur. But the consistency of his model, the transparency of his economics, and the durability of his audience made him the most-cited reference. Other creators study Welsh the way SaaS founders study the early operating manuals from Stripe or Atlassian.

The risks and the questions

Two open questions sit over the Welsh model. Both apply to the broader category.

Platform risk. LinkedIn is the primary funnel. If LinkedIn changes its algorithm in ways that compress distribution for daily-text accounts, or if the platform's audience shifts in a way that doesn't match the LinkedIn OS thesis, the funnel narrows. Welsh has hedged through the Saturday Solopreneur newsletter and the audience-owned email list. The hedge mitigates but does not eliminate platform risk.

Category saturation. The solopreneur-teaching-solopreneurs category is now crowded. Five years ago the niche had a handful of operators. In 2026 it has hundreds. Welsh's revenue may sustain through brand strength and audience loyalty; new entrants face a meaningfully harder distribution problem than Welsh did in 2019-2021.

What Welsh demonstrates about the Creator Economy

Welsh is not the largest creator. He is not the most famous. He does not produce the most spectacular content. What he produces, consistently, is the proof that a one-person business can scale to revenue levels that, ten years ago, required a venture-funded company with dozens of employees to reach. The structural shift -- that the smartphone, the platform, and the digital-product stack collapsed the cost of running a real business to the cost of one person's time -- is the shift Everything-PR's Creator Economy vertical exists to document. Justin Welsh is the case that most clearly proves it.

Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Thirty-plus publications. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis -- built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. more

Richard Sabol


Career development 1d
I work as a gardener and groundskeeper worker at an apartment complex. I take care of the landscaping, order new plants and keep the flower beds looking nice. After this winter two of our four Japanese plum trees died because of the cold. I covered and protected them the same way I always do. So I don't think it was my fault.
Now the management wants me to pay for the two trees. Replacing them... would cost almost my salary. What can I do to protect myself and avoid paying for something that wasn't my fault? I like my job and don't want to lose it.

 more
1   

  • Bonventure Musyoki

    6h

    Unless the management had seem some sign of negligence from your side, i don't understand why they want you to pay. However, if they insist request... them to be deducting each month from your salary, so that you don't lack cash for personal upkeep at once. more

  • Juli Whitten

    1d

    If the management insists you reimburse them for the trees, you have two choices: stay and take the loss or leave tha Job. There are other jobs... opportunities. I know it feels like your life is unraveling, but you are talented and your skills will always be in demand. You may take an initial financial loss; but I believe that you will land on your feet, no matter your choice! more

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Career development

 9h

AI recruitment: How your next job interview could be with a bot


Recruiters are already turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to sort through resumes, but some are now taking the next step: Using it to conduct the job interview.

Companies such as Google are creating specialised AIs to interview candidates at the screening stage either through phone calls, video chats with on-screen avatars, or by text message.

More candidates are walking away from interview... processes that involve AI, according to a research study by hiring platform Greenhouse of almost 3,000 job seekers in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and Australia.

More than half of those who did these interviews did not hear anything back, either because they were "ghosted" by the company or because they are still waiting for a reply.

Here's what a jobseeker can expect if they decide to take one of these interviews and how to best prepare for them.

Practice, practice, practice

Some of the best interview advice, whether it's AI or human-led, is to review the job description, research the organisation and understand what they are looking for, according to Amanda Augustine, a career coach at Careerminds, which helps companies support laid-off workers with resume writing and job search services.

"The more prepared you are, the easier it will be to tailor your responses, even when you're interacting with AI instead of a person," she advised.

During the interview, there might be less warm-up chit chat or ice breakers to build a rapport with the recruiter.

The best way to get over that is to prepare "out loud ... by say[ing] the actual answers out loud," because the chatbot needs to record what is being said, according to Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at online job board Indeed.

An AI interviewer "cares less about my tone and more about what it is that I'm saying," Rathod said.

"You have to be particularly descriptive and a very clear communicator in your language so that they can pick up on things that a regular interviewer might pick up through your facial expressions and tone," she added.

One way to prepare is by using an online interview simulator to prep, which records answers and provides instant feedback on the content of a candidate's answers, delivery or pacing, Augustine said.

These tools can also help candidates get used to speaking to a camera, manage time limits and give answers in a structured way without conversation, she added.

Before the interview, candidates are also encouraged to have a good physical setup of their desk and computer, including functioning audio and video beforehand, good lighting and making sure the laptop is at eye level.

How to structure answers

AI interviewers rely "heavily" on behavioural questions, like asking candidates for specific examples of how they handled work situations with numbers and metrics, Rathod said.

"You want to use numbers as much as possible," she said. "Even if you're not in a revenue driving role, there are ways in which you can say (how) you influenced something or impacted something within a group."

Candidates should be using the STAR method -- situation, task, action and result -- when answering these types of AI interview questions, and should be practicing them beforehand, Rathod said.

Jobseekers might be tempted to use AI to help come up with answers, but Rathod said that is a "pretty obvious" tell to the AI interviewing tool and anyone reviewing the recording, and can often "immediately disqualify" a candidate.

Some questions by the AI recruiter are asked in a convoluted way to see whether a candidate is cheating, according to Mehak Chowdhary, head of marketing at TestGorilla, a Dutch skills-based hiring platform.

"We do that intentionally to understand whether you are running an AI alongside, because the AI will then try and optimise for the length of the question," she said. "But if you know your skill set, you will understand what's being asked."

If you're having difficulty answering, you can always ask it to clarify or repeat the question, she added.

This article was updated to correct the name of the hiring platform Greenhouse. more

Career development

 9h

6 Googlers who started out as interns share their advice on how to secure a full-time offer


With internship application season in full swing, you might be wondering how to make the most of your summer gig -- and turn it into a full-time offer.

Landing an internship at a Big Tech company is highly competitive, but having one on your résumé can help you get in early. Google offers general online guidance for navigating the hiring process, like being specific about projects you've worked... on or managed, and keeping your résumé one page.

Business Insider spoke to six former Google interns who turned their summer gigs into full-time job offers at the tech giant. They shared their process of landing internships and advice for landing a permanent offer:

Nancy Qi

Nancy Qi returned to Google full-time last June after spending three summers there as an intern, the first two with STEP, its more junior engineering internship, and the last with Google's Software Engineering internship, which is a more competitive program geared toward technical development.

Her primary advice: Start early.

Qi said she started taking data structure classes in high school at a community college and was practicing with LeetCode the summer before she started college, well before she had interviews lined up.

When Qi started sending out applications in the fall of her freshman year, she said her résumé mainly had website initiatives and leadership experience for volunteering clubs from high school. She said she also had some part-time tutoring experience teaching math and English,

"I think at that age, you're not expected to have so much CS experience or coding experience," Qi said. "So I think if you have some leadership experience or experience that shows your character, I think that's important at that time."

During her internship, Qi said she thinks her strong suit was building relationships with her teammates by getting lunch with them every day. She said doing helped to create "team chemistry," and she also said it helped her feel excited for work and "motivated to pump out code."

Islina (Yunhong) Shan

Islina (Yunhong) Shan interned at Google three times, beginning in the summer of 2022. She graduated from an accelerated computer science Master's program at Duke University and started a full-time role as a software engineer at the tech giant this spring.

Shan first participated in STEP and later in the Software Engineering Internship.

When she applied for her first internship, Shan said she had some hackathon experiences and some technical projects from school. After she sent her résumé, she was invited to two rounds of final interviews, both of which were technical and back-to-back, she said.

Her advice to interns hoping to secure full time jobs: Choose a team during the match process that you're actually interested in.

"Interest is really important in driving you to finish the project," Shan said.

She also said it's important to choose a team with a manager you can see yourself working with because you'll have to communicate with them regularly.

When she first started her internship, she said she set unrealistic goals. Once she adjusted expectations, she started seeing more progress. Shan suggested seeking help if needed, adding that Google engineers tend to be friendly.

Lydia Lam

Lydia Lam graduated from college in 2024 and participated in three Google internships, beginning with a STEP internship in 2021.

In her internship résumé, Lam included a seven-week Google program for high-school graduates called the Computer Science Summer Institute. She also had experience with a summer program for girls who code and a tech consulting student organization that she joined during her first semester of college.

Lam also recommended applying early in the recruiting cycle and said programs geared toward first and second-year students tend to be more aligned with that experience level.

Lam said "strong engineering practices" are highly valued at the company and mentioned feeling imposter syndrome and wanting to impress her internship host. However, she said asking questions sooner rather than later can help projects get done more quickly.

"It's much more efficient to ask someone else who knows a lot more than you try to figure it out longer," Lam said.

She also suggested "producing a lot of artifacts," whether designs or other "tangible pieces of work," that can help show your skill set and contributions.

Tawfiq Mohammad

Tawfiq Mohammad interned for two summers at Google before becoming a full-time software engineer at the tech giant.

He said the summer after his first year in college, he didn't have any internships, so he took summer classes and did his own projects at home, like a gadget that read the license plate on his car and opened the garage without him having to press a button.

Mohammad's biggest advice for incoming interns is to be prepared for imposter syndrome. Mohammad said the "biggest block" for him at first was being scared to do anything, and he suggested tuning out those negative feelings as much as possible.

"You're going to feel very out of place initially," Mohammad told Business Insider. "I honestly felt like I had no idea what I was doing."

He said interns should set a goal to "learn as much as possible" from the more experienced employees and try to believe that they, too, felt like they didn't fully "know what they were doing" at one point.

"They're really smart so you want to absorb as much information as you can from them," Mohammad said.

He also suggested thinking "outside the box."

"You're going to be given a project that summer and try to own that project. Try to own it from A to Z," Mohammad said.

He also recommended networking with other interns and team members, adding that Google provides a number of opportunities to do so.

"It's good to build up a good network of successful people and it's just good to network with people that are farther along the career path than you," Mohammad said.

Zachary Weiss

Zachary Weiss interned at Google for three summers before landing a full-time job as a software engineer in the Cloud department. He said he wasn't thinking about summer internships when he started as a freshman at the University of Michigan, but an older computer science major encouraged him to apply to Google's STEP program.

Google interns are given a summer project, and Weiss said that being proactive and anticipating problems in advance is key to excelling in the role.

He said a former internship manager complimented him for identifying an issue with a "one in a thousand" chance of occurring. He said interns should think about all the "weird edge cases" and speak up instead of waiting for a manager to say something.

"You're given work that would have been going to a full-time employee," Weiss said, adding that employees value your opinion and voice.

Weiss said communication was another key skill that he didn't expect to be as important. He said that in school, students tend to focus on learning the principles, algorithms, and data structures involved in programming. In a workplace, though, verbal skills matter, too, Weiss said.

"My day-to-day, I speak a lot more English. I read a lot more English. I read and write and talk and communicate a lot more than I am actually coding," Weiss said. "And I think communication is something that's really important."

He said that at the University of Michigan, there were three courses about technical communications, like writing design memos, emails, and presentations. He said many students didn't take the class seriously, and it ended up teaching a crucial skill.

Victoria Rozanska

Before Victoria Rozanska took on multiple roles across continents at Google, she interned there. She said she first applied to an internship through Google's website by following its CV guidelines. She said she remembers receiving a rejection email initially, followed by an interview months later.

She said she went through three rounds of interviews and then received an internship offer. She said that while she didn't have experience at the time, she thinks having a "growth mindset" helped her succeed as an intern and eventually become a full-time employee, strategic partnerships development associate.

"Mostly it was focusing on growing my network, asking questions, and having this growth mindset, which can also help to establish your position in the company," Rozanska said.

She said she was able to make a name for herself by being curious about others in terms of the work they did.

"Asking questions and being open-minded with this company," is key," Rozanska said. more

Career development

 10h

Banquet Server Job in Atlanta, GA | Concord Hospitality - Archynewsy


Concord Hospitality Enterprises currently maintains active recruitment for banquet server positions in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the firm's ongoing efforts to staff its managed properties. Candidates interested in these roles can access application portals through major employment aggregators like CareerBuilder, though industry experts often recommend applying directly through the Concord... Hospitality careers page to ensure the most current information regarding location-specific vacancies.

What are the primary responsibilities of a banquet server?

Banquet servers facilitate food and beverage service for large-scale events, including weddings, corporate conferences, and galas. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the core duties involve setting up banquet halls, executing table service, and maintaining cleanliness standards throughout the event. In a high-volume hotel environment like those operated by Concord Hospitality, servers must coordinate closely with catering managers and kitchen staff to ensure that meal service remains on schedule and meets guest expectations.

How does the Atlanta hospitality labor market compare?

The Atlanta metropolitan area remains a competitive hub for hospitality talent due to its high concentration of convention centers and luxury hotels. While general service roles remain in high demand, the specific requirements for banquet staff often differ from traditional restaurant service.

What should applicants know about Concord Hospitality?

Concord Hospitality operates as a third-party management company, meaning they oversee operations for various hotel brands, including Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt. According to their official corporate profile, the company manages over 150 properties across North America. For job seekers, this structure means that a "Banquet Server" title might apply to a variety of luxury or select-service environments depending on the specific hotel contract. Applicants should verify which specific property in the Atlanta area is hiring, as the work environment and service standards can vary significantly between a boutique hotel and a large-scale convention property.

Key considerations for your application

* Verify the posting date: Many job boards host listings that remain active for 30 days or longer. Confirm the role is still open by checking the company website.

* Highlight relevant experience: Emphasize experience with high-volume events, as this is the primary skill set required for banquet operations.

* Check for certifications: Depending on the specific venue, you may need a local food handler's permit or alcohol server certification to begin work.

The hospitality sector in Atlanta is expected to see continued growth as business travel and convention bookings rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Candidates who demonstrate flexibility in their scheduling and a strong background in customer service remain the most competitive applicants for roles within large management firms like Concord Hospitality. more

Career development

 10h

The job market is still rough. The next step in your career might be becoming your own boss.


Bonnie Chiurazzi did what people usually do after a layoff: process it, apply for jobs, and ask connections about opportunities.

When applications weren't leading to a new gig, she decided to try something new. With savings and severance to fall back on, she started her own market research firm, Vibe Insights Lab.

"I figured I might as well start my own business because I already know how to do... everything required to get the work done," said Chiurazzi, who was laid off as director of market insights at Glassdoor in September 2024. "No point in waiting for someone to hire me to do it."

In addition to -- or instead of -- playing the job-search game of personalizing résumés for each opening, attending interview rounds, and hoping not to get ghosted by employers, job seekers can develop their own businesses. It's an opportunity for people new to the workforce and those with long work histories, ready to see whether they can use their expertise to become their own boss, especially at a time when it's easier to start a venture.

Chiurazzi initially thought this would be a temporary "corporate detox," but now hopes her consultancy will be her career moving forward. She surpassed her revenue goals last year and is ahead of her 2026 targets. Chiurazzi, who has a few students and others helping her out on a contract basis, thinks one reason business is going so well is that she's able to support teams who recently experienced budget cuts and layoffs by filling the gap.

"AI isn't actually picking up the slack, so they need a cost-effective research expert to support them," she said.

While US job growth is healthy again, with the highest three-month average since 2024, over 7 million people are unemployed and actively looking for work. The job market also has stubborn weak spots: It's an especially challenging time to be searching in the tech-heavy information sector or the white-collar-heavy financial activities sector. That could mean striking out on your own might be an especially appealing option.

Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn's head of economics for the Americas, said LinkedIn data showed that many US business founders think entrepreneurship in a slower job market is more accessible and achievable than it was for previous generations.

"We're seeing that play out in longer job searches and declining job mobility," he said. "The share of LinkedIn members becoming founders has surged 75% since 2022, with some of the fastest growth in sectors like Education and Tech."

Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management, believes the increase in business formation is likely being powered by AI because it's cheaper and easier to get started. "As these firms scale, they will create jobs, underscoring that AI is likely to strengthen, not disrupt, the US labor market," Slok wrote.

College grads can kick off their careers without an employer

It's tougher to be young and actively looking for a role. A chart from Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, vice president in the economic research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, showed that the flow from unemployment to employment has dwindled more so for 16- to 24-year-olds than 25- to 54-year-olds. He said there's no sign the gap between the two groups will close soon.

Jessica Cao, who is in her 20s, thinks there could be rising college-student interest in entrepreneurship because people can leverage tech tools, and because students may consider available jobs as less stable than having control of their own business.

Cao isn't worrying about job applications. The Stanford University graduate had been using her passions for computer science, writing, and creativity to create an interactive story game called World37.

Cao has been developing and beta-testing it while attending school, and though she's always wanted to lean into entrepreneurship, she finds that it can be more horrifying than looking for a job. She said she became fascinated with using AI agents to represent human behavior, personality, and memory, and realized she could build her dream game.

A study -- conducted from January to February 2025 by Jobs for the Future, The Families & Workers Fund, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and Gallup -- found 46% of self-employed people were in quality jobs, which the report defined as jobs with good pay, autonomy, strong culture, and opportunities, compared to 39% of employees.

Maria Flynn, CEO of Jobs for the Future, said "the gap really comes from self-employed individuals really feeling that they have more agency in their role, more voice in their role, and more control over their job structure" rather than from higher earnings, Flynn said. The study found that more full-time employees reported earning a living wage than self-employed respondents.

About two-thirds of self-employed workers felt they had agency and voice, versus half of employees. Almost half of self-employed workers felt good about their financial well-being, meaning their pay, benefits, and job security. Just 39% of employees said the same. Flynn said the results show there are trade-offs in working for yourself or someone else, so people should consider what's best for them.

Workers with years of experience are striking out on their own, too

On the other end of Gen Zers developing businesses are older generations who have spent years progressing in traditional careers, but now want to go all in on entrepreneurship.

Chiurazzi, the former Glassdoor worker who is in her 40s, thought about developing her own research consultancy back in her 20s. However, she thought she would need to build up experience first. She worked in market research roles for over a dozen years, and thought she would need 20 or 25 years before pivoting.

When she had a hard time finding work post-layoff and reflected on what corporate tech life was like, she figured this could be the perfect chance to try solopreneurship.

"So much of corporate life is defending your job: Here's why I should be involved in this project. Here's why my passion for this matters, or here's why my experience with this other client matters here," Chiurazzi said, adding, "you want to help the company, and just the fighting to do your job part was really wearying on me."

People looking to be their own boss don't have to go into it completely alone. Chiurazzi said she has a mentor who was in the same line of work. She's interviewed other business owners for advice, works with contractors she knows, and leveraged her network to get her first clients.

"Even though I am technically a company of one, I'm just a one-woman show, I feel like I have a whole network of support behind me, so it doesn't feel as lonely as I thought it would feel starting a business," she said.

Darnah Thompson, who is in her 30s, also leveraged connections to get her business going. She started Books & Brand, a publishing and personal branding business, by accident.

Thompson said that when she was laid off from a publishing agency job, she wanted to still help clients. "I didn't have anything else to do, so I just offered to help those authors, get on a free call with them, talk them through what their next possible steps could be, because a lot of their projects were in my brain, and then they were like, 'Well, could you help us publish our books?'" she said. "So I started helping them while stepping into another full-time job."

Before pivoting her work from a side hustle to full-time, she wanted to make sure she was generating more money than her total budget for personal and business expenses for three straight months. Once she felt confident in her financial situation, she went all in on her business in August 2024.

Thompson initially felt imposter syndrome, since she never saw herself running a publishing business and was comparing herself to large agencies. "They've got all of the employees and all of the staffing. And so I just had to really look at the industry, do an analysis, what can I offer that's different?" she said.

She's feeling more confident after understanding what sets her apart and loving the work she's doing. Thompson used to manage teams in previous positions, but prefers a solopreneur life, saying, "the weight of the responsibility isn't what I want in my life." She's been enjoying creativity and freedom over her work, such as choosing her clients, and loves that she's building her legacy.

Burnout, loneliness, and scaling a business on her own can be challenges, but Thompson has found solutions, including calendar management, scheduling time off in advance, and delegating work to contractors when applicable.

She's also hoping to become a mom in the near future, so she's figuring out how to evolve her business and adjust her workload. One way she's doing so is by introducing digital education courses that teach people how to publish their own books.

"The best thing about having a business is you can make shifts," she said. "You don't have to ask anyone else. You can make shifts in your business strategy, in your scalability, in your workload."

Flynn, the CEO of Jobs for the Future, suggested new entrants or job switchers rank the qualities they want in a job and what it means for their life situation.

"If it is things like pay and benefits and that type of stability, then a traditional employment model might be right for you, but if you are looking for something that is more flexible where you have a little more say over the type of work you do and the conditions in which you do that work, then you may want to be open to more of a self-employment route," she said. more

Career development

 11h

Landing Your First Job: Interview Advice for School and College Leavers - Optimum Skills


Going to a job interview can feel daunting, but it is a great opportunity to discuss your skills and why you would be the best fit for this position with the employer face-to-face. Preparing effectively for an interview will help you feel more confident and comfortable talking to the employer. It will help you better state your points clearly.

Before the interview:

Research the Company - Learn... as much as you can about the company you are applying to. This will help you understand what the company does and explore its values. You will be prepared if you are asked about your knowledge of the company, and this will show that you are well-prepared and invested in the interview.

Arrive on time - Arriving 5 - 10 minutes early for your interview will show you are eager and punctual.

Practice answers to common questions - Research common interview questions for your selected role and think of some well-thought-out answers. This will expose you to the types of questions you might be asked in your interview. Practice talking to a friend or family member and answering the questions as if you are in the interview.

Dress smartly - Whilst this might seem obvious, dressing smartly, even if the company dress code is casual, will make you stand out as professional and instantly set a positive tone.

These tips will help you prepare for your interview effectively, so you can answer any questions the employer asks with confidence. Remember that an interview is just an opportunity to tell the employer more about yourself and to emphasise how you are the best fit for that role; don't think of it as an exam.

Some interview sessions may involve you attending an assessment centre or presenting to the employer. Some assessment days may involve you completing tasks set by the employer to assess your transferable skills (e.g. how you communicate with people, teamwork skills, dealing with problems) - these are skills which the employer will be looking for. The employer will usually send you an email with details about the assessment day, including how long the day will last and what types of tasks you may be completing. You can also have hybrid days where you complete tasks and also attend an interview.

On the day of the interview:

Ensure that before you set off for the interview, you check you have all the documents you may need to bring (e.g. national insurance number, birth certificate, driving licence). If they are not listed on the email, and you are unsure, you could contact the company and ask if they would require any documents for the interview; however, if they need to see these documents, they would usually ask you.

If your interview is online, ensure that you are logged on to your computer and check your internet connection is stable well before your interview starts. If you are having trouble, ensure that you contact the employer well before your interview is scheduled to start.

If you are ready to start your interview 5-10 minutes before it is scheduled to start, it will instantly create a good impression with the employer and show you are punctual, which is one of the transferable skills that employers are often looking out for.

The interview and the STAR method:

The best way to get a lot of your points across clearly and concisely is by using the STAR method.

Situation - Describe the situation that you had to deal with.

Task - The task that you had to do to deal with the situation.

Action - What you did to complete the task.

Result - What happened after you completed your action, the outcome of this and what you learned.

You can use this method to showcase your transferable skills, and use real-life examples to show the employer how you use your skills in real-life situations. You can research examples of interview questions and use the STAR method to answer them effectively. You can include examples of your school life if you are struggling to think of examples. For example, if you are asked about times you have worked as part of a team, you could talk about being part of a sports team or being part of an extracurricular club.

If you can, try to think of a question to ask the interviewer if they ask if you have any questions for them. This shows that you are active and willing to learn more about the company.

Best of luck with your interviews! more

Career development

 12h

Towards a New Theory of Wealth - ERIC KIM ₿


We have inherited a boring, cowardly, accountant's definition of wealth.

Numbers on a screen. Net worth. Salary. Real estate. Stock portfolios. Status objects. The car, the watch, the house, the zip code, the private school, the marble countertop, the "passive income stream."

This is not wealth.

This is often just decorated slavery.

A man can have ten million dollars and still be poor if he is... afraid. Afraid of losing it. Afraid of markets. Afraid of his neighbors. Afraid of being judged. Afraid of aging. Afraid of missing an email. Afraid of not being invited. Afraid of eating beef. Afraid of lifting heavy. Afraid of walking alone. Afraid of thinking one original thought.

The modern world confuses possession with power.

But true wealth is not what you own.

True wealth is what you can do.

1. Wealth Is Metabolic Power

The first wealth is the body.

Not the bank account. Not the résumé. Not the LinkedIn profile. The body.

Can you walk all day? Can you lift heavy? Can you sleep deeply? Can you digest meat? Can you wake up with fire? Can you carry your child, your camera, your groceries, your ideas, your life?

A weak body makes all philosophy weak.

The modern rich man sits in a luxury chair, under artificial light, eating seed oils, negotiating his own decline. He pays for trainers, therapists, consultants, nutritionists, coaches, apps, devices, subscriptions, supplements, and still cannot squat with courage.

This is poverty.

Real wealth is testosterone, sunlight, muscle, bones, grip strength, lung capacity, courage in the flesh.

Your body is your first Bitcoin wallet. Your body is the original cold storage. Your body stores your energy, your vitality, your will to dominate reality.

Money without vitality is just a hospital bill waiting to happen.

2. Wealth Is Freedom From Permission

The poor man waits to be chosen.

The wealthy man acts.

This is the simplest dividing line.

To be wealthy is to need less permission. Permission from bosses, institutions, audiences, critics, algorithms, universities, galleries, governments, parents, peers, lovers, haters.

The highest form of wealth is this:

I do what I want, when I want, how I want, because I have trained myself to need almost nothing.

Luxury is not a Lamborghini.

Luxury is not needing to impress the man in the Lamborghini.

Luxury is waking up, drinking black coffee, going for a walk, making photos, lifting stones, writing your thoughts, eating meat, playing with your kid, publishing your work without asking anybody.

Luxury is direct action.

Modern society sells fake freedom through consumption. "Buy this, and you will be free." But every purchase that requires maintenance, insurance, storage, attention, signaling, comparison, and anxiety is not freedom. It is another chain.

Real wealth subtracts.

Less dependency. Less clutter. Less fear. Less need for approval.

More mobility. More courage. More strength. More sovereignty.

3. Wealth Is Optionality

Cash is not wealth. Cash is one form of optionality.

Bitcoin is not wealth. Bitcoin is one form of optionality.

Muscle is optionality. Walking is optionality. Skills are optionality. Charm is optionality. Courage is optionality. Having no debt is optionality. Having no addictions is optionality. Knowing how to cook, fight, photograph, write, speak, think, and leave -- this is optionality.

The richest man is not the one with the most stuff.

The richest man is the one with the most exits.

Can you leave the job? Leave the city? Leave the platform? Leave the bad deal? Leave the toxic relationship? Leave the ideology? Leave the old version of yourself?

Wealth is the ability to walk away.

This is why debt is evil: debt destroys the exit.

This is why addiction is evil: addiction destroys the exit.

This is why status is evil: status destroys the exit.

When you become addicted to lifestyle, reputation, applause, comfort, convenience, or predictable pleasure, you become poor -- even if the spreadsheet says you are rich.

The new wealthy are not the people with the biggest homes.

The new wealthy are the people who can disappear.

4. Wealth Is Attention

Your attention is your empire.

Every advertisement is an invasion. Every notification is a tax. Every feed is a casino. Every algorithm is a leash.

The modern poor do not merely lack money. They lack attention.

They cannot sit alone. They cannot read. They cannot think. They cannot look. They cannot walk without headphones. They cannot eat without scrolling. They cannot wait in line without checking the slab.

A distracted billionaire is poorer than a focused monk.

The camera teaches us this.

Street photography is not about taking pictures. It is about reclaiming vision. It is about training the eye to become sovereign. To notice gestures, light, geometry, faces, absurdity, beauty, tragedy, comedy, power.

To photograph is to say:

I decide what is worth seeing.

This is wealth.

The man who controls his attention controls his reality. The man who rents out his attention becomes a tenant in someone else's mind.

Protect your attention like your private keys.

5. Wealth Is Creative Force

To consume is poor.

To create is rich.

The consumer asks: "What can I buy?"

The creator asks: "What can I make?"

A photograph. An essay. A child. A theory. A body. A business. A meal. A philosophy. A new way of seeing.

The creator compounds himself.

Every essay creates future essays. Every photograph trains future vision. Every lift builds future strength. Every walk produces future thought. Every conversation creates future possibility.

Consumption ends at the object.

Creation multiplies.

This is why the artist, the entrepreneur, the philosopher, the athlete, and the parent are all secretly the same type of being: they transform energy into form.

They metabolize chaos.

They impose pattern.

They say: "Let there be."

True wealth is not passive income.

True wealth is active creation.

6. Wealth Is Low Fear

Fear is the ultimate tax.

You can earn 10% annually in the market and still lose 90% of your life to fear.

Fear of failure. Fear of poverty. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of being canceled. Fear of looking stupid. Fear of aging. Fear of death.

The new theory of wealth must put courage at the center.

Because cowardice makes every man poor.

Courage converts risk into life. Courage turns uncertainty into adventure. Courage lets you publish the essay, shoot the photo, approach the stranger, lift the weight, start the company, buy the Bitcoin, have the child, leave the mediocre life.

A courageous poor man is already richer than a timid rich man.

Why?

Because the courageous man can become anything.

The timid man only protects what he already has.

7. Wealth Is Not Comfort

Comfort is overrated.

Comfort softens the organism. Comfort kills appetite. Comfort makes you polite, passive, domesticated. Comfort teaches the body to expect smooth surfaces, climate control, padded chairs, soft foods, endless entertainment.

The new wealth is not maximum comfort.

The new wealth is maximum aliveness.

Cold air. Heavy weight. Long walks. Hunger. Sun. Risk. Sweat. Silence. Battle. Deep sleep. Sharp thoughts. Real conversation. Raw creation.

A man does not become wealthy by avoiding discomfort.

He becomes wealthy by choosing his discomfort.

The poor man suffers accidentally.

The wealthy man suffers intentionally.

This is the entire difference between decay and training.

8. Wealth Is Time Sovereignty

Everyone says time is money.

Wrong.

Money is a crude attempt to store time.

But most people trade their best time for worse money, then use that money to buy distractions to recover from the pain of the trade.

Insanity.

Time sovereignty means owning the prime hours of your day.

Not the leftovers. Not the exhausted scraps after work. Not the half-dead evening after commuting and meetings and inbox slavery.

Your morning is sacred.

Your walk is sacred.

Your lifting is sacred.

Your thinking is sacred.

Your creative work is sacred.

A man who owns his mornings is rich.

A man who sells his mornings is poor.

9. Wealth Is Self-Respect

Self-respect is more valuable than money because it cannot be purchased after you betray it.

Every time you say yes when your soul says no, you become poorer.

Every time you flatter someone you do not respect, you become poorer.

Every time you censor your thought to protect your comfort, you become poorer.

Every time you outsource your taste, your ethics, your body, your vision, your ambition -- poorer.

The truly wealthy man can look in the mirror and say:

I did not sell myself.

This is rare.

Most people sell themselves in small pieces and call it maturity.

10. Towards the New Equation

The old equation:

Wealth = Assets - Liabilities

Useful, but insufficient. Too narrow. Too dead.

The new equation:

Wealth = Vitality × Freedom × Attention × Courage × Creative Power

If any term goes to zero, wealth collapses.

Vitality without freedom is a strong slave.

Freedom without attention is aimless drifting.

Attention without courage is sterile observation.

Courage without creative power is mere recklessness.

Creative power without vitality burns out.

This is the new theory:

Wealth is not accumulation.

Wealth is embodied sovereign energy.

The point is not to have more.

The point is to become more.

11. Bitcoin and the Ethics of Hardness

Why does Bitcoin matter in this theory?

Not because "number go up."

Number go up is nice. But the deeper philosophy is hardness.

Bitcoin teaches hardness in a soft world.

Fixed supply. No begging. No central priesthood. No inflationary anesthesia. No bureaucratic mercy. No committee can vote more into existence because people feel sad.

Bitcoin is wealth as discipline.

It is not just financial technology. It is a moral technology. It teaches low time preference, patience, self-custody, suspicion of easy money, and respect for energy.

Fiat trains weakness.

Fiat says: consume now, borrow now, inflate later, socialize the consequences, hide the decay.

Bitcoin says: save, wait, verify, hold your keys, accept volatility, become harder.

The deeper lesson of Bitcoin is not merely to buy Bitcoin.

The deeper lesson is to become Bitcoin-like.

Hard. Scarce. Unbribable. Portable. Global. Decentralized. Impossible to counterfeit.

Become the asset.

12. The New Rich

The new rich person may not look rich.

He walks. He lifts. He thinks. He makes. He sleeps well. He owns his attention. He has no need to flex. He can live anywhere. He can talk to anyone. He can photograph anything. He does not fear silence. He does not fear solitude. He does not fear volatility.

He does not need luxury because his life is already luxurious.

His luxury is physiological.

His luxury is philosophical.

His luxury is creative.

His luxury is that he cannot be easily controlled.

This is the future aristocracy: not bloodline, not diploma, not net worth, not corporate title.

The future aristocracy is composed of sovereign creators with strong bodies, independent money, sharp eyes, low fear, and high creative output.

13. Practical Commandments

Do not ask, "How do I get rich?"

Ask:

How do I need less?

How do I become stronger?

How do I own my mornings?

How do I reduce fear?

How do I increase optionality?

How do I protect my attention?

How do I create more than I consume?

How do I make my body, money, and mind harder?

How do I become impossible to buy?

These are better questions.

The poor chase income.

The rich build power.

The sovereign build themselves.

14. Final Word

A new theory of wealth must begin with contempt for fake wealth.

Contempt for the leased car.

Contempt for the dead body in designer clothes.

Contempt for the luxury prison.

Contempt for the man who has everything except courage.

Contempt for the soft life.

And then we build upward.

Wealth is sunlight in the blood.

Wealth is muscle on the bone.

Wealth is Bitcoin in cold storage.

Wealth is a camera in the hand.

Wealth is a child laughing.

Wealth is a long walk with no phone.

Wealth is saying no.

Wealth is publishing without permission.

Wealth is sleeping like a lion.

Wealth is creating until death.

Do not become rich merely in money.

Become rich in force.

Become rich in vision.

Become rich in courage.

Become rich in life.

The future belongs not to the comfortable, not to the obedient, not to the over-optimized, not to the status-addicted.

The future belongs to the strong, the free, the awake, the unbribable, the insanely alive. more

Career development

 12h

What Nobody Tells You About the Cost of Care When You're the One Who Paused Their Career - Demotix.com


At the kitchen table, a woman compares her paycheck with the cost of care. Child care nearly wipes out her income.

Elder care adds appointments, rides, calls, forms, and emergencies. Her partner earns more, has better benefits, and works in a job that seems harder to interrupt.

Calling it a choice can hide the pressure behind it: unequal pay, rigid work, high care costs, limited paid leave, and... old expectations about whose career can bend.

Care is necessary, but someone absorbs the cost.

Too often, one person gives up income, momentum, security, and future choices so the family can keep going.

Let's talk those things in detail.

Costs begin before leaving

A career pause usually has a backstory. It does not start with a resignation email. It starts with small assumptions that have been building for years.

Decisions carry weight before anyone resigns

People often assume the lower earner should pause. At first, that sounds logical.

But lower pay may already carry the effects of pay gaps, missed promotions, caregiving expectations, weaker negotiating power, or work that has been treated as secondary.

So a family can make a practical decision and still deepen the imbalance that made the decision seem practical.

After that, every work decision runs through the care role. Can she travel? Can she stay late? Can she take the promotion? Can she commute farther? Can she go back full time without the household falling apart?

Meanwhile, the uninterrupted career looks more stable partly because someone else protected it.

Family math leaves too much out

Most families start with the paycheck. That is understandable, but it is not enough.

Most families start with the paycheck. That is understandable, but it is not enough. A pause can also change health coverage, especially when employer benefits are tied to the job being paused.

Before anyone steps back, the family should compare the cost of staying on an employer plan, moving to a partner's plan, using public options, or choosing private health insurance.

Confidence gets hit too. Someone who once negotiated without fear may later feel grateful just to be considered.

Someone who once felt skilled may start wondering if she is behind.

Money also changes the balance at home.

A caregiver without current income may feel less able to question spending, ask for rest, leave a harmful setup, or insist that her future matters.

Love can make a care pause meaningful. Love does not make it free.

Work remembers absence differently than family does

A family may know exactly why the pause happened. A hiring manager may only see a gap. That difference can be brutal.

Care is praised at home and questioned at work

At home, care may be praised as sacrifice. At work, the same years may be treated as risk.

A caregiver may have handled medication, school issues, insurance calls, transportation, meals, budgets, and emotional crises.

Still, hiring systems often do not know how to value that labor. Résumés reward job titles, promotions, and recent results.

Care often keeps life stable, but stability is easy to overlook.

Returning workers are expected to explain the pause carefully. Not too defensive. Not too personal. Not too bitter. Not too unsure.

They have to prove they are serious while staying quiet about the conditions that pushed them out.

Home may call the pause devotion. Work may call it a concern.

"Extra mile" careers rely on hidden labor

Many workplaces reward people who can travel on short notice, answer late messages, stay after hours, move easily, and treat work emergencies as the top priority.

That kind of availability often depends on someone else handling life at home.

Care does not disappear when one worker stays late. It shifts to someone else.

When caregivers cannot offer endless availability, they may be seen as less committed. Not less supported. Not overloaded. Just less committed.

Work may not openly punish care. It often rewards people who can act like care is not part of life.

Identity cost - pausing work can feel like losing a self

Money matters, but the loss is not only financial. Work can hold confidence, purpose, structure, pride, friendships, and a sense of progress. Losing that can hurt, even when care matters.

Grief can sit beside love

A person can love the child, parent, partner, or relative they care for and still grieve the career they slowed down.

Guilt often keeps that grief quiet. A parent may adore her child and still miss adult recognition, income, and momentum.

A daughter may feel grateful to care for an aging parent and still resent lost options. A partner may choose care with love and still wonder why love requires so much personal loss.

Ambition may not disappear. It may get buried under appointments, meals, laundry, phone calls, and daily logistics.

It may show up later as envy, sadness, or anger when former colleagues move ahead.

Grieving the pause does not mean the care was not worth doing. It means the caregiver had a life too.

Family history can make every option feel loaded

Care decisions often carry old fears.

A woman may remember a mother who had no money of her own. A daughter may remember a grandmother who could not leave a bad marriage.

A parent may remember someone who gave everything to care and became invisible later.

Those memories can pull hard. Staying employed may feel like protection. Leaving may feel like love. Either choice can carry guilt.

A career pause is not always just about today's schedule. It can bring up fear about money, dependence, duty, and regret.

Re-entry penalty - "temporary" pauses can create lasting consequences

Families often talk about pauses as temporary. One year. A few years. Until school starts. Until treatment ends. Until a parent stabilizes. Until life gets easier.

Paid work rarely treats the pause that gently.

Job markets keep moving while care happens

Software changes. Skills language changes. Industry expectations shift.

Colleagues move up or move on. Job posts start asking for tools and credentials that were not required before.

A worker who once felt current can start to feel out of place.

Hiring managers may see the gap before they see the reason for it. Care can show responsibility, patience, planning, judgment, and stamina. But it is often treated as lost time.

Flexibility can also cost people. A caregiver returning to work may still need hours that fit school pickup, elder care, medical appointments, or household needs.

Jobs with flexibility often pay less, offer fewer paths up, or carry quiet judgment.

Care may have been temporary. Its penalty may not be.

Re-entry can mean restarting while pretending not to restart

A paused worker may need to update skills, rebuild contacts, practice interviews, and regain confidence.

But she may feel pressure to make the pause sound small and easy to explain.

Gratitude can become a trap. She may accept lower pay just to get back in. She may take a job below her ability because she fears asking for more.

She may work too hard to prove she is still serious. She may accept weak terms because time away made her feel lucky.

Employers can benefit twice. First, unpaid care kept families running. Later, re-entry at lower pay gives them experienced workers at a discount.

Temporary may be the family's word. The market often behaves as if the pause is permanent.

Emotional bill often arrives later

During the hardest caregiving years, many people do not have time to feel the full cost. They are too busy getting through the next appointment, school call, bill, crisis, or sleepless night.

Later, when things quiet down, the loss can become clearer.

Resentment can appear after survival mode ends

A partner may have advanced. One retirement account may have grown while another stalled. One résumé may look steady while another needs explaining.

One person may have gained confidence while another is trying to rebuild it.

Family may move on faster than the caregiver can. They may remember the period as something everyone got through together.

She may remember private options getting smaller.

Resentment often grows because the cost was never fully named.

A caregiver may not regret the care. She may regret being left alone with the consequences.

Burnout can come through being unseen

Caregiver burnout is not only about doing too much. It is also about being needed constantly and counted rarely.

A caregiver may feel invisible in two places at once. Work may treat the care years as a weakness.

Home may depend on her unpaid labor without protecting her rest, money, identity, or future.

A hard question follows: what happens when the person who protected everyone realizes nobody protected her?

Myth of "opting out"

People often use simple language for complicated decisions. "She chose to stay home" can make the whole thing sound calm, personal, and easy.

Often, it was anything but easy.

Preference language can hide pressure

"She chose to stay home" can hide unaffordable child care, limited paid leave, weak elder care support, rigid work schedules, unequal partnership, no nearby help, and no backup care.

That language can turn a social problem into a personal preference. It can make one person's sacrifice look private, not structural.

Even a pause made with love can have uneven consequences. One person loses income while the whole household receives care. One person takes the résumé gap while others keep building. One person carries future risk while everyone calls the plan practical.

Calling something a choice should not end the conversation about cost.

Lost ambition may be an audit of a bad bargain

Some caregivers eventually say they do not care about career the same way anymore. Outsiders may hear laziness or lowered standards. Often, they are hearing clarity.

Caregivers know what jobs ask for. They know what families need. They know how often work praises care in theory while making little room for it in practice.

If paid work demands total availability, penalizes care, discounts gaps, and gives little loyalty back, pulling away can make sense.

Ambition may not die. It may stop cooperating with a bad deal.

What care costs reveal about power

Care does not only affect schedules. It can change who has options, who feels safe, and who gets to plan for the future.

Financial independence is not selfish

A caregiver without current income may have less leverage even in a loving household.

She may feel less able to question spending, ask for help, make plans, leave harm, or protect her future. Dependence can grow quietly.

Long pauses increase risk. Each year away can mean lower lifetime earnings, weaker re-entry power, missed retirement growth, and fewer options during crisis.

A loving family should not ask one person to carry financial risk alone.

One career may advance because another career paused

Caregiving often makes another person's career easier to build. Families may avoid saying that out loud because it feels uncomfortable.

But the trade is real. One résumé may stay clean because another got a gap. One worker may travel because another handled children, meals, medicine, and appointments. One retirement account may grow because another person's paid work stopped.

Power often hides inside normal family routines. A career pause can show how much paid success depends on unpaid time.

Summary

Cost does not disappear because care was necessary or because love was present.

It lands on one résumé, one bank account, one retirement account, and one future.

Families should name the cost. Partners should share it. Employers should stop treating care as lower commitment.

Policy should treat care as basic support, not a private inconvenience.

No one should have to pretend a career pause was free just because it was made with love. more

Career development

 14h

Your horoscope for June 19-25


Your spot-on horoscope for work, money and relationship from Guru by the Bangkok Post's famously accurate fortune teller. Let's see how you will fare this week and beyond.

* ⏰ is for work, ₿ is for money, ❤️ is for coupled life and ⚤ is for single life

* Previous ones: www.bangkokpost.com/shr/9b6b72ef

♈ Aries

Mar 21 - Apr 19

⏰ Your steady effort will begin to show tangible results, a clear... sign your strategy is working. A new project may land on your desk, backed by a bigger budget and better tools. Sudden chaos could be your crash course in decision-making and problem-solving. Job hunting? An offer may come in, but double-check the details before you commit.

₿ The money you'd already written off might land in your account. Cash will flow in fast and go out just as fast. Saving takes a backseat while dopamine hits, doom spending and Fomo-Yolo vibe take the wheel. Be cautious with travel deals. One wrong click could lead to a tour that never existed.

❤️ You'll maintain a better balance between "me time" and "we time". Minor disagreements may flare up but fade fast. You two will find common ground, reach creative compromises and clear the air where needed. Expect a healing getaway, micromance and choremance to deepen your soul connection.

⚤ Romance could come through travel, online chats or matchmaker friends. You'll explore the chemistry, test compatibility with clear coding and maybe sexplore what really does it for you. A hotter ex on the outs with their current partner might slide back. Save yourself the headache and walk on.

♉ Taurus

Apr 20 - May 20

⏰ Expect a shower thought to unlock a breakthrough for your current workload and toughest challenge. You'll be handed a greenfield project that sparks your curiosity and gets your dopamine going as you learn on the fly. Prepare for unexpected travel or last-minute meetings. A job interview or assessment coming up? Expect good news.

₿ Your earnings will surprise you in a good way. You'll tighten the reins on your finances. Unused subs? Gone. People-pleasing spending? Not this week. A money dispute with a close friend or cousin may occur. You'll have the facts, but winning could cost you the relationship.

❤️ A shared win or good news will give you both every reason to celebrate. Pen may meet paper as you lock in a property deal, a business pact or even a marriage registration. You're not just partners in love; you're each other's shelter and spark.

⚤ Seeing someone? Your connection will turn real and official. Expect labels and an IG hard launch. Single and seeking? Someone composed and accomplished could cross your path through social scenes or travel. A friend may send clear signals that they want more than just friends.

♊ Gemini

May 21 - Jun 20

⏰ Your diplomacy and knack for organising will help you hit a new milestone. Higher-ups' trust in you is growing. Expect more autonomy to call the shots, along with chances to expand your network and forge strategic connections. A heads-up on an unposted role might land in your lap. Running a business? Cash flow and resource moves will sync up, resulting in tangible gains.

₿ Your income will match the energy you pour in. Negotiations will go your way, landing on the exact the terms you want. A calculated risk or contest could pay off with extra cash. A hefty travel cost or vehicle repair may pop up out of nowhere.

❤️ Your partner might be extra moody, throwing tantrums or saying things that rub you the wrong way. You'll handle them with grace and kindess, choosing silence over the storm and protecting your energy for battles worth fighting. Smart move, but know this: the calm is a pause, not a fix.

⚤ Someone from work, your usual spot or the gym will make a clear effort to get close. You'll stay polite but unimpressed and they'll pick up on it. Sensing your boss energy, self-sufficiency and independent aura, they may feel you're out of their league and quietly fade out. Have a crush? They're busy vibing with someone else.

♋ Cancer

Jun 21 - Jul 22

⏰ Goals met, project polished. Well-deserved kudos and a small celebration will follow. Higher-ups may hand you a cross-border mission that broadens your horizons and widens your network. Business owners, you could uncover an untapped market, blue ocean or next frontier. Job seekers, a chance for global exposure could beep on your radar.

₿ An off-the-books side gig or under-the-radar work may show up, pay well and let you flex your skills. You'll handle contracts and negotiations with sharp instincts. No one and nothing will pull a fast one on you. You may dive into personal finance, money strategies and relevant laws.

❤️ People around you see you two as couple goals, the gold standard for relationships. In private, though, you might face an uncomfortable truth: stability turns into stagnation. It's not about lost love, it's boredom. Routine got too good at its job.

⚤ Your presence and allure will turn heads and pull admirers in, but your heart won't skip a beat. No one will clear the bar you've set for yourself. You'll stay single by choice, not by shortage. Being on your own will feel like a flex, not a flaw.

♌ Leo

Jul 23 - Aug 22

⏰ Sudden changes, drama queens and energy vampires will come at you, but you'll handle it all with grace while crushing every deadline. You'll shine in meetings, pitches and presentations with anticipatory thinking, narrative creativity and main character energy. Expect kudos and possibly a new opportunity from the higher-ups. However, a light brownout and tiny bore-out may creep in.

₿ The bag will be worth the hustle with solid Roi on your time. Still, sudden big expenses tied to home, vehicles and your kids could come up. Budget smartly. Chill with the "add to cart"energy. And don't co-sign anyone's debt.

❤️ Your relationship will ride highs and lows. Instead of having real talks, you two will likely stay passive-aggressive, skirting the issues instead of solving them. Out of nowhere, a low-key pull between you and a taken friend or colleague could catch you off guard. Cute spark, complicated cast.

⚤ You're perfectly happy masterdating, but the universe has other mischievous plans. Expect a mixed bag: from someone marriage-minded and ready for an LTR to a hookup hunter or a cake-eater playing single. Good luck telling them apart.

♍ Virgo

Aug 23 - Sept 22

⏰ A high-stakes mission will land on your desk and look like a trouble, but it'll pay off. Crushing it will solidify your standing and boost your authority at work. You'll pace yourself well, making the most of every resource. A workplace rival may switch sides and back you up. Job hunting? You may be spoilt for choice.

₿ Big bills are on the cards, think home repairs, healthcare, insurance or tuition fees. You'll shift into saving mode to stay on track. It's not about lack; it's about being smart with your cash flow and getting ahead of hefty costs.

❤️ Expect smoother vibes, more one-on-one time and real heart-to-hearts with your partner. You two may map out shared savings or joint investments to build something solid and set yourselves up for the long run. Love is there, but you'll be thinking bigger: security, stability and sanity.

⚤ You're locked in on your goals. Your drive and focus will be compellingly appealing. Someone older, already in your orbit, will take notice and move closer under the guise of a supportive advisor or helpful mentor. Sweet, but read between the lines. Their interest runs deeper than advice.

♎ Libra

Sept 23 - Oct 22

⏰ Your ideas will win over decision-makers, turning even doubters and frenemies into supporters. Sharp thinking and strong connections will carry you through, helping you clear backlogs and deadlines. A challenging mission may land in your hands, with prestige and prize waiting at the finish line. Surprise travel is on the cards. Between jobs? You won't be soon.

₿ A chance to monetise your expertise or flip unused items for quick cash will present itself. Negotiating your pay/rate, securing support or raising capital will work in your favour. If you're in debt, expect a haircut or some relief. Watch your wallet; scams may masquerade as your favourite things.

❤️ Your relationship moves with a smoother stride, better understanding, deeper connection and more heat between the sheets. You two will look further ahead: pooling resources or building a nest egg for a more secure, elevated lifestyle. Talking money with your honey will feel surprisingly easy.

⚤ You might vibe with someone through work or social media and something about them will hit different. However, they might not be on your level yet and will move slower than you. Push too hard or too soon and they'll go away. They're still on the first chapter while you're already at the epilogue.

♏ Scorpio

Oct 23 - Nov 21

⏰ A sudden shake-up will clear what you've been carrying and push you out of your comfort zone. You'll unlearn old ways, pick up cutting-edge tools and build fresh connections across borders. This new chapter will be yours to own and you'll face it fearlessly, with zero hesitation and ready to tackle every challenge.

₿ Income may come in waves, not a steady stream. A competition win, windfall or heartfelt gift might find its way to you. Your inner CFO will lecture about budgets while your Yolo side waves a credit card and screams "add to cart, it's self-care!"

❤️ Love gets real and sweet. Expect micro-mance, choremance and heart-to-heart moments. You two will squash any beef in no time. You're each other's compass, comfort and muse. Family time or a first meeting with your future in-laws is in the offing.

⚤ You might not vibe with the "perfect match"a friend introduces. Out of the blue, a married friend or colleague might sweep you off your feet, making you believe they're the one fate sent your way. Wake up. This fantasy has a spouse-shaped problem.

♐ Sagittarius

Nov 22 - Dec 21

⏰ Blocked or bottlenecked? You'll crack the code and cut through it. Stalled work will pick up serious momentum and shift into high gear. You'll charge toward the finish line, targets within reach. If a job interview or big deal is on your calendar, you'll charm the room and seal it on the spot.

₿ Your hustle will deliver better-than-expected income, showing up as strong digits in your account. A well-connected friend might share insider intel or plug you into a money-making opportunity. Essential bills will be handled smoothly and you'll still have leftovers to treat yourself and buy your mood a quick boost.

❤️ You two won't always see eye to eye, but your debates will be sharp, smart and surprisingly constructive. Different views, same team. Mutual respect and support hold strong. In bed, it won't happen often, but when it does, the neighbours may hear it.

⚤ Someone might shoot their shot, but a language barrier, mismatched energy, or their tone could rub you the wrong way. Crushing or trying to rizz someone up? They might hard launch someone else on IG, making it official.

♑ Capricorn

Dec 22 - Jan 19

⏰ Work may move in slow motion and your main goals could be further away. A project you had high hopes for could stall for reasons beyond your control and pushing harder will only make it messier. This pause isn't failure; it's a necessary mental reset. Stillness prepares you for a sharper breakthrough. Sometimes, doing nothing is the most productive move.

₿ Your income may ebb and flow. An unexpected expense or a costly mistake could throw a wrench in your spending limit. You'll likely need to trim some fat elsewhere to keep things steady. It's less about a crisis and more about a strategic financial revision.

❤️ You might throw a tantrum or two, but your partner will still adore every version of you -- your ultimate stan, maybe even wrapped around your finger. Expect cosy date-cations and golden-hour moments, making core memories together. In bed, you two may get into some playful, cheeky exploration.

⚤ Your rizz and aura are peaking, pulling in fresh faces. You'll likely play it casual and keep things in the talking stage, viewing romance as more of a playful game than anything serious. Flirting feels fun, freedom feels better, and right now, single life is treating you just fine.

♒ Aquarius

Jan 20 - Feb 18

⏰ Your diplomacy, productivity and AI-boosted creativity will hit a new high. You'll handle people and resources with calm confidence, play politics smart and turn tension into traction. Your output will beat the benchmark and exceed all expectations. A key role in a new revenue stream or growth engine project may be yours. Ladies, She-EO energy rises -- the glass ceiling is cracking.

₿ The money coming in will match the energy you've been putting out. You'll keep spending and saving in check without overthinking it. Negotiations will go your way and contracts will be ready to sign. Struggling with a financial dispute? Expect a fair compromise.

❤️ Less friction, more understanding. Hot heads cool off. Compassion and logic lead the way in your relationship. You two may align on a new shared goal or a bigger commitment. Family time or a first meeting with your future in-laws is also on the cards.

⚤ Single life is treating you well right now. You're grounded, free and focused on your own goals with zero apologies. Still, a happily married friend or cousin, convinced you're too good a catch to stay solo, may introduce someone on your level with a similar background and life path. Worth a cafe date.

♓ Pisces

Feb 19 - Mar 20

⏰ Your integrated strategic thinking and adaptive creativity get sharper. Complex tasks that once felt overwhelming will start making sense quickly, and you'll coordinate with your team like a well-oiled machine. You'll deliver results and smash targets, no question. A senior colleague may take you under their wing, preparing you for bigger roles.

₿ A kind auntie or big sis might drop some good news or plug you into a way to cash in on your talents. Your instincts and your BS detector are both razor-sharp as you make smart investment decisions. Essential bills will be easily covered. A little splurge? You absolutely deserve it.

❤️ If you're committed and exclusive, expect smooth sailing with a few healthy, grown-up debates that strengthen your bond. Mutual respect and support hold strong. Two-timing? Your worlds are crashing into each other. You'll be forced to choose a lane. Time's up.

⚤ Romantic prospects could come through work, online or a friend catching feelings, but you'll likely be too oblivious to notice. Seeing someone? They'll want to lock it in, but your feelings may waver and cold feet could creep in. more

Career development

 1d

Gotta Catch 'Em All? Antitrust and the AI Talent Wars


The AI talent wars have produced a steady stream of stories that seem tailor-made to confirm everyone's worst suspicions about Big Tech: nine-figure pay packages for star researchers, entire startup teams absorbed without a formal acquisition, and -- most strikingly -- reports of elite AI scientists paid handsomely to do nothing for a year under "garden leave" arrangements rather than join a rival... -- "hoard[ed] like Pokémon cards."

To many observers, this looks wasteful at best and sinister at worst. Why would a profit-maximizing firm pay enormous sums for talent it seemingly has no intention of using?

Ronald Coase had a wry answer for moments like this. "[I]f an economist finds something -- a business practice of one sort or other -- that he does not understand," he observed in 1972, "he looks for a monopoly explanation. And as in this field we are very ignorant, the number of ununderstandable practices tends to be rather large, and the reliance on a monopoly explanation, frequent."

A new working paper by Shaolong Wu of Harvard Business School and Zefan Qian of Georgetown, "Talent Hoarding and Upstream Innovation: Labor Market Distortions by Large Incumbents," supplies precisely that monopoly explanation, complete with a formal model and an empirical test. Large incumbents, the authors argue, sometimes hire and retain frontier researchers not to put them to work, but to keep rivals from doing so. Because top AI-research talent is scarce, every researcher a dominant firm keeps "on the bench" is one a challenger can't hire. The incumbent protects its existing profits, and society loses the discoveries that researchers would have produced elsewhere.

The paper closes with policy recommendations to match: limits on garden leave, narrower noncompete agreements for publicly funded researchers, and institutional pressure to keep frontier talent "actively deployed."

The policy audience is already primed for this argument. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced its intention to scrutinize acquihires -- transactions structured around hiring a startup's employees rather than acquiring the company outright -- to ensure they aren't used to evade merger review. Talent-centered theories of competitive harm are rapidly becoming the next front in the broader campaign against large technology firms. All the more reason to get the economics right.

It's a clever paper, and perhaps a more careful one than many in this genre. Its headline claim, however, substantially outpaces its evidence. What the data actually show is that one group of software firms retained more skilled employees after the Supreme Court weakened their patent protections. Everything beyond that -- the "idle benches," the foreclosed rivals, the lost innovation, and the social harm -- comes not from the data but from assumptions built into the model.

More importantly, nearly every one of those assumptions rules out, by construction, a far more ordinary explanation: that the same behavior reflects good management rather than anticompetitive conduct.

The Model Does the Hoarding for You

In the paper's model, an incumbent firm earns profits from a legacy technology, while an entrant may develop a replacement. The key input into discovering that new technology is a fixed pool of researchers (an assumption we will return to) who possess knowledge of the incumbent's technology. Hiring one of those researchers does double duty: It increases your own odds of a breakthrough while reducing your rival's. There is, by assumption, no one else to hire.

The model also imposes another crucial condition. A researcher generates innovation only when paired one-for-one with "innovation capital" -- new equipment, computing power, organizational capacity, and similar inputs. A retained researcher who lacks that matching investment is "benched": employed and paid, but contributing nothing to the only outcome the model treats as socially valuable -- the discovery itself. The model does allow benched workers to perform ordinary legacy work -- it simply assigns that work no social value.

An additional assumption drives the paper's headline results. Those results emerge from what the authors call the "no self-replacement" case, in which a breakthrough is assumed to be worth no more to the incumbent than the legacy product it already sells. The incumbent, therefore, gains nothing from innovation itself. In such a world, where the breakthrough has no upside for the incumbent, the only reason to retain a researcher is to keep her away from a rival.

Notably, retention doesn't require leaving the researcher idle. Matching her with capital and putting her to work also reduces the entrant's chances of success. Under the model's assumptions, even productive employment can function as a form of exclusion. Whether she sits on a bench or works at a desk, the point is the same: she isn't helping a competitor build the next generation of technology.

The paper thus assumes, quite literally, that an incumbent's only reason for incurring the cost of retaining a knowledgeable researcher is to deny that researcher to a rival. Under those conditions, if a successful entrant would destroy the incumbent's profits, the incumbent will rationally pay to keep researchers in-house even when it places no value on anything they might produce.

On the empirical side, the paper exploits the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. The Court held that implementing an abstract idea on a generic computer is not, without more, patentable. The decision thus made broad software patents substantially harder to obtain and enforce. For firms whose competitive position depended on such patents, Alice increased the risk that rivals could imitate or displace them -- what the paper terms "external displacement risk." Talent hoarding, in turn, became a potentially more attractive way to protect an incumbent position.

The authors find that software firms holding pre-2014 software patents increased their net hiring after Alice by roughly 0.34 percentage points per month relative to software firms without patents -- a not-insubstantial effect, about 63% of the sample average.

Several additional findings are noteworthy:

* The increase came almost entirely from reduced employee departures rather than increased recruiting.

* The effect was concentrated among workers with advanced degrees.

* It was not accompanied by measurable growth in assets or other complementary capital.

* A companion analysis of worker résumés found that science-and-research employees at exposed firms advanced more slowly up the occupational ladder in the years following the decision.

In short, the study finds: more high-skilled workers retained, no corresponding increase in complementary capital, and slower career progression among the researchers who stayed. The authors interpret this pattern as evidence of their central hypothesis: the defensive retention of underutilized talent.

The Data Are Not the Dispute

To give the paper its due, the distinction between retaining a worker and deploying one is genuinely useful. Too much commentary on tech hiring blurs the difference. The research design is also serious: exposure is measured before the shock, the shock itself is a judicial decision no firm controlled, and the authors are unusually candid about their limitations. Most importantly, the central empirical finding appears real. Patent-exposed software firms reduced employee separations after Alice, and those reductions were concentrated among workers with knowledge likely to be valuable for innovation.

The dispute isn't over the finding, but over its interpretation. The talent-hoarding story depends on a series of modeling choices, each of which rules out a competing explanation under which the same data reflect efficient, rather than anticompetitive, behavior.

Foreclosure by Construction

The paper's most significant assumption is one most readers will never notice. It has two parts. First, the incumbent and the entrant are assigned identical discovery technology, meaning a researcher generates exactly the same probability of a breakthrough wherever she works. The incumbent firm itself contributes nothing distinctive, except already being there. Second, as noted above, in the headline case, the incumbent places no value on producing the breakthrough at all.

Taken together, the model effectively assumes the incumbent is the worst possible home for research talent. It's no better at research, and it's uninterested in the results. The only remaining explanation for retention is blocking.

The authors would fairly answer that this isn't a claim about the world. They set the new technology's value to zero on purpose, to strip out the incumbent's offensive motive -- wanting the breakthrough for itself -- and study the defensive motive in isolation. Fair enough. Isolating one mechanism is what models are for.

But here, the model removes the efficient reason to retain talent before the welfare verdict is rendered. Then that verdict gets carried over to a world where incumbents usually do want the breakthrough, and where retention is often offensive as well as defensive. The conclusion isn't "found" in the research; it's built into the model.

And that assumption elides a great deal. Firms aren't equally good at converting researchers into discoveries. They differ enormously in management quality, in the data and infrastructure researchers can use, in their ability to select promising projects and kill bad ones, and in the colleagues a new hire works alongside. A large incumbent may get more out of a marginal researcher than a startup can, because she joins teams with experienced managers who have already solved a thousand deployment problems, and because she can work with proprietary data and installed systems no entrant possesses.

In that model -- the real world -- scarce talent flowing toward incumbents isn't foreclosure. It's the market allocating a scarce input to its highest-valued use. Eye-popping compensation is the competitive price of that input, captured by the workers themselves.

The paper's model rules out this more realistic dynamic, and the empirical work can't restore it. A finding that exposed firms retained more researchers is equally consistent with "those firms denied rivals an input" and "those firms are where the input is worth the most."

An economist might respond that, in the model, the incumbent's willingness to pay exceeds the worker's deployment value. That's what makes it hoarding. While true in this context, that result follows from the equal-capability assumption. Relax that unrealistic assumption, and the wage premium may reflect a productivity difference rather than a blocking premium.

That means the paper's welfare conclusion turns on a parameter it never measures.

The Salop Problem Returns

The claim that a dominant firm will rationally outspend any challenger to preserve its position is one of the oldest moves in the antitrust playbook. A recent version of it comes from Steven Salop, who argued -- in a paper pointedly titled "Potential Competition and Antitrust Analysis: Monopoly Profits Exceed Duopoly Profits" -- that acquisitions of potential or nascent competitors by dominant firms raise inherent anticompetitive concerns. Because keeping a monopoly is worth more than sharing a duopoly, the incumbent will always pay more to eliminate a threat than the threat is worth to anyone else.

Wu and Qian have, in effect, transported this logic from the market for startups to the market for researchers. Here, the thing the incumbent supposedly overpays to control isn't a nascent rival firm, but the researcher who might help create one. Same wine, different bottle.

The argument fails in the labor-market setting for many of the same reasons it fails in the acquisition context -- reasons Dirk Auer, Brian Albrecht, Eric Fruits, Daniel Gilman, Lazar Radic, and I discussed in the International Center for Law & Economics' (ICLE) comments on the FTC and U.S. Justice Department's (DOJ) draft merger guidelines, and that Albrecht has explored at length here at Truth on the Market.

The first problem is arithmetic. Buying off a single potential entrant may be profitable when monopoly profits exceed duopoly profits. But once one challenger is paid to stand down, the next stands to enter as a duopolist, and the next after that, and so on. Each must be compensated at roughly the duopoly level, not some small fraction of it. With enough potential challengers, the cost of paying them all off exceeds the value of preserving the monopoly, and the strategy collapses. If we nonetheless observe the conduct, that suggests something other than monopoly maintenance may be at work.

The same arithmetic applies to talent. The paper's model contains one incumbent, one entrant, and one closed pool of researchers, so cornering the input requires outbidding exactly one rival. The real frontier-AI labor market looks nothing like that. There are multiple deep-pocketed AI labs, a venture-capital ecosystem aggressively funding startups to compete for the same people, and a university pipeline continuously producing new talent.

To foreclose discovery through retention, an incumbent would have to outbid all of those rivals, for every pivotal researcher, indefinitely. The predictable result isn't foreclosure, but an auction. And in that auction, the owners of the scarce input -- the researchers themselves -- capture much of the surplus. That looks less like market failure than competition doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Two features of labor markets make the strategy even less durable than its acquisition counterpart. First, workers, unlike startups, can't be bought outright. Because "human capital is inalienable," a retained researcher stays only as long as she chooses to stay. Maintaining exclusivity is therefore perpetually expensive and contractually fragile.

Second, when employees leave large firms, they disperse. They don't march single-file to the one rival most capable of threatening their former employer. As Kevin Murphy has observed, departing workers spread across many employers, with only a small fraction joining any particular competitor and many leaving the industry altogether. The model's premise that every researcher released by the incumbent flows directly to the one firm poised to destroy it bears little resemblance to how labor markets actually function.

The second problem is the one discussed above. Salop's result requires the incumbent to be at least as capable as any challenger -- an assumption he relegates to a footnote, while acknowledging that "monopoly profits are not always higher" when an entrant has lower costs or a better product.

As Dirk Auer, Sam Bowman, and I have written:

Although it is convenient in theoretical modeling to assume that similarly situated firms have equivalent capacities to realize profits, in reality firms vary greatly in their capabilities, and their investment and other business decisions are dependent on the firm's managers' expectations about their idiosyncratic abilities to recognize profit opportunities and take advantage of them -- in short, they rest on the firm managers' ability to be entrepreneurial.

Once that realistic possibility is admitted, differences in firms' willingness to pay no longer demonstrate preemption. They may simply reflect differences in productivity.

Again, the empirical prediction that retention rises after Alice doesn't depend on the equal-capability assumption. But the conclusion that retention is driven by exclusionary motives does. The empirical test therefore confirms the portion of the model that doesn't require the assumption, while leaving untested the assumption that does most of the work in generating the paper's policy recommendations.

No New Assets, No New Ideas?

The paper's cleverest empirical move is to infer foreclosure from the combination of rising headcount and flat capital investment. At first glance, the logic seems straightforward: if firms were truly putting these researchers to productive use, we should see corresponding investment in the inputs they need.

But the argument rests on a strong assumption: that a researcher paired with anything less than a full new unit of "innovation capital" produces nothing. In software, of all industries, that is a peculiar picture of the production process.

The complementary inputs that matter -- data, codebases, proprietary tools, accumulated organizational knowledge, and much of the underlying computing infrastructure -- are often already in place. An additional researcher can use those resources without the firm having to book a single new asset. Much of this capital is also non-rival within the firm. Another engineer working with the company's data doesn't consume that data. Even rivalrous inputs, such as computing power, are often available within existing capacity, with enough slack to absorb another researcher without generating a measurable increase in asset purchases.

A firm whose competitive advantage consists precisely of these intangible assets can productively absorb additional researchers with no observable capital response at all. Put differently, the paper's headline empirical finding -- more labor, flat balance-sheet assets -- is exactly what we would expect if incumbents are where marginal researchers are most productive.

The authors also argue that complementary capital "can often be scaled within just days and weeks," making its absence particularly informative. If firms wanted to deploy these researchers, they argue, they could have done so cheaply and quickly.

But that cuts both ways. If complementary capital is as inexpensive and scalable as the authors suggest, then the absence of a detectable increase in assets is weak evidence of non-deployment. Cheap capital may not show up as a measurable balance-sheet change even when researchers are fully deployed. And if computing capacity can be expanded on short notice at low cost, then computing power was never the binding constraint. Talent was.

In that case, scarce talent flowing toward the firms willing to pay the most for it is not evidence of benching. It is what efficient allocation looks like.

When the same evidence supports opposite welfare conclusions, it ceases to be especially informative.

Nor does the authors' fallback diagnostic -- that patent output per employee fell at exposed firms -- break the tie. That claim is perilously close to circular. The Supreme Court had just made it more difficult for those firms to obtain patents. Of course patenting declined. That was the treatment. It is not evidence that researchers were working less effectively or producing less valuable output.

The People Are the Patents Now

The most natural reading of the paper's central finding requires no "benches" or anticompetitive animus. Alice didn't conjure displacement risk from nowhere; it weakened the specific legal instrument -- patents -- that exposed firms had used to protect their innovations. Economists have long understood patents and trade secrecy as substitute ways to appropriate the returns to invention. And trade secrets don't live in filing cabinets -- they live in employees' heads.

When the Court devalued these firms' patents, the rational response was to lean harder on the other instrument: retaining the people who embody proprietary knowledge.

That reading fits the paper's evidence rather neatly. It predicts retention rather than recruitment, because the point is to protect knowledge the firm already has, not acquire more of it. It predicts concentration among advanced-degree workers, because they are most likely to carry the relevant know-how. And it predicts no corresponding capital expansion, because nothing about the firm's investment program or resource allocation needs to change.

The paper's own marquee example points in exactly this direction. Describing Adobe -- the lead illustration -- the authors write that, once Alice weakened its patents, "the strategic asset that mattered more was not just the code or the patent portfolio, but the people who embodied the know-how." That's a description of a firm switching from one appropriability mechanism (patents) to another (retaining employees who hold trade secrets). The paper states the benign reading in its own words, in its own flagship example, and then subsumes it under "foreclosure."

But those are not the same thing. Preventing your own know-how from walking out the door to a competitor is a legitimate interest that trade-secret law has protected for well over a century. On the most plausible reading, it's also welfare-enhancing here: retention substitutes for the appropriability that Alice weakened, preserving at least some of the innovation incentives the decision would otherwise have eroded.

Indeed, the paper's own framing concedes the point without quite noticing it. The workers in the model are valuable to the entrant because of their "incumbent-specific knowledge." What the rival wants from them, in other words, is largely the incumbent's own proprietary information.

The Missing Foreclosed Rival

Even granting the retention findings, the paper's welfare conclusion -- that society loses when incumbents retain these workers -- is built into the model rather than derived from the evidence. The social planner against whom the incumbent is judged is defined to value "the availability of the innovation" while placing no weight on the incumbent's existing profits. By assumption, entrant innovation is socially valuable.

But a challenger's incentive to enter often includes what economists call "business stealing." Much of the entrant's prospective profit comes from taking customers and profits from the incumbent. From a social perspective, that is largely a transfer rather than a gain. Indeed, the economic literature on entry has long recognized that private incentives to enter can sometimes exceed the socially optimal level for precisely this reason.

One could just as easily write down a model with the opposite welfare weights and conclude that the entrant's poaching is the problem. Neither stipulation would constitute evidence.

Meanwhile, the foreclosure side of the story -- the part that carries the antitrust implications -- is never tested at all. Foreclosure requires, well, foreclosure: rivals must be meaningfully constrained in their ability to compete because they can't access a necessary input. Yet the paper offers no evidence that startups in Alice-affected fields were starved of talent, hired fewer workers, grew more slowly, or innovated less than they otherwise would have. Perhaps they did, but the paper neither tests nor demonstrates it.

What evidence we do have points in the opposite direction. The authors themselves note that the cost of software experimentation was falling during this period, as cloud computing and related technologies made entry cheaper and more accessible.

Readers familiar with the killer-acquisitions debate will recognize the problem. Even in pharmaceuticals -- the sector with the strongest evidence for the theory -- the most generous estimates suggest that genuine "killer" acquisitions account for only about 5% to 7% of deals. The evidence in digital markets is considerably weaker -- which is to say, nonexistent.

A foreclosure mechanism that leaves no observable trace in the supposedly foreclosed market may be an interesting theoretical possibility. It is not an empirical finding.

A Raise Is Not a Market Failure

The paper's career-trajectory evidence is also clever, but again curiously interpreted. The slowdown in advancement for workers in the "science and research" category at exposed firms is real but tiny -- about 0.018 points on a 2-to-5 occupational scale. Indeed, the scientists who are the paper's central concern show the smallest of the highlighted effects.

The largest decline in the paper's table of "strong negative effects" belongs instead to workers in "education and training," at a rate of ?0.068 -- nearly four times the science-and-research estimate. That is difficult to square with a story about the "benching" of frontier talent.

The next-largest slowdown, among workers in "law, compliance, and public safety," is easier to explain. The authors themselves attribute it to a collapse in demand for patent-related legal work -- a direct consequence of weaker patents, not talent hoarding. And in a separate "difficult to interpret" category, "healthcare and maintenance" workers at exposed firms also show larger slowdowns than science-and-research employees.

The heterogeneous responses across job categories are supposed to support the hoarding story. But doing so requires emphasizing the category with the smallest effect while explaining away the larger effects the theory can't account for.

There is also a simpler, and perhaps more important, problem: the data contain job titles but not wages. A worker who stays in the same role because her employer pays her substantially more hasn't suffered a policy-relevant harm. She has been compensated. Indeed, the very study the authors cite on inventors moving to large firms finds that earnings rise by double digits after those moves.

A flatter title progression accompanied by a fatter paycheck isn't a labor-market distortion. It's known as a raise.

Before We Ban Good Management

If we step back and ask what conduct this paper actually condemns, the normative implications become difficult to sustain. What the paper identifies is lower employee turnover, the payment of retention premiums, and efforts to keep proprietary knowledge from reaching competitors. That describes competent management far more readily than monopolization. Every well-run firm in every industry does these things. The conduct labeled anticompetitive is observationally indistinguishable from conduct we generally want firms to undertake. And the paper's empirical design can't tell the difference, because the assumptions that do the distinguishing work -- equal firm capability, one-for-one capital matching, and a social planner indifferent to incumbent investment incentives -- are imposed rather than tested.

The paper's reception has outpaced its findings. One economist described it as "a dark theory (with evidence)" of Big Tech hiring, in which incumbents "leave some on the bench" to "slow rival innovation." But the bench is precisely what the paper never observes. The authors are candid that they can't see deployment worker by worker. Benching is inferred from the absence of a capital increase, not directly measured. "With evidence" is doing a great deal of work for a mechanism the study assumes rather than demonstrates.

Despite that, the paper advances policy recommendations: limits on garden leave, restrictions on noncompete agreements for publicly funded researchers, and institutional expectations that frontier talent remain "actively deployed." These proposals arrive amid a broader labor-antitrust push whose evidentiary foundations are already remarkably thin, resting on a small number of studies with heavily qualified findings.

Yet the mechanisms the paper would restrict perform real economic functions. Even the FTC, in the rulemaking that banned noncompetes, acknowledged evidence that such agreements can increase investment in workers' human capital, physical capital, and research and development. Firms invest in training and entrust employees with valuable knowledge when they have some confidence that those investments won't immediately walk across the street.

Weakening those arrangements based on a possibility theorem and an empirical pattern that admits several efficient explanations is a recipe for getting error costs backward. It risks condemning ordinary retention practices in the hope of catching the occasional genuine "idle bench."

It is also worth remembering which firms the talent-hoarding story is meant to indict. The paper takes its empirical cue from a 2014 patent decision, but its stakes -- and its policy recommendations -- are aimed squarely at today's AI incumbents. Those firms are not behaving like hoarders stashing talent on idle benches. From 2019 to 2025, the largest tech firms -- Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple -- added nearly 1 million employees while increasing capital expenditures from $77 billion to $370 billion, according to their 10-K filings. That is not a picture of firms accumulating talent they have no intention of equipping. It is a picture of firms racing to deploy labor and capital as quickly as they can acquire them. In other words, it looks like competition, not foreclosure.

The paper's actual contribution is narrower, but still interesting -- if perhaps not as headline-grabbing. It suggests that when courts weaken patent protection, firms respond by retaining the people who embody their proprietary knowledge. That's a finding about the substitutability of appropriability mechanisms, and it counsels caution both about Alice-style doctrinal shocks and about labor-market interventions that would weaken the substitutes firms turn to in response.

Before talent retention becomes the next frontier of antitrust, we should demand evidence of the thing that matters: not that firms kept their researchers, but that those researchers sat idle, and that someone else would have put them to better use. more

Career development

 1d

How meta-skills prepare teams for AI-powered work futures


Organizations can programme in meta-skills training, including through executive education that strengthens leadership capability.

We usually think of skills as the capabilities we have, such as negotiation, marketing and financial modelling. They sit in résumés and can be certified, benchmarked and compared. From this perspective, an organization's capability is a matter of hiring enough skilled... people and giving them the right tasks.

This logic is good enough in stable environments. It breaks down in the environments created by modern digital technologies, where tasks change faster than job descriptions, and technologies evolve faster than training curricula.

In such unstable contexts, instead of only asking whether employees have the right skills for the tasks on hand, leaders should ponder how fast - and how well - they can acquire the skills they will need next. This reframing shines the spotlight on a different category of capability: meta-skills.

Meta-skills do not produce output directly. Nor are they exactly the same as soft skills such as problem-solving or communication. A meta-skill's primary effect is not on the performance of a task, but how well new skills are acquired. Meta-skills do not only or even necessarily make you better at today's job; they make you better at becoming good at whatever the job turns into next.

Meta-skills are not defined by domain, difficulty or prestige. They are defined by what they do to your skill portfolio: how latent skills are activated to become deployed skills as tasks change.

The research on learning points to two important sets of mechanisms that underlie meta-skills.

Some meta-skills improve how quickly and deeply people learn on their own. They include higher-order thinking, which comprises critical evaluation, disciplined experimentation and decision-making under uncertainty. This skill helps people refine mental models instead of merely accumulating facts.

Other meta-skills enable people to connect knowledge across tasks and domains. Analogical reasoning is the workhorse here. It allows you to recognize that two problems with different surface features share the same underlying structure and therefore can be solved using similar principles. This is why your experience in one domain sometimes helps you in another.

Metacognitive regulation does something even more subtle. It allows us to monitor our own understanding, detect when a learning strategy is failing and change approach accordingly.

Some meta-skills pertain to social interaction, not individual problem-solving. They involve the capacity to understand and "mind-read" others, negotiate and build trust.

Individuals with these social skills can learn from and adjust to new tasks more rapidly. After all, most tasks in organizations are interdependent, and peers are a critical source of learning.

Teams of individuals with these social skills are likely to trust each other and learn together. Any disagreement is productive rather than paralyzing, and mistakes are surfaced but not punished. Such teams can outperform groups of more conventionally skilled individuals who learn in isolation.

Besides cognitive and social skills, emotional resilience and a growth mindset also help us rapidly acquire new skills when the old become obsolete.

Most skills translate effort into immediate output. Meta-skills translate experience into future capability. People with strong meta-skills may often look inefficient. They ask naive questions and test imperfect hypotheses while others execute confidently. But when conditions change, they may adapt faster than everyone else. However, by then, organizations may have already decided who is "high potential".

It's in the interest of business and government leaders to recognize and nurture this dynamic human capability. Conventional management wisdom says you can't manage what you can't measure. So how do you measure meta-skills? Three indicators matter:

The cognitive and social mechanisms underlying meta-skills are not fixed traits, but known to be plastic in both young and adult humans. Higher order thinking, metacognitive regulation, analogical reasoning and social coordination all improve with structured practice, feedback and reasonably demanding environments. Meta-skills strengthen most reliably when people face novel and complex tasks, receive timely feedback and work interdependently.

This is one reason why executive education may help. The purpose of executive education is not simply to update leaders on industry trends or teach them a new framework, it is to strengthen the cognitive and social machinery that will allow them to adapt to whatever comes next. Executive education often encompasses strategy, finance or leadership. However, its deeper value may lie in building the meta-skills - through cases, group work, simulations and problem-solving - that make leaders and their organizations fit for a world that will not stop changing.

This is also why learning how to code may continue to be useful. In my experience, programming fuels the cognitive components of meta-skills like few other things do.

This brings me to our increasing reliance on AI. Using AI might help us write better reports and better code, but it can cause our skills, including meta-skills, to atrophy, reducing our employability in the long run. Think of the relationship between tasks and skills as that between leaves and roots. Tasks are leaves and skills are roots. Each leaf is nourished by many roots, and each root feeds many leaves. Removing a leaf (i.e. offloading a task to AI) can make its underlying skills (the roots) atrophy, which may then impede performance even in other tasks that we still need to do manually.

We often hear the expression "people are our greatest asset". But assets can depreciate. There's a need to balance between efficiency today and resilience tomorrow, and meta-skills could help us achieve this. more

Career development

 1d

Ten simple rules for turning your qualifying exam into an NIH-style fellowship proposal: A guide for graduate students


Citation: Peña-Lima C, Bader CS, Ball BK, Dildine TC, Dissanayake MV, van 't Erve I, et al. (2026) Ten simple rules for turning your qualifying exam into an NIH-style fellowship proposal: A guide for graduate students. PLoS Comput Biol 22(6): e1014420. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014420

Editor: Russell Schwartz, Carnegie Mellon University, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Published: June 18,... 2026

Copyright: © 2026 Peña-Lima et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Graduate school is a time of transformation as you develop from being a consumer of science to a producer of science. In the US, many PhD programs require a capstone research project like a qualifying exam ("quals") where students develop research ideas and writing skills. In preparing for your qualifying exam, you've invested a lot of time into writing about your research. Did you know you can turn your qualifying exam into a grant proposal or fellowship to fund your graduate career? Graduate students can apply to a variety of external and internal funding opportunities.

Writing research proposals is a way to put your future as a scientist in focus as a graduate student. Funding opportunities for graduate students (often referred to as fellowships, such as US National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellowships) typically require three interwoven plans: research, mentoring, and career development. It is also a great way to build your resume as securing funding has benefits for many professions including as an independent researcher [1]. Even if not funded, the act of writing a proposal is a valuable skill to develop as it strengthens your critical thinking and writing skills [2]. Writing a proposal enhances your science and career development as it requires you to engage with your research in new ways, think more deeply about future career plans, and identify the type of training and support you will need to reach your goals. It demonstrates your commitment to your research and solidifies relationships with mentors by seeking their feedback. With external funding, you have additional agency to pursue your own research interests as well as use available funds for professional development training, like attending conferences. By applying for external funding and familiarizing yourself with the process, you are gaining valuable knowledge that will be beneficial to your development as a researcher in the long-run, so think of this experience as a journey and not an outcome.

While the process of applying can be time-consuming, it is well worth the effort because it is an opportunity to develop your skills as a scientist. In the rules below, we have laid out a step-by-step guide to turn your qualifying exam into a fellowship-style research proposal. These rules will be most useful if you have already completed your quals or will in the near future. While they are tailored to US funding mechanisms, the concepts of the rules may be applicable to other contexts.

The first step to getting funded is understanding the funding landscape, including funders' deadlines, eligibility, and interests. Many universities compile lists of funding opportunities relevant for their graduate students, such as Stanford University's Funding Train [3], UCLA's GRAPES [4], Harvard University's CARAT [5], and John Hopkins' funding list [6]. Check to see if your university has something similar. External funding may include the trainee focused NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Fellowship or the American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship. Make a comprehensive list of potential funding opportunities, including relatively soon deadlines (6-9 months) as well as future opportunities (1+ years). Add to your list any relevant internal funding opportunities as well, such as seed funding or a slot on an institutional training grant, such as NIH's T32.

Deadlines and eligibility are frequently strict (e.g., citizenship status, time in program), but many funders have broad interests and cast a wide net for research that might someday impact their stated interests. Your goal is to understand the funder's values and priorities so you can imagine how your work can align with their interests. Carefully read their website, announcements, and see who they have funded; if possible, talk to past awardees. For the NIH, the RePORTER Matchmaker [7] allows you to search key terms in your application to identify similar funded research. This process can also take time because the process of identifying a relevant funder might not be immediately obvious or straightforward and you may need to adapt your work to match the funding call.

Once you have identified an opportunity (or opportunities), reach out to relevant staff to check alignment, such as NIH's Program Officers [8]. When the data are public (e.g., NIH Data Book [9]), look at both the percentage and total number of awards given. For NIH, each institute (for example National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) sets its own priorities for funding, meaning proposal success rates can vary widely and you may want to tailor your proposal to the institute that funds more fellowships each year.

Once you've identified a potential funder, the next step is to make a "checklist" or list of the documents required for your proposal. Carefully read the proposal's instruction guide, which will describe the documents you need to prepare. Some funders will also share the review criteria that reviewers will use to rank proposals, which you should use to inform your writing as well. Gather funded and even unfunded sample proposals from peers or other repositories, such as Open Grants [10], to examine how other grant writers approached their proposals; for tips on how to examine funded proposals, read: How to Gain a Competitive Edge in Grant Writing [11]. Once you have gathered all the relevant information, draft a checklist with all the necessary steps needed to submit your proposal. Do include major proposal documents like the research (Rule 5), mentoring (Rule 6), and career development (Rule 7) plans, internal requirements (Rule 9), required letters (Rule 6), facilities documents, and other resources or equipment. Other documents may be optional, or only required when certain types of methods, such as when vertebrate animals or human subjects are proposed. It may be helpful to group the documents on your checklist into categories such as core documents (requiring lots of iterative feedback (Rule 9), e.g., the research plan), letters or supporting documents (requiring documentation from others, e.g., a letter from your mentor), and standard content (these are commonly referred to as boiler documents) that may be available through your mentor which require minimal changes (e.g., list of equipment available for you in the lab).

Now that you are familiar with the specific documents you will need, figure out when you're going to complete them. We recommend between 3 and 6 months before the deadline to prepare a compelling proposal. Your timeline should provide time for outlining, drafting, seeking feedback, and revising. Remember that some universities will require review of the final proposal too (Rule 9). Build into your timeline plenty of buffer time (20-30%) to accommodate unexpected situations and other major commitments. Also, add breaks into your timeline so you can return to your proposal with fresh eyes. Consider making your timeline visually appealing and keeping a copy at your writing station so you are reminded of your daily (or weekly) writing goals.

Equipped with both your checklist and timeline, create a tracking system that will work for you in documenting your process and highlighting remaining tasks because writing a proposal requires stellar project management skills.

It is important to note that, as a graduate student, you are still developing many of the skills required to write a proposal and may experience a miscalculation in how long it takes to complete certain writing tasks. Know that this is part of the learning process and may require you to adjust your timeline as you re-align your estimations to reflect your actual writing time.

Grant writing is rarely a solo effort. Turning your qualifying exam into a compelling proposal requires planning, communication, and community.

Writing is an important part of being a scientist [13,14]. Developing strategies to counter barriers to writing progress, such as procrastinating or hitting writer's block, is a critical component to writing productivity and future success as a scientist. There are specific resources on overcoming writing resistance [15-17], and we have identified a few methods to address these barriers, detailed below. It is important to evaluate your writing practice often, and when you are feeling your writing productivity is lagging, try a new method.

You likely received feedback on your qualifying exam documents already, which is a great starting point for drafting your research proposal. The research plan for graduate funding opportunities usually consists of two sections: 1) Specific Aims and 2) Research Strategy. The specific aims section or document provides the executive summary of the research proposal and the research strategy, consisting of several subsections like the significance, innovation, approach, timeline, and future directions, provides the details of what you will do. Always read instructions carefully because funders can have different requirements and page limits. For example, NIH NRSA Fellowships do not require an innovation subsection.

To begin, revise (or draft anew) an outline of your specific aims, we recommend reviewing The Anatomy of a Specific Aims Page [19] and Writing Your Specific Aims [20]. Remember that you may need to adjust the scope of your qualifying exam proposal to fit the requirements of your targeted funding opportunity. After drafting your specific aims outline, seek feedback from your peers and mentors (Rule 8). Next, begin drafting your specific aims document using complete sentences and paragraphs. Again, seek feedback from peers and mentors as well as revise to increase clarity, conciseness, and compellingness. Finally, draft the research strategy subsections. Ask yourself these questions to help structure the research strategy [21]:

Continue to seek feedback as you outline and draft each subsection of the proposal. You may need to make adjustments to your specific aims as you continue to revise based on feedback.

Creating a mentoring plan is a crucial step not only in fostering your professional development and achieving your career growth but also in defining the success of your grant application. A well-structured and personalized mentoring plan provides guidance, support, and valuable insights that uniquely enhances your research capabilities and future successes. The mentoring team consists of your primary mentor, potential co-mentor(s) (if necessary), and advisors (i.e., collaborators, contractors, consultants, committee members). The mentoring plan should clearly outline how the primary mentor will guide your research and career development including the specific skills and experiences you need to prepare for your next career stage. Key components of a mentoring plan include defining goals and milestones, detailing specific career development activities, describing the mentor's role and expertise, and providing a strong communication plan to ensure a successful mentor-mentee relationship.

When developing the mentoring plan, make sure to distinguish between roles of the primary mentor, co-mentor(s), and advisor(s). The level of responsibility, involvement, and commitment to the research proposal will be different for each role. The primary mentor will provide overall supervision and guide the applicant's research and career development. A co-mentor is a member of the mentoring team that may bring forth an additional expertise or skillset needed to facilitate the research. An advisor likely contributes specific expertise in the proposed research. The mentor and co-mentor often write the mentor plan (often as a letter to reviewers) that is included within the proposal. You may also include letters of support from advisors, which detail their specific contribution and commitment to supporting you.

The career development plan is required for most graduate funding opportunities because funders are as interested in augmenting your development into an impactful scientist as making contributions to science. Because of this important goal, the career development plan should be written early in your proposal writing process to allow time for feedback and alignment with the research and mentoring plans. It is important to show consistency and cohesion across the three plans: research, mentoring, and career development.

Start with a careful assessment of your current skills and the skills needed in order to obtain your career goals and objectives. This exercise is useful for writing your career plan, as well as planning and prioritizing relevant training opportunities throughout your graduate training. In general, focus your career development plan on a few key skills. Prioritize the skills needed for your proposed research as well as professional development skills such as scientific writing, mentorship, and presentation. You don't want to propose skills or training that you have already completed. Instead, acknowledge you already have foundational skills, but require additional training within specific areas. For example, describe your strong foundation in bioinformatics programming and propose additional coursework in Python. Present this level of background and rationale for each proposed skill. Clearly defining the why and when for each skill is essential and should align with the proposed research and timeline.

If you are proposing skills that are not already utilized by your lab, propose a co-mentor or advisor (Rule 6) to provide those skills. Clearly identify who will train you for each of the proposed skills.

Your career development plan must follow the Goldilocks principle and be just right in terms of its scope. Proposing too many commitments outside of the proposed research won't seem feasible to reviewers. While it is fine to spend one semester as a teaching assistant or doing outreach, these time commitments should be balanced such that your primary focus is the proposed research. It is also important to tailor the training to your training stage. For example, early-stage graduate students can include introductory coursework, but later stage graduate students would include more advanced courses.

An important feature of the grant writing process is the iterative cycles of receiving feedback, making revisions, and seeking further feedback. You likely already received feedback from your committee and your mentor on your quals. Seeking additional feedback from peers and mentors can reveal gaps in the research's significance, design, methodology, etc., enabling you to address these issues before submitting your proposal. Additionally, seek feedback on your two other plans (career development and mentoring plans) required for fellowship research proposals. Both peer and faculty feedback are valuable for improving your writing [25], and shown to increase the likelihood of funding success [26].

Typically, you do not submit your proposal directly to the funder. Instead, it is submitted by an institutional signing official at your university; each university has its own internal processes for submitting proposals. Typically, universities will review the final proposals a full 5 business days in advance of the funder's due date. This internal deadline is necessary to allow time for the institutional signing official to review your proposal for completeness and compliance. Thus, it is imperative that you are aware of your university's internal processes so ask your mentor as well as peers about internal processes. A good rule of thumb is to aim to have your proposal completed at least one week before any internal deadlines (Rule 2), to allow you a bit of breathing room as you address last-minute problems that always arise (i.e., formatting issues, missing documents, etc.).

Submitting a grant requires a celebration, a step that must not be skipped. Grab a cupcake or your favorite treat to acknowledge this momentous milestone. Even better, embrace this triumphant moment with a picnic or dinner date with a friend or your pet.

After celebrating, it is time to follow through on next steps. Some funders allow submission of post-submission materials, which is an opportunity to update your reviewers on progress since the submission of the proposal. Allowable post-submission materials vary by funders, but can include updates on new publications, recent presentations, exciting preliminary data, as well as revisions to the proposal. NIH post-submission materials are requested by the Scientific Review Officer (SRO) via email, about one month before the Scientific Merit Review meeting, so mark your calendar when to expect this request and create a plan for generating a robust post-submission response. Additionally, if your proposed research requires oversight, such as from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), submit or update the relevant protocol as soon as your proposal is submitted. It is important to ensure you are ready to start your research as the funder may give you only days to complete time-sensitive documents when they are finalizing funding decisions, such as NIH's Just in Time (JIT) process.

NIH, like some other funders, prohibits applicants from having identical proposals under review at the same time. However, applying to different funding sources, such as federal (e.g., NIH's F31), foundational (e.g., American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship), and internal (e.g., seed funding), is often allowed, but carefully review instructions for information on duplicate submissions and scientific overlap policy. Applying to different funding sources increases your chances of becoming funded, although you may not be able to accept multiple awards. Proposal writing should be a process of continuous progress, like your research. Work towards the next funding opportunity on your list by generating a checklist and timeline (Rule 2). Then, revise your proposal drafts to be responsive to the new review criteria and instructions. You have invested an enormous amount of time and resources already in drafting your proposal so keep moving it forward.

Lastly, most funders will share reviewers' feedback about your proposal's strengths and weaknesses. Relish any comments from reviewers' that highlight your proposal's strengths. Conversely, negative feedback can invoke strong emotions so allow time for the self-care you need to view the feedback as constructive. As you develop a plan for potential next steps for your proposal drafts, consider if the reviewer's concern is major or minor. Finally, revise your proposal and resubmit or submit as a new proposal.

Turning your qualifying exam into a grant proposal may seem daunting at first, but it can become one of the most rewarding parts of your graduate training. Think of proposal writing not as a hurdle, but an opportunity to discover your voice as a researcher and communicate the excitement of your science to the world. more

Career development

 1d

Career Move with Confidence this Spring | Workforce Staffing


Spring often brings a natural sense of momentum.

Settled into the new financial year, budgets are set and many organisations start hiring. This makes it a strong time to get ahead and hit the ground running with your job search

For many professionals, it is the time of year when career goals come back into focus. Reviews may have taken place, bonuses may have landed, busy periods may be easing,... and the question starts to surface:

Is now the right time to make a move?

Whether you are actively job hunting, quietly exploring opportunities, or simply wondering what else might be out there, making a career move is rarely just about finding a new role. It is about making the right decision for your future, your progression, your financial goals and your work-life balance.

The UK labour market remains considered and competitive, with hiring intentions still cautious in some areas and employers paying close attention to workforce planning, skills and salary expectations.

That means candidates need to approach the process with clarity, preparation and confidence.

At Workforce Staffing, we support candidates across a wide range of professional sectors, including Accountancy & Finance, Business Support, Manufacturing & Engineering, Driving & Transport, and Industrial & Warehouse roles. From entry-level opportunities to senior and C-Suite appointments, our role is to help people make informed career decisions, not rushed ones.

So, if you are thinking about your next move this spring, here is how to navigate the key stages with confidence.

1. Know Why You Want to Move

Before updating your CV or applying for roles, take a step back and ask yourself what is really driving the decision

Are you looking for better progression? A higher salary? More flexibility? A stronger culture? A manager who supports your development? A role that better matches your skills?

A new challenge?

Getting clear on your reasons will help you make better decisions throughout the process. It will also help you communicate your motivations clearly in interviews.

A career move should not just be about leaving something behind. It should be about moving towards something better. That also means looking beyond the basic salary. A higher salary can be attractive, but it should not be the only factor in your decision. Before accepting an offer, consider the full picture.

Sometimes the best opportunity is not simply the one with the highest number attached. It is the one that gives you the strongest overall fit.

When you understand your priorities, it becomes much easier to assess whether an opportunity is genuinely right for you.

2. Prepare for Interviews Properly

Interviews are not just about proving you can do the job. They are also your opportunity to understand whether the business, team and role are a good fit for you.

Preparation makes all the difference.

Start by researching the company. Look at their website, recent news, values, services, team structure and social media presence. Revisit the job description and prepare examples that show your experience in action. Think about situations where you have solved problems, supported a team, improved a process, managed deadlines or delivered results.

Strong interview answers are built around evidence. Instead of simply saying you are organised or confident under pressure, talk through a real example that proves it.

You should also prepare questions of your own. These might include:

What does success look like in this role after six months? How is the team structured? What are the biggest priorities for the person coming into this position? What opportunities are there for progression or development? How would you describe the company culture?

Good questions show that you are engaged, thoughtful and serious about the opportunity.

3. Be Honest About What You Want

It can be tempting to tell an employer what you think they want to hear. But the best career matches happen when both sides are honest.

If flexibility is important to you, be clear about it at the right stage. If progression is a key reason for moving, say so. If salary is a major factor, do not avoid the conversation completely.

That does not mean going into an interview with a list of demands. It means being professional and clear about your priorities.

Salary conversations can feel uncomfortable, but they are a normal part of the recruitment process. The key is to go in with a realistic understanding of your market value. Research similar roles in your sector, location and experience level, and think about your full package too, including pension, bonus potential, holiday allowance, hybrid working, training and wider benefits.

When asked about salary expectations, try not to undersell yourself. A confident response could be:

"Based on my experience and the type of role I'm looking for, I'd be expecting something in the region of £X to £Y, depending on the wider package and responsibilities."

You can also frame your wider priorities clearly:

"I'm looking for a role where I can continue developing technically but also take on more responsibility over time."

"I'm keen to understand what progression looks like within the team."

"Salary is one part of the decision for me, but I'm also looking closely at culture, development and long-term fit."

Clarity helps everyone. It allows recruiters and employers to guide you towards roles that properly match what you are looking for.

If you are working with a recruiter, use their insight. A good recruiter (like us) can help you understand market rates, employer expectations and how to position the conversation professionally.

4. Do Not Rush a Counter-Offer Decision

Counter-offers are common, especially when an employer does not want to lose a valued member of the team.

On the surface, a counteroffer can feel flattering. A salary increase, new title, improved benefits or promise of progression may suddenly appear once you hand in your notice.

But before accepting, pause and ask yourself an important question:

Does this solve the reason I wanted to leave in the first place?

If your only concern was salary, a counter-offer may be worth considering. But if your reasons were linked to culture, lack of progression, workload, management style, burnout or feeling undervalued, a counter-offer may only be a short-term fix.

Think about:

Why has this offer only appeared now? Will the promised changes actually happen? Has trust been affected? Are you staying because it is right, or because it feels safer?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Some counter-offers work. Others simply delay the inevitable.

The important thing is to make the decision based on your long-term goals, not short-term pressure.

5. Make Your Next Move With Confidence

Once you have made your decision, leave well.

Your reputation matters, and the way you exit a role can be just as important as the way you start one.

Even if your experience has not been perfect, try to leave on good terms. Industries can be smaller than they feel, and maintaining positive relationships is always worthwhile.

If any formal agreements or written terms are involved, make sure you read everything carefully and take the time to understand what you are agreeing to before making a final decision.

Final thoughts

A spring career move can be a brilliant opportunity to reset, refocus and take the next step in your professional journey.

At Workforce Staffing, we are here to support candidates through every stage of the process, from exploring opportunities and preparing for interviews to navigating offers, salary conversations and next steps.

So, whether you are ready to apply, considering your options or simply wondering what your next step could look like, now is a good time to start the conversation. more

Career development

 1d

Are HR Certifications Worth It To Land Your Dream HR Job?


You can meet most of the requirements for an HR role and still pause at one line in the job posting: "HR certification preferred." It's easy to read that as a sign that HR certification is the missing piece between you and the HR job you want. Sometimes, it is.

A recognized HR certification can show employers that you understand core HR concepts, from hiring and onboarding to compliance,... benefits, and employee relations. But HR job postings rarely point to certification alone. Employers also look for practical proof that you have the HR skills needed for the specific role.

So, are HR certifications worth it? Yes, if it helps you prove you're ready for the HR role you want.

In this guide, we'll break down when an HR certification can strengthen your application, when experience matters more, and how to turn your certification into evidence that hiring managers can trust.

Contents

Are HR certifications worth it?

What hiring managers look for in HR candidates

What an HR certification does for your job search

Which HR certification matches your situation?

Certification and practical skills: How they work together

Are HR certifications worth it?

Yes, HR certifications are worth it when they help you build and prove job-ready HR skills. For early-career candidates, a certification can strengthen your resume and help you get noticed.

For experienced HR professionals, it works best when you can connect the credential to real examples of HR work, such as improving onboarding, supporting employee questions, managing HR data, or advising managers. The key is to treat certification as part of your career strategy, not the whole strategy. Employers want to know what you can do with your HR knowledge. That means pairing your certification with practical skills, role-specific examples, and clear interview stories

Use this table to decide whether certification is the right next step and which skills you need to build next. The third column is the most important one. It shows where certification should lead: stronger, role-relevant capability.

Use the skills column as your decision filter. An HR certification is more valuable when it helps you build the capabilities employers expect for the role you want. For example, if you are targeting HR Coordinator roles, prioritize learning that helps you support onboarding, maintain employee records, answer basic policy questions, and work with HR systems. If you are moving toward people analytics, focus on HR data, reporting, dashboarding, and evidence-based decision-making.

This is where a practical HR certificate program can help. Instead of studying HR concepts in isolation, look for courses that help you create work samples, apply frameworks, and practice real HR tasks. Those examples make it easier to show a hiring manager how your qualifications connect to the job.

What hiring managers look for in HR candidates

Before you decide whether an HR certification helps, look at what it competes with in a hiring decision. HR hiring managers rarely evaluate certification on its own. They look at the full picture: relevant experience, demonstrated skills, communication and judgment, and commitment to HR as a profession.

A certification mostly supports commitment and baseline knowledge. It can also support demonstrated skills if the program includes practical assignments, templates, case work, or projects you can discuss in interviews.

For entry-level HR roles, employers often look for evidence that you can handle the day-to-day work: keeping employee records accurate, coordinating onboarding, supporting recruitment, answering basic policy questions, protecting confidential information, and using HR systems or spreadsheets.

This can help when your résumé is still thin. If you are switching careers or have recently graduated, an HR certification can show that you have invested in HR fundamentals. But the stronger signal is what you can do with that learning.

Certification may become less of a priority as you gain experience. When a hiring manager compares two HR candidates, they will look more closely at what each person has done. They will want concrete examples of employee support, process improvement, HR reporting, manager communication, or problem-solving.

It also helps to understand how applications are filtered. Larger employers may use applicant tracking systems to scan resumes for keywords, including SHRM-CP, PHR, aPHR, HRIS, onboarding, employee relations, or benefits administration. Smaller companies may rely on a hiring manager to review resumes manually. In both cases, certification can help you get noticed, but practical proof helps you move forward.

What an HR certification does for your job search

A certification can support your job search in a few clear ways:

* It helps your résumé pass the first screen: HR job descriptions often list certifications as preferred qualifications, though some mid-level and senior roles may list them as required. If the role names SHRM-CP, PHR, or aPHR, having that credential can keep your application in the pool.

* It validates knowledge your work history doesn't show yet: An HR certification gives employers proof you understand HR fundamentals. This helps when you're moving from administration, operations, customer service, office management, or another related field.

* It shows a commitment to HR: Studying for an exam or finishing a certification program shows you take your career path seriously. This can help you stand out from other entry-level candidates with similar experience.

* It has a reported salary association: SHRM states that HR professionals who pass the SHRM certification exam report salaries 14% to 15% higher than peers who don't. While this guarantees you higher pay, it's still a positive association.

* It can create practical evidence: If the program includes assignments, templates, or projects, you can turn that work into interview examples or portfolio-style proof.

Despite these advantages, an HR certification does not prove you can run a fair investigation, coach a manager, design an onboarding process, or analyze turnover. To make the credential work harder, connect it to examples that show how you think and how you would apply HR knowledge at work.

For entry-level candidates, the most immediate benefit is access. A certification can help you land interviews you might not get otherwise. The career and salary benefits usually come later, once you combine your certification with experience, projects, and measurable results.

Which HR certification matches your situation?

A fair question at this stage is: What jobs can I get with an HR certificate or certification? The answer depends on the certification and your experience. A foundational credential can support applications for HR Assistant, HR Administrator, HR Coordinator, Recruiting Coordinator, or People Operations Assistant roles. More senior roles usually expect experience and a professional credential.

The options fall into three groups:

Entry-level HR credentials

If you're trying to break into HR, start here. The Associate Professional in Human Resources (aPHR) from HRCI is for those starting their HR journey. No HR experience is required for this knowledge-based certification, though you'd need a high school diploma or global equivalent to apply. The aPHR allows you to show baseline HR knowledge when your résumé doesn't include HR job titles yet, making it useful before you even land your first HR role.

Professional credentials for HR

Once you are working in HR or performing HR-related duties, professional certification becomes more relevant. The Professional in Human Resources (PHR), also by HRCI, focuses on technical and operational HR knowledge, including U.S. laws and regulations. HRCI requires professional-level HR experience, with the exact requirement depending on your education level.

The SHRM-CP is for people who perform general HR or HR-related duties, students, and people pursuing a career in HR management. SHRM says candidates don't need an HR title, degree, or previous HR experience to apply, though basic HR knowledge is recommended. These credentials carry more weight once you have practical exposure, and are a better fit when you can connect exam knowledge to real HR work.

Skill-based HR certificate programs that build capability

A certificate program is different from an exam-based certification. It focuses on learning and practical assignments rather than passing a formal credentialing exam. This route can be useful when you need to build skills and show proof points in interviews.

AIHR's help learners build practical skills in specific HR domains, such as AI in HR, HR business partnering, people analytics, and talent acquisition. AIHR offers structured online HR certificate programs and shorter courses covering HR domains, with hands-on labs and capstone projects that help learners apply concepts to real HR scenarios.

AIHR is recognized by several HR associations, including SHRM, HRCI, HRPA, CPHR, ATD, and CIPD. It is also recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP® recertification activities.

Certification and practical skills: How they work together

An HR certification can help you get noticed, but practical skills help you show that you're ready to do the job. The most valuable approach is to choose learning that helps you build HR knowledge and apply it in ways employers can recognize.

Hiring managers want to know that you understand HR concepts, but they also want to see how you would use them at work. For example, can you support onboarding? Keep employee records accurate? Answer basic policy questions? Coordinate interviews? Communicate clearly with employees and managers? Use HR data to spot a people-related issue?

This is where the right HR certificate program can make a difference. A strong program gives you practical tools, assignments, templates, and scenarios that help you build skills you can use on the job.

For example, two candidates may both say they understand onboarding. One can explain what onboarding means. The other can show a 30-day onboarding plan, explain how they would coordinate manager check-ins, and describe how they would track whether a new hire has the tools, access, and support they need. The second candidate gives the hiring manager clearer evidence of job readiness.

That's why HR certifications and certificate programs are most valuable when they help you build proof alongside knowledge.

Next steps

If you want to build practical HR skills, AIHR's is a great place to start. It covers HR fundamentals across the employee life cycle, HR policy work, HR project management, AI-supported prioritization, and communication skills. It also doesn't require any previous HR experience.

You can preview the AIHR learning experience and get a clear picture of what to expect with its Certificate Programs through the before enrolling. more

Career development

 1d

"Your friend failed to solve a basic problem": Employee refers a friend, HR's next email leaves her stunned


A software professional's referral led to an unexpected HR email questioning her judgment after the candidate failed a basic coding problem. The company then decided to re-assess the employee's own technical skills, sparking widespread amusement and debate online about the risks of employee referrals.

A software professional's hilarious workplace story has gone viral online after she claimed that... their company decided to reassess her own technical skills. This happened simply because a friend she referred for a job interview could not solve a basic coding problem.

The post, shared on X, quickly sparked laughter and debate among users, with many suggesting why one should not refer to strangers as referrals.

ALSO READ: Father's Day 2026 Quote of the Day by George Washington

HR's unexpected email leaves employee stunnedAccording to the viral post, the employee referred a friend for an open position at their company. However, things took an unexpected turn after the referred candidate reportedly struggled with a basic "3 Sum" coding problem during the interview process.

Soon afterward, the employee received an email from HR that read: "The candidate you referred was unable to solve a basic 3 sum problem. This has raised serious concerns regarding your judgment and evaluation process."

The message went on to state that the company was now questioning the employee's standards for recommending candidates.

ALSO READ: 'Still feels like a dream': Employee goes from Rs 70,000 to Rs 1.58 lakh per month after layoff, shares career lesson

Company wants to "verify credentials" againThe email became even more surprising when HR informed the employee that a fresh

technical interview would be conducted for them as well.

The message stated: "Accordingly, we have decided to conduct a fresh technical interview for you as well. We look forward to verifying your credentials once again."

The unusual response quickly caught the attention of Reddit users, many of whom found the situation absurd and humorous.

Social media users couldn't stop laughingThe post generated a flood of reactions from people who joked that employee referrals might soon become a risky activity. One user jokingly said, "Your friend must have said I am here for my 20th interview."

"This is exactly why people don't respond when strangers ask for referrals. a referral isn't just forwarding a resume. you're putting your own reputation on the line," commented another. "Imagine trying to help someone and catching strays yourself," said another.

Several users sarcastically suggested that companies could start holding employees responsible for every candidate they recommend, while others said they had never heard of an organization re-testing an existing employee because of a referral.

Many commenters wondered whether the email was genuine, while others treated it as one of the funniest workplace stories they had seen in recent weeks.

Why the story resonated online

Employee referral programs are common across the tech industry, with companies often encouraging workers to recommend qualified candidates. However, referrals are generally viewed as introductions rather than guarantees of technical ability.

That is why the idea of re-interviewing an employee because their referral failed a coding question struck many internet users as both bizarre and entertaining.

The viral post highlights the sometimes unpredictable nature of workplace culture and hiring processes. While referrals can help companies find talent faster, most employees would probably agree that being asked to retake a technical interview because of someone else's performance was not on their list of expected consequences.

Disclaimer: This article is based on a user-generated post on X. ET.com has not independently verified the claims made in the post and does not vouch for their accuracy. The views expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the views of ET.com. Reader discretion is advised. more