Jenson Lane


Career development 10h
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.
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  • Melanchtone Anzala

    58m

    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

  • Mitchell Brock

    4h

    *Do

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Career development

 12h

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

 13h

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

 13h

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

 14h

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

 17h

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

 17h

"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

Career development

 18h

Internship Ready: How to Pass (and Even Leverage) Your Background Check


Action step: add a short "digital contributions" section to your résumé and Checkr Profile -- projects, hackathons, peer-reviewed papers -- so the next-gen screeners see more than a binary pass/fail.

Eighty-one percent of surveyed companies say they will either increase (53%) or keep steady (28%) the number of interns they bring on this year -- NACE.

More openings mean more applicants. When you... attach a recent clean background-check PDF to your application, you remove friction and signal professionalism.

Early-talent recruiters report that pre-cleared candidates move through hiring pipelines 28% faster.

[For extra résumé-polishing pointers, check out IvyPanda's student-friendly guide to personal branding for interns before you hit "submit."] 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   

  • Juli Whitten

    19h

    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

  • OYELEKE AYODEJI

    23h

    As a professional Horticulturist, you are not entitled to pay for something that is caused by natural disaster. However, you can recommend for them... plants that can survive the temperature in the region be it hot or cold. If it was caused due to mismanagement, they have a point but not when the weather changed abruptly and led to the death of a plant. This should be reviewed in your contract very well, also you are supposed to understand the terms on your contract and what is within your KPI.
    Thank you      more

    2
Load more...

Career development

 21h

In Conversation | Chloe Scott on Her Journey in Wealth


By submitting this form, I agree for Core-Asset Consulting to store my data on their database so I can be contacted about job opportunities, Diversity & Inclusion surveys, and other relevant business updates.

You can withdraw your consent at any time. Click here for our detailed privacy statement.

In this edition of our In Conversation series, we speak with Chloe Scott, Associate Consultant... within our Wealth team. With a focus on building genuine alignment between individuals and opportunities, Chloe reflects on sector insights, what defines a successful placement, and the rewarding impact of supporting long-term career development.

What drew you to recruitment, and how did you end up at Core-Asset?

I studied English at university and was keen to build on my communication skills in a role that combined both administrative and people-facing responsibilities. Recruitment felt like a natural fit, allowing me to use those strengths while also developing a broader skillset.

I was actually approached by Ellen on LinkedIn, and the way she described the team and the role aligned perfectly with what I was looking for. Since joining Core-Asset, it's been incredibly rewarding to progress to Associate Consultant and to work closely with Ellen on the wealth desk.

Tell us about your progression since joining the team?

Since joining the team, I've had exposure to a variety of areas across the business, which has been a great foundation for my progression.

I initially worked on the Verify side, carrying out onboarding checks, before transitioning into the CAS team, where I managed onboarding and pre-employment processes for candidates, alongside supporting reception and wider team administration. Both roles really strengthened my attention to detail, as well as my ability to build candidate and client relationships.

At the start of this year, I was promoted to Associate Consultant and took on more responsibility on the recruitment side. The experience I gained in my previous roles has been hugely transferable, from guiding candidates through onboarding to understanding the importance of CV accuracy and confidently handling more challenging conversations.

What do you enjoy most about working in the wealth sector?

What I enjoy most about working in the wealth sector is how interesting it is to see the different career routes and opportunities available within wealth management. It's a space where there's a clear focus on long-term progression, which often leads to more considered and thoughtful conversations with candidates, particularly those earlier in their careers. It's particularly rewarding to be able to match individuals with opportunities that genuinely align with their long-term goals and support their professional growth.

I also really enjoy working closely with Ellen and learning from her expertise in the sector.

Are there any trends you're seeing across the roles you work on?

At the moment, it's a very busy market, which is great to see. There's strong demand across the wealth sector at all levels, from entry-level roles through to more experienced hires.

It reflects the continued growth of the industry and makes it an exciting time to be working in this space.

How would you define a successful placement?

I'd define a successful placement as one where there is clear alignment between the candidate and the client, not just in skills and experience, but also in long-term goals and cultural fit. It's about taking the time to really understand what a candidate is looking for in their career and ensuring the opportunity aligns with that, while also reflecting the attitude, values and qualities that the client prioritises.

Ultimately, a successful placement is one that sets both sides up for long-term success, where the candidate can grow, and the client gains someone who will make a meaningful and lasting contribution to their team.

Can you share a particular role or placement you are proud of?

One placement that has always stood out to me is my very first one. I recently caught up with the individual, and it was really rewarding to hear how much they're enjoying the role and how well it's worked out for them. It really reinforced the impact a well-aligned placement can have.

More broadly, I'm particularly proud of placements where candidates move into opportunities that genuinely allow them to develop and flourish over the long term. Seeing that progression and knowing you've played a small part in supporting someone's career journey, is incredibly rewarding. more

Career development

 22h

Faces of HR: Sheila Bala on the 3 things that make rewards a true differentiator for talent


She explains why effective rewards must differentiate employers, reflect what employees truly value, and stay aligned with business strategy and what this means for attracting talent in a competitive market.

Meet Sheila Bala (pictured above), Head of Talent Acquisition Malaysia at Standard Chartered Bank.

Armed with experience across global organisations including HSBC and Shell, she brings deep... expertise in talent advisory, driving operational efficiencies, and future-ready workforce strategies. She is also known for championing a skills-first agenda, using AI and data to bridge the gap between education and industry, while supporting leadership development and career inclusivity.

Her entry into HR was not planned. She began her career in hospitality before moving into marketing within the education sector. Her first real exposure to HR came when she took on employer branding and graduate recruitment responsibilities for Shell Malaysia. That experience became a turning point, leading her into a long-term career in talent acquisition, where she has remained focused on the intersection of business strategy and human impact.

Over time, she has seen talent acquisition evolve from a functional hiring role into a more strategic business function. From her perspective, effective rewards and employee value propositions now go beyond pay and benefits to include flexibility, wellbeing, career development, and purpose.

As organisations rethink how they compete for talent, Sheila believes total rewards must be viewed as part of a broader talent and business strategy. As she prepares for her session at Total Rewards Asia Summit 2026, Malaysia, she tells Mary Ann Bundukin that she hopes attendees will rethink rewards not as a standalone HR topic, but as a key driver of attraction, engagement, and retention in a competitive market.

Read Sheila's full interview below:

Q What first drew you to HR, and what keeps you passionate about it today?

My entry into the field of human resources was entirely serendipitous. Initially, I embarked on my professional path within the hospitality sector, before transitioning to marketing at an educational institution in Malaysia. The turning point came when I undertook marketing and employer branding responsibilities for Shell Malaysia's graduate programme. That experience marked my first real step into HR, and from that moment, I have never looked back.

What continues to sustain me in my role within HR is the unique opportunity to operate at the crossroads of business strategy and human impact. I have always been intrigued by how organisations achieve success through their people -- not merely by relying on structures, processes, or financial results, but through the calibre of talent that is attracted, nurtured, and retained.

My passion for HR, especially in the realm of talent acquisition, is driven by the field's evolution into a far more strategic function. It is no longer concerned solely with filling vacancies; it is about shaping the workforce of the future, understanding what matters most to talent, and enabling organisations to remain competitive in a rapidly changing landscape. This dual focus -- commercial and profoundly human -- makes the work both energising and rewarding.

Q From a talent acquisition perspective, what makes a rewards strategy truly effective in helping organisations stand out in a competitive hiring market?

A rewards strategy becomes truly effective when it goes beyond pay and reflects the full employee value proposition. In today's market, candidates are looking at the whole experience -- fair and transparent compensation, meaningful benefits, flexibility, wellbeing, career development, and a sense of purpose. Current total rewards thinking increasingly emphasises a more holistic and personalised model, especially as employees expect rewards to integrate wellbeing, flexibility, and career progression.

From a talent acquisition lens, the best rewards strategies do three things:

* Differentiate the organisation clearly -- they answer why a strong candidate should choose you over another employer.

* Reflect what employees genuinely value -- not what employers assume they value.

* Align with the business and culture -- because rewards are most powerful when they reinforce the behaviours and outcomes the organisation wants to drive.

A strong rewards strategy helps attract talent, but an effective one also builds trust. Candidates can tell when the offer is thoughtful, relevant, and designed around real workforce needs rather than market benchmarking alone.

That is increasingly important in a market where rewards are becoming a strategic lever, not just a support mechanism.

Q What is one common misconception about total rewards that you'd like to challenge?

One common misconception is that total rewards is simply about salary and benefits. While many people believe total rewards are limited to salary and benefits, the reality is that the concept is far more comprehensive. Total rewards encompass the overall value an employee experiences from being part of an organisation, which includes not only pay and benefits, but also recognition, wellbeing, flexibility, and opportunities for development.

Current frameworks and industry discussions increasingly define total rewards in this more holistic manner, reflecting the wider range of factors that contribute to employee satisfaction and engagement. It is important to challenge the misconception that total rewards are solely about pay, as this limited perspective might cause organisations to overlook the elements that truly drive attraction and retention.

Employees increasingly expect to feel valued in a holistic way. This means they seek not just fair compensation, but also opportunities for growth, flexibility in how and where they work, and reassurance that their employer recognises the various life stages and priorities that shape individuals throughout their careers.

Organisations that understand and respond to these broader needs are more likely to create a stronger and more sustainable talent proposition. By personalising rewards to account for multigenerational needs, organisations can better support employees whether they are just starting out or are well established within the organisation, acknowledging the different stages of life and career progression.

Q Please tell us a fun fact about yourself that people may not know.

Outside of work, I enjoy expressing my creativity and unwinding through two main passions. Firstly, I am a self-described "wannabe" drummer, and you'll often find me tapping out rhythms and challenging myself to master new drum patterns. Secondly, I love getting lost in the pages of a gripping crime thriller.

For me, both music and stories offer a wonderfully restorative escape from the demands of the working day. Whether I'm quietly exploring a new novel or perfecting a complex rhythm, these activities provide a welcome balance of creativity and contemplation in my life beyond the office.

Q As a speaker at #TotalRewardsMY, what do you hope attendees will take away from your session?

I hope attendees leave with the perspective that total rewards is not just a compensation discussion -- it is a talent and business strategy discussion. In a competitive market, organisations cannot rely on traditional approaches alone. Rewards need to be more intentional, more human-centred, and more closely linked to what talent values.

Across current industry conversations, that means balancing competitiveness with equity, personalisation with simplicity, and employee needs with business sustainability. If attendees walk away thinking more broadly about how rewards can strengthen attraction, engagement, and retention -- and how to turn rewards into a real differentiator in their talent strategy -- then I would consider that a meaningful outcome.

I want to attend the conference: If you're keen to attend this closed-door conference, kindly register your interest here. For speaking opportunities, please write in to Mary Ann Bundukin. We look forward to welcoming you!

I want to sponsor: Engage in meaningful dialogue through dedicated speaking slots, roundtable discussions, and at your booths! If your organisation provides any talent solutions and products that you'd like to showcase, you'll fit right into this event. To learn how you can sponsor, please reach out to a member of our team now! more

Career development

 1d

SmartPA Administration Assistant And PA Job | Nasi Ispani


The SmartPA Administration Assistant and PA Job offers South Africans an opportunity to work remotely for a growing international company. SmartPA is currently hiring a full-time Business Support Executive to provide administrative and personal assistant support to clients across various industries.

This permanent remote position offers a salary ranging from R200,000 to R450,000 per year, along... with additional benefits and career development opportunities.

About the SmartPA Administration Assistant and PA Job

SmartPA is a global administrative support company that helps businesses improve efficiency through professional PA and administrative services. The company works with clients in industries such as technology, automotive, retail, and legal services.

As a Business Support Executive, you will become part of SmartPA's Centre of Excellence. This client-facing team delivers tailored support solutions while maintaining high service standards.

The role is fully remote, allowing successful candidates to work from anywhere in South Africa.

Key Responsibilities of the SmartPA Administration Assistant and PA Job

Successful candidates will provide a wide range of administrative and personal assistant services.

Administrative Support Duties

You will be responsible for:

* Managing diaries and calendars

* Scheduling appointments and meetings

* Handling email correspondence

* Preparing and formatting documents

* Editing business documents

* Managing data entry tasks

* Producing reports and business updates

Client Support Responsibilities

The role also involves:

* Supporting multiple stakeholders

* Delivering customised client solutions

* Building strong professional relationships

* Acting as a trusted business support partner

* Ensuring excellent service delivery

Process Improvement and Innovation

SmartPA encourages employees to identify opportunities for improvement.

Key duties include:

* Recommending process enhancements

* Streamlining workflows

* Supporting automation initiatives

* Implementing best practices

* Contributing innovative ideas

Skills and Requirements

SmartPA is seeking motivated individuals who can thrive in a fast-paced environment.

Essential Requirements

Applicants should have:

* Strong Microsoft Office skills

* Advanced knowledge of Outlook, Word, and Excel

* Administrative support experience

* Project delivery experience

* Excellent organisational skills

* Strong time management abilities

* The ability to manage multiple priorities

* Excellent communication skills

Desirable Qualifications and Experience

The following experience will be advantageous:

* CRM platform knowledge

* Booking system experience

* Office management experience

* Account management experience

* Diary management experience

* Document formatting expertise

* Data handling and reporting experience

Working Hours and Employment Details

Before applying, candidates should understand the working schedule.

Employment Type:

* Permanent position

* Full-time employment

* 37.5 hours per week

Working Hours:

* Monday to Friday

* UK business hours

* 9:00 am to 5:30 pm (UK time)

Since the role supports international clients, employees must be comfortable working according to UK schedules.

Salary and Benefits

The SmartPA Administration Assistant and PA Job offers a competitive remuneration package.

Salary

Successful applicants can expect:

* Annual salary between R200,000 and R450,000

The final salary will depend on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Employee Benefits

SmartPA provides several attractive benefits, including:

* Competitive salary packages

* Annual performance bonuses

* Flexitime initiative

* 33 days of annual leave

* Departmental incentives

* Employee Assistance Programme

* Professional growth opportunities

The company's flexitime programme allows employees to work when they are most productive while maintaining core working hours.

Why Work for SmartPA?

SmartPA promotes a modern and innovative workplace culture. The company focuses on delivering technology-enabled administrative support while maintaining a strong human-centred approach.

Employees benefit from:

* Remote work flexibility

* Exposure to international clients

* Collaborative team environments

* Career development opportunities

* Continuous learning experiences

* A supportive company culture

The organisation values creativity, adaptability, and problem-solving skills.

Who Should Apply?

This opportunity may suit individuals who:

* Enjoy administrative work

* Have strong organisational abilities

* Work well independently

* Are comfortable in remote environments

* Can manage competing priorities

* Enjoy supporting business operations

* Want exposure to international clients

Candidates who are proactive and solutions-focused are likely to succeed in this position.

How to Apply

Interested candidates can submit their application through SmartPA's online recruitment portal.

Applicants should ensure their CV highlights:

* Administrative experience

* PA experience

* Microsoft Office proficiency

* Time management skills

* Client service experience

* Project coordination abilities

Early applications are recommended as positions may be filled once suitable candidates are identified.

Apply Here.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The SmartPA Administration Assistant and PA Job presents an excellent opportunity for South Africans seeking remote employment with an international organisation. With competitive pay, flexible working arrangements, and opportunities for professional growth, this role is ideal for experienced administrative professionals who enjoy delivering high-quality support and building strong client relationships. more

Career development

 1d

5 Best Machine Learning Bootcamps in 2026


Companies can't hire ML professionals fast enough right now. Seriously -- demand is outpacing supply by a mile. Businesses are throwing AI and automation at everything, which means they need people who can actually build and deploy these systems.

The World Economic Forum says "AI and Machine Learning Specialists" are the fastest-growing job category globally. Money-wise, it's one of the best bets... in tech. ML engineers in the US pull in around $160-180k base salary in 2026 -- more than double the national average. Top-tier engineers and researchers? They're clearing $300-400k+ once you factor in bonuses and stock.

Here's the catch: breaking into the field isn't easy. Employers want more than a CS degree. They want portfolios packed with real projects, people who understand production constraints, folks who can talk to business teams without making everyone's eyes glaze over. A lot of CS grads and online course completers hit a wall right here -- they've got the knowledge but can't package it in a way that makes hiring managers notice.

That's where ML bootcamps shine. These intensive programs exist for one reason: take someone with little to no practical experience and turn them into a hirable candidate in a few months. Real projects. Current skills. A story that makes sense to American employers.

How We Picked Best ML Bootcamps

The AI education market has blown up lately. Everyone's promising you a six-figure job. But Reddit tells a different story -- plenty of people dropping $10-15k only to end up with a nice-looking certificate and no job offers.

We used six criteria to find the actual best programs:

* Curriculum quality - Does the course match what employers actually need? Real projects and current tech stacks score higher.

* Student outcomes - Job placement rates, LinkedIn success stories, how many graduates actually land that first Junior/Entry role or successfully switch careers.

* Cost and financing - Price matters, but so does accessibility. Installment plans, scholarships, income share agreements, veteran or immigrant grants.

* Instructor experience - Have they worked on real ML/AI teams? Built production systems? Worked on significant projects or research?

* Career support - The bootcamp should help you market yourself: résumé work, LinkedIn optimization, mock interviews, job search help, employer connections.

* Reviews and community - Course Report, SwitchUp, Trustpilot reviews, plus Reddit threads, Slack/Discord groups, and what alumni actually say.

The Top 5 Machine Learning Bootcamps for 2026

1. TripleTen - Strong Foundation for Beginners

TripleTen runs a 9-month part-time online ML bootcamp (20 hours weekly). Pay upfront and it's $8,505, or $10,913 with installments.

What You'll Learn

You start with Python, statistics, SQL, and data visualization. Then move into core ML algorithms. Finally, you hit neural networks, computer vision, NLP, generative AI, API development, cloud deployment, and MLOps. The capstone project tackles real business problems, giving you portfolio pieces that American employers actually care about.

How It Works

Training happens online with flexible scheduling -- perfect if you're working or switching careers. The program uses "sprints" -- every week or two, you focus on a specific topic plus a project. This builds real skills incrementally instead of drowning you in theory.

You get mentor support: experienced instructors, daily office hours, webinars. Feels like working with an actual team.

Career Help

82% of TripleTen grads land technical jobs within 6 months. They offer a job guarantee: if you don't get hired within 10 months (while meeting program requirements), you get your money back. Full career services included -- résumé help, interview prep, post-grad support, portfolio assistance.

Best for beginners without IT/STEM backgrounds and career switchers who want to break into ML.

2. NYC Data Science Academy - Technical Depth for Analysts

This intensive bootcamp targets people with analytical backgrounds who want to level up fast. Two formats: 12 weeks full-time or 24 weeks part-time. Study on campus in NYC or online. Full tuition is $17,600, with installments and scholarships available.

How It Works

Group training with a fixed schedule creates a fast pace, constant feedback, and some healthy competition. You'll need 60-100 hours of prep work before starting so everyone enters at the same baseline.

Heavy emphasis on hands-on practice and teamwork. The learning process simulates working on a real data team. No formal job guarantee, but the program focuses hard on preparing you for actual openings.

Grads build strong technical foundations suitable for junior and mid-level roles in data science and analytics. The curriculum emphasizes tools companies actually use, including the big data stack.

What Makes It Different

High technical bar and serious depth -- not a "start from zero" course. Cohort-based instead of self-paced. You move in a strict rhythm like you would on the job. Big Data in the curriculum, which is rare for ML bootcamps. Direct connection to NYC, one of the world's major data markets.

Best for people with experience in analytics, Excel, statistics, or programming who can handle a heavy workload and want deep technical training fast.

3. Caltech CTME - Academic Rigor Meets Real-World Practice

Caltech's CTME program blends the academic depth of a top-tier university with practical, industry-focused training. Not for beginners -- it's designed for people with technical or analytical foundations who want to develop skills for more advanced AI roles. Cost is around $8,000.

Curriculum

Six months covering statistics, programming basics, ML methods, neural networks, image and text processing, modern deep learning architectures, and generative AI elements. Includes lab work, case studies, and several projects applying methods to real examples.

What Sets It Apart

Academic connection. Instructors and experts from Caltech give the program more theoretical depth than most commercial bootcamps. Projects mirror industry tasks: text analysis, computer vision, recommendation models.

You get a Caltech CTME certificate, which carries weight from one of the world's most respected tech universities. Online format with live sessions and flexible scheduling works for working professionals.

More emphasis on theory than "quick" programs. You'll understand principles, not just apply tools.

Best for people who already know programming and statistics basics and want serious, academically rigorous AI and ML training. Especially useful if you want practical skills plus fundamental understanding of AI methods.

4. Flatiron School - Career Support Powerhouse

Flatiron School focuses on education plus long-term career support. They've built a community of 20,000+ graduates working at leading tech companies worldwide, giving students access to referrals, networking, and continued support after graduation. Fixed tuition of $16,900, with installments, scholarships, and partner financing.

How It Works

Two main formats: 15 weeks full-time for people who can commit fully, or up to 60 weeks flexible in part-time or self-paced mode. Available online and on campus in several US cities. The program adapts to different learning speeds and life situations.

Tuition includes full career services: personal career coach, résumé and LinkedIn help, interview prep, and post-grad support.

Best for people who want a strong career boost with coaching, an alumni network, and ongoing support. Good choice if you value flexible format, job search help, and a powerful professional community after you finish.

5. 4Geeks Academy - Modern, Flexible, Results-Focused

4Geeks Academy offers an online (optionally on-campus) Data Science and ML bootcamp heavy on practice, AI tools, and career readiness. 16 weeks part-time, or a pre-work plus core program model. Tuition runs up to $13,499. Groups max out at 12 students for better quality. Individual mentoring and lifetime support included.

How It Works

The school uses Ribobot, their AI assistant that analyzes your code, catches errors, and gives personalized feedback while you work. Fills gaps between mentor sessions and speeds up learning.

Job placement support through partner networks, career mentoring, and post-grad help. The school reports 84% of grads find jobs within 6 months. You build real projects: data collection to model deployment. Looks strong on résumés and in portfolios.

Best for people who want to enter data science/ML without a strong background but with willingness to learn, work on projects, and build real solutions. Good option for a modern, practical program with flexible format and strong early-career support.

ML Bootcamps Comparison

Which One Should You Pick?

Starting from scratch? TripleTen gives you the safest entry with guaranteed support and job placement. Built from basics to production-level skills, perfect for career switching.

Already have analytical/technical skills? Consider NYC Data Science Academy (Big Data focus, intense cohort format) or Caltech CTME if you want academic rigor and a strong university name.

Career development is your priority? Look at Flatiron School -- they have one of the best career support systems and a massive alumni community.

Want flexibility with modern tech? 4Geeks Academy offers AI-powered support without overwhelming entry barriers. Great for entering ML through hands-on projects and personalized mentoring. more

Career development

 1d

I ran my résumé through ChatGPT -- these 5 prompts exposed mistakes I kept missing


AI helped me refine my résumé and stand out in a crowded job market

Getting your résumé noticed in today's job market is a gauntlet. Between navigating automated Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and catching a hiring manager's eye in under six seconds, a generic CV just won't cut it anymore.

While Google autocomplete trends prove that millions of people are turning to AI for career help, generic... prompts like "write me a resume" usually lead to generic and ineffective results. Ironically, when you're desperate to land your next role, spending time perfecting your résumé and applying to jobs can feel like a full time job.

After hours of testing and tweaking, I've refined a toolkit of specific, highly effective prompts that go beyond the basics. Whether you are aiming to beat the bots, punch up your bullet points or tailor your experience to a dream role, here are 5 ChatGPT prompts I actually use to make a résumé stand out.

TL;RD hot tips for your résumé

* Never copy-paste blindly: ChatGPT is a brilliant first-draft partner, but always review the output to ensure it accurately reflects your actual experience. Don't let it invent skills or experience you didn't actually achieve.

* Keep your formatting clean: Once ChatGPT gives you the text, paste it into a clean, text-based template (like Google Docs or Word). Avoid heavy graphics or multi-column layouts, which confuse ATS scanners.

* Feed it context: The more specific details you give the AI about your industry and background, the less generic your results will be.

1. Ensure a real human sees your résumé

The prompt: "Act as an expert recruiter. Here is the job description [Insert Job Description] and my current resume [Insert Resume]. Analyze both and identify the key skills, hard keywords and core methodologies missing from my resume that are highly emphasized in the job description. Provide a list of these gaps and suggest exactly where and how to integrate them naturally."

As much as we want to get our résumés in front of human, the truth is, 70% of most major companies use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to scan resumes for specific keywords before a human ever sees them. This prompt acts as your preliminary scan, identifying exactly what your résumé is missing compared to the job description.

The goal: Ensure your résumé doesn't get automatically filtered out by recruitment software.

2. Let your experience speak for itself

The prompt: "Review the following bullet points from my résumé. They currently sound too passive or task-oriented. Rewrite them using strong action verbs and a results-driven framework (Focus on: Action + Context + Quantifiable Outcome). If a metric is missing, use brackets like '[insert metric]' to show me exactly where I need to add data or percentages. Here are the bullet points: [Insert Bullet Points]."

Hiring managers don't want a list of your daily tasks, but do want to see the impact of your work. This prompt uses the proven X-Y-Z formula (Accomplished [X], as measured by [Y], by doing [Z]) to transform passive wording into active, results-oriented bullet points.

The goal: Turn boring, task-based descriptions into high-impact, metrics-driven achievements so your résumé takes shape and stands out.

3. Humanize your résumé

The prompt: "Review this résumé section. The tone needs to be professional, confident, and modern, but completely free of artificial intelligence cliches, overused corporate jargon or overly dramatic adjectives (like 'passionate innovator' or 'revolutionized'). Rewrite it to sound natural, direct and human. Here is the text: [Insert Text]."

ChatGPT loves words like "spearheaded," "utilized," "testament" and "synergy." And while you may have written a few of those words yourself, it still could come off as robotic and insincere. Not to mention, recruiters spot these AI-generated buzzwords from a mile away. Use this prompt to clean up your tone and keep it grounded.

The goal: Strip away the obvious "AI flavor" and make your résumé sound like a real, professional human wrote it.

4. Update your experience for a changing market

The prompt: "I am currently a [Your Current Role] trying to transition into a [Target Role]. Review my experience below and translate my transferable skills (like project management, communication, or problem-solving) into the terminology and framing typically expected of a [Target Role]. Highlight the overlap. Here is my experience: [Insert Experience]."

If you are trying to transition into a new field or step up into management, your current résumé might look a bit misaligned. This prompt helps translate your transferable skills into the specific "language" of your target industry. Just be sure to include as much about the role you want (include a job description, if possible).

The goal: Pivot your existing experience to fit a slightly different industry or higher role.

5. Let your résumé act as interview prep

The prompt: "Based on the job description and my tailored résumé provided below, identify the top 3 potential 'weak spots' or missing qualifications an interviewer might challenge me on. Then, provide 3 behavioral interview questions I am highly likely to be asked, and suggest which specific project from my resume I should use to answer them using the STAR method. Job Description: [Insert] Resume: [Insert]."

After reviewing and updating your résumé, you're going to want to look it over so you're prepared when you do get your foot through the door and lock down an interview. This prompt looks at your tailored résumé alongside the job description to predict exactly what the interviewer will grill you on, giving you a massive head start.

This is my favorite prompt because it really helps reduce jitters before an interview.

The goal: Turn your newly updated résumé into an active study guide for the actual interview.

A great résumé gets you through the door, but you still have to back it up in person. This prompt looks at your tailored résumé alongside the job description to predict exactly what the interviewer will grill you on, giving you a massive head start.

Bottom line

Ultimately, running my résumé through ChatGPT was a reality check. Keep in mind that you don't want AI to rewrite your résumé word-for-word, but rather to act as a starting point. Rather than creating a perfect resume from scratch, ChatGPT takes what you've given it and takes a pass to help you confront your blind spots, avoid passive wording and to support your search by adding important keywords.

Remember, iff you treat AI not as a ghostwriter, but as a brutally honest editor, you can turn a generic CV into an interview magnet. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Career development

 1d

Why Quiet Quitting 2026 Is Increasing in Modern Workplaces


The workplace has undergone significant changes over the past few years. Employees today are re-evaluating their priorities, expectations, and relationship with work. As a result, a growing trend known as quiet quitting has gained momentum across industries worldwide.

Quiet quitting 2026 is not about employees resigning from their jobs. Instead, it reflects a deeper issue of disengagement where... workers do only what is required of them and stop investing extra effort beyond their defined responsibilities.

For organizations, this trend serves as an important warning sign. It highlights underlying issues related to employee wellbeing, workplace culture, leadership effectiveness, and career development opportunities.

Understanding why quiet quitting is increasing and how to address it is essential for businesses that want to retain talent and build engaged teams.

What Is Quiet Quitting 2026?

Quiet quitting refers to employees psychologically checking out from work while remaining employed. They continue performing their core responsibilities but no longer go above and beyond their job requirements.

Unlike traditional resignation, quiet quitting happens internally. Employees may still attend meetings, complete assignments, and meet minimum expectations, but their motivation and emotional connection to work decline significantly.

The rise of quiet quitting 2026 reflects changing employee expectations around work life balance, wellbeing, and purpose.

Many professionals are questioning the long-standing culture of overworking and sacrificing personal wellbeing for career advancement.

This trend is becoming increasingly visible across industries as employees seek healthier relationships with work.

Organizations looking to address disengagement should also explore emotional intelligence in leadership to better understand employee needs and workplace dynamics.

Major Causes Behind Quiet Quitting 2026

Quiet quitting rarely happens overnight. It often develops gradually due to ongoing workplace frustrations and unmet employee expectations.

Burnout and Stress in Quiet Quitting 2026

Workplace burnout remains one of the leading drivers behind quiet quitting.

Many employees continue facing:

- Heavy workloads

- Unrealistic deadlines

- Constant pressure to perform

- Long working hours

- Lack of recovery time

When employees feel exhausted for extended periods, they often reduce their emotional investment in work as a protective response.

Instead of leaving immediately, many choose to do only what their role requires.

This response helps them preserve energy and protect their mental wellbeing.

Poor Workplace Communication in Quiet Quitting 2026

Communication plays a critical role in employee engagement.

Employees are more likely to disengage when they experience:

- Lack of recognition

- Limited feedback

- Unclear expectations

- Poor leadership communication

- Minimal involvement in decision-making

When people feel unheard or undervalued, their commitment to organizational goals naturally decreases.

Strong leadership communication helps employees feel connected, appreciated, and motivated.

Lack of Career Growth in Quiet Quitting 2026

Career stagnation is another major contributor to employee disengagement.

Employees often become frustrated when they see:

- Limited promotion opportunities

- No clear career path

- Lack of professional development

- Insufficient training programs

People want to feel they are progressing in their careers. When growth opportunities disappear, motivation often declines as well.

Research on employee burnout and engagement continues to highlight the strong connection between workplace experience and long-term performance. Learn more through Gallup Research.

Warning Signs of Quiet Quitting 2026

Identifying quiet quitting early can help organizations address issues before they result in turnover or declining performance.

Reduced Engagement and Participation

One of the earliest indicators is a noticeable drop in employee participation.

Employees may:

- Contribute less during meetings

- Avoid volunteering for projects

- Show limited enthusiasm

- Reduce collaboration with colleagues

They often focus only on assigned responsibilities and avoid additional initiatives.

Emotional Detachment in Quiet Quitting 2026

Disengaged employees frequently display emotional withdrawal from work.

Common signs include:

- Reduced motivation

- Increased frustration

- Lack of enthusiasm

- Minimal connection to company goals

This emotional distance can affect both individual and team performance.

Decline in Productivity and Initiative

Employees experiencing quiet quitting often stop demonstrating proactive behavior.

Warning signs may include:

- Missing deadlines

- Reduced creativity

- Lower productivity

- Minimal problem-solving efforts

- Avoidance of leadership responsibilities

While basic tasks may still be completed, the drive to contribute beyond expectations often disappears.

Organizations focused on long-term success should also invest in workplace culture transformation strategies that encourage engagement and collaboration.

How Quiet Quitting 2026 Impacts Businesses

Although quiet quitting may appear less serious than employee turnover, its impact can be significant.

Lower Productivity

Disengaged employees often contribute less discretionary effort, reducing overall team performance and organizational efficiency.

Higher Employee Turnover

Quiet quitting frequently becomes a precursor to resignation.

Employees who remain disengaged for extended periods are more likely to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Reduced Workplace Morale

Employee disengagement can influence team culture.

When disengagement spreads, motivation and collaboration often decline across entire departments.

Negative Customer Experience

Employees who feel disconnected from their work may provide lower levels of customer service and support.

This can directly affect customer satisfaction, retention, and brand reputation.

Businesses seeking to understand evolving workforce dynamics can explore future workplace trends through McKinsey & Company.

How Leaders Can Prevent Quiet Quitting 2026

The responsibility for addressing quiet quitting does not rest solely on employees. Leadership plays a major role in creating workplace environments where people feel engaged and valued.

Build a Supportive Work Culture

Employees thrive in cultures where communication, trust, and recognition are prioritized.

Leaders can improve engagement by:

- Encouraging open conversations

- Recognizing achievements regularly

- Providing constructive feedback

- Supporting employee ideas

- Promoting collaboration

Employees who feel appreciated are more likely to remain committed to their work.

Prioritize Employee Wellbeing

Wellbeing is becoming a central component of employee retention strategies.

Organizations should support employees through:

- Flexible work arrangements

- Mental health resources

- Realistic workloads

- Wellness initiatives

- Work life balance programs

A healthy workforce is typically more productive, engaged, and resilient.

Create Career Development Opportunities

Employees want opportunities to learn and grow.

Leaders can improve engagement by offering:

- Upskilling programs

- Leadership development initiatives

- Mentorship opportunities

- Career planning discussions

- Continuous learning resources

Clear growth pathways give employees reasons to remain invested in their future with the organization.

Organizations can also explore top skills you need to succeed in the 2026 workplace to prepare employees for future opportunities.

The Future of Work Beyond Quiet Quitting 2026

The future workplace will likely place greater emphasis on employee experience, flexibility, and purpose.

Human-Centered Workplaces

Organizations are increasingly recognizing that employees perform best when they feel respected, supported, and connected.

Flexible Leadership Styles

Modern leaders must adapt their approaches based on employee needs, changing work environments, and evolving workforce expectations.

AI and Employee Experience

Artificial intelligence is also influencing employee engagement by improving communication, personalization, performance tracking, and workforce planning.

However, technology should enhance -- not replace -- the human aspects of leadership.

Businesses interested in emerging workforce changes can explore future of work insights from World Economic Forum.

Want to Build a Healthier and More Engaged Workplace?

Employee engagement does not happen by accident. It requires intentional leadership, strong workplace culture, meaningful communication, and genuine investment in employee growth.

Explore expert workplace insights on Quirkwise and learn practical strategies to improve employee engagement, strengthen culture, and build high-performing teams.

Conclusion

Quiet quitting 2026 reflects deeper workplace challenges related to burnout, communication gaps, employee satisfaction, and career development.

Organizations that focus on employee wellbeing, growth opportunities, recognition, and healthy workplace cultures will be better positioned to retain talent and improve engagement.

The future of work belongs to companies that understand people are not just resources -- they are the foundation of long-term business success. more

Career development

 1d

QuickCheck: Are scammers impersonating an airline to steal 'processing fees' from job seekers?


JOB hunting is stressful enough without having to worry about whether the company you are applying to is even real.

A claim has been circulating about a website that looks remarkably similar to the careers portal of a major Malaysian airline, asking applicants to pay a fee before their application can proceed.

Is this scam website really impersonating the airline to charge job seekers processing... fees?

Verdict:

TRUE

AirAsia has confirmed that a fraudulent website impersonating its official careers portal is currently targeting job applicants.

The fake website, found at airasiaexpress.com, mimics AirAsia's official careers page to collect personal information from applicants and demands payment of "processing fees" to proceed with a fake hiring process.

"Job seekers are advised that AirAsia's official careers portal is exclusively located at careers.airasia.com and the company never charges processing fees for job applications," said AirAsia in a statement released on Thursday (June 18).

"Applicants are advised not to share personal details or payment information with unauthorised websites."

AirAsia said it continues to monitor such fraudulent activities and encouraged the public to verify all recruitment information through official channels. more

Career development

 1d

7 Best Executive Assistant Recruiters for High-Growth Founders Scaling Fast


A last-minute contract error gets caught; an unfinished pitch deck goes out at midnight. In both stories, the assistant makes the difference.

Hire well and you reclaim about 10-20 hours a week for product, fundraising, and strategy. Hire poorly and chaos follows. Yet, according to Robert Half, 94 percent of administrative leaders say finding skilled talent is challenging, and 60 percent expect to... rely on contractors just to keep up.

This guide fixes that bottleneck. Below, meet seven recruiters who consistently place board-room-ready EAs with venture-backed teams.

Why They Rank: Methodology and Criteria

This ranking is designed to provide readers with an objective overview rather than serve as a platform for paid placements.

More than twenty staffing firms specializing in executive assistant recruitment were evaluated. The assessment included a review of client testimonials, publicly available salary data, Clutch and Glassdoor reviews, and agency case studies. Feedback from founders who had engaged these services was also considered to better understand strengths, outcomes, and areas where expectations were not fully met.

Based on this research, a scoring framework was developed around five key factors that are particularly important for high-growth companies:

* Specialization and proven experience working with venture-backed leaders

* Average time required to hire a fully vetted executive assistant

* Depth of candidate screening, including skills assessments, psychometric evaluations, and reference checks

* Length of placement guarantees and documented retention beyond the first year

* Geographic reach and ability to support remote hiring needs

Each recruiter received a weighted score across these categories. The seven firms featured in this ranking stood out for their strong overall performance across multiple dimensions, rather than excelling in only a single area such as speed or cost efficiency.

Why rank them at all? When you are raising a round or closing a customer, you do not have time to scroll alphabetized directories. A clear order helps you focus on the partner that solves your biggest problem, whether that is "find me someone yesterday" or "protect me from another bad cultural fit."

Use the table in the next section as a cheat sheet, and keep these five criteria front of mind when you speak with any recruiter -- whether they appear on our list or not.

Your cheat sheet: compare the top seven in one glance

You know the criteria. Next, see how each recruiter stacks up. Scan the grid, pick the column that answers your need, and you will know who to call first.

*Time to hire reflects typical permanent placements once the search kick-off call is complete.

1. C-Suite Assistants: your white-glove EA matchmaker

Picture a recruiter that lives and breathes executive support, nothing else. That is C-Suite Assistants. For more than twenty years, their team has paired senior leaders with career EAs who operate at board-meeting-level polish; their research on executive asssistants for AI companies also reports that seven in ten business leaders now rank speed as their top competitive strategy, making a high-caliber EA a growth prerequisite rather than a perk.

C-Suite Assistants executive assistant recruiter homepage screenshot

You start with an in-depth discovery call. They dig into your work style, decision cadence, and the personalities already on your leadership team. That context fuels a search through a private network of assistants who have supported Fortune 500 CEOs, venture-backed founders, and family-office principals.

Within three to four weeks you receive a shortlist of two or three contenders, each pre-vetted for discretion, anticipatory thinking, and the tech stack you use daily. Placement fees run about twenty-five percent of first-year compensation, and every hire carries a 90-day replacement guarantee, a safety net seldom needed because retention rates stay well above industry norms.

Where C-Suite shines is cultural chemistry. Founders told us the agency acted more like an executive coach than a vendor, guiding them on how to delegate, set expectations, and avoid the "super-assistant" burnout trap. If you need an EA who can brief investors at 9 a.m. and manage a last-minute flight change at 9 p.m., this is the partner to call.

Best fit: Funded startups and high-visibility CEOs who value poise, confidentiality, and a smooth onboarding experience.

2. Support Shepherd (Somewhere): fast, remote, and budget-friendly

If you run a distributed startup, you need an assistant who is fluent in Slack threads, async hand-offs, and nine-time-zone calendars. Support Shepherd, now rebranding as Somewhere, was built for exactly that world.

Support Shepherd Somewhere remote EA recruiter homepage screenshot

The model is simple. Recruiters based in talent hubs such as the Philippines and Latin America pre-screen thousands of English-fluent professionals, and only the top one percent reach your inbox. You pay nothing up front, interview at no cost, and cut a check only when you sign an offer. Every placement carries a six-month "perfect hire" guarantee; if the match falters, they replace the EA at no charge.

Founders appreciate the economics. Offshore salaries trim payroll by up to 80 percent while preserving overlap with U.S. time zones. That makes it possible to bring on full-time help months -- or funding rounds -- earlier than planned.

Speed is another draw. Because Somewhere keeps a live bench of vetted candidates, the average client sees a shortlist in about ten days. Compare that with the four-to-six-week cycle of a traditional search, and you regain lost time before the next sprint even starts.

Remote readiness is not a buzzword here; it is the entire playbook. Assistants are tested on async judgment, documentation habits, and cloud-tool fluency. That matters now more than ever, with 37.7 percent of businesses adopting virtual assistants for administrative work, according to Market.us.

Where is the catch? Cultural nuances and holiday calendars require a short learning curve. Strong leaders address it by setting expectations early and meeting their EA halfway on communication rituals.

Best fit: Scrappy, globally minded founders who need reliable support yesterday yet still watch every dollar.

3. Tiger Recruitment: enterprise polish with global reach

Growth seldom happens in one postcode. When your calendar hops from New York to Dubai to London, you need an assistant who can keep pace. Tiger Recruitment delivers that reach.

Founded in 2001, Tiger operates hubs in London, New York, Zurich, Dubai, and Dublin. That network feeds a deep bench of multilingual EAs who already understand visa rules, cross-border etiquette, and 3 a.m. board calls. According to the firm, 93 percent of permanent placements clear probation, proof that Tiger filters out "just-okay" résumés before they reach you.

Ethics add another layer of confidence. The firm is a certified B Corp, so its business practices meet verified social and environmental standards.

Expect a four-week search cycle on average. Fees follow the classic contingency or retained model, and placements come with a three-month guarantee. The firm can also provide temporary "Tiger Virtual" assistants if you need cover tomorrow while the permanent search runs.

Best fit: Late-stage startups and multinational teams that want seasoned, multilingual support plus the assurance of working with a values-driven agency.

4. Pocketbook Agency: startup chemistry over cookie-cutter matches

Pocketbook Agency approaches hiring like a relationship matchmaker, not a résumé mill. Recruiters focus on intangibles such as communication style, pace tolerance, and humor before they discuss a candidate's typing speed. SnackNation named the firm the number-one EA search partner in 2026 for this chemistry-first approach.

The process begins with a candid founder interview. You talk through how you give feedback, what "proactive" looks like in your world, and the energy level that works for your team. Pocketbook turns those cues into a narrative it shares with candidates, so you skip the awkward "first date" stage and head straight to real fit.

Turnaround runs two to four weeks, thanks to a network rooted in tech, media, and creative circles. Assistants can shift from investor memos to studio logistics with ease. Fees sit at about twenty-five percent of salary, backed by a ninety-day guarantee. Clients say many hires stay for years because both sides felt understood from day one.

If you believe the soft stuff decides success but lack time to screen for it, Pocketbook is the partner to call.

Best fit: Venture-backed startups, entertainment firms, and culture-driven founders who value personality alignment as much as pedigree.

5. Robert Half (OfficeTeam): speed and scale when you need it now

Sometimes your assistant resigns on Friday and the board deck is due Monday. That is when founders call Robert Half. With hundreds of offices worldwide and an AI-driven matching engine, the firm can place a temporary EA on your screen or in your lobby within one day.

Robert Half OfficeTeam administrative staffing service page screenshot

Robert Half's administrative arm, OfficeTeam, keeps pipelines for every support role from junior admins to senior executive assistants. Because these professionals are already on Robert Half payroll as contractors, onboarding is as quick as a DocuSign. Many founders begin with temp-to-hire, then convert the EA to full-time once chemistry is clear.

Coverage is broad. Whether you work from Austin, Berlin, or a coworking spot in Boise, Robert Half likely has vetted candidates nearby or ready for remote work. The firm also supplies salary guides and market data, so you enter negotiations with real benchmarks instead of guesswork.

The trade-off for that speed is selectivity. You will still interview a few résumés, and quality can vary in such a large funnel. Partner with a senior recruiter and specify "career EA" to avoid junior overflow.

Best fit: Founders who cannot afford a vacancy, such as parental leave, unexpected turnover, or a looming fundraising roadshow, and need dependable coverage in days, not weeks.

6. Belay Solutions: fractional EA firepower on subscription

Hiring an assistant once meant committing to an $80k salary the day you signed seed documents. Belay changed that model. You subscribe to a vetted, U.S.-based executive assistant for the exact hours you need -- ten, twenty, or forty each week -- and adjust as workloads shift.

Belay Solutions virtual executive assistant subscription service screenshot

Onboarding feels like concierge service. A Belay consultant maps the tasks clogging your calendar, then selects an EA who already knows your software stack. Because every assistant is a Belay employee, payroll, taxes, and benefits stay on their books, not yours. You receive one monthly invoice and can delegate immediately.

Founders say the fractional start is the standout feature. You can test senior support for $1,500 to $3,000 per month, well below a full-time salary, then expand hours once the return is clear. Belay's client success managers check in often, smoothing communication and replacing talent quickly if needed.

The limitation? Remote only means no one greets VIPs at the office or packs product kits. If you need in-person errands, consider another option. For calendar defense, inbox triage, and project coordination from a seasoned pro, Belay supplies expert help without a long-term lock-in.

Best fit: Early-stage to mid-market founders who need senior EA judgment for about twenty hours a week and prefer zero HR overhead.

7. Keller Executive Search: headhunting the unicorn EA

Some roles cannot be filled by job ads alone. When you need the assistant who quietly runs a Fortune 100 CEO's life, or a chief-of-staff-level EA ready to join an ambitious startup, you call Keller Executive Search.

Keller treats the EA seat like any C-suite hire. Consultants map the strategic outcomes you expect, then discreetly approach high-performing assistants who are already employed and not scrolling LinkedIn. The result is a candidate slate most agencies will never present.

Rigor defines the process. Every prospect completes psychometric and cognitive assessments plus scenario interviews that simulate real-time crisis management. That depth supports Keller's 210-day replacement guarantee, one of the longest in the market.

Precision requires time and investment. Plan for a 30- to 60-day search cycle and a retained fee structure: one-third up front, one-third at shortlist, and the balance on hire. Founders choose Keller when they view the assistant as a strategic partner worth the premium.

Best fit: CEOs who need a world-class right hand and can wait a few extra weeks for the perfect match.

2026 hiring trends every founder should factor in

The assistant landscape keeps evolving. Three shifts now shape how, when, and where you hire.

Remote work became the norm first. According to Market.us, 37.7 percent of businesses use virtual assistants for administrative tasks, and adoption climbs fastest inside venture-backed tech firms. Remote fluency is no longer a perk; it is the baseline.

Second, AI moved from hype to daily workflow. Top EAs already rely on scheduling bots, GPT-powered draft writers, and automated research digests. The tech does not replace them; it multiplies their output. Smart recruiters now screen for assistants who can prompt, QA, and refine AI results so you never see rough edges.

Finally, the market tightened and prices rose. In San Francisco and New York, six-figure EA salaries are common. Offshore or fractional models surged because they deliver support without payroll shock. Subscription services such as Belay and offshore partners like Somewhere thrive on that math.

What should you do? Decide early if location truly matters, budget for a tech-savvy hire, and move quickly. High-quality assistants often field multiple offers in a single week.

Disclaimer: The rankings and information presented in this article are for informational and editorial purposes only. The ranking does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or guarantee of services. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own due diligence before engaging any recruitment firm. more

Career development

 1d

The LinkedIn makeovers that actually get people hired | Mint


Summary

Updating your approach to the professional networking platform is crucial whether you're job hunting or not.

Building a strong LinkedIn profile is like hitting the gym or drinking more water. You know you should do it, but forming habits that are right for you isn't easy.

Connection requests on Mondays, kettlebell swings on Tuesdays?

Like health guidelines, online best practices... evolve. For example, the "skills" sections of LinkedIn profiles are becoming more important because recruiters increasingly filter job candidates by things they can do, not titles.

If you haven't hunted for a job in a while, you might be surprised by how integral LinkedIn has become. In the social-media age, it's often the first place that recruiters contact prospects and a key channel for networking and referrals. Many job applications now ask for profile links so hiring managers can check you out.

Myhan had a bare-bones profile until he was laid off from a customer-success role in December. The severance package from his former company included a job coach who advised him to beef up his LinkedIn presence. It paid off, and he joined medical-equipment maker Stago as a corporate partnership executive in April.

Post and post some more: Myhan committed to posting every weekday during his unemployment. Sometimes he'd share his response to a question he'd been asked in a job interview. Other times he'd repost someone else's musings about key performance indicators and add his own take.

The idea was to be visible in users' feeds and give people a sense of his work style. A former co-worker saw one of his posts and told a manager at her new company that Myhan would be a fit for an upcoming opening. The manager messaged Myhan and arranged a video call before the job was posted. He still had to go through an online application portal later, but he had a head start.

Key adjustments: Myhan added 56 skills, including conflict resolution, team building and event planning. He used AI assistant Claude to crib these from the desired skills listed in job postings for the kinds of roles he was targeting.

He also sought recommendations to add to his profile, including one from the former chief executive of the company that laid him off. She wrote that she "was impressed with how he turned around a very upset large strategic account relationship."

Gwen Gutierrez: The Targeted Job Hunter

A lot of people take a spray-and-pray approach to job hunting, using LinkedIn's "easy apply" feature. Gutierrez can count on her fingers the number of jobs she applied to before landing at pet-supply company Chewy in May as a program manager.

Use your network: Gutierrez identified a handful of companies she'd be eager to work for and monitored the openings they posted on LinkedIn. When she saw an opportunity at Chewy, she messaged a former colleague who works there to ask for a referral. Tying the request to a specific role is key, she believes.

"Don't message somebody and say, 'Oh, will you give me a referral and let me know which jobs I should apply for?' " she says. "They're not your agent. As the job seeker, you find the exact job that you want to apply to and ask for a referral for that."

Key adjustments: Gutierrez was aiming for program-management roles similar to ones she'd held in the past, so she stripped unrelated experience from her work history. She had dabbled in art education, but found including that background seemed to confuse LinkedIn's algorithm. It sometimes fed her art-teacher openings she wasn't interested in.

Jeff Conrad: The Experimenter

Conrad spent 18 years at Microsoft, an eternity in the tech sector. A layoff last summer thrust him into the unfamiliar position of using LinkedIn for a job search. With a solid severance package, he could afford to be selective and experiment with profile changes. He joined Boeing as a senior artificial-intelligence project management specialist in May.

Explain your impact: Conrad cold-applied to Boeing -- no referral, no recruiter outreach -- after LinkedIn flagged the position as a potential fit. He paid for LinkedIn's premium service, which gave him insight into who viewed his profile. Seeing that Boeing employees were scoping him out gave Conrad confidence that he was in the running.

By then he had worked to translate his record at Microsoft into plain English, helping profile viewers understand his responsibilities and impact. A lot of companies use titles and jargon that mean little to outsiders, he says, so it is important to simplify terms.

Key adjustments: Conrad also used multiple AI tools to revise, and revise again, the "about" section of his profile. He treated it like his first impression on recruiters and hiring managers, and was determined to get it right.

"Once in a while I would even have a former colleague take a look to get human input," he says.

Then he relied on data to determine what works. After making a change, he'd watch his LinkedIn metrics for a few days. Did his profile views go up or down?

Kavolshaia Howze: Queen of Patience

Even people with well-crafted profiles can have a hard time finding work, especially in struggling industries. Howze, a multimedia news producer, was looking for a full-time role for about three years before joining Verite News New Orleans as a managing editor in June.

Determination pays off: Howze's profile is as much a portfolio as it is a résumé. It features videos she produced and a link to her personal website with additional work samples. A long job search can be discouraging, but she says it is important to maintain a robust profile nevertheless. She got on her new employer's radar through a referral, and her page was ready for its close-up when the time came.

"It definitely gave the hiring manager and my future co-workers a really good glimpse into what I can do," she says.

Key adjustments: Howze watched YouTube videos about how to enhance her profile and paid a consultant for further help with the design. This includes a polished headshot and banner containing her contact info. Notably, she found and screened this person through Upwork. The internet is full of scammers selling bogus LinkedIn-optimization services, so be careful.

Now that she has a new job, Howze hopes LinkedIn can help one more time: She's using it to promote a GoFundMe campaign to cover the cost of relocating to another state. more

Career development

 1d

The LinkedIn Makeovers That Actually Get People Hired


Connection requests on Mondays, kettlebell swings on Tuesdays?

Like health guidelines, online best practices evolve. For example, the "skills" sections of LinkedIn profiles are becoming more important because recruiters increasingly filter job candidates by things they can do, not titles.

If you ...

Career development

 1d

Mastering English job interviews: A crucial skill for TVET graduates


As the semester comes to an end, most final year students are preparing to leave campus and begin a new chapter in their lives. For many graduates, securing employment begins with one important hurdle: the job interview. While technical knowledge and practical skills remain highly valued by employers, the ability to communicate effectively in English has become increasingly important in today's... competitive job market.

This challenge is particularly evident among graduates from Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes and technical universities. Many have excellent technical competencies, hands-on experience, and industry-relevant skills. However, when faced with an interview conducted in English, some struggle to express their ideas confidently. Others may choose to respond in Bahasa Malaysia even when interviewers ask questions in English, unintentionally creating the impression that they lack communication skills or confidence.

It is important to understand that employers are not necessarily looking for perfect English. Instead, they seek candidates who can communicate their thoughts clearly, demonstrate professionalism, and convince interviewers that they are capable of contributing to the organisation. Therefore, graduates should view English interviews not as a language test but as an opportunity to showcase their strengths.

One of the most effective ways to prepare for an English interview is through thorough research. Candidates should learn about the company, its products or services, vision, and recent achievements. Understanding the organisation allows applicants to provide more relevant and informed answers during the interview. Employers are often impressed when candidates demonstrate genuine interest in the company rather than appearing unfamiliar with its background.

Preparation should also include practising common interview questions. Questions such as "Tell me about yourself," "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" and "Why should we hire you?" frequently appear in interviews. Graduates should prepare concise responses and rehearse them repeatedly. Practising aloud helps improve pronunciation, fluency, and confidence. Recording oneself and listening to the responses can also help identify areas for improvement.

Another important strategy is to focus on communicating ideas rather than speaking flawless English. Many candidates become anxious because they fear making grammatical mistakes. This fear often causes them to remain silent or switch entirely to their first language. Interviewers generally understand that English may not be the candidate's native language. What matters most is the ability to convey ideas effectively. Speaking with simple vocabulary and straightforward sentence structures is often more effective than attempting to use complex language that may lead to confusion.

Graduates should also learn how to highlight their achievements persuasively. Instead of merely listing qualifications or skills, candidates should provide specific examples. For instance, rather than saying, "I have leadership skills," they could explain how they led a project team, solved a problem, or organised an event. Concrete examples help interviewers visualise the candidate's abilities and achievements. This approach makes responses more memorable and convincing.

Furthermore, non-verbal communication plays a significant role in interview success. Maintaining appropriate eye contact, offering a confident handshake where culturally appropriate, sitting upright, and smiling naturally can create a positive impression. Research consistently shows that communication involves more than words alone. A candidate's body language often reflects confidence, enthusiasm, and professionalism. Even when English proficiency is limited, positive non-verbal communication can enhance overall performance.

For TVET graduates specifically, it is essential to connect technical skills with workplace value. Many candidates spend too much time describing technical processes without explaining how their skills benefit employers. Interviewers want to know how a candidate can solve problems, improve productivity, maintain quality standards, or contribute to organisational goals. Therefore, graduates should learn to translate their technical expertise into practical workplace outcomes.

Another common mistake is immediately switching to Bahasa Malaysia when an interviewer asks questions in English. If candidates genuinely do not understand a question, they should politely request clarification. Phrases such as "Could you please repeat the question?" or "Could you explain that differently?" demonstrate professionalism and willingness to communicate. Such responses often leave a better impression than avoiding English altogether.

In addition, candidates should prepare thoughtful questions to ask at the end of the interview. Questions about training opportunities, career development, or company culture demonstrate initiative and interest. Interviews are not one-sided assessments; they are opportunities for both employers and candidates to evaluate whether there is a good fit.

Educational institutions also have a role to play in preparing students for the realities of the job market. More mock interviews, workplace communication workshops, and industry engagement activities can help students gain practical experience before graduation. Exposure to authentic interview situations allows students to build confidence and become familiar with employer expectations.

As graduates prepare to embark on their professional journeys, they should remember that confidence comes from preparation. Technical expertise may help candidates secure an interview, but effective communication often determines whether they receive a job offer. In a workplace increasingly shaped by globalisation and international collaboration, the ability to communicate in English remains a valuable asset.

For TVET and technical university graduates, the message is clear: do not underestimate the importance of English communication. Employers are not searching for perfect speakers; they are searching for capable professionals who can communicate their ideas, showcase their skills, and demonstrate their potential. With adequate preparation, practice, and confidence, every graduate can turn an English interview into an opportunity to shine.

Suzilla Jamari

Language Teacher

Centre For Language Studies

Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia more