Career development

 21h

My husband was unemployed for 10 months. He finally landed a job when he turned up at an office with a box of doughnuts.


I was skeptical of his plan as a former recruiter, but it got him the job.

My partner was laid off in January of last year. Hundreds of applications later, he'd only landed two interviews with no job offers.

We had managed to stay optimistic during the job search, using the time to travel and see family, but our positive attitudes began to wear thin as January turned into September.

As a tech... professional, he found it difficult to find work in the field as AI surges and companies grapple with the uncertainty it brings. Even with my help as a previous recruiter, he was ghosted by most companies. I reviewed and tweaked his résumé multiple times, edited his cover letters, gave him tips on finding leads on LinkedIn, and we even practiced mock interviews.

At one point, I listened in on a remote second-round interview to make sure I didn't have any additional pointers. He was doing great, but when he didn't land that position either, our worry grew.

Desperate, he stepped outside his comfort zone and began applying to non-tech companies. But with no experience in other fields, that effort was also fruitless. He wasn't even getting a call back. That's when he came up with a unique plan.

One day, after seeing an open role that was locally posted online, he decided to try an old-school tactic by visiting in person after submitting his online application.

When he told me, I worried about how they'd react to an unexpected drop-in. But he's a social person, and being at home so much was tough on him. If nothing else, putting in an appearance at their headquarters would let him be social in the middle of what would have been a workday, instead of searching through postings at home for the thousandth time.

I had serious doubts that showing up unannounced would work, but we were approaching the 10th month of his job search, and he looked excited about an opportunity. That had become rare.

I wished him luck and held my breath when he left that morning.

Now, my husband is a pastry lover, and on the way to their office, he stopped for a box of doughnuts to bring as a nice gesture. The move drew attention during his visit and jump-started conversations with staff.

He came home hopeful but nervous, telling me about who he had met and how the sweets had gone over better than expected. And it was true: his visit pulled him to the top of the applicant pool, and he finally received a call from HR later that day. The woman mentioned the doughnuts and how the staff had appreciated the treat.

A few interviews with them finally turned into a job offer.

When he first told me he planned to show up at their office with a box of sweets, I didn't think the visit would do much. Truthfully, dropping his résumé in person for that level of role seemed outdated to my recruiter's mind. I worried they would find his actions antiquated. I was wrong.

His visit earned him the chance to land a job he wouldn't have been considered for otherwise. Six months later, he's been offered a raise and recently had a great review. We still joke that doughnuts are responsible for his employment, even though they were just a symbol of his tenacity in this hard job market.

Unemployment isn't for the faint-hearted. It chips away at your confidence and finances while escalating life's stressors. I feel for anyone currently on the hunt when I look back at those 10 months of uncertainty.

What I love about the story is that showing up with a box of doughnuts is a very "him" thing to do, and it was when he let his personality shine that he finally got recognized as a person instead of just another applicant in their email inbox.

As a former HR professional, the job market and hiring process can feel brutal and impersonal on both sides. He forced it to be personal, and that's when things clicked. more
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chisha brandz
Career development 2d
i graduated as a registered nurse 6years ago,i ve been applying for different hospitals,companies but never been lucky enough to get picked or even called for interviews ,its really stressing me out
how do you guys get lucky with jobs,need some practical tips and help,maybe i do it the wrong way?
4   

  • Anthony Fearon

    6h

    Please pray to God first and apply as a volunteer nurse with your CV. Choose any of the hospitals in your country and work your way through. After a... while, you will land a full time job. Your skills and compassion for patients will endear you to someone for a recommendation.
     more

  • nsanzimana jean baptiste

    8h

    BE STRONG PERSON ,THERE IS NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES ALL OVER THE WORLD

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Career development

 11h

'Punctuality should matter for both sides': Gen Z job candidate walks out after interview is delayed by 1 hour despite double salary offer


A top Gen Z job candidate walked out of a job interview after being asked to wait an hour due to the interviewer's unavailability. He highlighted the hypocrisy of companies demanding punctuality from applicants while disrespecting their time. This incident revealed a company's flawed hiring culture, prompting a reevaluation of their practices and emphasizing that candidates also evaluate potential... employers.

Punctuality in workplaces is an extremely important quality. It shows that you are serious about your tasks, respect others' time, and are committed to maintaining discipline and professionalism in your work environment. In today's competitive corporate environment, being on time also plays a key role in making a positive impression among seniors, managers and bosses, establishing trustworthiness and commitment. On the contrary, when job-seekers appear for an interview, they often have to wait beyond the scheduled time, causing delays to prior commitments. But this difference is almost brushed under the carpet.

Recently, career coach Simon Ingari dropped a post on his X-handle sharing a similar story of one such Gen Z job candidate. But what he did after the delayed interview showed why punctuality is not exclusive and it should be followed by everyone. A conversation between an HR and a CEO revealed how a seemingly routine scheduling delay led to an unexpected outcome that left the company rethinking its hiring practices.

As per the post, the HR informed the company's CEO that a top candidate had walked out before the interview even began. When asked what went wrong, they explained that the candidate had arrived 10 minutes early for his 11:00 a.m. interview, demonstrating punctuality and professionalism. However, upon reaching the venue, he was told that the interviewer was unavailable and was asked to return at 12:00 p.m.

The CEO initially considered this a reasonable adjustment in a busy schedule. But the situation took a turn when HR highlighted the candidate's reaction. The applicant reportedly pointed out the irony that while candidates are often rejected for being even 5 minutes late, his own time was rescheduled without prior notice or apology. Although the candidate was offered a double salary than his current role, he chose to withdraw from the process.

According to HR, the candidate emphasized that hiring is a 2-way process where respect for time should be non-negotiable on both sides. He further stated that the experience reflected the company's culture more than any interview question could. For him, the delay was not just a scheduling issue but an early indicator of how employees might be treated within the organization.

The CEO, though surprised, acknowledged that the candidate viewed the situation as a sign that the company treated its own time as flexible while expecting strict punctuality from others. The HR team concluded that the interview effectively 'started' the moment the imbalance in expectations became visible. The incident has since sparked wider discussion around workplace etiquette, with many pointing out that candidates are not just being evaluated during interviews but are also actively evaluating the organization from the moment they step in. more

James Petchett


Career development 3d
Hi! I recently became the manager of the courier department and everything has been going well. But last week we hired a new courier and he keeps coming to work with his dad. His father tries to get involved in everything and control the work process. I understand he cares about his son, but it’s starting to bother me. How can I politely tell him not to come to our office anymore and not to stick... his nose into our work? Thanks more
1   

  • peter elweu

    14h

    May be you hired a baby. Just lay off the baby.

  • Siyabonga Madikizela

    1d

    Hi Sir, I understand you care about your son's performance and the quality of work he produces, but I think we got it covered here and we can manage.... We will handle everything we'll together but if we need help we will certainly call you.  more

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Career development

 1w

I hid the fact I had children in job interviews - it's the only way to get hired


When author and mother-of-two Davina Quinlivan was interviewing for new roles online five years ago, she would hide all evidence of her two children, moving Mother's Day cards, their artwork and stray Pokemon cards.

Quinlivan, author of recently published Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity, felt she needed to give each interview "the best shot" and couldn't take the... risk of motherhood "impacting me, even a small amount". As an academic who has spent much of her career teaching feminist theory, she found it deeply conflicting.

"It's a difficult feeling, because why would I do that? It's so painful to pretend to vanish [my children] away. Yet I know on some unconscious level that people interviewing are thinking: 'Well, if this child is unwell, our teaching schedule goes down.' Of course, there is support for working carers, but you have to jump through the hoops of getting the job in the first place," she explains. "I wanted to give myself opportunities. I don't think there were vast numbers of mums being interviewed for these jobs, and I knew who would get those jobs in the end - and they weren't mums."

She's one of an increasing number of women who have felt the need to hide motherhood during job interviews. Peanut, the world's largest community app for mums, ran a poll exclusively for The i Paper and found that the majority of mothers - 60 per cent - don't mention caring responsibilities during job interviews, while six per cent actively hide any trace of motherhood until they are offered a role. This compares with 34 per cent of mums who actively mention their children in interviews, the poll of 580 mothers found. "We're seeing more mothers concealing their children from interviewers, which underscores the need for our working culture to catch up. When honesty becomes a hiring risk, the problem isn't with the candidate - it's with the system," Michelle Kennedy, CEO of Peanut, believes.

You might think caring responsibilities should never be discussed in a job interview. But research consistently shows that men can actually experience a "fatherhood premium" - where having children actually increases their chances of getting hired. In one study, professor Stephen Benard at Indiana University sent identical fictionalised CVs to companies from female and male job "candidates", some mentioning their volunteer work for the Parents Teacher Association. Fathers received a slightly higher callback rate than childless men, while employers were 100 per cent less likely to call back mothers than childless women.

Lana Phillips, a marketing assistant from Derby with two children, aged six and four, learnt to hide motherhood after a job interview went wrong. "My children were three and one at the time. The interview was going well and it came up naturally that I had kids. The head of operations asked how old they were. When I told her, she replied, 'They need their mummy at home with them at this stage.' Then explained she stayed at home with her three children until they were school age. I was already back at work. I found it especially shocking that a woman was making this judgment. The interview went sour and ended five minutes later. I received an email saying I hadn't got the job," she remembers.

Since then, she has avoided mentioning her children in interviews. "Then, if I'm turned down, I know it's because of me, not because I have children," she says. She is relieved her employer is supportive and offers flexibility if she wants to watch a school show.

Discrimination against mothers is something that charity Pregnant Then Screwed has been campaigning against for a decade. CEO Rachel Grocott says: "The reality is that many bosses still see motherhood as a burden to business. Women have faced this discrimination for decades - from assumptions they might become parents, to the belief they 'won't come back' from maternity leave, to the stereotype that mothers are less passionate, less talented and less productive. Anyone experiencing it should seek advice on their rights and protections. Mothers are some of the most talented, productive employees and when you discriminate or push them out, you pay the cultural and financial price as parents move to employers who support them. That's the economic truth."

Joeli Brearley, founder of Growth Spurt which gives advice to women returning to work after becoming parents, says: "I spoke to a recruitment consultant who was told by 80 per cent of his clients not to put forward women with children under the age of five. We are seeing pregnancy and maternity discrimination rising year on year. When the economy gets tricky, people feel uncomfortable and revert back to old biases," she explains. "Things are taking a step backwards but we have a government that is making positive changes with the Employment Rights Act last year and the Parental Leave review currently underway."

Many mothers have experienced "ghosting" from recruiters. Florence, who has three children under five, recently started interviewing. "I have multiple childcare options, from nursery to family living closeby," she explains. "I had one recruiter contact me saying I was a perfect fit for a role. They were really positive until I mentioned children, when he asked how I'd manage work and my childcare responsibilities. I never heard from him again."

Brearley says in a job interview it's not illegal to ask a candidate if they are a parent, but it is illegal if an employer acts on that information. "We cannot prove that is the reason for discriminating, though," she says. "More often than not, interviewers ask subtle questions about candidates' personal lives, such as: 'How do you manage your personal life alongside work?' How to react to this depends on where you are in your career; we know that bias exists. For the majority of people, it is better to wait until you are offered a job to ask for flexible working or mention children, then you can prove discrimination. But if you're very senior, have privilege [to choose your role] and power, then ask the questions you want."

She says this is the opposite for men: mentioning children in an interview - as long as there is no request for flexible working - boosts their chance of success as they are seen as "responsible and better employees". Fathers are perceived as five percentage points more committed than childless men at work, according to research by Harvard Kennedy School, while mothers are seen as 12 percentage points less committed than non-mothers.

Sophie Catto, managing director of AllBright everywoman, which supports development of women in leadership roles, and whose children are seven and five, says: "No woman should ever feel she has to hide being a mother in a job interview. There is no lack of ambition in women who are mothers. Motherhood builds skills from prioritisation and decision-making under pressure to resilience, adaptability and problem solving. It strengthens emotional intelligence, empathy and communication, while also sharpening efficiency and the ability to manage competing demands. When businesses recognise and value this, it has a direct impact on confidence, progression and retention, something we have positively experienced in our office.

"I recommend training for line managers who aren't parents and an open calendar policy from business leaders: I have sports days and parents evenings in my diary and this inspires others to do the same. When working flexibly feels normal and doesn't come with a hidden career trade-off, we see stronger retention, deeper engagement and more sustainable long-term progression."

Quinlivan, whose children are now 13 and 10, found the experience of "vanishing" her children so painful that she will never do it again. "It seemed impossible [at that time] to think I had choice. But I did: by giving myself the tools so that I could make my own work," she says. She's built her self-employed creative career over the past four years, while remaining in academia running an online course with the University of Bristol and holding a Research Fellowship.

"Luckily, I've been treated brilliantly - sometimes my children come along and sit at the back in seminars. I now display motherhood in a way that makes it easier [for employers] to understand how my skills are immensely important and translatable to any kind of professional life. Anyone who is a carer knows the amount of creative power, care, love and challenge that goes into raising a human. I bring all those skills to the workplace." more

  • Tony Briscoe

    1
    14h

    Technically, it's none of their business how many children you have.

  • Munyaradzi David Matimba

    3
    1w

    I think the female boss in the interview was primarily focused on what’s best for the children, rather than assuming that hiring a mother of young... children would negatively affect work throughput or productivity. more

Career development

 15h

Welcome to the Machine: An Unemployed Coder's Guide to the Tech Industry


Welcome to the Machine: An Unemployed Coder's Guide to the Tech Industry

Forget everything you've been told. Burn the motivational posters. The tech industry isn't a meritocracy; it's a bizarre, multi-level marketing scheme for existential despair, and you've just paid for the starter kit, which includes a free laptop sticker and a lifetime supply of impostor syndrome. You were promised a world... of kombucha on tap and beanbag chairs, but you found yourself in your childhood bedroom, now with more monitors and significantly less hope.

This isn't a guide to help you win. Winning is a myth. This is a map of the battlefield, drawn in the blood, sweat, and instant-noodle broth of the damned.

I. The First Commandment: Thou Shalt Bear False Witness (On Thy Résumé)

Your résumé is not a record of your accomplishments. It is a work of high fantasy, a sacred scroll designed to pleasure an ancient, brain-dead god known as the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This algorithm, which has the cognitive function of a sea cucumber, is your only audience. It does not understand nuance. It only understands keywords. Your job is to feed the beast until it's bloated and happy.

- . Did you spend an entire weekend wrestling with a single CSS bug? You "Architected scalable, cross-platform styling solutions, demonstrating mastery of advanced Flexbox and Grid paradigms to ensure pixel-perfect UI fidelity."

- Did you copy a function from Stack Overflow? You "Leveraged community-vetted, industry-standard code libraries to accelerate development timelines and optimize application performance."

- Did you use 'git commit -m "stuff"'? You "Meticulously documented version control histories, providing robust commit messages to enhance team-wide code comprehension and streamline asynchronous collaboration."

Lie with the conviction of a televangelist. Your final document should be so dense with buzzwords it feels physically heavier. If you drop it, it should break the floor.

II. The Second Commandment: Thou Shalt Cast a Wide and Desperate Net

The idea of a "dream job" is a cruel joke told by people who have never had to choose between paying for Wi-Fi or buying cheese. The strategy is not precision; it's a carpet-bombing campaign fueled by cheap coffee and nihilism.

Apply for jobs that require a decade of experience in a technology that was invented two years ago. Apply for roles that demand 8 years of experience in "SwiftUI 5," a framework that doesn't exist yet, but you're a go-getter, right? The "Easy Apply" button becomes your new best friend, your therapist, your confessor. It doesn't judge. It just sends your soul into the ether, one click at a time, until you're pretty sure you've applied for a Senior VP position at the same company that rejected you for an internship.

III. The Third Commandment: Thou Shalt Perform Thy Passion (On LinkedIn)

LinkedIn is not a professional network. It is a digital hellscape of forced enthusiasm, a scrolling monument to corporate Stockholm Syndrome. It is the saddest party in the world, and you have to act like you're having the time of your life.

Your role is that of a professional sycophant. Comment "Game-changing perspective, John!" on a post that is literally just a picture of his new company-branded water bottle. Endorse people you've never met for "Quantum Computing." Make sure your profile picture is a professional headshot where you look friendly but also like you might disrupt an entire industry before breakfast. It is a grotesque masquerade, and the price of admission is your last shred of dignity.

IV. The Fourth Commandment: Thou Shalt Endure the Trials of Humiliation (The Interview)

Should you be one of the chosen few, you will be invited to the Gauntlet. This is not an interview; it is a series of ritualistic hazings designed to see if you'll crack.

- . Act I: The Vibe Check. A 15-minute call with an HR person who describes their office as a "work-hard-play-hard family," which is corporate code for "we expect you to have no personal life and the HR department doubles as a cult deprogramming unit." You must act like this is exactly the kind of dysfunctional family you've been dreaming of joining.

- . Act II: The Unpaid Labor. They will call it a "quick take-home assignment." It is not. You will be tasked with building a fully functional user authentication system, complete with two-factor authentication and password recovery via carrier pigeon. You will sacrifice your weekend. You will submit it. The only response you'll get is the faint, distant sound of them deploying your code to production.

- . Act III: The Whiteboard Inquisition. You will be made to stand before a panel of senior developers who died inside years ago. They will ask you to reverse a linked list on a whiteboard that still has the faint smudges of the last candidate's tears on it. The goal isn't to get the right answer. It's to see if you sweat through your shirt while talking confidently about "Big O notation" as your brain slowly turns to pudding.

V. The Fifth Commandment: Thou Shalt Be Ghosted

After you have been thoroughly vetted, tested, and drained of all hope, you will be given the final reward: The Great Silence. They will say "we'll be in touch shortly." They will not.

You will not get a rejection email. That would require effort. No, you will simply cease to exist to them. You will develop an intimate relationship with your spam folder, hoping their response just got lost in a sea of ads for discount catheters. You weren't rejected. To be rejected, you must first be acknowledged. You were simply... deleted from reality.

This is the system. It is a finely tuned engine designed to run on the fuel of your ambition and convert it into shareholder value. It is not broken. It is working perfectly.

This isn't a guide to getting a job. It's your initiation. Welcome to the machine. Your complimentary laptop stickers are in the mail. more

Career development

 16h

Crafting an Executive Assistant Job Description That Actually Works! - Supply Chain Game Changer™


Rushing to sift through résumés is the quickest way to mis-hire an executive assistant. Before you post a job, pause to map exactly what the role will own and the traits your leader values most.

A clear profile makes executive-assistant recruitment faster, cheaper, and far more likely to stick.

Why a generic job description isn't enough

Most executive-assistant postings read the same: manage... calendars, book travel, handle inboxes. Yet a template ignores the one variable that drives success -- how your leader actually works.

The mismatch is costly: the U.S. Department of Labor estimates a single bad hire can drain 30 percent of the role's first-year salary once you add recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity (business.com).

Think of the job description as a blueprint, not a checklist. One CEO may need a minute-by-minute scheduler who protects every block of time. Another may thrive with a connector who navigates ambiguity and liaises across departments. Publish the same generic ad for both scenarios, and you signal nothing about which skills matter -- attracting candidates who fit neither.

A custom profile:

* Draws in assistants whose working style matches your leader's rhythm.

* Sets clear expectations on pace, decision authority, and after-hours support before day one.

* Gives recruiters a concrete picture of what "excellent" looks like for this exact executive, cutting search time and cost.

When the description mirrors reality, you'll spend less time sifting through résumés and more time meeting people who can elevate the seat from day one.

Clarifying core responsibilities

Gallup's 2024 workplace report shows that only 46 percent of U.S. employees strongly agree they know what's expected at work, a ten-point drop since 2020. That gap becomes obvious fast when you hire an executive assistant without a precise scope.

Start by drafting one master list of everything the assistant will own or influence in the first year. After two decades of pairing C-level leaders with high-impact assistants, the C-Suite Assistants executive assistant recruitment team has found that roles unravel fastest when no one can point to a clear scope.

So they advise estimating the approximate percentage of time each major responsibility will consume to show candidates how their days will actually unfold. Then label each line:

* Must-have - critical from day one

* Nice-to-have - valuable after onboarding

* Out-of-scope - clearly not part of the role

We usually sort tasks into five buckets to keep the exercise focused:

Mapping responsibilities this way lets you -- and every candidate -- see exactly where the role begins and ends, saving hours of post-hire course correction.

Defining the level of partnership

A role that looks "strategic" on paper but turns out to be mostly scheduling work doesn't last. In a 2020 survey of 4,732 administrative professionals, Executive Support Magazine found widespread friction between assistants hired for strategic impact and those limited to transactional tasks.

Think of partnership on a sliding scale:

* Transactional support. Manage calendars, book travel, and keep logistics running.

* Operational partner. Anticipate roadblocks, track cross-functional projects, and surface red flags early.

* Strategic partner. Act as a proxy in meetings, filter information, and shape priorities alongside the executive.

Decide where the role sits today, and how far it can grow over the next 12 months. Being explicit helps candidates self-select, lowers early-churn risk, and sets a clear path for upskilling from day one.

Identifying the right experience and traits

Experience still matters; you'll want someone who has supported a fast-moving C-suite before. LinkedIn's Global Talent Trends report shows that 92 percent of talent professionals rank soft skills equal to or more important than technical skills, and 89 percent blame most failed hires on weak soft skills.

In practice, that means screening for how a candidate behaves, not just what they've done.

Look for evidence that the assistant has:

* Handled sensitive board materials or investor decks without a leak.

* Co-managed shifting priorities across multiple time zones.

* Written crisp, error-free briefing notes under deadline pressure.

Then probe for traits that predict success over the long haul:

* Proactivity. They surface conflicts before your calendar melts down.

* Emotional intelligence. They sense when a terse email hides a bigger issue and adjust the response.

* Resilience. They recover quickly after a meeting schedule explodes at 6 pm.

* Systems thinking. They build repeatable checklists so mistakes don't recur.

Sharing these non-negotiables with your recruiter keeps the search focused on candidates who will thrive in your specific environment.

What to share with candidates up front

Glassdoor's 2024 OpenCompany survey shows that 95 percent of job seekers rate workplace transparency as important when they judge an employer. The clearer you're on day one, the stronger your talent pipeline becomes.

During the first call, walk candidates through four realities of the role:

* How your executive works. Share their preferred communication style, decision speed, and meeting rhythm.

* Typical hours and responsiveness. Set expectations about after-hours texts or weekend prep so no one feels blindsided.

* Travel cadence. Spell out how often the assistant will be on the road or covering time zones from home.

* Success metrics. Explain how first-year impact will be measured, whether that's calendar accuracy, project throughput, or executive "share of mind."

When people understand the constraints and opportunities early, they self-select accurately, saving you rounds of interviews with great assistants who would thrive in a different environment.

Aligning stakeholders around the profile

When hiring teams disagree on what "great" looks like, the clock keeps ticking and candidates walk away. Gartner's talent-acquisition study shows that each extra week of internal deliberation after interviews cuts offer acceptance by 16 percent and pushes time-to-fill up 17 percent.

To avoid that drag:

Conclusion

A shared, unedited brief keeps interviews focused on the same success criteria and lets you present a unified message to candidates.

Article and permission to publish here provided as Contributed Content. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on November 25, 2025.

All images and permission to publish here provided by Contributor. more

Career development

 17h

How Business School Alumni Networks Quietly Power the Gig Economy in 2026 - CEOWORLD magazine


The Importance of Business School Alumni Networks in the Gig Economy in 2026

In 2026, the most valuable career asset for many business graduates is no longer a blue‑chip employer on their résumé, but the strength of their alumni network. As full‑time roles fragment into projects, mandates, and side ventures, who you studied with -- and who they know -- is increasingly what converts skills into... income.

Across global business schools, graduates are not just chasing traditional placements; they are assembling portfolios of startups, consulting gigs, and cross‑border contracts that demand constant deal flow. In this landscape, alumni networks are morphing from nostalgic communities into live operating systems for opportunity discovery, capital access, and strategic collaboration.

For CEOs, investors, and policy makers, this shift matters because it changes how talent moves, how innovation circulates, and where economic value pools form. Alumni ecosystems are beginning to function as informal labor markets, capital markets, and even relocation engines, shaping where professionals live, work, and build companies.

The Big Development: Alumni Networks Become Career Marketplaces

The classic model of a business school alumni club -- annual dinners, newsletters, and occasional reunions -- is being eclipsed by always‑on professional networks that behave more like curated marketplaces.

At top schools, alumni communities now facilitate everything from deal syndication and founder‑matching to cross‑border gig referrals. New research indicates that alumni networks increasingly influence where people move after job loss, nudging them toward cities where their alma mater has a high density of graduates and stronger earnings potential. That is a structural shift: location decisions are no longer guided solely by job postings, but by the gravitational pull of trusted peers.

At the same time, the career paths of business graduates are fragmenting. Harvard Business School's class of 2025, for example, saw a record share of MBAs opting out of traditional employment altogether, with a meaningful portion choosing entrepreneurship instead. Tech has overtaken consulting as a top destination, while startups and early‑stage ventures attract a growing minority of graduates who rely heavily on alumni connections for funding, customers, and teams.

Why this is a pivotal shift

Alumni communities now double as talent platforms, investment syndicates, and global referral engines. Post‑MBA careers are increasingly non‑linear, with side gigs, venture building, and portfolio work becoming mainstream choices. Geographic mobility is guided as much by network density as by headline job numbers, amplifying the role of alumni clusters in global cities.

For business schools, the implication is clear: the value proposition is moving from "placement" to "lifetime market access."

Why This Moment Matters: The Gig Economy Meets Network Capital

The rise of the gig economy is not new; what is new in 2026 is its penetration into the upper tiers of the talent market. Highly skilled professionals -- MBA graduates, former executives, domain specialists -- are increasingly comfortable exchanging the predictability of a single employer for diversified income streams and higher autonomy.

Estimates suggest that more than half of the global workforce has either engaged in gig work or worked independently at some point, as flexible and project‑based models displace the traditional nine‑to‑five. Among younger cohorts, side gigs and entrepreneurial pursuits are no longer viewed as risky detours but as rational strategies in a volatile, tech‑disrupted labor market.

In this environment, alumni networks perform three critical functions:

Information advantage

Alumni channels surface high‑quality, off‑market opportunities -- consulting mandates, board advisory roles, angel deals -- that rarely make it to public platforms. Reputation and trust

A shared institutional background and overlapping social circles compress due diligence time. Alumni are more likely to take meetings, share intel, and extend early trust. Mobility and resilience

When layoffs or market shocks hit, alumni networks guide displaced professionals toward new geographies, industries, or gig clusters with better economics.

For the global wealth elite and institutional investors, this dynamic matters because it influences where innovation clusters form, which ecosystems attract high‑value human capital, and how quickly new ventures can scale.

Inside the Strategy: How Smart Graduates Use Alumni Networks in the Gig Era

The most sophisticated alumni do not treat their network as a passive directory; they manage it as a strategic asset. In a gig‑driven economy, that means using alumni platforms in four deliberate ways.

1. Building a personal "deal pipeline"

Rather than relying on job boards, independent professionals work their alumni connections to maintain a live pipeline of projects, mandates, and partnerships.

Alumni groups on LinkedIn and school platforms are used to test new service offerings and secure anchor clients. Graduates collaborate across cohorts and geographies to package joint solutions -- for example, combining strategy expertise with data science or sustainability consulting capabilities.

This transforms the alumni ecosystem into a recurring revenue engine rather than a one‑off referral channel.

2. Using the network as a risk‑management tool

For MBAs stepping into entrepreneurship or independent consulting, the biggest risk is not lack of ideas, but lack of distribution. A strong alumni network mitigates that risk:

Early customers, beta users, or pilot partners are often sourced via alumni communities. Alumni investors and operators provide fast feedback on business models and pricing, shortening the time from concept to commercial traction.

In effect, alumni networks act as an informal incubator layer overlaying the gig economy.

3. Orchestrating cross‑border mobility

Research from Berkeley shows that when professionals move after job loss, they often relocate to cities with stronger alumni presence and higher earning potential. For mobile, gig‑driven talent, this translates into:

Choosing hubs where alumni density guarantees faster integration into client and investor networks. Leveraging alumni in target markets to navigate regulatory hurdles, cultural nuances, and local ecosystem gatekeepers.

That is particularly relevant as global manufacturing shifts, supply chains are re‑drawn, and new regional hubs emerge in Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

4. Continual upskilling and repositioning

As the gig economy rewards adaptable skills, alumni communities play a growing role in continuous learning.

Alumni‑run workshops, micro‑communities, and peer groups help members pivot into high‑demand areas such as AI‑enabled business strategy, ESG, and digital growth. Informal knowledge exchanges and peer‑to‑peer mentoring supplement formal executive education and short‑course programs.

The outcome: graduates can reposition themselves quickly as macroeconomic headwinds, regulation, and technology reshape demand.

Market and Economic Impact: Networks as Invisible Infrastructure

Viewed at scale, powerful alumni networks function as invisible infrastructure in the global gig economy. They reshape flows of talent, capital, and information in ways that matter for cities, sectors, and investors.

Talent allocation and regional hubs

Cities with dense concentrations of alumni from top business schools often enjoy a compounding effect: as more graduates relocate to leverage their networks, those locations become more attractive to subsequent cohorts. This can:

Reinforce existing hubs such as New York, London, San Francisco, Singapore, and Dubai. Accelerate the rise of newer regional centers that combine favorable policy, digital infrastructure, and strong alumni clusters.

For policy makers competing in the race for human capital, alumni engagement is no longer just a university issue -- it is an economic development lever.

Corporate access to specialized talent

For large corporates, alumni ecosystems are becoming efficient channels to access highly specialized, project‑based talent without expanding permanent headcount.

Companies tap alumni consultants and independent experts for discrete projects -- from digital transformation to supply chain diversification -- rather than hiring full‑time roles. Business schools that cultivate strong alumni‑employer bridges effectively become long‑tail staffing partners for global firms.

This supports more flexible corporate cost structures, but also increases competition for top independent talent within alumni communities.

Investor deal flow and syndication

For venture capital, family offices, and angel investors, alumni networks are increasingly important channels for early‑stage deal flow.

MBA founders often raise first money from fellow alumni investors, shortening fundraising cycles and enhancing signaling power. Alumni co‑investment groups form around sectors such as fintech, climate tech, and B2B SaaS, blending professional expertise with capital.

The more the gig economy blurs the boundaries between operator, investor, and advisor, the more valuable a dense, trusted alumni network becomes.

Risks, Constraints, and Unknowns

The rise of alumni networks as power centers in the gig economy also introduces new risks and unanswered questions.

Concentration and exclusion

Strong networks can reinforce privilege.

Graduates of elite schools may enjoy disproportionate access to high‑value gigs and capital, widening gaps between institutions and regions. Those without access to powerful alumni ecosystems may find themselves competing on open platforms with lower pricing power and weaker bargaining positions.

This raises questions about meritocracy, social mobility, and the distribution of opportunity in a network‑driven economy.

Over‑reliance on informal channels

When too much deal flow lives inside closed alumni circuits, there is a risk of:

Reduced diversity of ideas and counterparties, as professionals circulate within familiar clusters. Under‑exposure to emerging markets, industries, or demographics outside the alumni footprint.

For both individuals and institutions, the strategic play is to combine alumni networks with broader, more open professional ecosystems.

Regulatory and institutional lag

Many business schools are still organized around placement metrics optimized for traditional employment. In 2026, that is increasingly misaligned with reality.

Career services and alumni relations functions must retool around gig discovery, founder support, and cross‑border mobility, not just corporate pipelines. Governance frameworks for alumni‑led investment groups and deal rooms remain nascent, creating questions around conflicts of interest, compliance, and liability.

The institutions that move fastest to modernize their alumni infrastructure will shape the next decade of talent and capital flows.

What to Watch Next

The next three to five years will likely determine which business schools emerge as true gig‑era powerhouses and which are left behind.

Signals to monitor:

Alumni platform sophistication: Are schools investing in digital platforms that enable matching, co‑founding, investing, and cross‑border collaboration, or just broadcasting news? Integration with local ecosystems: Do alumni hubs connect meaningfully with city‑level innovation clusters, venture funds, and corporate innovation programs? Policy engagement: Are universities and alumni groups present in conversations about industrial policy, talent visas, and innovation incentives that shape where gig‑era professionals can operate?

For senior executives and wealth holders, the strategic question is simple: which alumni ecosystems do you want to be embedded in -- and how actively are you leveraging them?

That is where the real shift begins.

Key Insights and Takeaways

In 2026, business school alumni networks function as live marketplaces for gigs, deals, and partnerships, not just social communities. Strong alumni clusters increasingly shape where professionals relocate, influencing city‑level competitiveness and regional talent hubs. Gig‑oriented MBAs use alumni networks as risk‑mitigation tools for entrepreneurship, independent consulting, and portfolio careers. Elite alumni ecosystems offer investors curated early‑stage deal flow and sector‑focused co‑investment opportunities. Schools that modernize alumni platforms around the gig economy will define future flows of talent, capital, and innovation.

FAQs

1. How is the gig economy changing MBA career paths?

More graduates are choosing entrepreneurship, startups, and independent consulting instead of traditional corporate roles, often building multi‑stream portfolio careers.

2. Why are alumni networks so important in 2026?

They provide trusted referrals, off‑market opportunities, and support for relocation, making them critical infrastructure in a flexible, project‑based labor market.

3. How do alumni networks impact geographic mobility?

Research shows professionals are more likely to move to cities where their alma mater has a strong presence and better earnings potential.

4. What is the upside for investors and founders?

Alumni ecosystems accelerate fundraising, team formation, and market access, especially in sectors like tech, fintech, and sustainability.

5. What should business schools change to stay competitive?

They must evolve from placement‑centric models to building digital alumni platforms that enable gig discovery, venture support, and cross‑border collaboration.

Have you read?

Global Human Prosperity Index: Best Countries in the World.

Ranking: Top Fashion Design Schools Worldwide.

Top Global Business Schools Every Executive Knows.

Top Hospitality Management Programs in the World.

Ranking: Countries With the Lowest Obesity Rates.

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For media queries, please contact: [email protected]. © CEOWORLD magazine LTD more

Career development

 21h

Traditional Resume Creation


I need a clean, professional résumé built entirely from scratch in a classic, traditional format. The final document must highlight core sections -- Work Experience and Skills -- each laid out in an easy-to-scan structure that hiring managers expect. I will supply you with all of the raw background information (roles, dates, achievements, academic history, key competencies) once we start; your job... is to distill it into polished, accomplishment-focused bullets, choose an understated yet elegant template, and ensure consistent typography, spacing, and formatting throughout. Deliverables * Editable résumé in Microsoft Word (DOCX) * Print-ready PDF version Please make sure the language is concise, action-oriented, and free of any spelling or grammar errors. more

Career development

 1d

I built an AI résumé tool that refuses to lie about your experience


Most AI résumé tools have the same flaw: they hallucinate. Ask them to tailor your résumé for a job requiring "Rust experience" and they'll happily invent a Rust project you never worked on. It reads great -- until the technical interview.

I wanted the opposite. So I built Citevault: a local-first résumé tailoring tool where every claim is either grounded in your own evidence, or refused and... flagged as a gap.

No fabrication. No API keys. Runs entirely on your laptop. (Model weights are pulled from Hugging Face once on first boot; after that, no outbound connections.)

The result is a résumé where every bullet has a footnote traceable back to a specific span in your source material.

Toggle "Compare with naive AI" before starting a tailoring run. Citevault runs its grounded pipeline and a second single-pass run -- same model, same evidence, same task description, no verification loop. The only difference is the grounded pipeline checks every claim against its source before including it.

Gemma 4 E4B was chosen specifically for this role: it is instruction-tuned well enough to return consistent structured JSON verdicts, small enough to run on CPU without a GPU, and open-weight so no API key or data exposure is involved. The tag is the Q4_K_M quantised build -- the best size/quality tradeoff for local inference via Ollama.

The entire stack runs on CPU. Measured on a 4-core/8-thread laptop with 32 GB RAM and no discrete GPU: 3-8 tokens/second generation speed, 20-30 minutes per tailoring run; add another 10-20 minutes if naive comparison is enabled. Slower than a cloud API, but zero cost, zero data exposure, and no dependency on an upstream service staying alive.

Structured generation is the hard part. Getting Gemma 4 to consistently return structured JSON verdicts from the verifier took more prompt iteration than anything else. The final verifier prompt is tightly constrained: it gives the model a specific rubric, a strict output format, and a worked example. It still occasionally returns malformed output -- those claims are logged and omitted from the output rather than silently passed through.

Hybrid RAG matters. Pure dense search misses exact keyword matches. Pure BM25 misses semantic similarity. On the five-case golden eval set, the hybrid combination recovered ~15 percentage points in first-pass grounding rate over either retrieval strategy alone -- enough to tip borderline claims from UNCLEAR to SUPPORTS.

Eval-driven development pays off. I built a golden evaluation set of five synthetic candidates and ran the pipeline against it after every significant change. The final first-pass grounding rate is 98.2% -- but more importantly, I caught two regressions that looked fine in manual testing.

Local-first is a real constraint, not a marketing line. Your career data is sensitive. Résumés contain salary history, reasons for leaving, private project details. I didn't want to be a data controller. Building local-first forced specific architectural decisions -- no cloud storage, no async job queue, no third-party embedding API.

Upload your evidence, paste a job posting, and watch the grounding happen in real time via SSE stream.

Heads up -- this runs on CPU. On a 4-core laptop without a GPU, expect 20-30 minutes per tailoring run. With naive comparison enabled, add another 10-20 minutes for the second pass. It is slow by cloud-API standards, but fully offline and costs nothing after the first model pull.

The best test: pick a role where you have a genuine skill gap -- that is where the gap report is most useful.

The full architecture (hexagonal layout, RAG pipeline, Docker Compose stack) is documented in in the repo.

The code is on GitHub: github.com/jaberoma/citevault -- MIT licensed, no account required, runs on any laptop with Docker.

Citevault's contract is simple: every claim in your résumé either links to a source span in your own evidence, or it does not appear. No exceptions. more

Career development

 1d

Chicago woman asked a hiring manager about diversity. Then the manager refused to answer and told her 'we'll get back to you in a couple days'


Job hunting is a struggle, and as Chicago resident Suz Ballout just shared on TikTok, the interview process can sometimes be the test that leads to burnout. After navigating a series of scheduling nightmares, she found herself in a bizarre, dismissive final interview that Ballout declaring, "I'm gonna just stop looking for a job." If the comments are anything to go by, her story resonates with... everyone tired of the repetitive, often soul-crushing nature of modern jobs.

Ballout described her first interview as amazing. They obviously agreed since she got an email 10 minutes later to schedule a follow-up. Meeting that district manager was easier said than done. It wasn't just about the 4 attempts to schedule the meeting; it was the three no-shows. In that third time, she got a call, after she left, to meet hours later, and when he finally showed, she said she "immediately [did] not like this guy's vibe."

Would you like to know what makes this process even more hilarious? She was interviewing for a role at a weed dispensary. He asked the standard questions and then asked for her concerns. Rightfully, she mentioned the communication. He straight-up ignored that and asked for her next question. She was a little taken aback and then, out of curiosity, asked, "What do you do for diversity for your company? What do you do for people of color?" Yeah, that didn't go down well.

The response was jarring to say the least. The manager told her "that's like not really a discussion that I wanna get into right now. Um, I would just be too long. Um, but anyone who comes in here with any background, uh, can get promoted."

After that response, as you would expect, the manager finished the interview by saying they had other candidates and would be in touch in a couple of days. Ballout of course, could read the writing on the wall, so she called the first manager to pull her name from consideration.

While Ballout's experience feels personal and frustrating, it touches on a much larger, systemic issue regarding how companies handle diversity, equity, and inclusion. A study from Stanford Graduate School of Business, highlights a major disconnect between corporate rhetoric and actual internal change. After analyzing 1,300 DEI-related controversies, they found that even when companies face public backlash, their efforts to improve diversity are often surface-level.

According to the report, most companies respond to controversies by modestly increasing hiring, but almost exclusively in lower-paid, junior, or non-core back-office roles. However, companies are not just failing to promote diverse talent. The study found that turnover increased among women and people of color.

The researchers called it "DEI washing." Companies ramp up their diversity-related language on social media and in corporate reports without making meaningful structural changes. As the lead researcher points out, firms often rely on slogans like "people are our greatest asset" but don't commit to it in practice. Then, they face similar controversies the next year. Unfortunately, it echoes Trump's push to cut DEI programs for being 'woke' or to deem them illegal.

TikTok agreed. Users shared their own horror stories, ranging from hiring managers hiding in the back room to avoid onboarding new hires to companies using AI to psychoanalyze candidates based on text-based interviews. For many, the process feels like a complete waste of time that leaves them feeling undervalued.

As one commenter, HRene, wrote, "I am so tired of applying and not hearing anything. It makes me feel worthless and sad. Like I am not good enough despite my years of experience." more
6   

  • Ezekiel Kayanja

    1d

    Hiring managers need sensitization but also candidates should go to interviews with unbiased mind due to their skin colour.

Career development

 1d

Learning Agility in the AI Age: Top Skill for Jobs


"AI is not going to provide empathy and leadership and mentoring and all those skills that you need to lead a company for a company to be successful." John Santora, CEO of WeWork, made that statement at Fortune's Workplace Innovation Summit, and beneath his emphasis on human qualities sat something more specific: learning agility has become the singular skill reshaping how the world's most... powerful leaders hire.

Across boardrooms from Silicon Valley to Singapore, a consensus has crystallized. Not AI literacy alone. Not technical prowess. But the capacity to learn, adapt, and thrive as roles shift almost daily. What's remarkable isn't that CEOs value learning -- they always have. What's changed is the urgency and specificity with which they now assess it.

Why "years of experience" is no longer coveted by recruiters

The hierarchy of hiring has inverted. Years of experience no longer carry decisive weight. Advanced degrees are losing their gatekeeping power. What now separates those who will thrive from those who will quietly become obsolete is something harder to measure on a résumé: the ability to absorb new information, reset mental models, and perform in roles that didn't exist 18 months ago.

"The number one trend reshaping talent acquisition in 2026 is a decisive shift from experience-based hiring towards skills, learning agility, and AI readiness," said Napit Teparak, People and Organisations Director at SCG Chemicals. "Learning agility matters more than years of experience, and AI readiness is a baseline expectation."

The data backs this.

A World Economic Forum analysis of hiring experiments found that AI skills offset conventional disadvantages. Older applicants and candidates without advanced degrees -- groups historically facing lower callback rates -- saw their prospects improve substantially when they demonstrated learning agility and current capabilities. A barrier that seemed fixed for decades suddenly became permeable.

AI isn't replacing job categories in waves. It's rewriting almost every role from within. A marketing manager now works with AI copywriting tools. A data analyst includes AI governance. A customer service rep must know when to override an AI recommendation.

"If we don't continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in 3-5 years?" asked IBM's Chief Human Resources Officer. "There's no pipeline; the well simply dries up." IBM responded by tripling US entry-level hiring in 2026 -- explicitly for learning agility, not credentials.

This reflects a broader truth: the most expensive mistake a company can make now is hiring someone overqualified for yesterday's job but unable to adapt to tomorrow's.

Learning agility means several things: rapid knowledge absorption (moving from zero to competent in days, not months); mental flexibility (holding multiple frameworks and knowing which to deploy); comfort with ambiguity (viewing unfamiliar territory as data, not threat); and intellectual humility (updating beliefs when evidence shifts).

Sixty-seven percent of CEOs expect AI to increase entry-level hiring in 2026.

That's a signal they're willing to hire less experienced people if they demonstrate learning agility. Palantir CEO Alex Karp was blunt: "There are basically two ways to know you have a future" -- vocational trades or neurodivergent individuals. His company backs this with $5,400 monthly stipends and a clear pitch: "Skip the debt. Reclaim years of your life. Earn the Palantir degree."

Tastewise CEO Alon Chen hired Gen Z candidates with zero experience and no degree requirement. Why? Because they're not trapped in "old ways of working." Someone fresh from high school hasn't internalized legacy assumptions. They approach an AI tool as simply the way you do things.

Companies using "learning tests" present candidates with unfamiliar tools and ask them to solve problems in 30 minutes. Others conduct multi-round interviews where each round introduces new information. IBM explicitly evaluates "ability to learn quickly, adapt to change, and confidently leverage AI."

The most reliable indicator: curiosity. Evidence of self-directed learning, questions during interviews, side projects suggesting intellectual exploration -- these predict learning agility better than any formal test.

The future realignment

Learning agility determines whether a company moves faster than the technology it's trying to harness. Job titles will become less stable. Performance reviews will focus on what someone learned, not just what they shipped. The person valuable in 2031 is the one comfortable admitting ignorance today and getting fluent in two weeks.

In the age of AI, learning agility is the core asset that separates the adaptable from the obsolete. more

Career development

 1d

Gen Z Doesn't Job-Hop. They Manage Risk.


For years, job-hopping was framed as a flaw. It signaled impatience. A lack of commitment. A résumé that couldn't sit still.

That framing assumed something crucial: that staying put was safer.

It isn't anymore.

Gen Z is not leaving work because they lack discipline or loyalty. They are leaving because the risk calculus has changed. Stability has thinned. Guarantees have disappeared. And the... cost of staying wrong has quietly overtaken the cost of leaving early.

From their vantage point, mobility is not a form of rebellion. It is insurance.

Staying Used to Be a Strategy

For much of the twentieth century, staying made sense. Tenure increased earning power. Loyalty bought visibility. Endurance was rewarded with progression, protection, or at least predictability.

That system was imperfect, but it was legible. You could see the trade.

Many senior leaders built their careers inside that logic. It shaped how they interpret ambition and seriousness. Staying signaled intent. Leaving early raised suspicion.

But that logic depended on one condition: that institutions would reciprocate commitment.

Gen Z entered the workforce after watching that condition fail.

A Different Risk Landscape

Gen Z's formative years were marked by instability that older cohorts experienced later, if at all. They watched layoffs ripple through households during the Global Financial Crisis. They graduated into a pandemic economy. They entered professional life just as white-collar work lost its aura of safety.

By 2024 and 2025, layoffs were no longer exceptional events. They were routine corrections. Early-career workers were often the first to be let go. Offers were rescinded. Roles disappeared mid-cycle.

At the same time, the cost of staying rose. Student debt in the US surpassed $1.7 trillion. Housing affordability in Western markets reached generational lows. Wage growth lagged inflation for much of Gen Z's early working life.

In practical terms, concentration risk increased. Staying in a single role for too long no longer maximizes upside. It amplified exposure.

A Gen Z professional put it plainly in a 2025 Reddit thread: "If I stay somewhere too long and they cut me, I'm stuck explaining a role that didn't grow. Leaving earlier keeps me employable."

That is not restlessness. It is portfolio thinking.

Job-Hopping as Risk Management

Research from 2024 and 2025 shows that early-career workers who switch roles often see faster wage growth than those who stay. External moves now carry a clearer financial premium, while internal promotion ladders have flattened or slowed.

Gen Z noticed.

They also noticed how quickly skills age. Roles evolve faster than job descriptions. A stagnant position is not neutral. It erodes future optionality.

In interviews and online forums, Gen Z consistently describes job changes as defensive, not aspirational. Leaving is how they hedge against skill decay, pay compression, and organizational fragility.

One Gen Zer described it this way: "Staying loyal doesn't protect you anymore. Staying relevant does."

That sentence should unsettle leaders. It reframes mobility as prudence.

What Managers Experience as Disruption

From a managerial perspective, this behavior feels destabilizing. Surveys from 2024 and 2025 show rising frustration with Gen Z employees. Many managers report that Gen Z is harder to retain, harder to motivate, and more likely to leave "too soon."

Some go further. A widely cited study found a meaningful share of managers saying they would hesitate to hire Gen Z again.

The complaints follow a familiar script. Too many questions. Too much feedback required. Too little patience. Too willing to walk.

But these complaints often confuse friction with irrationality.

Gen Z asks more questions because context matters when decisions shift quickly. They request feedback because delayed calibration feels risky, not reassuring. They leave earlier because staying wrong has become expensive.

Managers are reacting to a mismatch between old assumptions and new incentives.

Loyalty Has Become Conditional

In Leading Gen Z, I wrote:

"Gen Z does not reject loyalty. They reject blind loyalty. They grew up watching institutions dissolve commitments without warning and learned to treat work as conditional by default. When loyalty is framed as endurance without protection, they opt out. When it is framed as mutual investment with clear terms, they commit with surprising intensity."

This distinction is often missed.

Gen Z is not anti-commitment. They are anti-ambiguity. They want to understand what staying delivers, how long that delivery lasts, and what happens when conditions change.

When those answers are vague, they leave.

Tenure Is No Longer a Proxy for Trust

Many leaders still view tenure as a sign of seriousness. Time served is assumed to signal maturity, alignment, and grit.

Gen Z does not share this assumption.

To them, tenure without progression is not a sign of loyalty. It is exposure. Staying in a role that no longer builds skills or leverage is seen as careless, not commendable.

A Gen Z employee explained this in a 2025 interview: "If I stay somewhere that isn't teaching me anything, I'm not being loyal. I'm being irresponsible with my future."

That framing flips the moral weight of staying.

Why Gen Z Leaves Before Leaders Feel Ready

One of the most common managerial frustrations is that Gen Z leaves "before they're ready." Often, this means before leaders feel they have recouped their investment.

But that framing assumes the investment was mutual.

Gen Z evaluates roles continuously. When learning slows, feedback thins, or growth becomes hypothetical, the return curve flattens. Staying becomes speculative.

They leave at the point where the risk outweighs the reward.

That moment often arrives earlier than leaders expect because leaders still treat time itself as value.

It isn't.

Feedback, Growth, and Exit Timing

Gen Z consistently identifies feedback as one of the strongest predictors of staying. Not praise. Not perks. Information.

They want to know where they stand, what is improving, and how the role compounds over time. When that information disappears, uncertainty fills the gap.

In organizations where feedback is infrequent or performative, Gen Z interprets silence as stagnation. Leaving becomes the only way to regain signal.

This is not impatience. It is calibration.

The Managerial Misread

When Gen Z leaves, leaders often default to moral explanations. They lack grit. They expect too much. They do not want to put in time.

These explanations are comforting. They preserve identity. They absolve systems.

They are also incomplete.

Gen Z is navigating a labor market with fewer guarantees, faster skill obsolescence, and higher volatility than any cohort before them. Their behavior reflects that environment.

Calling it disloyalty does not change the incentives.

The Cost of Staying Wrong

There is another factor leaders underestimate: regret.

Gen Z has watched older workers stay too long in roles that stalled their growth. They have seen loyalty rewarded with layoffs rather than leadership. Those stories matter.

A Gen Z commenter wrote: "Everyone who tells me to stay longer also tells me they wish they had left earlier."

That observation carries weight.

What Actually Keeps Gen Z

When Gen Z does stay, the conditions are consistent.

They stay when learning is visible. When feedback is direct. When expectations are explicit. When progression is real rather than promised. When time invested compounds.

They do not stay because of slogans or sentiment. They stay because the math works.

In Leading Gen Z, I also wrote:

"Retention has shifted from being a function of time to a function of relevance. Gen Z stays where growth is tangible, feedback is frequent, and the exchange feels fair. When those conditions erode, leaving is not emotional. It is logical."

This is the new retention equation.

A Leadership Test, Not a Generational One

Gen Z's mobility is not a phase. It is a signal.

It exposes organizations that rely on inertia to retain people. It reveals roles that cannot articulate their value beyond tenure. It forces leaders to confront whether staying is rewarded or merely expected.

Some leaders will continue to frame this as a generational flaw. Others will adjust.

The difference will not be empathy. It will be clarity.

Mobility Is the Symptom, Not the Problem

Gen Z does not job-hop because they lack commitment. They move because commitment without return is no longer rational.

In a volatile labor market, staying is no longer the safest option. Relevance is.

Leaders who understand this will stop asking why Gen Z doesn't stay and start asking why staying should be worth it.

Those who don't will continue to treat attrition as a mystery while quietly accelerating it.

Jodie Shaw writes about consumer behavior, leadership, and generational shifts. Her books -- The Mind of the Modern Consumer, All Leaders Make Mistakes, and Leading Gen Z -- go deeper than this piece. If this thinking is useful, start with one of them. If not, subscribe for future essays. And if nothing else, a clap or comment helps this reach the right readers. more

Career development

 1d

Terry Prone: Mooney controversy not as wild as BBC's case of mistaken identity


Which the director general thought was a good move. He further thought going public about it was an exercise in openness and should have been warmly welcomed. Which neither media nor an Oireachtas Committee obliged him by doing.

On the other hand, in the pantheon of RTÉ war stories, it's not actually that memorable. Every station and broadcaster have their war stories. The guest who arrives drunk... or otherwise incapable, like the eminent late Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing on Gay Byrne's Late, Late Show.

Byrne called him on it and -- in a wonderful example of the unpredictability of a live broadcast -- was promptly attacked by audience members eager to defend what they clearly believed was Laing's basic human right to go on Irish television pissed as a newt if he so chose.

Sometimes, the war story emerges from technical failure, as happened repeatedly to the BBC's great Richard Dimbleby during his later years, when he was dying painfully of cancer, although he had kept his illness secret. Dimbleby was presenting the BBC's live coverage of a royal tour of Germany during the mid-60s by Queen Elizabeth II.

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Video links failed. Audio was hit-and miss. Just as they were about to go on air, Dimbleby's own monitor failed, which meant he was guessing what pictures, if any, were reaching the viewers, and to what degree if at all those pictures matched his commentary.

In fact, what the viewers were seeing, back home, seemed flawless, but Dimbleby didn't know that, and his frustration grew when the production crew told him the feed to London had failed. "Jesus wept," he muttered, sure his microphone was not working. Except that it was, and millions of viewers heard his desperation.

But a Dimbleby slip, while memorable, was nothing like as consequential as the broadcast cockup which happened 20 years ago, leaving jobs lost and reputations shredded.

What happened was that a man from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, having survived murder and mayhem in his homeland, became a refugee, reaching the UK, where he gained permission to stay. His career prospects were not helped by poor English, but, as a graduate in finance, he was also tech-savvy, and eventually received notice he should turn up for a job interview at the BBC at 10am on May 8, 2006. The job would entail detecting and removing inaccuracies from online databases. He was delighted and turned up in plenty of time.

So far, so good. As Guy arrived for his interview, a TV programme was already being broadcast from the same building, and that programme was lining up to cover a legal case involving the Apple logo. A computer expert had been booked to talk about this, and one of the production crew -- named Elliott Gotkine -- was told to get that expert from reception and bring him to studio.

He asked the receptionist if a guy named Guy Kewney had arrived and she nodded him towards the man who was there for a job interview. Somewhere along the line, the fact this was Guy Goma got missed. Gotkine grabbed Goma and led him to the studio, where Goma sensibly waved off an offer of make-up. What would he be doing with make-up on during a job interview?

He then found himself in a bright-lit studio, listening to a presenter introducing the bare bones of the court case judgment before turning to him, and asking if he was surprised by the verdict. At this point, Goma knew he was in trouble. "I'm in the wrong place," he thought. "Please don't blame me. I'm gonna do my best."

Doing his best consisted of him mixing a hamfisted response to her question with an attempt to relate it to the job interview he was supposed to be doing.

"I am very surprised to see... this verdict... come on to me, because I was not expecting that," he said. "When I came, they told me something else and I am coming. 'You got an interview,' so it's a very big surprise anyway."

In print, it looks semi-coherent. It wasn't, and the "interview" got quickly worse, during which time, people in the control room yelled at each other that the guy on camera knew nothing, that they had to get away from him and to alert the reporter at the court that they were cutting to him.

Which they did. Now, the reporter had not had time to read the judgement, so as the hand signal came to tell him he was on air, he started winging it like he had never winged it before. On the other hand, he spoke creditable English and most viewers were paying damn all attention to him anyway, because they were going "What the hell just happened there?"

One viewer was asking that with particular focus, he being Guy Kewney -- the real, the actual and the white Guy Kewney -- who was watching the disaster unfold on a monitor in another part of BBC reception, mystified by the chyron running across the black man's chest, falsely identifying him as Kewney.

All hell broke loose. Other media began cobbling stories together, some wrongly claiming Goma was a taxi driver made famous -- or infamous -- by pretending to be someone else.

Next, international media bombarded the Beeb with requests for information. One of those reached was the controller, Kevin Bakhurst, who'd been on a day off when it happened, and whose initial reaction to queries was to truthfully say: "Sounds very unlikely."

Unlikely it may have been, but it had happened, and Bakhurst suddenly found himself being asked if the BBC could prevent other broadcasters -- like CNN -- from using the clip. No, he decided. Time to put the corporate hands up and let it run.

He denied being angry about it, but he certainly did not, as most viewers did, find it funny. The recently published book about the episode says that over time his view "may have mellowed a bit".

"It was funny," he admitted to the author, "but it was reputationally not helpful." In that context, an RTÉ broadcaster wrongly categorised by the previous DG as a producer, rather than a presenter, is, bluntly, small potatoes.

Minuscule spuds, in fact. Petite prátaí, even. Which may explain why Bakhurst got so shirty with members of the Oireachtas committee who didn't see it that way. The shirtiness availed him nought. It had been decided this was a scandal, whether he liked it or not. And he clearly didn't like it.

But, in fairness, the producer/presenter controversy doesn't come near to the earlier, 20-year-old disaster. That's a broadcasting war story for the ages. Goma goes wild... more

Career development

 1d

Mumbai journalist forced to quit during pregnancy struggles to get a job: 'HRs only see gap in CV'- Moneycontrol.com


'I was snatched away from a professional system that would have been in place for me had I not been forced to resign,' Nisha Nawaz (name changed) said. (AI-generated image)

A Mumbai-based journalist, who says she was forced to quit during her pregnancy, has spent nearly three years struggling to re-enter the workforce, alleging that recruiters are fixated on a gap in her résumé and using it to... justify lower salaries.

Nisha Nawaz (name changed), who previously worked with a city tabloid, told Moneycontrol that her job search since her child was three months old has been marked by repeated scrutiny over her career break.

"It seems like the first thing that catches recruiters' eye in my resume is the gap," she said, adding that offers made to her have often been below market standards. According to Nawaz, hiring managers frequently position the gap as a weakness in salary negotiations. "They want me to settle with a minimal salary and have often used the career gap as a reason that I should settle for less," she said.

She has applied across journalism, content writing, and research roles, but says the response pattern has remained consistent.

Exit during pregnancy

Recalling why she was forced to quit her last job at a popular Mumbai tabloid, Nawaz said she informed her editors about her pregnancy during the first trimester and initially received support, including limited work-from-home flexibility. But, health challenges -- including severe nausea, back pain, and long commutes -- made work increasingly difficult.

After taking a short medical leave, she said she was called into what she described as an unexpected performance review with senior editors.

"I could immediately sense a shift in my seniors' attitude," she said, adding that despite delivering around 15 cover stories during her nine-month tenure -- while others were expected to provide one cover story a month -- her performance was questioned over minor contributions.

She also alleged that her request for continued flexibility was denied.

"I had a note from the doctor that advised rest. I was nauseous almost all the time and had a back pain. I did not say no to work but just wanted a little flexibility. A hybrid system would have made it much easier for me to take care of myself and my work. But both my editors and the HR, who were all women, put their foot down."

This surprised Nawaz because there were at least two employees in the office who were allowed to work from home.

"It wasn't like I was the only person requesting for some flexibility. The organisation had already made exceptions for two other employees," she said.

Pressure builds after appraisal meeting

Since the office had denied a hybrid work system, Nawaz asked the senior editors if she could take a couple of months leave without pay along with her maternity leave. They allegedly said no. The following week as marked by "immense pressure," leaving her with what she felt was no viable option but resignation.

"It seemed that the only way to protect myself and my baby was to quit," Nawaz said, adding that the organisation accepted her resignation immediately and waived her notice period, which surprised her.

Long-term impact on career

Nawaz says the lack of maternity-linked job security has had cascading effects -- from lost benefits to stalled career progression.

"I was snatched away from a professional system that would have been in place for me had I not been forced to resign," she said.

She also pointed to the challenges of job-hunting while raising a child without family support in a large city. "Sifting through jobs... while I take care of a young child... has been traumatising," she said.

'Gap added skills, not reduced them'

Despite hiring bias, Nawaz argues that the career break has strengthened her abilities.

"That gap has not only brought forth a new human being but also taught me better time management, multi-tasking and other life skills," she said.

Nawaz is currently interviewing for roles and remains hopeful that employers will evaluate her on skills rather than the career break. more

Career development

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The job-search move that matters more than your résumé


College might prepare you for a job, though not necessarily how to network for one.

Building those professional relationships matters more than ever because while it's easier than ever to apply to jobs, it's often harder to stand out from a pile of AI-tailored résumés.

Finding ways to connect with people on the inside might be enough to get a hiring manager to give your application a... thumbs-up.

This approach is often more effective than expecting your résumé to do the talking for you, career advisors told Business Insider. And this is especially the case if you're just starting out and don't have a lot of experience.

"People hire people, they don't hire paper," said Andy Chan, who runs the Office of Personal and Career Development at Wake Forest University.

He said that job seekers too often think of recruiting and applying for jobs as transactional processes. While they are, to some degree, Chan said, it's important to try to ground your interactions with an employer in relationships.

That matters because it's a tough job market in many industries. While unemployment remains in check, some companies are shedding workers, and some employers want more from their entry-level hires.

He said the No. 1 way to get an interview is to know someone at an organization or have someone recommend that you talk to someone at a specific company.

After a conversation, Chan said, the person you spoke with might then talk to the hiring manager or someone in HR and let them know you're applying, Chan said.

"That bit of endorsement is frequently the key to getting an interview," he said.

Spend two-thirds of your time networking

Chan said it's important that most job seekers, including those seeking their first professional role, spend about 60% to 70% of their time talking with people and only 30% to 40% applying online.

"Most students will say, 'Whoa, I spent like 100% of my time online,'" he said, adding that some will then say that their approach hasn't worked.

If you don't have many contacts in your field, college career offices can often help connect you with relevant alumni and corporate recruiters.

You can also try to make connections by asking someone you admire to chat for a few minutes about their career trajectory. It's what's sometimes called an informational interview.

The trick is to first do your homework by researching the employer and the person you're speaking with.

"If you're going to ask for 15 minutes of their time, be sure to show that you spent 15 minutes of yours," Madeline Mann, a career coach and CEO of Self Made Millennial, previously told Business Insider.

Apply, then start your hustle

Jane Curran, global head of HR operations at the real-estate company JLL, said that job seekers still need to apply for roles that make sense for them. After all, you need to be on an employer's radar to be in contention. Yet, she said, there's more work to do after submitting an application.

"Then you have to turn that into a hustle," Curran said. That could mean going to LinkedIn to see who might have a connection at that company, she said.

"You have to go figure out who knows who, and how am I going to stand out? How am I going to get a job interview?" Curran said.

Catherine Fisher, a career expert with LinkedIn, said that networking doesn't have to mean taking someone out to dinner three nights a week.

Making or keeping a connection with someone can involve small gestures like offering a substantive comment on someone's post or shooting them a text, Fisher said. Other times, like if you're asking someone for a bigger favor, it might be time to buy them a coffee, she said.

"Networking is a muscle that you're going to have to flex throughout your entire career," Fisher said. "When you're job searching, you're going to be flexing it more."

She said that too often, people think they should only reach out when they have something big to share. Instead, Fisher said, it can be as simple as messaging to say you were thinking of the person and enjoyed the last conversation.

"You just want to keep those relationships warm," she said, "because they will serve you when you need them."

Fisher said a key part of it is being "reciprocal" so that when people contact you, you give your time, too.

"It just becomes this kind of circle of networking," she said.

Don't overlook your résumé

Even though networking is so often essential, that doesn't mean your résumé can be an afterthought, said Kathleen Powell, chief career officer at William & Mary.

Many employers use applicant-tracking software to take a first pass at reviewing résumés, in part by looking for keywords that match those found in the job posting.

She said that because a recruiter or hiring manager might only scan a résumé quickly, it's important that it be well-organized.

"If it's in front of a human, make it easy for that human to find the things," Powell said.

Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

An earlier version of this story appeared on July 16, 2025. more

cyusa shawn
Career development 1d
hey guys am new here, i had a question i would like to become the a successfully tech entrepreneurand am seeking advice on the 5 big mistakes a entrepreneur should avoid, from you as experienced people in the field that would mean alot to me.
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  • Kelvin Mulembe

    2
    4d

    Focusing on the mistakes starts on the wrong page. "Youngest successful tech entrepreneur" sounds like an ego adventure rather than an innovative... idea. Your idea must attempt to solve a problem, improve something, or meet a need. Otherwise, find a job and climb the ladder.  more

    2

  • Tawny King

    4
    4d

    I do not know the tech industry but what I can say generally speaking which I could have benefitted from when I started my cleaning services is....1.... do your research and know the industry you are entering 2. look up competition 3. Get a mentor  more

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Career development

 1d

ScoutBetter Raises the Bar in Hiring with $5M AI Career Platform Built for Outcomes


ScoutBetter is an AI career platform helping job seekers optimize applications, improve hiring outcomes, and build data-driven job search strategies.

ScoutBetter is an AI career platform helping job seekers optimise applications, improve hiring outcomes, and build data-driven job search strategies. Today, a typical job seeker applies to 200+ jobs, customises every résumé, and still doesn't know... if what they're doing is right. The problem isn't effort; it's strategy. That's the gap ScoutBetter was designed to fill. But for co-founder Rakshith Reddy Gopidi, it wasn't a market insight so much as an experience as an international student in the US: repetitive, uncertain and disheartening. "It felt like shouting into an abyss", he says. "You apply, you wait, and you never know what made the difference." Disappointment that leads to a problem that needs solving. Co-founded with Raghav Kapoor Gupta, both Computer Science Engineering graduates and batchmates from NIIT University, Rajasthan, ScoutBetter has become a $5 million AI-powered career platform built completely bootstrapped with a global team of 80+.

While most hiring platforms focus on the number of listings and applications, ScoutBetter is the other way around. By looking at the link between a candidate, the roles they apply to, and what they get in return, this employer-focused hiring marketplace is building a data-informed picture of what drives results. "You shouldn't position your career on guesswork it should run on intelligence, clarity and direction," says Raghav.

In practice, the platform covers the entire lifecycle of job search: resume polishing, job identification in company career pages, custom application, and interview prep, where AI and humans work together. To date, it has handled millions of applications across the United States, creating thousands of prospects for interviews for students, early-career professionals and international applicants.

Creating the Intelligence Layer

ScoutBetter is changing from a purely application platform to an AI-powered career agent, which tells candidates where they position, what skill gaps they have, and their odds of success at different roles. Developed by CTO Nayan Reddy, a BITS Pilani graduate who has 5+ years of experience, the focus of the system is pattern recognition, feedback and real-life results, all without raising a penny of external capital.

The company, a $5 million AI career platform, was founded in 2023 by Rakshith Reddy Gopidi and Raghav Kapoor Gupta. ScoutBetter is headquartered in the US with a distributed +80 team, serving users across the US and India. more

Career development

 1d

Job Search Guidance For 10th-Pass


I have completed my 10th standard and now want to enter the workforce as soon as possible. What I need from you is focused job-search support that goes beyond simply polishing a résumé. Here's what I am expecting: * A concise, market-ready résumé and short cover-letter template tailored to 10th-pass openings. * A curated list of current vacancies in reputable companies that hire candidates with my... qualification, including but not limited to hospitality, customer service, manufacturing or similar corporate setups. * Step-by-step guidance on how to apply to each role -- including optimising keywords for online portals, filling out application forms, and following up professionally. * Interview preparation: likely questions for entry-level positions and tips to present my schooling and any informal experience in the best light. Please outline how quickly you can deliver the first set of openings and any tools or job boards you plan to use. I'm ready to start right away and will provide any additional personal information you need to move things forward. more

Career development

 1d

I Found a $49 Service(For Free) That Applies to 100+ Jobs a Month For You  --  And It's Not What You...


I Found a $49 Service(For Free) That Applies to 100+ Jobs a Month For You -- And It's Not What You Think

A human team doing your job hunt isn't lazy. It might actually be the smartest career move you make this year.

Job hunting is broken. Not slightly inconvenient -- genuinely, soul-crushingly broken.

The average software engineer spends 4-6 hours filling out a single application on Workday.... The average job search takes 5 months. The average number of applications sent before landing an offer? Somewhere between 50 and 200, depending on which depressing LinkedIn post you read last.

And yet, most job seekers are still doing all of this manually. One application at a time. Copy-pasting the same bullet points into yet another "Skills" text field that will be read by a bot before a human ever sees it.

That's the problem JobRocket was built to solve -- and when I came across it, my first reaction was skepticism. My second was: wait, this is actually just smart.

What JobRocket Actually Is

JobRocket is an application assistance service where a US-based human team applies to jobs on your behalf. You upload your resume once, tell them your target role and salary range, and they start hunting.

Every day, their team identifies 5+ new openings across 200+ company career pages -- Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, Ashby, Notion, Stripe, the whole ecosystem. They tailor your resume and write a custom cover letter for each application. You get a live dashboard showing every single submission, and interview invites land directly in your inbox.

The price: $49 a month. But here's the hook -- they'll do your first 10 applications completely free, no credit card required. If those 10 applications generate interviews, you pay. If they don't, you walk away with nothing lost.

That's a genuinely confident business model. You don't offer a free trial unless you believe your product works.

The Part That Made Me Stop Scrolling

There's a line on the site that stopped me: "No bots. 100% human team. That's why we don't get banned by Workday or Greenhouse."

This is the thing most people miss when they think about AI-powered job search tools. The major Applicant Tracking Systems -- Workday especially -- have gotten extremely good at detecting automated submissions. Bot-applied applications frequently get flagged, filtered, or silently discarded before a recruiter ever sees them.

JobRocket's answer to this is deliberately old-fashioned: actual people, actually filling out forms. It sounds counterintuitive in 2026, but human applications have a higher completion rate, better formatting consistency, and don't trigger spam filters. Their clients reportedly average 3-8 interview requests within 30 days of 100+ applications. That conversion rate is real.

Who This Is Actually For

The site mentions "200+ laid-off engineers," and that framing is precise. This product clicks hardest for a specific kind of person:

The employed professional who hates job hunting. You're not desperate, but you want to see what's out there. You have $49 but you don't have 20 hours a week to spend on applications. JobRocket is essentially arbitrage -- you're buying back your time at a rate that makes obvious sense.

The recently laid off who's overwhelmed. When you're in the middle of a layoff, the cognitive load of job hunting compounds the emotional weight of it. Having someone else handle the application volume while you focus on interview prep is a legitimate division of labour.

The senior professional targeting specific companies. At a senior level, the ratio of quality applications to quality interviews matters more than raw volume. JobRocket's team applies directly to career pages (not third-party aggregators), which means your application lands in the primary ATS -- where it should be.

The Honest Caveats

JobRocket is transparent about what it is and isn't. The footer reads: "JobRocket is an application assistance service. We do not guarantee interviews or employment."

That's fair. No one can guarantee interviews. What they're guaranteeing is volume -- 100+ applications a month, or a full refund. The rest is on the quality of your resume, the strength of your experience, and the market you're operating in.

The other thing worth noting: this is not a headhunter. They're not leveraging relationships with hiring managers. They're not doing anything you couldn't theoretically do yourself -- they're just doing it faster and at scale, which is precisely the value proposition.

The Broader Point

There's a cultural narrative that says doing your job hunt manually is somehow more earnest, more deserving of results. That if you didn't suffer through every Workday form yourself, you didn't really want it.

That's nonsense. Nobody judges a founder for hiring a recruiter, or a busy executive for using a career coach. Delegating the mechanical, repetitive parts of job hunting -- form-filling, cover letter formatting, application tracking -- so you can focus on the high-leverage parts (interview prep, networking, negotiation) is not cutting corners. It's resource allocation.

JobRocket isn't magic. But at $49 a month with a free trial that requires zero credit card, it's one of the lowest-risk experiments a job seeker could run in 2026.

The application economy is volume-based now. The question is whether you want to supply that volume yourself, or hire someone who does it faster while you sleep.

JobRocket is live at jobrocket-site. The free trial is 10 human-submitted applications, no card required. more