career planning

NAPA, Calif.—Drop the hard sell. Try texting prospective buyers. And know that it might take dozens of meetings to close a deal. Such were some of the lessons shared at the Women in Sales Summit here this fall, where about 250 saleswomen networked, traded tactics and considered one of the biggest questions consuming the sales profession: how to sell to millennial buyers. The cohort born between 1981 and 1996 is the biggest in the U.S. workforce, and now holds the largest number of decision-making roles in corporate…

Many of the millions of people who switched jobs during the pandemic are feeling the bite of inflation especially hard, and for an often overlooked reason—they opted for pay cuts.All around, it has been a good time for American workers and their earning power—if not their spending power. Labor shortages have driven up wages, and many in-demand employees have quit jobs for better-paying ones.  Yet a sizable share of job switchers took pay cuts in the Covid-19 era, according to new research. In a…

The U.S. surgeon general is telling Americans for the first time that disrespectful or cutthroat workplaces could be hazardous to their health.Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s office—which is more often associated with warnings about nicotine, Zika and the Covid-19 pandemic—issued a guidance Thursday outlining how long hours, limited autonomy and low wages can affect workers’ health and organizational performance. Chronic stress disrupts sleep, increases vulnerability to infection and has been linked to conditions ranging…

You’re showing up at the office again. Are you getting the face time that matters? Many of us used to rack up the in-person interactions and career exposure we needed by osmosis—trying to impress the big boss when she walked by, absorbing tips from a cubicle-mate’s phone calls, reminding colleagues of our presence just by sitting at our desks. After all, everyone was there, every day.  Now we’re contending with a mishmash of hybrid schedules. Colleagues dash in for an hour or two, then head back out—to a client meeting, a…

Broad new data on wages earned by college graduates who received federal student aid showed a pay gap emerging between men and women soon after they joined the workforce, even among those receiving the same degree from the same school.The data, which cover about 1.7 million graduates, showed that median pay for men exceeded that for women three years after graduation in nearly 75% of roughly 11,300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs at some 2,000 universities. In almost half of the programs, male graduates’ median…

Rarely has such a robust labor market been so thoroughly scoured for signs of impending doom. Does this mean you should lower your salary expectations the next time you are up for a promotion or a new job? Or settle for a job with more security as a recession looms? Not necessarily. Now is still a good time to vie for a new opportunity or more money. The demand for talent is strong and many employers are contending with significant staffing challenges. Economists predicting a downturn…

Internships are often a springboard to full-time jobs, yet high living costs have some students questioning whether they can afford to take summer roles in certain locations.Many companies are paying interns in order to compete for talent and ensure opportunities don’t go solely to those who can afford to work for little or no compensation. Yet some students and employers say stipends and wages don’t go as far as they did a year ago, and soaring rents from New York to Seattle also have changed students’ calculations as to…