The EMBA Question - is it worth it?

I was reading in the WSJ a few weeks ago about the compression of the EMBA program. Experienced executives are having a hard time meeting the demands of work and fitting the EMBA curriculum into their schedules. Schools are compressing the schedule to get it all in in a shorter period. Getting on the Fast TrackTo an Executive M.B.A. By Ronald Alsop

I was thinking that there are quite a few senior executives in my same position; having been consumed in working hard for smaller companies that did not have time to sponsor me in an EMBA program. I wondered if it would be worth the investment today to get the EMBA degree or is there just not enough return? I was discussing this with my older sister and suggested I might be too old to make it worthwhile - she was apparently offended by my suggestion that I was "too old" considering what this would mean for her, so I had to explain that too old was not about age, but about ROI.

So to get an expert's opinion, I sent a message off to Ron Alsop at WSJ and apparently I was not the only one. The answers to this compelling question is in the next article Is Earning an Executive M.B.A.Past the Age of 50 Worth It?

I would love to hear comments on this - please let me know.

A very cool video from Neal Adams

This post has absolutely nothing whatever to do with job searching, but it is so cool that everyone needs to see it. Flies in the face of conventional science - you can't watch this without wondering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI

Internet Presence - Yet another day

Focus
Working on a career transition is not easy - but it is cathartic and it certainly helps to provide much needed focus on what is truly important, what you really want to do, what your goals really are. There is a book out "Stumbling on Happiness" showing that we don't really know what we want - if we got what we think we want, we would be miserable. Guess what - when you are in transition you still need to think about it.

Job Search = Sales and Marketing Job
I don't have to tell anyone in job transition that the old adage "Finding a job IS a job" is true. What else is true is that finding a job is a Sales and Marketing job - I have never had a sales and marketing job and I have not been trained to do it. I am an engineer with lots of business experience, but not a sales and marketing guy.

Well I am learning to be a Sales and Marketing guy - the hard way - I am learning to do sales and marketing on myself, probably the hardest product to work with, we are not unbiased observers of ourselves. So, how do you do this? Get some training. I have hired a coach to help me do it right. Tiger Woods has a coach and he is a better golfer than I am a job searcher - I deserve a coach. I used Execunet to find the coach, but there are other ways as well.

Internet Presence
My latest endeavor is to increase my own internet presence so that I actually exist on the internet. Its not actually that complicated, but its not simple either. There are two really good sites devoted to help on this topic.

Ron Bates, who is the most connected guy on LinkedIn, sponsors two great sites on improving your job search CV-Advantage and Search-Advantage. Both provide excellent instruction for getting an internet presence in a few weeks. He is also a very helpful guy and runs a successful executive search firm. I am following his advice and have had some good results.

Eric Wolfram also has a site that provides excellent instructions on getting improved internet visibility - his is mostly focused on a business, but the same rules apply. http://wolfram.org/writing/howto/3.html

Hope all this helps all the active job seekers out there - e-mail me if I can help you more directly.

Jim Rowland

Its a brand new day

This is my very first post on this blog, or on any other blog for that matter. I will be sharing my experiences, my insights what is interesting... etc.

I am in transition for about 5 months now, a strange experience for anyone who has ever been there. Its not for the faint of heart. I have not searched for a job in 20 years and all the rules have changed. I have learned an entirely new vocabulary and an entirely new skill set. For all the internet activity these days, internet job boards are the worst place in the world to find a job.

I will be sharing my experiences with searching for a new job and hopefull finding one, then doing the new job.

Hope this is helpful to some of you who are also out there searching.

Jim Rowland