
Consultants are typically seen as hired mercenaries. Sometimes they get a bad rap, but at least they’re compensated well for it. I have to think that those who work at The Advisory Board Company have at least a somewhat better reputation since their company’s clients are all mission driven. What does mission driven mean? Well, most of The Advisory Board Company’s clients are in the healthcare industry (think hospitals and health systems, not insurance providers), but they’ve recently moved into working with universities too. I hadn’t heard of The Advisory Board Company until a One Day, One Job reader e-mailed me (you can reach me at willy@onedayonejob.com if you want to share a tip or success story) to tell me that he recently received a job offer from them. Apparently they do a ton of entry level hiring (along with some interns), and they’re continuing to grow well beyond the 5 employees that they started with in 1979. Since then they’ve grown to more than 1,000 employes, and they’ve served “more than 2,800 leading healthcare and higher education organizations.” Additionally, they’ve grown beyond their corporate headquarters in Washington, DC to having offices in Chicago, IL; San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; Portland, OR; Nashville, TN; London, UK; and Chennai, India. Continue reading about The Advisory Board Company…

One of the books that I’ve been reading lately is SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. It’s a great follow-up to the original Freakonomics
, and it once again shows how changing your mindset can lead you to all kinds of new ideas (this is a really important lesson for your career). One of the companies that is mentioned in the book is Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, WA based invention company. They’re all about ideas. Things like product design, product development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and service all come later, and Intellectual Ventures doesn’t want anything thing to do with those processes. They just invent, invent, invent. The company isn’t tied to one specific area—they’re working on problems like stopping Malaria, preventing hurricanes, and counteracting negative effects from climate change should they ever happen. Continue reading about Intellectual Ventures…

A lot of people find it ironic that I put an end to my job search by starting a company that helps other people with their job searches. I’ll admit that it’s a bit odd, but it seems to be working out pretty well. Maybe you’ll do something similar by starting your career with an internship at a job-search focused company like Mountain View, CA based LinkedIn. There are plenty of other companies trying to build professional social networks and online résumé sites, but none of them seem to have any hope competing with LinkedIn. LinkedIn reached critical mass first, and that’s why they’re one of my favorite online job search tools. Not only do they allow you to visualize your own professional network to see whom you’re connected to, but they also let you browse through the networks of different companies to learn more about their organizational structure. Where else can you get access to the résumé (which includes where they interned) of someone whose job you want to have five years down the road? LinkedIn is an amazing tool for smart job and internship seekers, and it’s also an amazing business—they’ve been profitable for nearly three years (which is impressive for a startup of their size and scope). Continue reading about LinkedIn…