What employers want from you

These days, your academic excellence is almost taken for granted by potential employers. More and more they are looking for hard skills such as writing, literacy and leadership and soft skills such as the ability to communicate effectively.

As well as academic requirements, the jobs mentioned above all emphasizes the other skills that the employers want from Science and IT graduates. And time after time, it’s the same ones:

* Good communication and presentation skills, both oral and written
* Self-motivation
* Team worker
* An interest in and an ability to pick up technical concepts quickly and competently
* Analytical mind
* Imagination and inquisitiveness
* Ability to learn new skills and implement them quickly
* Sound decision making and problem solving skills
* Ability to manage own and others’ time

Remember, too, that many employers require quite a high level of mobility today. This is especially true of the larger recruiters who have graduate training programmes that involve extensive national and sometimes international travel.

A typical example of this is pharmaceutical giant GSK, which is a major recruiter of both Science and IT graduates (www.gsk.com/careers/uk-stud-grad-prog.htm).

Science opportunities are offered within analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, microbiology and chemometrics. The development programme involves three 12-month placements in at least two business areas, in different sites mostly within the UK and the Republic of Ireland but occasionally further abroad too. Training and development is divided into four areas: business execution and understanding, technical and specialist expertise, self and high performance behaviors. Note that the latter concerns those all-important soft skills such as working with others and communication skills that every employer is looking for today.

IT graduates at GSK must be prepared to move around, too. Over three years, a series of different IT rotations are conducted, each lasting a year. These can include business analysis, project management, service analysis and systems architecture.

It’s a similar story with BT (www.btplc.com/Careercentre/), whose regime involves IT graduates getting early experience in design and consultancy, software and platform engineering, IT systems engineering, IT technical operations, security and more. As one graduate trainee sums it up on the BT website: “I actually chose BT because it’s so big, and there’s scope to work in so many different areas.”

By Your Career Guide

How Much Are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Worth? (Report)

For the moment, the valuations we have for private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are based mostly on what we know from venture capital investments.

SharesPost, however, is a company that lets owners of shares in private companies sell them to prospective buyers, and it has just released an index detailing valuations of some of the most prominent companies in the social media space.

Here’s what they report:

Facebook: $11.5 billion

Zynga: $2.6 billion

Twitter: $1.4 billion

LinkedIn: $1.3 billion

Linden Labs (Second Life): $383 million

How close are these valuations to reality? Facebook’s most recent investment from DST valued the company at north of $10 billion, while Twitter was valued at roughly $1 billion when it took $100 million in funding back in September. In other words likely not too far off.

SharePost also says that it has been involved “in the negotiations of more than $229MM worth of transactions,” so there is enough activity in its marketplace for it to make rough estimates of valuation. Its estimates also take into account venture capital investments and research reports from equity analysts.

What do you think of the valuations? Let us know in the comments!

By Adam Ostrow

Build a More Meaningful Career

11,000 days. That's the number of days you'll probably work over your lifetime. You'll likely have six or seven career changes and 11 or 12 jobs in total. You may be wondering if you need a change now.

30 million people go to work each day to a job they hate. The harmful feelings permeate their entire life, putting a negative cloud over the home, their friends and many of their other activities. They may lack the know-how to change, may be afraid of leaving the security of a paycheck, or have a hundred excuses for why it's okay to be so dissatisfied and stay at their job.

There is a better way to live your life. Meaningful purpose is a driving force that adds enthusiasm to your days. Taking a passion and making it your career, living a dream can be not just a wish, but a true and certain reality. Here are a few steps to get the new career rolling:

Do some self-analysis. Ask yourself What really matters to me? What problem or wrong would I like to fix? What do I enjoy? Where are my interests and hobbies? What are my priorities? What is my secret passion? What do I want to do with the rest of my life? Reviewing these questions can give you new insight to where you want to go.

Use your unique genius and talents. Every person is born with a unique set of natural abilities. Talents, such as managing, creating, researching, training others, drawing, can all seem like easy work because you have a natural flair for them. True happiness comes from combining your natural talents, developing and excelling in them, and working in a field, job, industry that you have a passionate interest in.

Others have done it and so can you. Sometimes it's easy to forget that we can change if we really want to. Although she was a prominent lawyer, my client Sarah was dissatisfied in her work, and glad to take a few years off to have two children. She told me she hated “practicing law.” She found it boring, yet she felt enormous guilt at abandoning a career she spent years training for and made great money in. We worked together, focusing on her real interests and natural talents. Sarah landed a terrific new job as an executive director for a nonprofit organization. She leads others, influences policies, develops programs, and is a very happy person. “I even make a great salary, but I love my job so much, I'd do this for free,” she said.

Make a decision. Many people flounder for years and never turn their dreams into reality. They let themselves remain in a negative or stuck place. Only action can change your life. Read a book. Take vocational tests. Use a good career-management professional. Do some career exploration and gather all the information you need. Then make a decision and go forward. Outline the action steps to reach your career goal. The only thing at stake is your happiness. Finding meaning, passion and purpose every day you go to work is the wonderful reward, so don't wait any longer. Begin right now and set in motion your own plan to live a happier, more satisfying life.

by  Robin Ryan