Written by Sameer Kamat

It’s only a matter of time before working men and women will start facing the heat of a mid-life career crisis in their job. It’s seldom an overnight development that you can quickly put your finger on. Instead it starts creeping up slowly but surely. Office politics, burnout, ego clashes, loss of management trust, self defeating feelings of self-doubt.

Listening to the frustration release song (can you guess who’s the singer?) can offer a few moments of solace, but no real solution. For many, a job change or an international MBA seems like a good escape route to reset the clock and start off afresh. But it’s an expensive & risky option and there’s no guarantee that the mid-life career problems you were facing will disappear. What if they resurface in the new company in a different form?

Written by Sameer Kamat

Learning German, French, Spanish, Japanese or any other language can give you an advantage that no technical or managerial skills can replace. The ability to connect and interact with colleagues, clients and friends from another culture is a huge ice-breaker.
After completing my MBA, I worked for a German company (in India) for 5 years. This involved frequent trips to Germany. So in the first few months after I joined, I spent several hours each day to learn basic German from Anjali Patil, a highly accomplished German teacher from the Goethe Institut.
She has been one of the most patient teachers I’ve ever come across. It’s tough to manage a bunch of over-grown brats in the corporate class, but Anjali did it with poise and elegance. The end result was, after the course, we were able to manage not only our Germany trips well, but also the numerous email chains that would often shuttle between English and German content.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Management consultant Amit (better known as MBA Dropout, after his first post on MBA Crystal Ball) has been addressing queries on this blog as well as on our careers discussion forum, from folks interested in getting management consulting jobs.
We’ve had a few one-off posts and a mini-series on consulting careers earlier. But we weren’t able to cover a lot of ground earlier in those short posts. So Amit has offered to help out by starting this guest series to throw some light on the Management Consulting industry.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Academic jobs in business pay well, in fact, much better than ‘regular’ academic jobs in other (non-business) fields. But it’s a tough and long road to get there.
IMD Switzerland MBA grad Hari Raghavachari wraps up the 2-part series on academic careers by talking about how you get get the skills and qualifications needed for academic jobs.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Academic jobs are usually associated with teaching and research. Beyond this, the level of awareness is limited, specially for those seeking a ‘business focussed’ career.
Hari Raghavachari (an IMD Switzerland MBA alumnus) thinks there’s more to academic careers than meets the eye. In this 2-part series, he tries to provide additional insights into the world of teaching, administration, consulting and research jobs, but with a business focus.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Jobs in Human Resource Management can literally give you the power to control the careers of hundreds or even thousands of employees.
Hari Raghavachari started a 2-part series add some clarity to the field of Human Resources (HR).
Part 1: Human Resource Careers: Scope, roles, responsibility of HR Jobs
Part 2: HR Jobs: How to get them? Qualifications & personal qualities
Here’s the second part.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Human Resources Management is a key function that is generally managed directly by the CEO. That’s the level of importance it gets in any organisation. But it is also one of the few disciplines that gets misunderstood by employees and sometimes even by the senior management.
Our friend Hari Raghavachari (he wrote the IMD Switzerland MBA blog posts) returns with a 2-part series to throw light on the field of Human Resources (HR).
Part 1: Human Resource Careers: Scope, roles, responsibility of HR Jobs
Part 2: HR Jobs: How to get them? Qualifications & personal qualities

Written by Sameer Kamat

Teach for India jobs through various NGO partners on the ground can provide an excellent exposure to the education sector for high-potential professionals.

Saloni Gupta might remind you of the naughtiest girl in your school who always got away scot-free because of her innocent looks. Several years after completing her undergrad, she was planning to become a full-time student once again. But destiny had other plans for her. Rather than being an MBA student at one of the top bschools, she transitioned to the other side to become a teacher. Her life changed when she got the following email from Teach for India:

Written by Sameer Kamat

Management consultant Jaineel Aga started the blog series on Management Consulting Jobs with a post on Why management consulting and followed it up with why consulting jobs roles are popular. This week he talks about the relevance of business schools in the recruitment process.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Management consultant Jaineel Aga started the blog series on Management Consulting Jobs with a post on Why consulting? This week he talks about why a career as a strategy consultant is so popular.