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...and you get two completely different people looking for different things, what do you choose?

Ok, so this post is a little off my usual beaten track, but I just phoned a guy up today to ask for some feedback from an interview last week, and did receive some very hands on feedback! However, it was a little... confusing? So, there were two guys interviewing me over lunch, and the one I called to get some feedback is the one I've met before (how I found out they were recruiting), and he's a laid back guy and quick to laughs, just like me. The other guy was a bit more senior, and also less relaxed. So the first guy told me that he thought I was great and he prefered someone who is relaxed and can shift between being serious and professional, and cracking jokes and have fun, while his colleague thought I was a little 'flimsy'. I totally get it, the perception of being 'professional' is really something that depends on what culture you are in. I was listening to Dr. Annika Steibler at an AmCham (American Chamber of Commerce) seminar the other week, and she was describing how in an American cover letter or CV, one might write about traveling to exotic places, one's hobbies etc., while this is perceived to be very 'unprofessional' and not a serious application in a Swedish context.

So back to the case - in the context of my interview last week - what do you do when you are sitting opposite two people that have completely different ideas about what being 'professional' entails? (ok in the end I didn't get the job because I lacked some other skills, but that should probably also tell me that the senior consultant's opinion weighted more than my aquaintance's)

When being interviewe...

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Amazing. Had an interview today and I knew, I just knew, that my age was gonna be one of the biggest concerns. So I was prepared. Or so I thought. (I was NOT prepared for this…)

We spent the first third of the meeting discussing my age. A third. Of. The. Meeting. He was very, very, veeryyy concerned about me being 10 years younger than the predecessor to the role. Ended up with only the second 2/3 to talk about my experiences, strengths, weaknesses, all that stuff you usually talk on interviews.

Don't take me wrong, in the end me and the guy got along quite well and I impressed him by not taking offence to his ageism and on the contrary, proved that I have "thick skin". And my pragmatic side do see the reasoning behind his generalisation of age=competence - I work in an industry dominated by men with receding hairlines in their mid-50's when we are talking managers. Yes, it is really hard being a female. Yes, it is really hard being young. Yes, I have heard that a billion times before, but you know what? I am getting older by the minute and I've already realised ages ago that I need to be twice as good as my male counterparts. How else did I get into this chair in the first place, you think?

"Ageism", the new sex...

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OMG this is so gonna be my motto hereafter :D :D :D I die…!!

LOOL JUST HAVE TO SHA...

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Another spot on article/column by the NYT, what do you guys think, will women take the lead in management positions in the future and outperform their male counterparts?

"It’s 2014, and women are still paid less than men. Does this suggest that a gender pay gap is an unfortunately permanent fixture? Will it still be with us in 50 years? I would predict yes. But by that point, it will be men who will be earning less than women.
 

My forecast is based on evidence from schools, where it has been easier to work toward a level playing field than in the workplace.

 

Academically, girls have not merely caught up with boys in performance: they have overtaken them. In a study issued last year, and using data from 2000 to 2009, the economists Nicole M. Fortin, Philip Oreopoulos and Shelley Phipps found that 20.7 percent of female high school seniors had an “A” grade-point average, versus 14.7 percent of boys. In 2012, more than 70 percent of high school valedictorians were girls.

 

The trend extends into college. One study of Florida public colleges, by the economists Dylan Conger and Mark C. Long and covering the years 2002 to 2005, found that women had higher grade-point averages and were also more likely to stay in school. And the Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz also show in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” how times have changed. They report that by the age of 30, a man born in 1945 was roughly 50 percent more likely than a woman to have completed college — but that men born from 1960 to 1975 were less likely to complete college than women. For the group born in 1975, the gap was nearly 25 percent."

 


Read the whole article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/upshot/a-possible-path-to-closing-the-pay-gap.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=UP_PPT_20140512&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=2

 

…women earning more t...

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New HIV virus test developed, show a lot of promise and is using new technology for viral infection testing:

'Ticea used techniques that have been successful in identifying other viral infections and applied them to HIV for the first time. Rather than looking for antibodies to HIV, as the majority of existing tests do, Ticea amplifies the virus itself. This removes the window during which people are infected, but still show up as negative on antibody tests because the immune system has yet to gear up its response. Existing viral amplification tests for HIV are expensive and time consuming.'
 
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/teenager-creates-new-hiv-test

What is interesting is that the title of the article is 'Teenager Creates New HIV Test'. Hm… why emphasising on the age of the researcher more than anything else? The answer is obviously to generate clicks on the link - and must admit, guilty as charged, I did click on the link didn't I? Age biases is a part of the human nature, but what I am curious of, is how to manage that. Since I am writing a scientific paper myself right now, based on a Case Study Methodology, managing biases is a part of the methodology. Being aware, is the first step.

Are you aware of your own biases? o.O


 
 

Don't underestimate a...

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I thought this article about Stanford University taking a stance against climate change and trying to make the university fossil-fuel was pretty interesting:

"At least 11 small universities have elected to remove fossil-fuel stocks from their endowments, but none approaches Stanford’s prestige or national influence. Tuesday’s decision seems likely to increase the pressure on other major universities to follow suit."

It's not only the consumer brands (IKEA, H&M, Walmart) trying to re-invest in renewables, but even the universities are coming together in order to try to affect the energy sector. I mean, are there still people out there trying to convince themselves that the sustainability era isn't something real? That people on this planet - major decision makers, corporation and institutional leaders that influence huge assets - won't change? But they are!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/education/stanford-to-purge-18-billion-endowment-of-coal-stock.html?_r=0


Stanford Divests from...

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2:35 am - finishing the methodology section of my thesis - A business Case Study of Sustainable Packaging Design - while watching the movie "The Proposal". Gotta try combining business with pleasure ;-)

 
Btw love the proposal movie of evil (but very hot) female boss and submissive (and also very hot) male assitant ;-D Can I have Ryan Reynolds as my assistant if I get to be boss?? :D :D :D
 
 

Late night studies & ...

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Actually got to meet Erika Karp, founder of Cornerstone Capital Inc. at the Sday event today! And she is so cool :D Erika Karp was featured in Veckans Affärer (http://www.va.se/va-hallbarhet/finansvarldens-skarpaste-sluta-snacka-hallbarhet-593867) regarding her relentless battle within the financial industry for sustainable financial investments. She is one of the most powerful women in the financial industry and is a member of Harvard Business School Executive Education Program Development Advisory Council on Innovating for Sustainability. Go Erika!!
 
 
@ Sustainability Day: "You can be pragmatic and exploite the planet for a short term profit. But that's not pragmatic for the long term, if your clients are dead" - Erika Karp
 
Erika interviewed by The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/video/erika-karp-shakespeare-sustainable-business)
 

Erika Karp @ Sday

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Haven't slept all night due to jet lag and am now prepping for S-day… will have to rely on coffee to pull through the day. zzz… zzz…

On the bright side, I am meeting with a potential employer today!! :D :D :D fingers crossed!!
 
 

Sustainability Day he...

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So regarding my previous post about the saying/advice I got before - thought it might be interesting to share some thoughts on what that actually entitled (and if there are any Swedes/non-Swedes reading this, feel free to chip in on the cultural issue in this case).

The way I explained it to the students that asked me in my previous post, I told them it's like it's ok to say "I had a shitty day yesterday, you know, some good old family disagreements", and say it with some good humor. But it's not ok to say "I hate my mom".

Does that make sense? I ended up thinking about it some more and I guess the way I've interpreted the difference of being 'personlig'/'personal' and being 'privat'/'private' (sorry about the Swedish/English, language nuance are tricky) is that in the first statement you are being personal by telling people about your personal life outside work, but you are not pushing your problems onto someone else. In the second one, what the heck is your colleague suppose to do with that?? Then you've crossed the line.
 
 
An artikle in a Swedish newspaper that headlines: "Are you too private at work?"
(btw I just have to say I think it's curious that the picture in the article is of two women
gossiping. I wonder if the person who picked it was aware of his/her own biases, or
if this was perceived as a sales strategy of some sort?)
 

# 2 "Var personlig, m...

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This advice I received from a former colleague when I was just heading out into the buesiness world. I had just graduated engineering school and finished an internship with the Swedish Trade Council in China. At the time, I didn't put a lot of thought into it, but a few years later I gave the same advice to a fellow engineering student.
 
What was different this time, was that that student wasn't Swedish. He was in fact very much a "blatte" (Swedish ghetto slang for immigrants), like myself. He and his friend both looked at me, then each other and said something they probably never would've told any of the other biz people at the career fair.
 
-"What does that really mean, I mean, I've heard it many times before, but I never got it, you know?". And I realized shit, I totally got'im.
 
So it hit me. I don't get it, and they don't get it, because non of us ever grew up in a Swedish home. We never received the accompanied anecdotes or hand gestures or whatever that would've given us a deeper meaning to the phrase. What the hell is the difference between 'personal' and 'private'? If you google the definition of those words, they are freakkin identical!!
 
This story gave me the idea to start a blog about me trying to make a career in business, and the challenges I encounter, being a female engineer, and being a 'blatte'.
 
 
 
I was working at a career fair as a company ambassador when
I had the encounter with the two engineering students!
 

"Var personlig, men v...

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'Welcome, welcome, and may the odds be ever in your favor' - Effie Trinket, The Hunger Games.

 

In this blog I am going to write about my career aspirations. What it's like being a female engineer in a male dominating industry. What it's like being young and quite recently graduated from uni. What it's like being a first generation immigrant in Sweden, and managing the differences in cultures I daily encounter.

 

I am what some people refer to as a TCK - Third Culture Kid. If you google TCK, you will find that there actually has been a lot of research conducted in the area, mainly by a certain Dr. Ruth Useem. She was a psychologist who studied mainly American families who lived abroad in the 50's, e.g. such as diplomat families. Their children grew up in a country with a different culture than in their homes, and went to international schools. We are something of a cultural chameleon, since we absorbed all the cultures around us, and created something of a third cutlure within ourselves, hence the name.

 

I myself was born in China, and my parents likewise. We moved to Sweden when I was 4, and I grew up here, but attended a bilingual secondary school (high school). I lived and worked in China for a couple of years between 2008 and 2014, and now I'm about to take the first couple of steps into my new career path, finishing my second engineering master and working on moving my American boyfriend to Sweden. Career, feminism, diversification and sustainability are all topics close at heart to me. If they are to you too, I hope you'll continue to read my blog and add your own thoughts to it!

 

 

Welcome to my blog!