Category: Career

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Career · Skills

BR 164: Case Interview Secrets by Victor Cheng

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments and Learning: 

Top book if you are preparing for case interviews – I had case interviews in a couple of roles I interviewed for in my internship quest in the 1st year of my MBA – this book was very useful.

My favorite learning from the book was the importance of taking the first 2 minutes in a case and developing an approach/structure for the problem. If you structure a problem wrong or just don’t, there are few ways back in a case.

No learning blogged aside from – solve as many cases as possible and develop an approach that’ll help you tackle case interviews. :)

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career · Skills · Technology

BR 162: Cracking the PM interview by Gayle Laakmann, Jackie Bavaro

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments and Learning: 

1. Top book if you are preparing for Product Management interviews in technology – this book was very helpful in my internship recruiting quest in the first year of my MBA

2. Book learnings here

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career

BR 155: Case Studies and Cocktails by Carrie Shuchart and Chris Ryan

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Useful collection of pre-MBA resources. Sets expectations around the many priorities you will have to juggle while at school.

Looking back at the book now, I feel the priority and planning for MBA life section could be done much better. But, it was a good pre-school read.

Top Learning: Expect to be overwhelmed by multiple priorities like career, academics, extra-curricular, social commitments, etc.

Add on Mar 16, 2016: I have since blogged about the MBA experience in great detail.

3. SHELF it · Career

BR 154: More than Money by Mark Albion

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: This is one of 3 books that I read before starting out on my MBA. This is a good book and written with all the right intentions.

However, it failed to make an impact on me just because I’d read “How will you measure your life?” by Clayton Christensen  – which, I found more more comprehensive in terms of thinking about your impact on the world.

Top Learning: Think long term when thinking about your post-MBA career

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Career · Psychology · Relationships

BR 141: Give and Take by Adam Grant

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Category: 2 – BUY it! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: A very good book. It does really make you think about how you lead your life and establishes giving to be the best long term strategy.

Top 3 Learnings
1. There are 3 kinds of people – givers, takers and matchers. Takers never do well in the short term, matchers do consistently well whereever they go and the givers are either at the top or the very bottom of their fields. The givers at the top of their fields are what Grant calls “Other”-ish givers. They have a self interest in giving but don’t give at the expense of their performance. The givers at the bottom are those who give even if it is not in their long term interest to do so. Give a lot.. but be a bit selfish (not self centered) about it.

2. It is best to “chunk” your giving rather than do little bits every day. People who volunteer 3 hours on a  weekend are happier than those who do 30 mins every day. 100 hours was found to be the golden number for volunteering that gave maximum happiness returns.

3. It is in our interest to give a lot more than we get. In the old economy, takers weren’t as easily found out as today. Our track record follows us everywhere and being short term focused isn’t a good strategy.. and definitely isn’t a path to happiness.

Book notes here

1. Read ASAP! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career · Leadership · Philosophy · Self Improvement

BR 131: How will you measure your life? by Clayton Christensen

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Category: 1 – Read ASAP! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: I wish I had gotten to this book sooner. Clayton Christensen has such a thorough and clear thought process that reading this book is like embarking on an interesting intellectual journey with him.

This book is all about “how” to think rather than “what” to do. It has inspired some immediate changes in my life and I’m sure will continue to do so.

I loved it. I’m sure I’ll be sharing stories from the book for a long long time.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Be careful about viewing indiscretions in terms of marginal cost i.e. maybe I’ll do it just this time. You might think you are making allowance for an extenuating circumstance but life is just a series of extenuating circumstances. No athlete starts out with doping in mind.. it happens one bad decision after another. We can’t commit to 99% of an idea. It’s 100% or nothing.

2. Don’t look products as something people buy. Look at them as things people rent to get a job done. Ikea doesn’t win because it has the most amazing furniture. It wins because people hire Ikea for a quick, painless, cost effective way of re-decorating a home.

Similarly, great relationships involve asking yourself – why would my partner hire a husband/wife in this situation? This way, we focus on empathizing with what the other person wants rather than giving them what we think they should want.

3. Be careful about outsourcing your capabilities – Capability = Resources (what) + processes (how) + priorities (why). Dell began outsourcing small parts of manufacturing to Asus.. and 16 years later, Asus was manufacturing the whole computer. Asus soon started it’s own line of computers and Dell could do nothing since it had outsources it’s capabilities.

It’s important to think of this in terms of our kids. If our kids are constantly raised by someone else and learn processes and priorities from someone else, whose kids are they?

Add on Mar 16, 2016: This book changed my life. Up there with Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits.

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career

BR 129: The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Good career book and potentially useful for those reading career books for the first time.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Follow your passion is bad advice. The biggest reason for following your passion being irrelevant advice in this day and age is that your passion could be for an industry that might not exist in 10 years. The rate at which industries are being disrupted means that, even if it does manage to survive the next ten years, it’s unlikely it’s going to be anywhere as lucrative or attractive as it is now.

2. Who you know is what you know. Reid and Ben argue that the network is truest fastest source of information.When you look at it that way, having a deep network in the field you’d like to be in is critical because news will likely reach you much faster than via conventional sources.
The use for this is with all sorts of career moves of course. You get to hear of job openings before they exist, and so on.

3. Beware keeping optoins open. We’re often told to keep options open but Reid cautions against it. Making a decision may reduce your options in the short run but increases your options in the long run.

There’s never a right time. Even if you make a wrong decision, you can make another decision to correct it.

4. SOMEDAY it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career · Entrepreneurship

BR 123: The Millionaire Upgrade by Richard Parkes Cordock

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Category: 4 – SOMEDAY it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: This book was a real disappointment. I hardly ever put in books in the someday category but exceptions had to be made. I decided to listen to it as I was eager to get through a short book on a flight. I did.. And I was disappointed by the insight.

Perhaps this is a consequence of having read many great books on  career and entrepreneurship (So Good They Can’t Ignore You comes to mind), I found the book’s advice rhetorical – “follow your passion”, etc.

Top 3 learnings:

I’m going to pass on this for this book.

1. Read ASAP! · Book Review Actions · Career · Entrepreneurship · Self Improvement

BR 117: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

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Category: 1 – Read ASAP! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Top draw. Probably the best career book out there. Busts some really common myths and is really SO good you shouldn’t ignore it.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Follow your passion is bad advice. Working right trumps finding the right work. It is  all about “the approach” to work.

2. Adopt the “craftsman mindset” i.e. the mindset of someone who is willing to put in the hours of deliberate practice to hone their craft. Adopting this mindset means you focus your energies on being the best you can be. This, in turn, gives you career capital.

3. Once you get damn good, the chances are that you will love what you do thanks to being the craftsman. You can now also trade career capital in for more control and autonomy in your life.

Once again, top draw career book.