Never Less Than Success

Career Tips for Aspiring Management Consultants and Accountants

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The Excel Tip You Didn’t Know You Needed Until Right Now

As you know, I like to dabble in a little spreadsheet every now and again.

Tonight I stumbled upon a gem that I had to share.

I was working on a spreadsheet containing a handful of items to auction off ebay style. I had a fair market value (fmv) in one column and wanted the starting bid to be half of the fmv. There was just one problem…only nutjobs start bids at weird numbers like $12, or worse $12.50.

Enter my newfound friend – “ceiling.math”. After a little bit of googling and dodging a landmine of adsense and pop-up ads (my computer is currently revolting), I found this little guy and learned it can round up to the nearest multiple of basically anything.

As in ceiling.math($12.50,5) = $15. Don’t you think that’s much more satisfying to look at? If you need a little more precision and are dealing with something like hourly billings, this can help you there too. For example, if you always round up to the nearest half hour on timesheets for billing clients, ceiling.math has you covered, as in ceiling.math(11.25,.5) = 11.5. Simple.

If you’re swimming in spreadsheets everyday and like little nuggets like this, you’ll want to check out my full Excel training so you can get some high-impact efficiency gains in how you work in Excel.

https://ericpbutts.com/excel-bootcamp

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There are 4 elements to know if you’re in the right line of work (and a tip for what to do if the alignment isn’t currently quite right)

A friend of mine (Jason Jones) has begun frequently posting about finding his ikigai. At first, I thought “he seems pretty excited about it, so good for him.”

But the posts kept coming so then I needed to what ikigai was so I could know if I needed to be looking for it too. I will answer that in a second.

It is a Japanese concept that translates to “reason for being”. It is commonly depicted as a Venn diagram of four circles where the intersection is your reason for being.

  • What you have passion for
  • What the world needs
  • What you can be paid for
  • What you’re good at

A lot of people message me interested in consulting who have the first 3 covered but lack confidence in their skillset. In other words, they aren’t sure they are actually good at their job. If you find yourself in this situation, it may leave you feeling excited or happy but with some anxiety or a concern about your uncertain future. It usually presents as a question such as “what class can I take to be better prepared as a consultant?”

Believe it or not, the answer to that question frequently comes back to knowing your way around the almighty Excel spreadsheet. Decisions and strategies need to be supported by data and data needs a place to live. Most likely you will find that to be in a spreadsheet, so knowing what to do when data is staring you in the face can be a differentiator in your career.

So if you’re feeling uneasy in your pursuit of a consulting career (or any other where you end up handling numbers on a regular basis) because of a lack of confidence in your skillset, I suggest you head on over to Excel Bootcamp so you can try to find your ikigai.

https://ericpbutts.com/excel-bootcamp

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The fastest way to build strong business relationships that will endure the test of time

stronger relationships

I recently took a training on advanced networking and one of the things I talked about as my desired outcome was more techniques on forming stronger relationships faster. The training was with Performance of a Lifetime, a program which involved a lot of improvisational work as the primary method to work on those networking techniques. [Read more…]

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5 reasons you need to rethink telling people to smile more at work

All kinds of articles exist about the benefits of smiling, both socially and personally. And it all makes sense, yet you’re still probably not going to find me randomly smiling without cause. I think we can all acknowledge that a scowl is different from a straight face, unless you just happen to have a severe case of RBF, but that description is usually reserved for women (yay male privilege?!).

Here’s another fun fact. Despite all of the written words out there on why you should smile more, this is what I get when I type “you should smile more” into the Googles.

 

[Read more…]

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I found a business travel bag on Amazon that made me do a double take

Yes, a travel bag. I know it may sound a little crazy, but here’s the thing. Part of living the consulting lifestyle means there is some travel, for many that travel may be up to 80%. Some people love business travel and some people want to keep their business travel to a minimum. Regardless of which side of the business travel dichotomy you fall into, there is always a shared struggle about the luggage used. [Read more…]

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5 things you should do to stand out at a job fair (plus one thing to avoid)

 

Job Fair Hurdle

As many of you know, I recently attended the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) Conference in Detroit. During the two-day job fair, I came across a lot of hungry young professionals trying to figure out this whole career thing. While there, I realized I’ve discussed the importance of showing up to conferences and job fairs and my own experience in turning a job fair into a management consulting job offer, but never really talked about what to do once you’re *at* the job fair. I’m going to change that now and share the 5 keys to job fair success. These have held true since I was in the recruiting process several years ago, and they are just as true today. [Read more…]

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Nobody Eats Unless Everybody Eats

everybody eats

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you read the phrase “everybody eats”? Does it conjure up images of Thanksgiving day here in the United States?

Or maybe more of a Nathan’s hot dog eating contest (shout out to Joey Chestnut)?

Well this post isn’t about overindulgence but instead it’s about how to work most effectively with a team, especially one under constant pressure to produce results. [Read more…]

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Here’s why you NEED to take all of your vacation every year

It’s scary isn’t it?

But at the same time it feels pretty good.

You know what I’m talking about – putting up that out of office and going off the grid.

It’s interesting, it seems the more you move up the ranks, the more scary this is, until you’re the big boss. Read: partner in consulting speak. I think the campus hires often may not have enough responsibility to be concerned. Or the prioritization of career over vacation may be heavily skewed toward the latter.

If I had to visualize it, I think it would look something like this:

PTO

You might be thinking this is about to be another post about millennial entitlement or something like that but it’s not. It’s something entirely different. Instead, I want to talk about why it’s important to take that time off and why the new generation gets it right.

I’m sitting on a plane right now thinking about how I want to get this (vacation) right this time and more importantly why I NEED to, and so do you.

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Here’s the best way to secure that next promotion

Career Horsepower

What if I told you I had the answer to one the oldest career advice questions?

And that the answer shouldn’t be that surprising but it’s one you need to hear anyway?

Or that my answer applies to practically any industry, at least any job that requires you to interact with your customers or co-workers in person.

Even in 2018, that still covers… just about everyone.

So the question I’m talking about: what’s the best way to accelerate your career? [Read more…]