Success is no longer defined as simply reaching income goals and achieving a leadership position at any cost. We also want to be happy, to feel that our life has meaning and that the work we are doing taps into our greatest talents. It’s easy enough to evaluate a job based on salary, title and perks, but judging other elements that often lead to true satisfaction can be tricky. A Career Compass can help you find those career intangibles. It points you toward your “sweet spot,” the point where three critical variables intersect: your strengths, your interests and the environment where you will flourish.

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has met very few people who have a plan for their lives. Most are passive spectators, watching their lives unfold a day at a time. They may plan their careers, the building of a new home, or even a vacation. But it never occurs to them to plan their life. As a result, many end up discouraged and disillusioned, wondering where they went wrong.

But, he says, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can live your life on purpose. It begins by creating a “Life Plan.” This won’t insulate you from life’s many adversities and unexpected twists and turns, but it will help you become an active participant in your life, intentionally shaping your own future.

In a blog post, Hyatt shares with you how to create such a plan for your life. It consists of three sections:
* Outcomes
* Priorities
* Action Plans

Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank usually hears the “Should I get my MBA?” question at least once a month. Here's his answer for those interested in entrepreneurship.

Groups like MBAs Without Borders give B-school graduates experience in the developing world, and just maybe a new career.

As I age, I gain perspective on the illusion of wealth and status as forms of fulfillment. I don't want my life to be measured by dollars and cents, or the number of books I've authored. Rather, I want to be remembered by the lives that I've touched. I want live a life that counts.

A story from Keith Yost, an MIT grad, about his relatively short experience working at BCG in Dubai as a management consultant. [Hat tip to Brad Feld]

Anybody can become a consultant. But not everybody does it well. Here's what you need to know to thrive.

Everyone wants to make it to the top in their chosen career, but not everybody achieves that goal. This article takes an in-depth look at the different stages an executive must go through to become a CEO or to earn whatever other job title is used to describe the person at the apex of a business organization.

This 
paper looks 
at 
the 
small 
group 
of 
investors 
that 
nurture 
the 
entrepreneurial
 elite
 by 
taking 
big 
risks
 and 
writing 
big 
checks. 
More 
specifically 
it 
focuses
 on 
just
 who
 these 
VCs 
are
 and 
how 
they 
earned
 their 
stripes. 
It 
attempts 
to 
identify
 attributes
 that 
successful
 VCs 
share
 and 
provide 
some 
insight 
that 
you 
can 
share with 
your 
son 
or 
daughter 
if 
they 
tell 
you 
they 
want 
to 
be 
a
 VC 
when
 they 
grow 
up.

The founder of Silicon Alley Reporter and Mahalo.com offers advice to employers trying to make the right hire and candidates struggling to land a job.

In today's diverse workplace, your actions and motives are constantly under scrutiny. Time to manage your own professional image before others do it for you. An interview with professor Laura Morgan Roberts.

Like just about everything else in the workplace, the conventional wisdom about how to manage the boss has evolved considerably in recent years. If you hope to climb the career ladder by impressing your boss, these are the new and revised rules of the road.

This chart is meant to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and give you a better idea of whether you're ready to become a small business owner. It could also be useful in your career exploration or even in a more conventional SWOT analysis exercise.

It's smart to give the recruiter a few minutes of your time, even if you're not actively job hunting. You never know when you might be.

A powerful way to improve executive effectiveness or promote connectivity in an organization is to work through each employee's personal network. Research has shown that people in more diverse, entrepreneurial networks tend to be more successful. Providing executives and employees with a means of planning their personal network development is an effective way to promote connectivity. Such feedback can help employees identify biases in their networks and understand why they might want to invest more in some relationships and less in others.

There are many ways to assess the composition of your network and its impact on performance, learning and innovation. For example, sociologists commonly look at the effect of certain similarities between people-such as age, race, education, and gender-on clustering in networks. But these demographics do not always illustrate the subtle means by which one's contacts affect learning. In many coaching sessions with managers at all levels in organizations, we have found at least six dimensions of personal networks to be consistently important.

Toxic managers are a fact of life. Some managers are toxic most of the time; most managers are toxic some of the time. Knowing how to deal with people who are rigid, aggressive, self-centered or exhibit other types of dysfunctional behavior can improve your own health and that of others in the workplace. This author describes the mechanisms for coping.

It's rarely discussed, at least as not as much as the habits of successful CEOs, but the truth is that it takes some special personal qualities to be spectacularly unsuccessful. This author has written a best seller on the subject, and in this article he discusses how leaders can be not only instruments of success, but sometimes also architects of failure.

Search executive Danny Sarch, who specializes in recruiting financial-services professionals, offers a selection of books, plus a Web site and movie, for b-schoolers eyeing careers on Wall Street.

Dick Costolo (aka Ask the Wizard) blogs about granting options or receiving an option grant.

Guy Kawasaki interviews Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.

If you've ever wondered why some employers don't seem to understand how to hire or retain their workers, you're not alone. Slugging Through the War for Talent, a just-released research study cosponsored by Development Dimensions International (DDI) and Monster, confirms there is often a big disconnect between what employers and job seekers are looking for during the hiring process.

To avoid the heartbreak of being sacked, follow these 12 steps for building currency in the workplace.

Sitting down to negotiate your salary and benefits can be a tense time. It's important to ask for what you believe you deserve, and go in prepared to defend why you're worth it.

The office is a jungle. That's why intrepid employees need a field guide to help them spot and identify the most powerful creature in the workplace: the boss. Here are ten common examples of the species, along with care and feeding tips should you encounter a manager in the wild.

You've got a brainstorm. It's bold, it's brilliant-and it might even make you rich. Learn how the pros transform great insights into big career breakthroughs.