LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman: Why The Classic Career Question ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’ Is Totally Wrong

May 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Why The Classic Career Question ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’ Is Totally Wrong

Alyson Shontell | May 16, 2013, 10:39 AM | 1,175 | 2

Whether you’re a new college graduate or you’ve spent years in the work force, one question seems to linger:

“What should I DO with my life?”

LinkedIn‘s founder, Reid Hoffman, says that’s the wrong question to ask. Instead, professionals should be asking, “How can I help?” and trying to understand what other people’s needs are. “[That] question focuses the attention on you, instead of the most important factor, everyone else.” Hoffman recently wrote in a PowerPoint presentation for college graduates. “The best career has you pursuing worthy aspirations, using your assets, while navigating the market realities.” To do that, Hoffman encourages people to find their competitive advantage, which matches the things they do well with what the market will currently pay for those skills. “Fulfill needs. Solve problems. And you can change the world.”

Amazing Career Advice For College Grads From LinkedIn’s Billionaire Founder

Nicholas Carlson | May 12, 2013, 9:07 AM | 4,978,097 | 68

Reid Hoffman says it took him 15 years after graduating from Stanford in 1990 to figure out what he was really doing with his life. Figure it out, he did! Hoffman is now the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, a $19 billion public company. During those 15 years, Hoffman first thought he wanted to become an academic. Then he abandoned that idea to start some companies. Mostly, they flopped. How’d he figure his path out? What lessons can today’s graduates learn from Hoffman’s journey? To answer those questions Hoffman and Ben Casnocha first co-authored a book called “The Start-up of You.” Then, expanding on ideas from that book, they created a slideshow presentation for college grads called “The 3 Secrets Of Highly Successful Graduates” and allowed us to republish it here.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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