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And while most candidates find a way to look good on paper, their resumes don't always reveal how good of a problem solver they are. Yet all of my clients want to hire problem solvers - people who can walk into their operation and make their problems go away. This is understandable. Business, of course, is all about problems. In fact, whether your business is in growth mode or decline, you will always have problems. And it's management's job to either come up with the answers, or hire people who will. This article is about the latter. How We Learned about Solving Problems Surprise! Accounting is the Hot New Major There was a time when accounting was the boring college major that many people regretted signing up for. A constant barrage of numbers, statistics and spreadsheets was none too interesting. What is Mystery Shopping, and Can You Really Get Paid to Shop? 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If you want to control the outcome, you'll need to get your hands a bit calloused along the way. Learning to listen to your whine factor is a helpful self-feedback mechanism to guide you towards greater accountability and winning at working behaviors. Less whine means more accountability. Higher accountability typically means better results. And better results are what most of us are after. (c) 2004 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved. Love What You Do! "To love what you do and feel that it matters, how on earth could anything be more fun?" --Katherine Graham Youre Fired Isnt The Finale According to the U.S. Department of Labor, March 2004 had the largest gain in hiring in nearly four years. But as of then, there were still about 8 million Americans without jobs, and almost 23% of those had been unemployed for six months or more. Careers-Changing Jobs: The Fantasy of the Ideal Job Most people would agree that the concept of a job today is vastly different from that of 20 years ago. 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