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Yesterday β€” 7 January 2025Main stream

Ultrahuman stakes a claim to luxury smart rings with trio of 18K gold and pt950 platinum bands

7 January 2025 at 07:00

Smart ring maker Ultrahuman took the wraps off a trio of extra shiny high-tech trinkets at CES 2025 on Tuesday, adding a premium jewelry collection to its range of wellness wearables. It’s given the Ring line the brand name Rare, a neat verbal echo of the company’s mainstream smart ring, the Ring Air. The Indian […]

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Before yesterdayMain stream

Kidde’s new smoke detectors have Ring technology built in

6 January 2025 at 06:00

Amazon announced a partnership with Kidde at CES 2025 on Monday that brings its Ring technology to the home safety stalwart’s smoke alarms. There will be multiple versions of the hybrid smoke and CO2 detectors, ranging in price from $55 to $75. As a longtime owner of a Nest Protect, I can confidently say that […]

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ex-director of Wharton MBA admissions says too many people mess up when answering a common interview question

6 January 2025 at 02:57
Concept image of a man being flattened by a red large speech bubble
A lot of job candidates ramble at length when answering "Tell me about yourself," which risks losing a recruiter's interest.

Fanatic Studio/Gary Waters/Getty Images

  • One of the most common job interview questions can also seem like one of the hardest to answer.
  • The simply phrased "Tell me about yourself," can lead to sprawling answers.
  • An ex-MBA admissions director shared a common mistake people make β€” and how they should answer instead.

For as common an interview question as it is, it can still trip up a lot of job candidates.

"Tell me about yourself."

One of recruiters' favorite questions, the simple prompt can be daunting because many candidates may try to squeeze too much of their professional experience and qualifications into their answers.

Thomas Caleel, former director of MBA admissions and financial aid at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told Business Insider there is an effective approach to framing your answer to the question in both an academic or job interview context.

"Being able to clarify a question and re-frame it in a way that is respectful to the interviewer and shows that you can think and act under pressure, is, to me at least, a valuable skill in both the academic and corporate worlds," Caleel told BI.

Caleel talked more about the open-ended question on a recent episode of his "Admittedly" podcast.

"Most people when you ask them tell me about yourself, they will start to talk, and they will ramble and ramble and ramble," he said. "What happens is you lose your interviewer, like 30 seconds into that interview response, the interviewer's eyes glaze over, they kind of look at you and they're like, 'Oh my gosh.'"

So how exactly should you tackle the question?

Caleel recommends breaking your answer down into parts and posing a question back to the interviewer.

"What I say to do and what I think you should do instead is say 'Love to tell you about myself. There are three main areas that I'm involved in: academics, extracurricular activities, and sports (or volunteering.) Which one would you like to start with first?'" he told the podcast.

Compared to the common mistake candidates make of talking at their interviewer, this approach gets the interviewer's attention by making them "an active participant" in the conversation, Caleel said.

"By involving the interviewer in the conversation, you draw them in, you invest them in your answers instead of boring them with just a torrent of words," he added.

As a former admissions director, Caleel's advice is geared toward students applying to colleges β€” job candidates probably won't be talking much about academics or extracurriculars. However, for those applying to jobs, you might use as categories leadership, teamwork, and directly relevant experience, he told BI.

Regardless of the type of interview, his key point is "to try to engage the interviewer and set a more dynamic tone," he added.

Career experts also suggest highlighting some career accomplishments and focusing on the parallels and transferrable skills between your past experience and the position at stake when answering "Tell me about yourself." They say to try not to spend too long on this one question and aim to cap your response at around a minute.

"In my experience, candidates who can think on their feet, who are not cowed by the process and can remain genuine and engaged with the interviewer, usually fare well," Caleel told BI.

Read the original article on Business Insider

This fuzzy, purse-mounted robot is designed to β€˜delight bystanders’

5 January 2025 at 17:00

Best known for its Qooba cat pillow, Yukai Engineering has made a name for itself with some of the strangest little robots around. Who could forget, for example, Amagami Ham Ham, whose sole purpose is to gnaw on fingers, offering a β€œsomewhat pleasing sensation.” At CES 2025, Yukai unveiled its latest, Mirumi, and it follows […]

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Sam Altman has choice words for the OpenAI board members who fired him

5 January 2025 at 16:06

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has strong words for the former board members who abruptly fired him late last November. β€œ[A]ll those people that I feel, like, really fβ€”ed me and fβ€”ed the company were gone, and now I had to clean up their mess,” he told Bloomberg in a wide-ranging interview. Just over a year […]

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ten cool science stories we almost missed

There is rarely time to write about every cool science paper that comes our way; many worthy candidates sadly fall through the cracks over the course of the year. But as 2024 comes to a close, we've gathered ten of our favorite such papers at the intersection of science and culture as a special treat, covering a broad range of topics: from reenacting Bronze Age spear combat and applying network theory to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, to Spider-Man inspired web-slinging tech and a mathematical connection between a turbulent phase transition and your morning cup of coffee. Enjoy!

Reenacting Bronze Age spear combat

Experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. An experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. Credit: Valerio Gentile/CC BY

The European Bronze Age saw the rise of institutionalized warfare, evidenced by the many spearheads and similar weaponry archaeologists have unearthed. But how might these artifacts be used in actual combat? Dutch researchers decided to find out by constructing replicas of Bronze Age shields and spears and using them in realistic combat scenarios. They described their findings in an October paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

There have been a couple of prior experimental studies on bronze spears, but per Valerio Gentile (now at the University of Gottingen) and coauthors, practical research to date has been quite narrow in scope, focusing on throwing weapons against static shields. Coauthors C.J. van Dijk of the National Military Museum in the Netherlands and independent researcher O. Ter Mors each had more than a decade of experience teaching traditional martial arts, specializing in medieval polearms and one-handed weapons. So they were ideal candidates for testing the replica spears and shields.

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My therapist suggested I try decluttering. Focusing on what to keep rather than what to get rid of helped.

29 December 2024 at 03:03
Woman standing by couch with clothes on it, holding up item of clothing to assess whether she wants to keep it, while decluttering.
The author (not pictured) found that decluttering helped ease symptoms of anxiety and OCD.

Getty Images

  • When my therapist suggested decluttering might ease my anxiety and OCD symptoms, I was skeptical.
  • I decided to try it and started looking for a method that might help me with the process.
  • It became easier when I focused on what to keep rather than what to get rid of.

Anxiety and OCD had been manipulating my life like puppet masters for almost two years when my occupational therapist recommended trying decluttering to help ease my symptoms. At that point, though I'd noticed some improvements from a year in therapy, I'd also been struggling with a few health conditions, including long COVID, and felt like I was trudging along.

Over time, I'd become afraid of leaving my own home as I was petrified of getting sick again. My life often felt meaningless and unrecognizable. I couldn't see how getting rid of some belongings could help. Despite my skepticism, I was desperate to feel like myself again. I yearned for my home to no longer resemble an obstacle course.

My therapist helped me see why the clutter was such an issue

My apartment was already cluttered and stressing me out, and then my mom moved; everything I had stored in her garage was suddenly in my living room. My son and I had to create pathways among the boxes to move from one room to another.

"You're repeatedly having to step over your past β€” you're being reminded of it every day," my occupational therapist said. He had summarized in one sentence exactly why I'd been unable to move forwards. I started decluttering immediately after that appointment.

I tried a few different decluttering methods

I looked for a system to help me along the way. The KonMari method caught my eye first, but my sentimental nature decided that everything sparked joy β€” even a bag of rocks. I'd spent decades giving objects the same sentimental value as the memories they represented, and now, it was hard to get rid of them.

The four-box method β€” sorting items into boxes labeled keep, donate/sell, storage, and trash β€” also didn't work for me. When indecisiveness caused by my anxiety took over, almost everything ended up in the storage box, which I basically saw as a "maybe" box. All I ended up doing was pushing it around the apartment. I worried I might regret getting rid of something, so I decided it was safest to get rid of nothing.

However, through working with my occupational therapist, I realized guilt played a part in my holding onto some things β€” as though getting rid of an item would also mean getting rid of that memory. So, I took a deep breath and prepared to be ruthless.

Reframing the process of decluttering helped me tackle it

The next method involved deciding what to keep instead of what to get rid of. This mindset shift made the decluttering process more enjoyable; it was easier to focus on items I treasured than those I would get rid of, even if the end goal was the same. Inspired by decluttering blogs, I also considered whether I would buy the item now if I didn't already own it to help me decide how much I wanted anything I wasn't sure about.

Whenever I struggled with indecisiveness (which was often), I remembered that my home should β€” and could β€” be a place where I relax, rather than a cluster of clutter and unmade decisions.

With each carload donated to charity, the stress began to leave my body. The catharsis of releasing my grip on each box as I handed it over gave me the calmness and clarity I craved. I was giving myself permission to move on β€” permission to stop letting my past rule my present and future.

It wasn't totally smooth sailing, but I eventually got it done

I hadn't been prepared for when OCD tried to control the situation, though. After a few weeks, I began to feel on edge if I didn't declutter a certain amount of items each day. When I realized what was happening, I forced myself not to declutter for a few days, so I could calm the OCD and return with the right mindset.

A few months into the process, as I continued to declutter my apartment, my sleep improved, and my energy levels increased. I experienced fewer anxious thoughts, and when they did occur, I had the energy to rationalize most of them.

I was untangling myself from the burdens of my past as I removed their physical manifestations from my apartment, freeing up the space in my home so I could finally relax, and giving myself something to focus on other than my spiraling thoughts.

After decluttering, I feel relieved

Although I don't believe decluttering opened up a magic portal to my recovery, I have no doubt it helped tremendously. I managed to declutter most of my belongings in what felt like an act of liberation. I've only kept things that I either need or treasure.

My home isn't picture-perfect, and neither is my mental health. But I'm happy. It took me 21 months to finish decluttering my home β€” I had to pace myself as I couldn't do it every day, or for hours at a time. I finished completely about nine months ago. And in the time since I first started, I've gone from having severe anxiety and being incapable of leaving my home without prior planning, to living a life I can honestly say I adore.

By working with my therapist, reading self-help books, decluttering, going for daily walks, meditating, journaling, and rediscovering the things that bring me joy, the symptoms caused by my anxiety have lessened. I also received support from loved ones, improved my food choices, and developed a morning routine that gives me a feeling of purpose again.

Although anxiety and OCD are still unpaying tenants in my mind, they don't have the level of control they did before. By getting rid of the things that brought me anxiety, I've created space for the things that bring me joy.

My home and mind are no longer caverns of chaos.

Read the original article on Business Insider

6 of the biggest engagement ring trends you'll see in 2025, according to a private jeweler

29 December 2024 at 01:03
A hand holds an emerald cut engagement ring in front of a floral bush.
Elongated rings will be popular in 2025.

Anna P. Jay

  • Engagement ring trends evolve year after year.
  • Private jeweler Anna P. Jay said elongated stones and thicker bands will be popular in 2025.
  • Colorful stones and personalized details are on the rise, too.

The holiday season is in full swing, which means engagement season is, too.

And as the first proposals of the year roll in, we'll get a peek at the engagement rings that will be big in the coming months.

Business Insider spoke to private jeweler and jewelry store owner Anna P. Jay about the engagement ring trends that will be everywhere in 2025.

Elongated shapes will be popular in 2025.
A woman holds up her hand with a pear-shaped engagement ring on it.
Elongated shapes are becoming popular.

Anna P. Jay

Jay told BI that elongated-shaped stones, including emerald, oval, pear, and marquise-shaped, are becoming more popular.

"Elongated shapes are great because they visually trick the eye into appearing larger," Jay told BI of their appeal.

"I've started to do a lot of pear engagement rings all of a sudden. They're kind of the next step from oval," she said. "And then I think marquise is going to follow."

Recent celebrity engagement rings match Jay's predictions. For instance, in December 2024, Benny BlancoΒ proposed to Selena GomezΒ with a marquise diamond.

People are embracing color in their engagement rings.
Two hands show off different rings. One hand features an off-center pear-shaped ring and a bezel ring with an orange gem, and the other features a toi-et-moi ring with a green and diamond stone.
Colorful rings are on the rise.

Anna P. Jay

Diamonds will always be popular for engagement rings, but other stones are also becoming go-to's, Jay told BI.

"People are not shying away from diamonds, but I think that we're starting to see more color," Jay said.

Sapphires, rubies, and emeralds are often popular for colorful engagement rings because they're durable. Jay said people are getting more creative with their tinted stones, too, particularly with toi-et-moi rings.

"Over the summer, I did a toi-et-moi where I said, 'Bring me a color that you like,' and we matched the stone, which ended up being a tourmaline, to the color of eelgrass for a client."

"We're allowing ourselves a little bit more creativity, a little bit more flexibility to get the look that we want using colored stones," she added.

Bands are getting thicker.
An oval-shaped diamond ring with a diamond band sits on a woman's finger.
Thicker bands are on the rise.

Anna P. Jay

"The 80s are back in a very big way," Jay said, which she said means many people are opting for "bigger and chunkier" bands.

Thicker bands are as stylish as they are practical. They are typically more stable than the thin bands popular in 2023 and 2024.

"The conversation I have with my clients is like, 'You're going to wear this for the rest of your life. While we love a dainty band now, it's going to be a headache long term,'" Jay said, adding that making a band even slightly thicker can be beneficial.

"If we can add tenths of millimeters, you're visually not going to be able to tell a difference, but structurally, it's going to be much more sound," she told BI.

Yellow gold settings are still popular, but you might also see more white gold.
A hand with a round engagement ring in front of a wall with a bird drawing on it.
Yellow gold bands won't be as dominant.

Anna P. Jay

Yellow gold has become common for many people's engagement bands, but Jay anticipates white gold and silver will be on the rise in the coming year.

"I think it's going to take two or three more years, but I think we are edging toward more white and silver," Jay said. "Gold is becoming…expensive."

She added that the increase in the cost of gold had led people to wear sterling silver for day-to-day jewelry, making it more likely to select a white gold, platinum, or silver band for their engagement rings to match.

People are gravitating toward hidden details.
A side view of an engagement ring with hidden details in the setting.
Hidden details are in.

Anna P. Jay

Jay told BI that she's still seeing people embrace small details in their engagement rings, like hidden halos or personalized engravings.

"One of my favorite things to do is birthstones in a band," Jay said, often "discreetly" tucking a couple's birthstones into the setting.

She also told BI that these details are becoming more popular because couples design parts of their custom rings together, and the details allow the proposer to still give their partner an element of surprise in the ring.

"We're involving our partners more in this process," she said. "Maybe we talk about the shape of the stone, but they're not aware of how it's going to be set, when it's happening, or the budget."

And no matter the design, people will prioritize their center stones.
A hand holds an emerald cut engagement ring in front of a floral bush.
The center stone is key.

Anna P. Jay

Jay also told BI that people will invest their money into a center stone rather than selecting rings with multiple stones, which she said gives them the flexibility to reset the setting over time.

"If you ever did want to reset it, you could add side stones or put it in a chunkier setting or something like that," she said.

Jay told BI that it's also easier for people to stack other rings with theirΒ engagement and weddingΒ rings down the road when they're simpler.

"Consider making your wedding band just a gold or platinum solid band so that you do have that flexibility in the future to stack and play with and make it a little more fun and playful," she advised.

Read the original article on Business Insider

This chart shows what a bad year 2024 was for luxury

27 December 2024 at 08:05
Gucci shopping bags
Luxury labels β€” including Gucci β€” struggled this year, leading to poor showings for their parent companies.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

  • Luxury powerhouses struggled in 2024 as they faced macroeconomic headwinds.
  • The stock price of Kering, the owner of Gucci, has fallen more than 40% this year.
  • Two luxury companies, HermΓ¨s and Richemont, managed to buck the trend.

2024 was a bad year for luxury.

Many of the world's largest luxury companies saw their share prices decline this year as the market for high-end goods experienced a brutal slowdown.

"50 million luxury consumers have either opted out of the luxury goods market or been forced out of it in the last two years," Claudia D'Arpizio, who leads Bain's global luxury goods and fashion practice, wrote in a report last month.

"The negative environment predicted by many in the fashion industry this time a year ago has now materialized," a McKinsey report said earlier this year.

One chart β€” featuring some of the luxury's most notable companies β€” shows just how rough 2024 was through mid-December.

Only two companies — Hermès and Richemont, the parent company of Cartier and Van Cleef — managed to beat the STOXX Europe 600, an index that represents a mix of European stocks, this year.

Meanwhile, share prices for LVMH β€” the largest of the luxury conglomerates and owner of brands like Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior β€” and Burberry have fallen this year. (Prada and Moncler also slipped, though aren't pictured here.)

Kering, the company behind Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, fared the worst. Its stock price dropped more than 40% this year as its headline brand, Gucci, floundered.

While certain high-end lines suffered from specific pitfalls β€”Β Burberry priced their goods too high, Gucci spread itself too thin β€” the economy at large was to blame for a number of luxury's troubles.

"Many are navigating a momentary crisis, driven by macroeconomic pressures and a polarized customer base," Claudia D'Arpizio, who leads Bain's global luxury goods and fashion practice, wrote in a report.

An economic crisis in China, where real estate sales slumped and unemployment rose, meant a consistent group of luxury shoppers reined in their spending. In America, inflation squeezed the aspirational shoppers who had rushed to buy expensive goods during the post-pandemic spending boom. And in Europe, political uncertainty led consumers to hold off on big purchases.

2025 may be brighter for high-end companies, however.

HSBC analysts wrote in a December note that they believe the third quarter will be the "trough for the sector." Meantime, EMARKETER, a sister company to Business Insider, predicts that personal luxury retail sales will grow 4.1% next year β€”Β up from a low of 3.2% this year.

Read the original article on Business Insider

7 things to get rid of in your home before the new year, according to professional organizers

27 December 2024 at 05:59
A gray living room with large windows, a gray chair, a beige couch with blue and brown pillows, a beige rug, and a coffee table.
The end of the year is the perfect time to declutter your home.

imaginima/Getty Images

  • Business Insider spoke to professional organizers about what to get rid of before the new year.
  • The end of the year is a good time to go through your holiday decor and outdated clothing.
  • Expired food and beauty products shouldn't make their way into the new year.

The end of the year is a great time to do some decluttering. However, it can be difficult to decide what should stay and what should go.

To make things easier, Business Insider asked professional organizers about the best things to get rid of before the new year. Here's what they said.

Get rid of expired items.
Canned goods on two shelves of an open cabinet.
Expired food should be removed from cabinets and pantries.

Boogich/Getty Images

The end of the year is a great time to toss expired items, from food and beverages to old beauty products.

Ashley Coleman, founder of home organization company Done Neatly, told BI that starting with bathroom products is a great way to jump-start your decluttering journey.

She also said to go through your kitchen cupboards and pantry for expired canned goods and toss what can't be kept.

The end of the year is a good time to go through your holiday decor.
Clear boxes of Christmas ornaments and decorations.
It's a good idea to get rid of unused holiday decor.

GMVozd/Getty Images

Styles and preferences naturally change throughout the year, so December can be a good time to get rid of old holiday decor, broken ornaments, and other items that have remained in your holiday-decoration bins and boxes.

Nikki Bell, founder of Just Us Organizing, suggests taking note of what items you didn't decorate with this holiday season and getting rid of them.

Kids' spaces should be decluttered during the holiday season.
Toys scattered across a hardwood floor and a small gray rug.
December is a good time to get rid of old toys.

Tahir YILDIZ/Getty Images

Bell said December is a good time to go through kids' toys and clothes since they are likely to receive an influx of new items at the end of the year.

She said it's a good idea to get rid of these items while kids are enamored by their new gifts and will likely have an easier time parting with some of their old things.

Sort through your outdated and worn clothing.
A walk-in closet full of men's and women's clothing and shoes.
The experts suggest going through your clothes before the new year.

Jason Finn/Shutterstock

As the year draws to a close, the experts suggest going through your closets and looking for outdated, worn clothing.

Bell said it can be freeing to get rid of the sizes that no longer fit or feel good to wear.

Jamie Hord, cofounder of Horderly, said getting rid of one item for every new item you bring into the home is a good way to maintain order when accumulating new clothes throughout the holiday season.

It's time to go through your kitchen gadgets.
An open kitchen drawer with measuring spoons, baking equipment, and other kitchen utensils.
You can probably get rid of multiples of certain items.

Trudie Davidson/Getty Images

Coleman told BI it's important to look in your kitchen drawers and get rid of items that you don't use or have multiples of.

She said it's easy to develop a small stockpile of niche kitchen gadgets, but you shouldn't hold onto items "just in case" you may need them later.

Bell also said to purge old kitchen tools that have been replaced by newer ones.

Empty boxes take up valuable space.
Boxes of small appliances and electronics.
Empty boxes create unnecessary clutter.

tomeqs/Shutterstock

Having a stash of empty boxes in the house is an easy way to collect dust.

Bell said unless someone is actively using the box to store their item or moving within the next few months, unused boxes from small appliances take up too much space in a room.

Keep sentimental items to a minimum.
Sports trophies on the top shelf of a desk, with books, balls, and shoes in the cubbies below.
Old trophies can take up a lot of space in the home.

Mint Images/Getty Images

Nostalgic items are hard to part with, but all three organizers emphasized the importance of scaling down your collection to only the most beloved items.

After all, a collection of old concert t-shirts or sports trophies can take up a lot of space in the closet, basement, or garage.

In addition to these mementos, Bell said to look through your trinkets and gifts from friends and relatives. After taking a closer look, you might just find some of the items aren't as sentimental as you thought they would be when you first received them.

"I try to keep one thing a year. And that makes that thing even more special and important to me," she told BI.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The work trends that dominated the headlines in 2024

24 December 2024 at 13:06
Silhouettes of people walking to work.
The continued RTO push was one of the most defining aspects of the state of work in 2024.

EschCollection/Getty Images

  • "Quiet vacationing," "coffee badging," and "ghost jobs" were part of the corporate lexicon in 2024.
  • These are just some of the trends that came to dominate our conversations around work.
  • Here's a look back at work in 2024.

Ghost jobs. Coffee badging. Quiet firing. Quiet vacationing.

The buzziest workplace trends this year didn't just become well-known tropes but also highlighted an ongoing power struggle between workers and bosses after the pandemic shook up the way people do their jobs.

The year's biggest movements reflect "shifts in work models, technological integration, and employee expectations," says Lauren Winans, CEO and HR consultant at Next Level Benefits.

While some of these are by no means new fads, they all featured prominently in the discourse around work this year. Here are the trends that dominated the cultural conversation in 2024:

Ghost jobs

Ghost jobs are nothing new but got a lot of attention this year.

These are roles which employers claim to be looking to fill even though they may not actually be hiring for such positions.

Employers may list ghost jobs for a few reasons. They might want to suggest they're doing well and growing; they could be trying to ready a talent pool for actual positions opening in the future; or they may want to imply to overworked employees that they'll get some additional help soon.

Quiet vacationing

This one pretty much explains itself, but just in case: When employees go on vacation without using any time off or telling their bosses, they're said to be quiet vacationing.

overemployed remote worker
Some remote workers might take quiet vacations without letting their bosses know.

Vasil Dimitrov/Getty Images

RTO

Return-to-office mandates continued rolling out at big firms this year. Amazon, one of the country's biggest employers, became one of the highest-profile companies to announce a full 5-day-a-week return to the office. (Its implementation has been delayed for some employees though, due to a lack of space.)

Hushed hybrid

As employers tightened the reins on remote work, some employees started carving out a new working arrangement under the table.

Enter the hushed hybrid schedule, in which employees skirt RTO mandates by getting their manager's approval to continue working from home on days they're technically required to be in the office.

Managers, for their part, might agree to do this to keep their employees happy (or to keep them, period). They also probably have a more personal connection with the workers affected by a mandate than the executives enforcing it. And of course, managers who are themselves opposed to RTO plans might also cut employees some slack out of sympathy.

Coffee badging

Another method of evading RTO is coffee badging β€” though it still technically requires that an employee return to the office.

The practice involves going to work to swipe your badge so your attendance is logged. But instead of spending the rest of the workday there, you kill some time by grabbing a coffee, or showing face with a quick lap around the office, before returning home to do most of your actual work there.

Woman passing through security check in a office building holding coffee and scanning in her employee ID badge
Coffee badging refers to workers who swipe in at the office to meet return-to-office requirements before leaving quickly to finish their work elsewhere.

kotijelly / Getty Images

PIPs

Performance improvement plans, or PIPs, usually consist of a series of goals set for an employee to improve in areas where a boss says they're underperforming. If they're not completed in the allotted time, usually a few months or less, the employee will face termination.

PIPs are certainly not unique this year but statistically have been more frequently issued in recent years. They got renewed attention in 2024 as part of the discussion around ways employers trim headcount unannounced.

Quiet firing, silent layoffs, and stealth sackings

Yes, these are all somehow different things.

Between RTO mandates and PIPs, "quiet firing," which gained a lot of buzz in recent years, stayed in the spotlight in 2024. It refers to a boss or employer's unspoken attempt to encourage employees to quit by making the role more uncomfortable, as opposed to facing the monetary and reputational costs associated with explicitly laying them off.

Related phrases include "silent layoffs," which refers to giving employees severance packages but asking them to be discreet about their exiting the firm.

There's also "stealth sackings," coined by the Financial Times to describe firing employees over minor offenses. The newspaper cited Meta's dismissal of two dozen staff for using $25 GrubHub meal credits to buy non-food items as an example, and EY's firing of dozens of staffers for watching multiple online training courses simultaneously.

Other key trends

There were also other trends that, though they lack flashy names, also shaped how we worked in 2024.

The main one, of course, was the growing adoption of AI in the workplace, the "standout trend" of the year, according to Amy Schabacker Dufrane, CEO of the Human Resource Certification Institute and the Human Resource Standards Institute.

AI
The continued integration of AI into the workplace is this year's "standout trend," says Dufrane.

Chen

Winans says other trends included an emphasis on upskilling and reskilling to keep up with technological advancements and changing job requirements, as well asΒ increased labor organizing efforts.

What can we expect in 2025?

Next year, the integration of AI at work will no doubt continue.

"Employees expect training and transparency about AI's role, while employers navigate concerns about job security and ethics," says Dufrane.

Other themes to watch include an emphasis on skills-based hiring and employee wellness programs, as well as ongoing changes to companies' ESG and DEI strategies.

Employee engagement in the US hitting an 11-year low in 2024, coupled with the possibility it may be easier to change jobs in 2025 mean that revenge quitting may also be the next big thing in workplace trends come next year, according to a Glassdoor report.

The phrase refers to dissatisfied employees being vocal with their discontent and resigning, often with little or no notice, knowing it could negatively impact their employer.

Heading into 2025, "monitoring employee satisfaction will be more important than ever," says Dufrane.

"We may see an increase in trends like bare-minimum attendance or revenge quitting as return-to-work mandates require employees to be on-site more than the post-COVID norm," she adds. "Prioritizing open communication, as well as autonomy, fairness, and a high-trust environment, will be critical for organizations to succeed."

Read the original article on Business Insider

The most fascinating hedge-fund hire of 2024 wasn't a star trader or C-suite executive

24 December 2024 at 06:54
A man in a suit in front of traders
As the hedge-fund talent war continues unabated, demand for the business-development professionals who recruit traders has intensified.

iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI

  • "Business development" has become a coveted role at hedge funds amid the war to recruit top PMs.
  • The Citadel BD ace Matthew Giannini's joining Walleye was one of the most noteworthy moves of 2024.
  • Hedge funds hired dozens in BD in 2024 β€” BI tracked the names of more than 40 who joined top firms.

One of the most intriguing hedge-fund personnel moves in 2024 came late in the year. It wasn't a superstar portfolio manager or another big bank executive migrating to the buy side.

It was someone with barely any media profile at all: Matthew Giannini, a senior leader in Citadel's business-development unit whom Walleye Capital hired in October as chief operating officer of its long-short equities business.

The move from the industry's $66 billion killer whale to a much smaller fish surprised several industry insiders Business Insider spoke with at the time, underscoring the continued demand for the niche role of vetting and wooing investment professionals.

BI wrote in May about the evolution of the "business development" role, which has grown into a coveted specialty amid the boom in multimanager hedge funds. These firms, prized by investors for robust returns uncorrelated with the stock market, have added $200 billion in assets since 2019. Hiring has followed suit β€” head count since then soared by 90% at multimanagers compared with just 6% at other hedge funds β€” provoking a talent war that has been one of the industry's defining themes and challenges over the past few years.

Though total assets managed by these firms declined in 2024 for the first time in seven years (some investors pulled money amid growing costs paired with lackluster returns in 2023), "the war for talent appears to be continuing unabated," Goldman Sachs' prime-services team said in a September report on multimanager hedge funds. These roughly 50 firms added 2,400 employees over the previous year, Goldman found, a 15% increase.

Chart from Goldman Sachs prime services on multimanager headcount growth
Hiring at multimanager hedge funds has far outpaced the rest of the industry.

Goldman Sachs Prime Services

Business development was no exception, with dozens of hires by top hedge funds in 2024, according to industry sources, LinkedIn bios, and publicly reported moves.

Millennium, the largest multimanager, with $72.1 billion in assets under management and more than 6,000 employees, hired at least 10 people in business development in 2024, BI found. Balyasny, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring PMs this year, added at least six new BD executives to facilitate hiring, including three managing directors β€” most recently the commodities specialist David O'Connor, who joined in November from the external search firm Maven.

Citadel has been hiring as well, adding a handful of people to one of the most revered BD units in the industry. The hedge fund last year became the most profitable of all time, something its founder and CEO, Ken Griffin, attributed in part to an "unparalleled" ability to "recruit experienced professionals to Citadel" and "tremendous success attracting gifted graduates from the premier colleges and universities." Unsurprisingly, Griffin's talent whisperers are highly sought after.

Perhaps none has more gravitas than Giannini. Several industry professionals who know him say he's tall, charismatic, intelligent, and deft at winning over PMs β€” someone who provides an actual edge in an industry desperate for it. Giannini's leaving Balyasny in 2018 to rejoin Citadel contributed to a turf war between the funds.

"Matt is, if not the best, one of the best closers I've ever met," a BD professional told BI this year.

Leaving Citadel for Walleye may raise some eyebrows, but joining Walleye offers a potentially lucrative upside for Giannini compared with a typical BD role. Business group heads at these funds usually take home a cut of their unit's profits, and while Walleye struggled in 2023, it has been executing an overhaul that's bearing fruit. The fund was up by 15.4% through November, putting it near the top of its peer group for 2024.

He also joins some familiar faces at Walleye, including Thomas DeAngelis, an ex-Citadel BD leader who's now Walleye's president, and Anil Gondi, a longtime PM who joined from Balyasny this summer and will oversee the long-short equities division with Giannini. The two overlapped at Balyasny in the 2010s.

The hiring of Giannini and dozens of others at top funds in 2024 signals that the burning demand for investment talent, and those gifted in recruiting it, isn't likely to dim anytime soon.

"One clear theme from our conversations with multimanagers was that the 'war for talent' synonymous with this segment has not seen any material de-escalation in the last year," Goldman Sachs said in its report.

BI tracked business-development professionals who joined top funds in 2024, using industry sources, LinkedIn bios, and publicly reported moves. This list isn't exhaustive, and we may update it as we learn more.

FirmName of hirePrevious firm
BalyasnyNicole AmenDRW
BalyasnyDaniel AnzaloneBlueCrest
BalyasnyHarry CaseVerition
BalyasnyDavid MatzSmith Hanley
BalyasnyDavid O'ConnorMaven Search
BalyasnyKelly SuterIMC
BlueCrestJosh BealsChi-Rho Financial
Capstone Investment AdvisorsGrace GuoGoldman Sachs
Capstone Investment AdvisorsBrian HopkinsHudson Bay
CitadelTrystan Davies-TommasonThe Omerta Group
CitadelDonata LeonovaMillennium
CitadelOlivia ReesGoldsmith & Co
CitadelHannah RosenthalGoogle
CitadelMichelle TsangTwo Sigma
EislerRuvhen ChinaireThe Omerta Group
EislerChris HarnettCitadel
Freestone GroveChristopher AldacoD.E. Shaw
Freestone GroveBrittany LynchSchonfeld
Graham CapitalDanielle GreenbergMaven Investment Partners
Hudson BayChris PadfieldCitadel
LMR PartnersMelissa BosemMillennium
MillenniumMaureen ChangPoint72
MillenniumDerek ChiangSelby Jennings
MillenniumSarka DillingerovaExecuzen
MillenniumKatie GordonCybernetic Search
MillenniumBrian KimmelCitadel
MillenniumLauren KrausGarda Capital
MillenniumTerence LeeBlackstone
MillenniumSteven RosenMorgan Stanley Investment Management
MillenniumNatalia SkrzeczkowskaDartmouth Partners
MillenniumStella XuanTenere Capital
PalomaKristin CohenWalleye
Point72Joe BeachAksia
Point72Lauren CroucherDartmouth Partners
Point72Nicole DengUBS
Qube Research & TechnologiesCaroline KadhimBrevan Howard
Taula CapitalRobert FeatherstoneCitadel
VeritionAdam DonaldsonMarble Bar Asset Management
VeritionStephanie MelendezSchonfeld
Walleye CapitalCarling DiGiacomoCitadel
Walleye CapitalMatthew GianniniCitadel
Walleye CapitalJen PascalNeuberger Berman
Walleye CapitalMaureen ReedGoldman Sachs
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Apple is reportedly developing a home security product that could compete with Amazon and Google

22 December 2024 at 22:14
The Apple logo on a glowing glass display in front of a skyscraper.
Apple is reportedly developing smart home locks with face recognition tech.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

  • Apple is developing smart home locks with face recognition tech.
  • This move aligns with Apple's growing interest in the home devices market.
  • Apple's device would compete with Google's Nest and Amazon's Ring in home security.

Apple is reportedly working on bringing its facial recognition technology to home security.

The tech giant is developing a smart lock and doorbell that would allow residents to automatically open their home doors by scanning their faces, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

The report said that Apple's doorbell system could work with existing third-party locks or the company could partner with one lock provider to sell a complete product. The technology is still in the early stages and could be released at the end of 2025 at the earliest, the report said.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

The smart lock adds to Apple's growing interest in the home devices market. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working on an artificial intelligence-powered, wall-mounted tablet. The iPad-like device could be voice-operated, serve as an intercom, and control home appliances. Earlier this year, Bloomberg also reported that the company is working on building home robots.

Not all these developments may come to life. This year, Apple scrapped its car project and stopped efforts to develop a subscription model for the iPhone.

The door device could give the company an opportunity for more cross-selling with its other home products and its existing lineup of devices, like the iPhone and Apple Watch.

It could also allow the iPhone maker to compete withΒ Google's NestΒ andΒ Amazon's Ring. These devices have doorbells with a motion sensor that activates the camera and records a video of the surrounding area.

Such a product could draw the company into new debates about balancing users' privacy rights and working with law enforcement. Through emergency requests, police departments have received videos from Ring without receiving consent from the owner.

Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, are known for prioritizing user privacy. In 2016, Cook refused to cooperate with the US government to unlock an iPhone used by a shooter in a mass shooting and attempted bombing in San Bernardino, California.

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The smart ring explosion is here — a sign that fitness trackers are moving from wrists to fingers in 2025

21 December 2024 at 04:50
woman wearing smart ring
Samsung's $399 Galaxy ring debuted in 2024.

Samsung

  • The smart ring market is exploding, with options available at Costco and Walmart.
  • Rings aren't perfect health monitoring tools, but they can help detect patterns and some illnesses.
  • Healthcare companies and the US military are increasingly interested in harnessing the tech.

The rich and famous have been wearing them for years, and competing for the very best sleep scores. Longevity doctors swear by them too. But 2025 may just be the year that smart rings become the "it" tracker for the masses.

"We call it a 'check engine' light for your body," Oura CEO Tom Hale told Business Insider. "It's a tool for you to become literate in the dynamics of your biometrics as they relate to your behaviors."

Oura has been the longtime leader in smart rings β€” the Finnish company debuted its first ring in a Kickstarter campaign 10 years ago. The undeniable giant in the smart ring space (for now), Oura recently debuted a slimmer and smoother 4th generation ring model, priced from $349 to $399.

all 4 gen of oura
Oura has been selling smart rings since 2015. They've gotten smaller and thinner over time.

Oura

Oura says it has been profitable for 14 months after many years in the red. On Thursday, the company announced a $200 million series D funding round, bringing its valuation to $5.2 billion.

There's also been an explosion of competitor rings, including the $349 Ultrahuman Ring Air, which debuted in 2022. In 2024, we've seen Samsung's $399 Galaxy ring enter the market as well as smaller devices like the longevity-focused and David Sinclair-backed $200 Virtusan ring.

It all heralds the beginning of a new wearables category that may eventually help people eat, exercise, sleep, and avoid illness a little better than we do now.

"I welcome all the competition," Oura's Hale said. "It makes us better, it's good for the market."

Every smart ring has a different competitive claim

samsung ring
Samsung's ring has a charging case that looks like something you'd pack an engagement ring inside.

Samsung

Each smart ring company seems to have its own differentiator, the thing that they say makes them better than the rest, whether it's the thinnest ring band, the best battery life, or the biggest dataset.

They each generally track steps, monitor temperature, and log heart rate.

Dr. Daniel Kraft, a Bay Area-based physician-scientist and founder, says that's probably enough for the general consumer. We don't all need FDA-approved medical devices on our fingers. Instead, there's value in the consistency of the data a ring provides, monitoring trends day after day, learning about our bodies.

"We're all quite different and it's often the change from baseline that is most important," Kraft told BI.

Longitudinal trend lines can be useful for tracking things like how exercise, supplements, or stress are impacting a person's overall health. In Kraft's case, he watched his resting heart rate drop eight points over a roughly three-month period of daily exercise sessions.

virtusan ring
Virtusan's ring pairs with an app that features breathwork sessions from Andrew Huberman.

Virtusan

"That gets people engaged, like, 'Wow, I make these small incremental changes and I'm going to see changes that show up in weeks and months and years,'" he said.

Until now, interest in Oura rings has largely been driven by word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, colleagues, and some longevity-focused physicians. Oura's friend referrals (a 10% discount) drive a lot of the business; almost half of Oura members were referred by a friend or family member, according to the company.

A smart ring is also "considered a little premium," Jeffrey Kim, Samsung America's senior product lead for the Galaxy smart ring, told BI.

2025 is shaping up to be the year that smart rings could go mainstream in a big way.

Multiple projections show the market for smart rings taking off, growing more than 20% year over year, until 2030. Over the past six months, Ultrahuman has started stocking its ring at major brick-and-mortar retailers in the US, including Best Buy, Verizon, Costco, and Walmart, and the company says more than 15,000 people in the US are picking up a new Ultrahuman ring each month.

Smart rings are about more than fitness tracking β€” they're being used for period tracking and to predict illnesses

woman wearing ring and patch together
Ultrahuman also sells a blood sugar monitoring patch (CGM) that people can use in tandem with the ring.

Ultrahuman

Already, studies have shown smart rings are good at picking up when someone is about to get sick with a viral illness like COVID or the flu, by combining metrics like heart rate variability with temperature and breathing rate while asleep.

Some brands have also been carving out a niche among women, playing up their potential impact on women's health. In the US, women were not required to be included in medical research until 1993.

"We need more data," Dr. Umbereen Nehal, a fem-tech founder and pediatrician, told BI. "I would like to have accurate, personalized care. I would like to prevent bad things happening to me."

Women now make up the majority of Oura and Ultrahuman users (55% and 60%, respectively). Beyond sleep and fitness, a ring can use temperature to track a period β€” not a failsafe technique, but it's a non-invasive option to help people better plan when to have sex to conceive or avoid a pregnancy.

Nehal hasn't bought into the ring hype yet. In part, she says it's because the current rings are too "ugly" for her. But she also cautions consumers to maintain a "healthy skepticism" toward their wearables, and not take the data insights or recommendations as health gospel.

"Try to understand: who was this tested on? Who was this built for? How do you want to use it? Do you think this is a good way for what you want to know?" she said. "Recognize that when you buy a product, you are still in the driver's seat of deciding what to do with that information."

man using oura app

Oura

Having more at-home data on everyday health may prove useful, but it doesn't have to come from our fingers or wrists. Kraft said we can also harness health insights from cameras, voice recorders, and other easily accessible tech.

Ultrahuman founder and CEO Mohit Kumar imagines that his customers will use the Ring Air as an entry point into what can be a whole body and house health monitoring system, complete with a CGM for tracking blood sugar and a CO2 scrubber for cleaning the air.

woman training
The Department of Defense is investing in Oura.

Lorado/Getty Images

Oura has recently partnered with CGM-maker Dexcom and inked a $96 million deal with the Department of Defense. Some US Army airmen have been trying out Oura rings in an attempt to optimize performance by helping make decisions about when they might need more rest, or a caffeine boost.

Medicare Advantage plan Essence Healthcare says it will start offering free Oura rings to seniors in 2025, in the hopes of reducing healthcare costs.

"If I see Mrs. Jones's resting heart rate went from 65 to 95 over the last month, and it's not just because she's been climbing stairs, it's when she's sleeping, boy, I might want to call and figure out what's going on cardiopulmonary-wise," Kraft said. "A lot of our healthcare issues, they show up in subtle ways weeks, months, or years early, and they're just not picked up on, they can't be picked on that short clinical visit β€” if you're lucky enough to have primary care doctor at all."

Smart ring vs smartwatch

Smart ring pros

  • Small, inconspicuous, and unobtrusive
  • Great for sleep tracking
  • Long-lasting battery (~1 week)

Smart ring cons

  • Not as ideal for sports like weightlifting or running; you can't track your pace, and it gets in the way when you're lifting weights
  • Can't pick up a phone call or respond to a text
  • Expensive
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Wall Street headhunters are gearing up for a 'bonkers' hiring market in 2025 — here's what to expect

A man in a suit walks down the street
Some Wall Street bankers expect a return of 2021's deluge of dealmaking next year. Headhunters are feeling the pressure to help them staff up.

Momo Takahashi/BI

  • 2025 is expected to be a robust year for mergers and acquisitions as well as IPOs.
  • Consequently, some investment banks are bulking up on hiring, industry recruiters say.
  • Here's a look at which firms are staffing up and what sectors are seeing the most action.

When John Weinberg, the chairman and CEO of the elite boutique investment bank Evercore, sat down for a fireside chat in December at an annual Goldman Sachs conference, he revealed that his firm had been ramping up hiring.

"Most of the time, you don't really do much recruiting in November or December," he told listeners β€” adding that this year had been different. "If you could see my schedule, you'd see that virtually every day I am speaking with and recruiting" new talent, he said. "You could probably anticipate that our recruiting efforts will increase, not decrease."

Weinberg isn't the only Wall Street dealmaker for whom recruiting is top of mind. According to industry headhunters, hiring across the Street has been gaining steam.

"We're probably up 60% to 70%," Kevin Mahoney, a managing partner in the global financial-services practice at Christoph Zeiss Partners, told Business Insider in December. "We haven't been this busy in a long time," he added, saying he expects 2025 to be "bonkers" in terms of hiring volumes.

After several years of lackluster deal activity, Wall Street is finally starting to see signs of a thaw in mergers and public offerings. A cocktail of lower interest rates, pent-up demand, and expectations for a friendlier landscape under a Trump presidency has left many dealmakers across the Street feeling bullish about the prospects for 2025. Robert Stowe, the head of Americas equity capital markets at Barclays, told BI that he predicted some $50 billion in initial public offering volumes in the US next year. That would be a roughly 20% increase from 2024's just over $41 billion worth of IPO volumes in the Americas, as recorded by the deal-tracking firm Dealogic.

BI got an update on the latest investment-banking hiring trends from three top Wall Street headhunters: Mahoney; Meridith Dennes, the managing partner of the firm Prospect Rock; and Brianne Sterling, the head of the investment-banking recruiting practice at Selby Jennings.

Dennes said the industry's "musical chairs" could start to spike in about January or February after bankers receive their bonuses. Many, she said, have gotten early hints about their bonus numbers this year and are privately grumbling.

"Bonuses are not coming out as strong as we expected them to be, and I think the reason is because there's been so much hiring at the senior level and at the MD level," she said. "A lot of that compensation pool may be spoken for."

So, with moves on the way, which sectors will see the most activity? Here are a few key trends the headhunters say are worth watching in 2025.

The hot sectors

Banks big and small are already dialing up recruiting for their technology, media, and telecommunications teams, known as TMT in Wall Street parlance.

One reason, Mahoney said, is that those sectors are popular acquisition targets for financial sponsors. Indeed, private-equity firms are itching to deploy the billions they've raised from limited partners β€” but have been waiting for interest rates to decline.

"Something that I think will be interesting within the tech space, as well, is how teams are looking at staffing and positioning" for AI deals, as well as deals for cryptocurrency and digital-assets companies that may consolidate over the next year, Sterling of Selby Jennings said.

Tech has been a major area for banker movement, said Dennes, who also named healthcare, restructuring, industrials, consumer retail, and financial institutions as hot. Among some of the early findings of Prospect Rock's annual compensation survey, bankers in tech and restructuring displayed the highest levels of dissatisfaction with pay.

"Now, if they're not really paid," Dennes said, "they're going to want to jump β€” and there's opportunity for those folks to jump."

Tech dealmakers on the move

Union Square Advisors, a boutique technology-focused investment bank in San Francisco, has onboarded a series of dealmakers recently, including tapping Terry Jackson β€” who previously worked at JPMorgan and Bank of America Securities β€” as a managing director. The firm also hired Todd Meadow to pitch in with sponsor coverage and brought on the banker Chris Appaneal to focus on software for governance, risk, and compliance.

Houlihan Lokey, a midsize firm long respected for its prowess in restructuring and distressed deals, has also been growing its wallet share in tech to win competitive M&A mandates.

In the spring, the bank appointed Ryan Lund as a cohead of US technology. It's been deepening the granularity of its software coverage with subsequent hires, as well β€” like Nana Kyei, a managing director who joined from Jefferies this fall and focuses on education tech. Geoff Rhizor joined the tech team in San Francisco in late summer; his coverage, in part, intersects with the fintech group.

Barclays has also emphasized hiring managing directors focused on tech and healthcare deals, a company spokesperson told BI. Rob Patterson, who serves as head of data and information platforms coverage within tech investment banking, came over from Morgan Stanley. And the bank appointed David King, a former top-level banker at Bank of America, as global head of technology mergers and acquisitions last summer.

Big banks are staffing up

Some banks have already initiated widespread recruiting plans for juniors.

JPMorgan Chase, for instance, was engaged in a vigorous off-cycle recruiting spree for junior investment bankers as deal flow picked up speed in the fall, according to industry sources and postings on its job board.

Goldman Sachs' careers portal recently displayed roughly a dozen openings for junior bankers in New York, San Francisco, and London. Vacancies included analyst and associate positions in coverage groups like financial institutions, entertainment banking, TMT, and industrials, as well as product-focused functions like equity capital markets.

Bankers need fresh blood: 'Send them our way'

The last time there was an M&A boom during the pandemic, in 2021, many banks were caught unprepared and understaffed, resulting in complaints from overworked junior bankers.

Wall Street employers now say they won't make the same mistake twice β€” and many are eyeing boosting their junior ranks in preparation, the recruiters said.

Dennes expects an emphasis on associates and midlevel vice presidents to help juggle the ins and outs of executing the manifold deals coming down the pike. "Experienced bankers are always in demand," she said. "Anyone who has closed a couple of deals and is able to train junior staff is very valuable."

Dennes' firm, Prospect Rock, is working on filling four analyst roles, six associate roles, and two VP roles, postings on its website showed. Still, she doesn't see 2025 hiring following the same frenetic pattern it did during the earlier pandemic-era M&A boom.

"In 2021, you just needed bodies β€” more horsepower. This is very different," she said. Now, banks are markedly more vigilant in emphasizing quality over quantity. "Nobody wants a 2021, 2022 redo," she added. "A lot of those hires were not strong."

Some senior dealmakers are already worried about short-staffing. A managing director at a Wall Street bank told BI he was confident that 2025 would deliver a volume of work comparable with 2021 levels, if perhaps not the same soaring valuations.

"Part of the conversation that we're going to have to think through is augmenting the team at the midlevel" to handle execution, he said. In this hiring market, though, "it's almost impossible" to find impressive associates or VPs, he cautioned. "Send them our way β€” because it's hard."

Are you an investment-banking insider, or do you have knowledge of industry moves on Wall Street? Get in touch with these reporters. Reed Alexander can be reached via email at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at 561-247-5758. Emmalyse Brownstein can be reached at [email protected] or via Signal at 305-857-5516.

Correction: December 20, 2024 β€” An earlier version of this story misstated Meridith Dennes' role at Prospect Rock. She's the firm's managing partner, not one of its managing directors.

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Want to break into VC in 2025? MBAs and consulting backgrounds are out. Technical skills, especially AI, are in.

19 December 2024 at 02:00
Deedy Das (left), a principal at Menlo Ventures, held senior engineering roles at Glean, Facebook, and Google. Jon Chu, a partner at Khosla Ventures, previously worked as an engineer at Palantir and built machine learning at Facebook.
Deedy Das (left), a principal at Menlo Ventures, held senior engineering roles at Glean, Facebook, and Google. Jon Chu, a partner at Khosla Ventures, previously worked as an engineer at Palantir and built machine learning at Facebook.

Menlo Ventures; Khosla Ventures

  • VCs are increasingly looking for candidates with deep technical expertise, especially in AI.
  • Increasingly, VCs square off with the hottest AI companies to secure top talent.
  • VC firms can't compete with companies like OpenAI on compensation.

Matt Hoffman, head of talent at M13, an early-stage venture firm, is preparing to hire a new junior investor sometime next year. As recently as a year ago, he would have sought out someone from a top business school or consulting firm. Now, he wants someone with deep technical expertise.

"The technology is just getting really sophisticated," Hoffman said. "You need to have enough sophistication to be able to understand the tech you are assessing."

As venture firms struggle to raise new funds, they have been hiring fewer roles and even shedding staff. On rarer occasions when they are hiring, they are increasingly seeking out candidates with deep domain expertise, especially in artificial intelligence.

"We certainly noticed it in the past 3 to 6 months, and like a lot of VC, once it kind of takes momentum, it snowballs, and all the other VCs are doing it," Hoffman said. "The traditional MBA background will not be sufficient for the best investors going forward."

Evaluating previous generations of startups required less sophistication, according to Deedy Das, who this year was hired as a principal at Menlo Ventures, which backs OpenAI rival Anthropic. He previously worked for nearly a decade in senior engineering roles at Facebook, Google, and Glean, a buzzy AI-powered search startup valued at $4.6 billion.

"To understand Facebook, you don't need to be technical to get it," Das said. "You know people go online to use an app and connect with their friends. You can see how it can make money. For AI, if I tell you I have the best model in the world, how are you, as a non-technical person, going to call my BS on that?"

Ben Lerer, managing partner at Lerer Hippeau, says he wants to hire "younger people who are more natively growing up with AI and think about AI as less of a novelty and more of just a sort of inevitability."

Hiring for the investing theme du jour

Mark Suster, a partner at Upfront Ventures, says he used to recruit from blue-chip consulting firms like McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company, whereas recent hires have all brought specific expertise in areas the firm wants to focus on.

"I don't think generalist works anymore because venture capital is too competitive now," said Suster.

"We're going much deeper in our industries, and so when we went to invest in healthcare, we hired a healthcare expert. Now that we're doing more semiconductors, we're trying to get somebody with semiconductor experience. We're doing more with satellites, so we want someone from day one who understands the customer and the technology."

Upfront is currently hiring for an investment associate focused on machine learning and AI.

Last year, Khosla Ventures hired John Chu as a partner, who held senior engineering roles at Meta and Opendoor. This fall, Katie Jacobs Stanton, a longtime Twitter insider turned venture capitalist, hired a former engineering leader to her firm, Moxxie Ventures.

Ashwin Lalendran worked on drones at the Air Force Research Laboratory, shipped 3D vision software for Apple's mapping and self-driving-car projects, and led a team of engineers to scale the world's largest private-owned network of ocean sensors at Sofar Ocean.

He joins Moxxie's deep bench of operators to assist with sourcing, evaluating, and closing deals in deep tech, hardware, and national security, areas where Moxxie has deepened its focus over the past year.

Firms have long hired from certain networks based on the investment theme du jour, according to Yoni Rechtman, a principal at Slow Ventures, an early investor in Robinhood and PillPack.

During the fintech boom, Stripe was the hot ticket, and investors rushed to hire from the fintech giant.

Today, firms are chasing after ex-Palantir and OpenAI employees to fill out their ranks β€” some of them are restaffing after years of hiring slowdowns or job cuts, though such moves remain rare in the venture industry β€” and to add expertise and networks in their fields of interest.

Slow Ventures is looking to add as many as four associates over the next year based on the quality of talent on the market, Rechtman said. Being technical as an associate is a plus but not a requirement, though. "Being credible with founders because you worked at OpenAI is great," Rechtman said, "but doesn't necessarily mean much for your ability to pick stocks well."

VC firms can't compete with startups on compensation

Increasingly, venture firms find themselves squaring off with the hottest AI companies to secure top talent, according to Dan Miller, a recruiter and partner at True Search. "For a lot of VC firms, the stiffest competition for talent over the last year has been OpenAI," said Miller.

He's worked with several venture firms on partner and principal searches that lost candidates to the ChatGPT-maker. That is largely because OpenAI offers salaries above market rate and a chance to contribute to cutting-edge research and development. Those candidates, in turn, gain experience that opens doors to top-tier venture firms down the line, Miller added.

The average salary for a VC with 1-3 years of experience is $264,000, according to Glassdoor, an anonymous job review site. By contrast, OpenAI's median yearly total compensation is $534,197, according to Levels.fyi, which tracks compensation data at tech firms and startups.

"No VC will pay what a good AI engineer can make a company," said M13's Hoffman. "So our job is to find people who get excited about working in venture and helping to build a number of companies rather than just one."

Das said he did take a step down in pay when he joined Menlo Ventures after Glean, "but I wasn't concerned because if this worked, it would be a long-term bet where the comp would be fine," Das said.

He explained that he was excited to try venture because he was ready for a new challenge and also thought his technical chops would give him an edge over generalist investors evaluating AI infrastructure and machine learning deals.

"I thought a lot of venture capitalists were actually pretty terrible doing diligence on companies that were technical because they weren't technical."

Das was recently on a call with co-investors, and they needed his expertise. They were stumped and needed help understanding some of the jargon the founder of an AI startup was using.

"I chuckled because every second pitch I see is some version of fancy technical lingo, which actually doesn't mean much if you dig into it," Das said. "That's something a traditional investor has a really hard time seeing through."

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Recruiters share their favorite questions to ask in job interviews — and how candidates should answer them

18 December 2024 at 10:37
An illustration of a woman answering interview questions for a job.
Recruiters told BI what their go-to interview questions can reveal about a job candidate.

SB/Getty Images

  • One of the biggest parts of preparing for a job interview is running through practice questions.
  • We asked recruiting pros for their top interview questions and how a candidate should answer them.
  • Here's what they told us.

When you're preparing for a job interview, one of the first things you can do is research what previous candidates have shared about their own interviews with that employer. Some of the most helpful information to glean, if you can find it, is what interview questions you might expect to be asked.

To help job seekers who might not be able to find common questions asked by a specific company, we asked five recruiting professionals for their favorite questions to ask in job interviews.

They also broke down how candidates should answer and what the answers can reveal about them. Of course, the slate of questions asked in an interview can vary based on the recruiter's personal preferences, the role, and other factors β€” but these go-to questions from recruiters are a good place to start.

Here's a look at questions recruiters love to ask that they say can be particularly telling about a candidate.

'Tell me a time when you found a way to improve a process, made something more efficient, or otherwise introduced an improvement when you weren't asked to do so.'

Kyle Samuels, who spent 20 years in senior-level executive recruiting and is now CEO of executive search agency Creative Talent Endeavors, said he likes this question because it helps identify "proactive leaders who are willing to answer difficult questions and drive business results."

He recommends candidates use the STAR method β€” focusing on the situation, task, action, and result β€” to answer this question and really highlight their "initiative and drive."

"I'm also looking for candidates who can stand up to additional questioning well and describe specifics within each example or story they share when responding," he said.

He shared with us one example of how a STAR-formatted answer to this question might look:

  • Situation: "Our SaaS solution isn't cutting it."
  • Task: "I was assigned to fix the problem."
  • Action: "I spoke to other CTOs to get recommendations, found a final list of five, and then evaluated them against the incumbent so we could make the right hiring decision."
  • Result: Explain the end result and what happened after taking the actions described.

'Tell me about a time when something went terribly wrong with a project.'

This question shows a candidate's "ability to take responsibility for mistakes, solve problems, communicate effectively, and collaborate with others," said Lauren Monroe, who leads the creative practice group at Aquent, a staffing agency for creative, marketing, and design roles.

An ideal answer would "name the specific challenge faced, acknowledge the mistakes made, and identify the actions taken, lessons learned, and solutions implemented to solve the problem," she added.

'What key elements need to be in your next role, and what would be a dealbreaker for you?'

Amri Celeste, a recruitment manager and interview coach, likes this question because it gets at "what a candidate is really looking for in a role and whether the role we're discussing matches what they expect in their next role."

"It's also an opportunity to open up a more honest dialogue about their values, work style, and career goals, which helps me learn about not only how well they suit the role, but also how well they might suit the team and management style of the manager," she said.

'Tell me about yourself.'

It's a tried-and-true interview question, and Andrew Fennell, a former corporate recruiter and the founder of the rΓ©sumΓ©-builder website StandOut CV, leans on it to set the tone in interviews.

"After introducing myself and explaining how I've arrived to the point of this interview, I ask the candidate to do the same," he said.

"It relaxes the atmosphere a bit, makes it a bit more conversational, and allows the candidate to give a well-rounded summary of their experience and skills," he added.

'Tell me about the greatest impact you made at a company and what helped you achieve that impact.'

Tessa White, a former head of HR, is the CEO of The Job Doctor and the author of "The Unspoken Truths for Career Success."

Besides asking about a candidate's achievements, White also tries to gauge their ability to problem-solve by asking questions about challenges they've encountered in the past.

She'll ask, for example, "Tell me about a time you were at odds with someone or a department and you were able to successfully move through it."

Other times, she might say, "Tell me about a time when an initiative or project you were leading wasn't going the way you hoped. How did you handle it and what is your philosophy for addressing obstacles?"

For all of these questions, she said the ideal answer should be "authentic and real." If it's not, a recruiter can "sniff it a mile away," she said.

"I'm not looking for the answer you think I want to hear," she said. "I'm looking to see an imperfect person that has insight into their strengths as well as someone who understands how to learn from previous mistakes."

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