You might have said some pretty terrible things about particular hiring managers in the past, but in many cases, those in charge of HR duties are frustrated by the annoying antics of applicants in the dark.

You might be qualified for the job, but your chances for getting it will be better if you avoid doing these 10 things hiring managers hate about you.

1. Thesaurus Overload

You can create a resume that sounds intelligent without using words bigger than you. Use the thesaurus for keyword inspiration and variations, but leave out the words that sound like you're trying too hard.

2. Being Too Negative

Do ask about why the person who used to fill the position left the job, but don't ask about the most common complaint about the job. That's completely subjective anyway and makes a negative impression.

3. When You're Pushy

Persistence is only a virtue if it's not irritating, so hold back on the aggressive follow-ups. Getting in touch with the hiring manager excessively makes you seem desperate.

4. Not Managing Your Online Profile

How many times do they have to say it? Hiring managers will look up all of your online profiles, and yes, they will look through your pictures. Don't be a disappointment and waste their time; clean up your online presence.

5. Sharing Too Much

If you need to pick up your kids every Wednesday at 5:30 on the dot, don't mention it in the first interview. If you're the right candidate, you can work out schedule nuances later. Don't jump the gun and share too much about your personal life.

6. Making Sloppy Mistakes

You wouldn't believe how often applicants make sloppy and obvious mistakes, like putting the incorrect company name on the cover letter and getting the title wrong for the job you're after. Errors like these are turnoffs for hiring managers.

7. Feeling Too Comfortable

Even if the hiring manager appears to be around your age, do not treat her like she's your pal. Friendly small talk is encouraged to break the ice and show some personality, but don't compliment her complexion and ask for skincare tips.

8. Assuming You Have The Job

Certain questions give the impression that you think you already have the job, like asking where your desk would be located and how every minute of every day will be spent.

9. Exaggeration

There are plenty of ways applicants make themselves seem more perfect than they actually are. But total, obvious exaggeration, like saying you read through one book every day, is telling the hiring manager she's too naive to pick out a lie.

10. TMI About Your Current Position

When you're asked about the duties you have at your current job, do not describe your actions from the minute you get in until the minute you leave. Describing your fax-sending abilities does not sell your skills; giving examples of the way issues come up and how you deal with them does.

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Today's advice comes from Art Rooney, the founding owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, via Jeff Haden's article at Inc.:

"Let me teach you a lesson...you can never overpay a good player. You can only overpay a bad one." 

It is difficult to overstate the value a great employee can add to one's business. This year, we witnessed the rise of basketball superstar Jeremy Lin, whose presence on the court "upended the landscape for [Knicks] ticket brokers."

"Great employees are worth a lot more — to your teams, to your customers, and to your bottom line — than average employees," Haden writes. "Remarkable employees are worth dramatically more."

So when you're considering pay scales, industry benchmarks, and the ability to pay your outstanding employee beyond what is considered the norm, weigh in the invaluable impact this person will bring to the table. Haden suggests "pay[ing] them not just as if you want to keep them but as if you desperately need to keep them."

"I don't mind paying a good player $200,000. What I mind is paying a $20,000 player $22,000," said Rooney. 

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

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First jobs are anything but glamorous, and certain A-listers can attest to this.

We've scoured the web looking for the weirdest stints out there, and these celebrities have certainly paid there dues. Megan Fox used to dress up as a banana; Whoopi Goldberg was a phone sex operator; and Brad Pitt was a limo driver for strippers.

The good news is, we know they all made it to stardom. So, no need to feel too sorry for them.

Rod Stewart was a gravedigger

Before Stewart charmed audiences with his British accent, he worked as a gravedigger at Highgate Cemetery in London during his teens.

According to "Rod Stewart: The New Biography," he hoped working at the cemetery would rationalize his fear of dying: "He had suffered from nightmares about death from a very early age and so thought, as an impressionable teenager, that perhaps getting as close as he could to death, actually digging out holes to be filled by real bodies, he could rid himself of that fear."

Christopher Walken was a lion tamer

At the age of fifteen, Walken joined a traveling circus and was briefly a lion tamer. He's modest about his lion-taming days; he claims Sheba, the lion, was very old and "really more like a dog."

Sylvester Stallone was a lion cage cleaner

We're not sure who had it worse: Walken, who tamed a lazy lion, or Stallone, who cleaned up after them. While waiting for his acting career to take off, the Rambo actor cleaned up lion cages at the Central Park Zoo.

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If you're afraid the Olympics might deter your employees from their work duties during office hours, rest assure. 

Allowing your employees to watch the games while they're working might actually increase productivity.

That's what Steve Siebold, a former professional athlete and author of the book "177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class: The Thought Processes, Habits and Philosophies of the Great Ones," told us. 

Watching these athletes a couple of hours a day will actually be good for your employees' work ethics, Siebold said. 

Here's 10 reasons why: 

1. "Employees will learn that winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. Olympians have a 'whatever it takes' attitude. They’ve made the decision to pay any price and bear any burden in the name of victory."

2. "Employees will learn that Olympic athletes embrace conflict for growth. When most people run into an obstacle, they seek escape. Olympic athletes have a plan to push forward when this happens and learn all they can from the challenges they face. They know facing adversity is part of being successful."

3. "Employees will learn that Olympic athletes are held accountable on so many levels. One of the biggest problems is that most people have no means of accountability or a support system in place when it comes to what they’re trying to accomplish."

4. "Employees will learn that Olympic athletes are learning machines. They spend hours practicing, studying their competitors, watching videos of their performances and session after session with their coaches and mentors. If your employees adopted just a fraction of an Olympian’s work ethic, the results they could achieve would be endless."

5. "Employees will learn Olympic champions know very good is bad. For the average employee, to be classified as very good is something to be proud of. For the great ones, it’s an insult."

6. "Employees will learn Olympic athletes make “Do or die” commitments. When most people are burned out from the battle, Olympians are just getting warmed up. It’s not that they don’t fatigue; but their commitment to their dream of winning the gold keeps them going."

7. "Employees will learn Olympic athletes are consistently great. The reason they are so consistent is because their actions are congruent with their thought processes. They have a very clear mental picture of what they want, why they want it and how to move closer to their target objective."

8. "Employees will learn Olympians are coachable.  Most people will only accept the amount of coaching their egos will allow. Champions like Olympic athletes are well known for being the most open to world-class coaching. The bigger the champion, the more open-minded they are."

9. "Employees will learn Olympians compartmentalize their emotions.  In other words, they have the ability to put aside anything else going on at that very moment, and focus only on the task in front of them." 

10. "Employees will learn Olympians think big. Ask most people what they’re thinking at any given time, and you might be surprised to learn how many think about just getting by. That’s called selling yourself short. Olympians are fearless and focused on manifesting their ultimate dream of bringing home the gold."    

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Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen is best known for introducing the theory of disruptive innovation, which Steve Jobs and other visionaries have used to map out successful strategies for their businesses.

We spoke with Christensen a few weeks ago about his new book, "How Will You Measure Your Life," which looks at how we can apply successful case studies — for example, how Netflix disrupted the video retail industry — to our own lives.

"We’re forced to look into the future, which has no data available about it," Christensen recently told LinkedIn employees. "This means that we either pursue a path that is a crap-shoot or are forced to look into theories of causality: What causes what and why."

Humans respond best to motivation theory

Many companies operate on the "principal agent," or "incentive theory." It's based on research by economists Michael Jensen and William Meckling, who determined that people work as hard as you pay them. For example, it's why shareholder values are aligned with executive compensation.

But incentives are not the same as motivation. Incentives are based on "hygiene factors," including status and job security. Motivating factors include a broader sense of purpose.

If you choose a job based on motivating factors, you are much more likely to be rewarded with hygiene factors, because you will do your job well — you're intrinsically motivated.

Hygiene factors only go so far, and operating on a principal agent theory will eventually lead to burnout.

Balance deliberate and emerging strategies

The best strategy is a balance between having a deliberate one, and a flexible, or emergent strategy.

Honda accidentally took over America with the Super Cub. The company's strategy was to sell big motorcycles, but Honda employees had more fun riding the small motorcycles around Los Angeles. A Sears buyer happened to come across the motorcycles, and the rest is history. Honda was successful because it had a flexible strategy: it was willing to change its business plan and its priorities. 

In life, we need to have a deliberate strategy, but also have enough resources and flexibility to change course, and make way for an even better, emergent strategy.

Allocate your resources wisely

In the 1990s, after Steve Jobs had been forced out of Apple, the company lost sight of its strategy of delivering the best products in the world. There was a disconnect between what Apple managers thought people wanted versus what the market really wanted. They were putting resources into the wrong things.

When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he "immediately set to work fixing the underlying resource allocation problem" — which meant that "anything not aligned with creating the best products in the world got scrapped."

We determine our own values, and ultimately our fate, by where we pour our energy and resources.

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Six of 11 paid internships in one division of the Justice Department  were deliberately filled by family members of DOJ staff in 2010, according to a new report from the department's internal watchdog.

The internships paid salaries of up to $40,000 and often led to full-time work, according to Law Blog.

The report also found eight current or former Justice Department officials manipulated the hiring process so their children or colleagues' children got permanent jobs within the department.

The report, which was first covered by The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, also found that in at least one case "two senior officials simultaneously attempted to assist each other's relative in securing DOJ employment."

If true, these allegations mean Justice Department officials have broken federal law that prohibits nepotism.

This isn't the first time the department has come under fire for its questionable hiring practices. Back in 2004 and 2008, the DOJ's internal watchdog alleged the department's Justice Management Division hired or promoted family members.

Each time the officials implicated in the probe promised to change, Law Blog reported Thursday.

This time around, Assistant Attorney General for the Administration Lee Lofthus called the report "troubling," since it "identified hiring improprieties for the third time in eight years," according to Law Blog.

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Deirdre Woods, former associate dean and chief information officer at Wharton, made a point during her years as a senior manager of encouraging other women to advance in their professional careers. One thing has always surprised her, however.

Women who are offered promotions “generally feel they need to know 80% to 90% of their current job before they feel ready to step up into a new role,” she says. But if you are smart and knowledgeable, “probably somewhere closer to 40% to 50%” is all that you need.

Men, on the other hand, feel no such constraints. “Men will start thinking about their next promotion right after they start their new promotion,” says Woods, who is currently interim executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s open learning initiative and has started her own consulting company. “I’m not sure if men are necessarily more ambitious, but they are much more overt about having a plan and moving forward.” She remembers attending a conference where another woman made the same point, in a different context: In government, the speaker said, “a six-term congresswoman doesn’t feel she is ready for the Senate yet, whereas a first-term congressman does.”

It’s not just a phenomenon in the non-profit sector, according to a report last May in the Wall Street Journal titled “The XX Factor: What’s Holding Women Back?” The article quoted an executive at Google saying that the company “must invest extra effort to persuade women engineers to nominate themselves for promotions…. Men jump at the chance, often before they are ready, and are often turned down.”

But women, the executive noted, “must be prodded.” Indeed, he tells them that by not putting themselves up for promotions, they are holding themselves back. “By the time a woman says she is ready, she was probably ready a year ago,” he said, adding that the company promotes women engineers at about the same rate as men.

Woods agrees. “Women tend to be ridiculously over-prepared for everything. But at a certain point, over-preparedness doesn’t get you moving forward. It doesn’t leave you open to other opportunities.” She suggests that women should be able to clearly define what type of job they want to do next. “They should be thinking about the next step even if it feels overwhelming.”

And “as scary as it seems,” she adds, women who do get promoted “should start signaling, at least to their bosses, that this isn’t the last thing they want to do. They should show they want to do a really good job in their current role, but that they also have ambitions.” In addition, she notes, men know that wandering around the office and chatting with their colleagues qualifies “as work. Talking to the boss, running into him or her at the coffee machine, having interactions – men understand that this is part of their work. Women don’t understand that. They think it’s a distraction from whatever they are supposed to be doing.”

Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell suggests that there is “some evidence that women are held to a higher standard in the workplace than men, and that because women are stereotyped as less competent than men, any mistakes they make tend to reinforce those kinds of attitudes towards them as individuals. You can imagine that if this is the case, then it’s even riskier for women to take on that promotion.”

The Journal report was based on the comments of a task force set up to study the obstacles that women continue to face in the workplace. According to a McKinsey study quoted in the article, women get 53% of entry level jobs and “make it to ‘the belly of the beast’ in large numbers.” But then “female presence” drops sharply, “to 35% at the director level, 24% among senior vice presidents and 19% in the C-suite.”

The McKinsey study cited by the Journal article also noted that hiring and promoting talented women is important “’to getting the best brains’ and competing in markets where women now make most of the purchasing decisions.”

NOW READ: Arianna Huffington: Women Have to Redefine Success and Power >

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The candidate Pierce Howard interviewed for a sales position at his consulting firm, CentACS, won him over with her work experience, friend-of-a-friend connection and good looks.

But it didn't take long after she started working at the Charlotte-based firm for her to prove herself a nightmare employee.

She refused to write sales proposals even after Howard sent her to a $5,000 training session on the topic. She didn't meet sales quotas and grew abrasive at any kind of feedback. Within months, she'd managed to convince an intern at the eight-person firm to quit.

Company morale was suffering. Employees would gather behind closed doors to complain. "There was an element of the narcissist in her," Howard says. "She did not question her own personal judgment." After a year, Howard finally gave her the pink slip.

What makes Howard's situation particularly compelling is that his company CentACS—the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies—specializes in personality assessment and training. It shows that even the most perceptive business owners can make a bad hire when they don't pay attention to the right signs. Howard learned his lesson. "We hired her against our better judgment," he says. "There's a solid body of knowledge out there about the traits you should look for. You should not ignore that."

Here, three personality types that can bring down your business and how can to spot them in an interview.

1. The Narcissist. One of the most dangerous personality types in the workplace is the narcissist, says Robert Hogan, president of Hogan Assessment Systems, a Tulsa, Okla.-based personality assessment firm. It's easy to make the mistake of hiring a narcissist—they are often charismatic and radiate self-confidence. But a narcissist will manipulate others in the office, be careless about commitments, and will refuse to admit or learn from mistakes. In fact, they have some of the same personality traits as psychopaths, Hogan says. The trouble is that "narcissists always do beautifully on an interview. They can't get along with anybody. It's all about them."

How to spot them: A narcissist will have a swagger, so watch a job candidate's body language closely for signs of cockiness, Hogan says. When you ask candidates about their experience working in teams, do they focus exclusively on themselves or make deprecating remarks about teammates? Those are red flags that you might have a narcissist on your hands.

2. The Social Loafer. While this individual's behavior is far more passive than that of a narcissist, it's this very passivity that will drive you and your employees insane. People who are inordinately lazy when it comes to working in teams—what Howard calls "social loafers"—can be just as damaging to your business as narcissists. This personality type is particularly problematic in a small business where every individual counts. Social loafers let others do their work for them and take on a passive-aggressive attitude in the office. Such behavior will create resentment in others who feel they have to pull more weight. "It's a morale-beater," Howard says. "It's extremely important that people perceive everybody as doing their share."

How to spot them: You need to assess a candidate's energy level during the job interview. To get a sense of how much energy people have, pay attention not only to what they are saying, but also to how they are saying it. Howard suggests taking a prospective candidate to get a cup of coffee during the interview. It's a subtle way to get them moving and see if they can keep up with you.

3. The Hyper-Emotional Hire. While most people can keep their emotions in check during a job interview, they may be keeping feelings of aggression under wraps, says Michael Mercer, a Barrington, Ill., industrial psychologist and author of Hire the Best and Avoid the Rest (Castlegate, 2011). "They might act charming and delightful, even if they are a monster on wheels," he says. "They know how to control that." Hyper-emotional personality types can be resistant to rules, pessimistic and whiny. This is the type of employee who slams doors and is constantly complaining. Other employees will feel the need to tiptoe around them, and all that explosive negativity can be contagious.

How to spot them: Even hyper-emotional job candidates will know better than to complain during an interview. Ask them what they didn't like about their previous job or boss, and you'll likely get a rehearsed response. But if you press them for two such examples and challenge them to be more specific, you'll force them to have to answer on the fly, Mercer says. Watch for their reaction: Do they get huffy when you challenge them? Do they offer lessons learned or focus only on the negatives?

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A huge reason why people attend business school is for access to a valuable network. At the top schools, recruiters flock to MBAs and convince them to take jobs with great titles and pay packages. 

The folks over at Wall Street Oasis gave us permission to share a few tips from a recent post, What B-School Taught Me About The Job Hunt:

1. The more recruiters repeat something about their firm, the less likely it is to be true (ex. "You will have completely free access to our senior bankers. They will be involved in every step of your development. Our seniors have a very firm commitment to your career. We spend 10 percent of our man-hours on feedback and development. The whole company has an open-door policy." Etc.)
2. From your point of view it is more important that you interview them than vice-versa. You are handing them the keys to your life for the next X years. They're just managing future headcount.
3. Negotiate your job offer. If the employer pushes back or gets pissed that you're asking for more, ask them, "If you want to hire someone who won't pursue better outcomes for themselves, how can you expect them to pursue better outcomes for the firm?"

The author also says that "For what it's worth, I had five offers for a summer internship and four offers for full-time. Most of these were pretty high-quality offers and I was pleased with my palette of options."

Read the rest of the tips over at Wall Street Oasis.

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Porn star and former Playboy model Victoria Rae Black shared some smart comments on sex and the sex industry in a Reddit Ask Me Anything. 

Here's what she had to say about how she separates work from real life: 

"On-camera or casual sex is NOT the same or as meaningful as personal life sex. There was a period of adjustment for me with my boyfriend but once I let the walls down and let him in emotionally the sex became the most passionate I've ever had. Working with other men just makes me appreciate the sex my boyfriend and I have even more."

On what kind of man dates a porn star: 

"My current boyfriend loves me for me. He never saw my porn before we got together and is so geeky and nerdy that my looks only threw him off his game on our first date. He was so nervous....lol."

On how she fakes pleasure: 

"Sometimes you have to fake it. If that is shocking to anyone then i suggest having sex with a lot of strangers several times a week, some of whom you don't even feel attracted to."

Here's how the camera men REALLY feel: 

"Those dudes are sooooooooo over it. They see that everyday, sometime twice a day, 6 days a week. I have yet to meet a camera man who give a s---."

And how the economy of porn is evolving thanks to business models from successful sites like Hulu and Netflix: 

'I think the economy is slowly starting to turn around. I saw a dip in the scenes I was shooting in the last two years but now things are on an upswing, companies are making more money and therefore producing more content. I think entertainment in general is in a transitional state, between TV/Movies and the internet. As I'm sure you've all noticed, Hulu and Netflix are becoming much bigger players than anyone imagined, as a result studios are rethinking how the distribute and release things. I bring that up only because (as is often the case) PORN lead the charge on that one. Our industry has been suffering from the online competition for years now. It's only recently that companies have started to come up with innovate ways to keep money coming directly to them instead of all the free porn spread across the web."

DON'T MISS: Porn And Video Games Are Ruining The Next Generation Of American Men >

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Every year, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors with nearly impeccable academic
records submit their applications to highly selective colleges. And every year, the admissions
officers at these schools have to find a way to decide how to allocate the limited number of seats in each of their freshman classes.

How do they do it?

For just about every highly selective school, the major selection criteria are a student’s SAT scores, high school grade point average, the difficulty of coursework, and extracurricular
participation. Each school emphasizes different measurements depending upon its institutional focus; however, there remains one constant that plays a very large role in admissions: the SAT.

"Tens of thousands of students every year who are in direct competition for the slots at the nation's most elite universities are likely in danger that the SAT will not capture the true level of their academic ability."

Admissions officers at schools like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale will tell you that there’s an issue: The vast majority of students whose applications they review have perfect or near-perfect GPAs and SAT scores, so these metrics can’t be used to distinguish between the very best candidates. This means that other yardsticks—such as a student’s involvement in extracurricular activities—have become, by default, much more important because the objective academic metrics don’t have enough headroom.

Every year, over 200,000 intellectually talented 7th graders from across the country take the SAT, which is designed for the average 11th grader, to distinguish the academically tall from the academically giant. By the time those students get to the 11th grade, a majority of them will likely reach within 100 to 200 points of a perfect score. But this is simply because the test is not challenging enough for them.

Today, a perfect score on the SAT is 2400. A score of 3000 or 4000 is not currently possible, but that is because the test is simply not hard enough to measure a score that high. But if the test were more difficult, who’s to say that some of these talented students might not be able to achieve a higher score?

One way to solve this problem would be for the Educational Testing Service to design a harder SAT, and for all we know, something like this is already in the works. But for the purposes of selective college admissions, I offer a much simpler and more pragmatic solution for the short term: Highly selective colleges should require the GRE—or another graduate-school admissions exam—instead of the SAT as a measurement of academic aptitude. This is because the GRE is essentially just a harder SAT.

Tens of thousands of students every year who are in direct competition for the slots at the nation’s most elite universities are likely in danger that the SAT will not capture the true level of their academic ability. This can put them at a disadvantage in the college-admissions process.

Of course, one could argue that even these graduate-admissions exams wouldn’t have enough headroom for the most talented students. But if selective colleges required a test that were at least more difficult than the SAT, it would likely reduce the problem.

This would ease the dilemma of admissions officers seeing a perfect 2400 on the SAT and not knowing whether that student has the academic potential to exceed the demands of the test.

If talented high school students took a harder test, it could also have a secondary effect: teaching them a greater sense of humility at a critical moment in their lives.

© 2012 by Jonathan Wai. This post originally appeared at Education Week. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook or G+. For more of Finding the Next Einstein: Why Smart is Relative go here.

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Today Glassdoor released its annual list of the 25 most difficult companies to interview with, based on 80,000 interview ratings and reviews shared throughout the past year.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. tops the list, with a 3.9 difficulty rating (based on a 5.0 scale).

One candidate described their experience interviewing with the firm on Glassdoor:

“I applied directly on the McKinsey site for the junior research analyst position and had a 1-on-1 initial interview with HR before two 1-on-1 interviews with Research Associates. I was then asked to go in for the McKinsey Problem Solving Test, which I passed. Then I had three 1-on-1 interviews with Senior Research Associates from the teams in Chicago, Toronto, and Seattle. ... Overall, I had a good experience interviewing with McKinsey (despite not getting an offer after all of that). 1-on-1 interviews were non-technical and more fit-based. There were questions about background in research and quantitative analysis experience.”

Here is the full list:

We discovered this chart via GeekWire. 

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Hiring managers are known to create a tough interviewing experience in order to challenge candidates and test their thinking abilities under pressure.

To find out which companies have the toughest interviews, we turned to Glassdoor.com, which put together a list of the 25 most difficult companies to interview with.

The site looked through 80,000 interview reviews, ranking companies based on a 5-point interview difficulty scale.

Glassdoor also included a "negative interview experience" and "employee satisfaction" rating, to see if employees were ultimately satisfied with their jobs.

25. Amazon

Interview difficulty rating: 3.3

Negative interview experience rating: 18%

Employee satisfaction: 3.3

Tough interview question: “If you were to rank quality, customer satisfaction, and safety in order of importance, how would you rank them? Discuss.” –Amazon Area Manager Candidate (Allentown, PA)

Source: Glassdoor

24. Facebook

Interview difficulty rating: 3.3

Negative interview experience rating: 19%

Employee satisfaction: 4.6

Tough interview question: “It's 6pm and your work day is over, what happened during the day that made it awesome?” –Facebook Account Manager Candidate (Austin, TX)

Source: Glassdoor

23. Headstrong

Interview difficulty rating: 3.3

Negative interview experience rating: 12%

Employee satisfaction: 2.9

Tough interview question: “If your parents are doctors why didn’t you become one?” –Headstrong Associate Engineer Candidate (Delhi, India)

Source: Glassdoor

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Today's advice comes from Kathleen King, owner of Tate's Bake Shop, via Inc.:

"I needed to start Tate's Bake Shop, grow it into a viable business and move forward. I didn't have all that emotional attachment like I did with creating my first business from scratch."  

King's experience of being pushed out of her own bakery after 23 years, called Kathleen's, is an inspiring story of determination and perseverence.

When she opened her bakery 23 years ago, she hired two partners and thought that by giving everyone equal share, she was igniting unity amongst them and strengthening the team. However, eventually the other two paired together to push her out, resulting in King having more than $200,000 in legal fees. Instead of being overly emotional about the downfall of her tenure at her own bakery, she pushed herself up and started a new one. The result, Tate's Bakery, now sells baked goods to every state in America and sells more than 1 million cookies per week. The bakery that she was removed from is now closed. 

"It's the advice I always give when people ask: take the emotion out, and you'll be surprised at how less consuming your business will be and how much easier it is to execute."

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

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In 2003, Richard Florida predicted that right-brained people would rule the world in his book "The Rise Of The Creative Class." 

Ten years later, his book seems prescient. For the first time, being different is more prized than fitting in and black-and-white thinkers are being left behind.

Florida revisited his book and rewrote it to reflect modern times. In The Rise of the Creative Class--Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition--Revised and Expanded, he explores what social forces brought down the traditional corporate world and led to a rise in the counterculture.

Young people have revolted against the financiers on Wall Street. They're taking jobs that allow for expression instead of going for the highest paycheck. Tattoos and piercings are commonplace in the office, as the brain is valued over the outside package.

There is an economic need for the "creative class," which is why it's thriving right now, writes Florida. He says one in three Americans, or 40 million workers, belong to it.

Here's how he defines the creative class:

"I define the Creative Class to include people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. "

It's necessary because creativity is what powers many of the new industries of our day: from social media and computer graphics to medical research and urban planning, Florida says. The current business environment means that creativity is the "most prized commodity."

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A lot of us dream having Sharmila Mulligan's career.

She's been involved in multiple startups with big payouts and is now CEO and co-founder of ClearStory Data, a buzzy early-stage startup in Palo Alto, Calif. It's backed by Google Ventures, her buddy Marc Andreessen's firm Andreessen Horowitz, and Khosla Ventures.

She met Andreessen when her employer, a startup called Kiva Software, was bought by Netscape for $180 million in 1997. She joined up with him again at Opsware, which was bought by HP for $1.6 billion. Later she joined Aster Systems, bought by Teradata for $263 million last year. Along the way she dabbled in a bunch of other startups, as an advisor or investor.

She has three kids and was going to take some time off before plunging back to work, but the startup bug bit again last summer and off she went, along with two co-founders from Aster.

But what's it REALLY like to have that life? We asked Mulligan to tote a camera along for a couple of days and show us.

The big surprise: the stereotype of the working mom is far from true. Life as a startup CEO doesn't have to mean missing baseball games and family dinners.

During this particular week, she was speaking at UC Berkeley's DataEDGE conference, a gathering of top big data computer scientists.

7 a.m.: Sharmila waves goodbye to her kids. She often drives them to school but she's speaking at a conference today so has to leave early.

A day in the life of

8:39 a.m.: Sharmila gets briefed by Quentin Hardy, Deputy Tech Editor for the New York Times, who will moderate the morning panel at the DataEDGE conference.

9:28 Sharmila joins other big data bigwigs on stage including Amr Awadallah, CTO for Cloudera; DJ Patil, data scientist in residence for Greylock Partners and previously chief scientist at LinkedIn; and moderator Quentin Hardy.

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Marketing genius Seth Godin is constantly brimming with career and life advice.

One of his strengths is pointing out that both are interchangeable: the universal truths that inform our "real lives" apply to our professional selves, and vice versa. You cannot be two people at once — or at least, it won't last that long before you're found out. 

While looking through his blog, we came across this great post on the "Hierarchy Of Success."

Godin says it looks like this:  

1. Attitude, 2. Approach, 3. Goals, 4. Strategy, 5. Tactics, 6. Execution

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Virgin Group founder Richard Branson got a question from a mother in Texas about her 12-year-old boy, and the celebrity businessman gave her a surprisingly thorough answer.

The kid kept failing at his little business ventures. He tried making wallets and mowing lawns, but he couldn't get any customers. He'd get discouraged, but his mother wanted to help him keep him going.

Branson published the advice he gave in his new book "Like A Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You At Business School," and posted the excerpt on his blog.

"First of all, your son shouldn’t be disheartened – with all his restless activity, he is off to a good start. Indeed, he has achieved the first step, which is just to turn up and try. And he is showing good instincts. One of my golden rules for the Virgin Group is that any business we decide to launch should enhance customers’ lives. His lawn-mowing service certainly passes the test. Tell him not to be discouraged. Any good entrepreneur must take risks when starting new ventures, and most enterprises do not work the first time around. Now he needs to take the second step, which is to learn from his mistakes and ensure he doesn’t repeat them next time."

In 867 words, he told two stories about his initial "schoolboy attempts" to start businesses, and then broke down what the kid needed to do with his lawn mowing business in five points.

1. Is the pricing right? — if nothing works, maybe even offer to mow for free and ask customers to pay whatever they'd like
2. Is the equipment up to date? — perhaps invest in a better lawnmower
3. Do some research to find your most likely customers — find those whose circumstance require them to get extra help 
4. Can you broaden the services you offer? — cleaning cars, pulling weeds or taking out the trash
5. Offer to donate some of your proceeds to a local charity — may help convince people, since it's helping the community

Read Branson's entire answer at his blog >

NOW SEE: 22 Executives Share The Best Advice They Ever Received >

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We recently gave you the 25 most difficult companies to interview with based on reviews and ratings compiled by Glassdoor.com. 

The list also included an "employee satisfaction" rating, to see if employees were ultimately satisfied with their jobs. When the employee satisfaction rating was compared to the interview difficulty rating, Facebook employees — followed by Google and Bain & Company people — seem to have benefited the most from being hired.

But for people working for other companies, does life generally get easier or harder after a tough interview?

To get an idea, Kelly The WSJ asks Scott Dobroski, a spokesman for Glassdoor, who says the "difficult interview process is worth the sizable paychecks, challenging work and generally enticing workplace culture."

Although the "hours and workload may be notoriously demanding at these types of companies," the "challenging interviews are in place because of great compensation and benefits and because employees are being tasked with great responsibility."

Overall, if you're focused on having a work-life balance, the tough interviews are a sure sign that life after the interview isn't going to get less stressful. However, if the amazing salary and benefits are what you're after, better practice your interviewing skills. 

In the report, employees from the majority of these 25 companies were in fact satisfied with their jobs, but the ones who pass the tough interviews are likely types that can handle stressful jobs and typically want challenging responsibilities. 

NOW SEE: The 25 most difficult companies to interview with > 

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Today's advice comes from David Lieb, CEO of Bump, via Fast Company:

"We're a software company and what we do is done in groups of people. The way we recognize individual contribution is by having a wrap-up meeting at the end of every feature-development period and the team leader gets up and explains what the group was able to accomplish during that period. They call out the individual contributions of each person on the team."

It's important for companies that thrive off of a collaborative atmosphere to take note of the individual effort that goes into it. Even when a large group of people are working on a project, one person may go the extra mile or come up with a good idea that pushes it forward.

According to Lieb, it's important to acknowledge that person, whether privately or in front of the team. Without commending them for their individual contribution, they may begin to feel like a small fish in a big pond, and if they believe their advanced efforts will continuously remain largely unnoticed, eventually they'll put less into it.

"So if one guy makes a heroic contribution keeping the servers up during a big period of growth, we'll call that person out so the whole company will realize that person made a big contribution this time."

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

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