Mark Herschberg has spoken to tens of thousands of people over the past twenty years. Audiences have ranged from world class universities like MIT and Princeton to global companies like Microsoft and Accenture.

Creating Your Career Toolkit

Do you want to advance in your career? What are the twenty-first century skills that will give you the best return on investment to get you there fastest? Based on corporate research and developed over two decades of teaching at MIT’s career success accelerator, this talk covers what the core skills are and how best to develop them to quickly advance in your own career.

You will learn:

1. Overview of twenty-first century skills.
2. A no-cost plan for developing them.

Career Planning

You wouldn't undertake a 20 week project without first making a plan; what about a 20 year project? Your career is a major source of money, success, and fulfillment; it’s worth spending time planning it out. 

Learn how to think strategically about your career and create a plan to achieve your career goals. We’ll explore key career questions, professional development, and how to adjust your plan. At the end of this talk you’ll have a framework to create and execute a career plan to maximize your professional growth.

You will learn:

1. How to create an actionable career plan.
2. How to refine and adjust your plan as it unfolds.

Networking

This is the most cited, but least taught professional skill. Having a strong network can get you jobs, but it can also do so much more. Understand how to build, maintain, and use a diverse network to help you with challenges both professional and otherwise.

You will learn:

1. How to effectively use your network.
2. Why network diversity matters and how to create it.
3. Where and how to talk to strangers.
4. How to develop lasting relationships.

Working Effectively

You've mastered the functional skills for your job. That's necessary, but not sufficient to get to where you want to go in your career. No matter your role, there are universal job skills that will help you succeed and advance in your career. But for all the talk about them, not a single one of your university classes or professional development training courses covered them. Managing your manager, understanding corporate culture, finding ways to add more value, and dealing with office politics . . . each of which can help you be seen as a key contributor, or can undermine your career if not handled correctly.

You will learn:

1. How to understand your value to the company—and how to generate more.
2. How to manage your manager.
3. How to create and thrive in your corporate culture—not the values on the website but the real culture your team lives every day.
4. How to use corporate politics and ethics ways to help you and other succeed—and how to deal with those who use it unethically.

Negotiating for More Success

What if every deal you made was 1% better? 1% more income; 1% more sales; 1% more value delivered. What would that add up for you and your company? What if it was more than 1%?

Learn the foundation to be a more effective negotiator, not just how to get a bigger piece of the pie, but how to expand the pie and grab a bigger slice. We look at both the principles and also specific techniques to make your future negotiations a huge success.

You will learn:

1. How to reframe your approach to negotiating.
2. Negotiating principles.
3. Five stages of negotiation.
4. Common negotiation pitfalls.