Articles Career Advancement

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  Career Advancement

  “I was basically a chair”: 5 tips for telling your career story

  Yesterday, my daughter texted a picture from work. Two tiny preschoolers, both perched squarely in her lap, grinning at the camera. It was adorable. She’s spending her gap year at a preschool, before she starts graduate school in the fall. I’ve gotten a lot of texts like this.   But it was her caption that made […]

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  Articles

  Your First Promotion: What You Need to Know

  When people talk about women’s advancement, the conversation usually jumps straight to the C‑suite. But the real story starts much earlier, at the very first step up. For more than seven years, we’ve had a name for the place where women’s careers most often stall: the Broken Rung. First introduced by McKinsey andLeanIn.org in 2019, […]

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  Forté Signals

  The Graduation Speech I Wasn’t Asked to Give

  This is the time of year when people who are famous, accomplished, or both get invited to stand in front of a room full of graduating students and say something memorable. Graduation speeches are supposed to be inspirational. They are meant to give you good advice. And they are supposed to send you out the […]

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  Forté Signals

  Signs vs. Signals: The Two‑Letter Difference That Explains a Lot About Work

  For reasons that probably say something strange about me, I’ve been thinking about traffic signals a lot lately. Not because I’m secretly passionate about municipal infrastructure or have taken up a side hustle in urban planning. If anything, I’m the person who still gets irrationally annoyed when a left turn arrow takes too long. But […]

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  Early Career

  Welcome to Your Career. Here Are 5 Things Nobody Explained. 

  You spent years in school prepping for “that first job.”  You learned how to write papers (thanks ChatGPT), study for exams, give presentations, join clubs, and survive the group project with one person who mysteriously disappeared until the night before. Then you graduated, and yes you even managed to find a job in “this” market.  […]

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  Level Up Your Career

  Stop Telling Women They Need to Develop Skills They Already Have

  Employers are remarkably consistent about the skills they want most. In a recent survey of Forté member companies, employers said they are looking for communication, analytical thinking, coachability, professionalism, leadership, client-facing confidence, and the ability to work well with others. They want people who can stay calm under pressure, build trust quickly, navigate change, and […]

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