Curious as to what skills you need 
to score your first job? Here’s a hint: It’s not PowerPoint, Excel or Photoshop. A new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that employers care more about “soft skills”—such as integrity, reliability and teamwork—than they do technical abilities like reading comprehension and mathematics.
That’s not surprising, says Kathy Robinson, founder of Boston-based career coaching firm TurningPoint and former entry-level recruiter. “Hard skills can be taught,” she says. “Employers are more concerned about whether a job candidate has the right attitude and work ethic.”
Here are the five skills employers say they value most in younger employees—and what you can do during a job interview to prove that you’ve got them.
Click here to read the full story.
We know: It’s not exactly the kind of fun holiday shopping you had in mind. Still, your ability to sniff out a great mortgage is crucial to your financial well-being as a future homeowner, because the decision you make could stick with you for a very long time, maybe even 30 years. Gulp.
biggest obstacle to buying a home, and hands down they’ll say it’s scraping together enough money for a down payment. But understand a key point: This is not a separate and distinct issue from landing a mortgage. Lenders, after all, like to see clients lay down a sizable chunk of change before they fork over a mortgage, because this shows you have skin in the game and lowers the odds that you’ll default on your loan. So how large a down payment do you really need?
new vehicle, get serious about shopping now. December tends to deliver the deepest discounts of the year, with buyers receiving an average 7.7% off MSRP, TrueCar.com finds—vs. 6.8% in January, for instance. For an average buyer, that’s more than $300 in savings.
business idea hatched eight years ago when his wife, Mary, asked for a favor. She wanted him to use his design and woodworking skills to build storage units that could hold all of her crafting materials—ink pads, markers, paper punches—in one place.
a spiffy job-interview outfit and your resume (15 drafts later, phew) and cover letter in hand, but now it’s time for the hardest part: preparing what will come out of your mouth.
for his business idea. In June 2011 his wife, Ayana, called him upstairs to watch a couple decorating their living room. “They were hanging wallpaper that had a collage of their family photos,” recalls Oliver, a father of twins. “They said anyone could do it, but I couldn’t find how to do it anywhere.”
you’re like most Americans, you have a credit card or two (or three) to your name—shiny pieces of plastic that can have a tremendous impact on your financial well-being.
here—and so are some great domestic fall travel deals. That should come as a relief to many consumers, given that Americans will spend an average of $2,836 per person to travel this fall—more than summer travel—according to travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth.
you’ve probably heard that your credit score will affect your buying power big-time, because lenders use your credit score to determine whether to give you a loan, and at what rate.
Daniel Bortz 