We write a lot about resumes — what to do, what not to do. But these rules are generic advice we compile from career experts, and — depending on the industry — sometimes the more personalized and creative you are, the more likely you'll get noticed in this competitive economy.  So, we've also presented to you a lot of creative resumes. Taking a risk on the design and format of your resume can sometimes lead to unexpected results. Chris Spurlock posted his resume on the internet, and its viral success got him a job at the Huffington Post.

Faced with a 7- to 10-year IPO on-ramp, private companies are seeking alternate ways to unlock liquidity for early-stage investors and incentivize valued employees. High-profile pre-IPO companies, including Facebook, Zynga, and Twitter, have turned to private liquidity programs (PLPs) to enable investors and employees to cash out a portion of their shares.

Increasingly, cash flow positive companies in the middle private market are beginning to wonder whether they too should consider a PLP.  Here are 10 questions to ask when considering such a transaction:

The other day, I noticed an eye-catching headline:

"Internet Funding Boom Ends as Fast as It Began"

It was from the Wall Street Journal--a publication I count on for emphasizing quality journalism over empty linkbaity headlines above hollow stories.  Perhaps I need to rethink that.

How else can you explain this headline matching a story about a professional social network still trying to explore revenues raising $17mm on an $80mm valuation?  This is a company that, according to the article, got term sheets from half of the VCs that expressed interest in the company.  Not a bad close rate, I'd say--and a pretty great pay day.  Did I mention it only took the founder a month?

Back in the “old days” (as in 5 or 10 years ago) the very definition of a seed investment was investing before any product had been built or prototyped. Since then, the ability to build a startup on far less capital has made seed investing less risky. But, oddly, it seems that seed investors have become more risk averse.

With the institutionalization of seed investing has come a conventional wisdom that you need a prototype to raise a seed round. I’ve been thinking about this a ton since launching Resolute.vc, and I disagree. You shouldn’t need a prototype to raise a seed round.

The European Commission released yesterday (27 September) its EU strategy on cloud computing, which promotes off-site data storage in a bid to create new jobs and raise €160 billion per year in information technology savings.

Neelie Kroes, commissioner for the digital agenda, said the strategy would translate into savings of around €300 per person each year. Once the strategy is fully underway, the EU executive said it expected gains of some €600 billion between 2015 and 2020 overall.

The commissioner also sees cloud services as a driver for economic growth, saying it could generate 2.5 million new jobs, depending on how efficiently the strategy is taken up.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Tufts University, and others have created fully biodegradable electronics that could allow doctors to implant medical sensors or drug delivery devices that dissolve when they're no longer needed. The transient circuits, described in today's issue of Science, can be programmed to disappear after a set amount of time based on the durability of their silk-protein coating.

"You want the device to serve a useful function, but after that function is completed, you want it to simply disappear by dissolution and resorption into the body," says John Rogers, a physical chemist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and senior author on the study. 

Teamability™ is new technology that measures and predicts how people will perform when working with others to achieve common goals. Its creator, The Gabriel Institute, is 'crowdfunding' some enhancements that will optimize results for entrepreneurs and startup teams.

If the funding campaign on Indiegogo.com is successful, TGI will make a 'pay it forward' contribution of its own: making 10,000 uses of Teamability available at no cost to entrepreneurs who are active in startup incubators and other entrepreneurship programs.

If there’s one thing this country needs, it’s new jobs. Helping the REAL job-creators fulfill their mission is a worthy cause, isn’t it?

Don’t miss this opportunity to help build a new wave of startup successes. The ‘T410K’ campaign is now in its final week, ending on Saturday, Oct. 6 at midnight PST. Here’s where to go: http://bit.ly/T410K

If you need more encouragement, read on…

It’s time for the old adage that women neither like nor do well in math and science be put to rest …

Women are increasingly involved in the tech field, both as consumers and as practitioners, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since over half of social media users are women and the average social gamer is a woman in her 40s.

This trend is also reflected in education. Of the computer science majors graduating in 2013 from Harvard, women make up 41%. And although only 25% of science, tech, engineering and math (STEM) jobs are currently held by women, the numbers are beginning to shift. Between January of 2011

and 2012, the number of women in the IT field jumped by more than 28%.

Is your throat sore? Is your nose running? Do you have a fever? If you have any of these symptoms, chances are that you got them by sitting at your desk. Although it might look sterile, in fact, your desk harbors more germs and bacteria on it than a kitchen table or even a toilet. That shouldn’t be surprising when you think that at least 50% of Americans eat lunch and snack at their desks and one-third of workers go to work when they’re sick. When combined with the fact that we touch our faces 16 times every hour, it might be a miracle that we aren’t sick all of the time. The remedies to the spread of illness in the workplace are simple enough: wash your hands and your space, unchain yourself from your desk for lunch, and take a day off when you’re not feeling well.

Many entrepreneurs still dream of “going public,” making billions of dollars, and playing with the big boys. They don’t realize that this option would likely be their worst nightmare, since it costs millions for the road show, usually dilutes your equity to a tiny fraction, and takes away all your entrepreneurial control. Consider the recent example of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

Even though the Initial Public Offering (IPO) alternative for a successful startup seems to be coming back into vogue, it is relatively rare. After a record low of 39 U.S. IPOs in 2008, the market was up to a still trivial 159 in 2011. Even in most of these cases, the original startup founders were pushed out, or heavily supplemented, with “experienced” executives.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is looking to Chicago's young workers to invigorate the economic development plan being overseen by World Business Chicago.

Mr. Emanuel and the not-for-profit organization announced today a fellowship program that will have companies offer up-and-coming employees pro bono to help implement the city's "Plan for Economic Growth & Jobs Implementation."

“One of Chicago's biggest strengths is our talented workforce,” Mr. Emanuel said in a release. “This new fellowship program allows us to tap some of the best and the brightest minds — and engage our city's future leaders. The fellows will help shape Chicago's economic development by implementing the plan's key economic growth initiatives, which are essential for the city to compete in the global economy.”

According to author Glenn Fleishman, it’s a book that “distills hard-won lessons of successful projects into well-documented advice alongside case studies.” The problem? Fleishman turned to Kickstarter to raise $35,000 for his goal, and this weekend, he failed to reach his goal.

Judging from the onslaught of books, articles, and blog posts extolling Steve Jobs' virtues and condemning his vices, the question of whether leaders can replicate Jobs' results by emulating his methods is an important one. Since most managers quantitatively analyze the factors which that impact affect the performance of their firms, we find it surprising that this great debate has raged in a context largely uninformed by any hard data.

To the contrary, numerous commentators have passionately presented their anecdotal perspectives, either revering or reviling Job's take-no-prisoners approach; there is no middle ground. In his recent Wired article, Ben Austen aptly labeled these two camps acolytes and rejecters. Acolytes see Jobs as brilliant, citing his leadership as the reason behind Apple's phenomenal results. Rejecters see him as arrogant and deeply flawed, leading Apple to meteoric success in spite of his often boorish behavior.

ADELPHI, Md - The University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) today announced a collaborative school of public health that will give graduate students at both institutions expanded opportunities in public health education, research, service, and training.

The announcement was made at a news conference (see below) hosted by University System of Maryland (USM) Chancellor William Kirwan, PhD, at the USM offices in Adelphi. UMD and UMB have begun the national accreditation process as one initiative of their University of Maryland: MPowering the State collaboration approved by the USM Board of Regents on March 1, 2012.

GSF Accelerator has inducted twelve serial entrepreneurs and executives with deep domain expertise in technology, product management and start-ups as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs).

GSF Accelerator was announced last month as "India's first multi-city programme that aims to provide 12 start-ups with personalised and intensive mentoring, access to funding and business networks and initial capital."

We wanted to share this blog from the co-chairs of Startup Maryland where they talk about their experiences on the first-ever “Pitch Across Maryland” tour meeting entrepreneurs and discovering all that the State of Maryland has to offer for small businesses and startups.

Contributed jointly by Startup Maryland Board Co-Chairs Julie Lenzer Kirk and Michael Binko 

Entrepreneurs are renowned for coming up with what seems like crazy ideas and making them reality. The big yellow bus wrapped in the Maryland state flag that has been traversing the state is a perfect example.

The big national conversation this election year is about jobs. The number of unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged workers in the U.S. has been scary-high for a few years now. Everyone wants to know in the wake of the Great Recession how to create more jobs, more high-wage jobs, and train more Americans to get those precious jobs.

Nobody wants to look at an industry of the past (newspapers, anyone?) as part of the solution. But if you’re looking at the biotech industry as one of the futuristic sectors to count on for job growth, I can only say one thing: Keep looking.

Trying to cram hog-sized carry-ons into tight overhead spaces and drinking two bottles of wine before 8 a.m. local time will not serve you well when traveling for work. Here are some practical tips, as well as some apps and websites, to make business travel run more smoothly.

Between increased security and reduced airline services, there isn’t much thrill left in business travel, as I was recently reminded during a 2-week, 20,000-mile trip. But you can reduce the agony if you plan appropriately. Here are 10 up-to-date tips for minimizing the hassle of business travel:

The United States Census Bureau has released a report (Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change: 2000 to 2010.) on metropolitan area growth between 2000 and 2010. The Census Bureau's the news release highlighted population growth in downtown areas, which it defines as within two miles of the city hall of the largest municipality in each metropolitan area. Predictably, media sources that interpret any improvement in core city fortunes as evidence of people returning to the cities (from which they never came), referred to people "flocking" back to the "city" (See here and here, for example).

Downtown Population Trends: Make no mistake about it, the central cores of the nation's largest cities are doing better than at any time in recent history. Much of the credit has to go to successful efforts to make crime infested urban cores suitable for habitation, which started with the strong law enforcement policies of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Everywhere I go in Silicon Valley I hear people discussing their angel investments. The conversations remind me of fish stories. People love recounting the one time they caught a big fish, not the many futile hours they spent waiting for a bite.

My skeptical perspective on angel investing is colored by my 25 years in the venture capital business and the data I use to teach my students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

I know that many of our clients at Wealthfront are tempted to become angel investors after they sell their company stock post-IPO. It’s not that I think becoming an angel is a bad idea; it’s just that most people who expect to make money as angel investors are fooling themselves.