CEOs Without College Degrees !!!

[kueytoc]

CEOs Without College Degrees

by Rebecca Reisner

Monday, June 1, 2009

Provided by Business Week

The thousands of wait-listed would-be MBAs who may not get the chance to go to their dream B-school might want to draw inspiration from the following group of CEOs. Not only did they not get graduate degrees, they didn't get undergraduate degrees -- and some never even attended college.

Of course, not having a degree didn't stop them from being a big name on campus. You'll find Alfred Taubman's name at Brown, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and Lawrence Technological University; at least one building on each campus bears his name, although the retail magnate and philanthropist never finished college. Read on to learn who else made it into corporate top spots without the benefit of a bachelor's degree.

1. Dennis Albaugh

Chairman, Albaugh

Type of Business: Pesticides

Education: Associate's degree from Des Moines Area Community College

Fun fact: He has a collection of more than 100 classic Chevrolets

2. Paul Allen

Founder and chairman, Vulcan

Type of Business: Media, telecommunications

Education: Dropped out of Washington State College after two years

Fun fact: He persuaded Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard. They later founded Microsoft (MSFT) together.

3. Richard Branson

CEO, Virgin Group

Type of Business: Travel, radio, TV, music, venture capital

Education: No college degree

Fun fact: He became an entrepreneur at age 16 with the creation of Student magazine.

4. Maverick Carter

CEO, LRMR Innovative Marketing & Branding

Type of Business: Marketing

Education: 3.5 years of college at Western Michigan University and University of Akron combined

Quote: "Don't be afraid if you see an opportunity to go and give it shot. You can finish school later; it's always there."

5. John Paul DeJoria

CEO, John Paul Mitchell Systems

Type of Business: Hair-care products

Education: No college

Fun fact: He started out selling greeting cards at age 9.

6. Michael Dell

Founder, chairman, and CEO Dell (DELL)

Type of Business: Computers

Education: Attended University of Texas, Austin; did not finish.

Quote: "When I started our company, it was very much an idea outside of the conventional wisdom, and if there were people telling me that it wasn't going to work, I wasn't really listening to them."

7. Felix Dennis

Founder and chairman, Alpha Media Group, formerly Dennis Publishing

Type of Business: Publishing (Maxim, The Week)

Education: No college degree

Fun fact: He wrote a biography and published a magazine about Bruce Lee; sales surged when the martial arts star died suddenly in 1973.

8. Barry Diller

Chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)

Type of Business: Media

Education: Dropped out of UCLA after three weeks

Fun fact: He started his career working in the mail room of the William Morris Agency.

9. Bill Gates

Co-chair and Trustee, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Chairman, Microsoft (MSFT)

Type of Business: Philanthropy. Software.

Education: Dropped out of Harvard

Fun fact: As a schoolboy, he created a program that allowed people to play tic-tac-toe on the computer.

10. Mukesh "Micky" Jagtiani

Chairman, Landmark International (Dubai)

Type of Business: Retailing

Education: No college degree

Fun fact: The billionaire mall developer flunked out of a London accounting school as a teenager and worked as a taxi driver before becoming an entrepreneur.

11. Dean Kamen

Founder and chairman, Segway

Type of Business: Motor vehicles

Education: Dropped out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Fun fact: Kamen founded FIRST, a robotics competition for high school students.

12. David Oreck

Founder, Oreck

Type of Business: Vacuum cleaners

Education: No college. At 17, enlisted in the army, and flew B-29 bombers during World War II

Quote: "Things are never as bad as they seem to the pessimist and never as good as they seem to the optimist."

13. Amancio Ortega Gaona

President, Inditex Group

Type of Business: Fashion retailing (Zara, Kiddy Class, others). (A Coruna, Spain)

Education: No college

Fun fact: Often cited as the richest man in Spain, he reportedly has never given any media interviews

14. Phillip Ruffin

Owner, Treasure Island

Type of Business: Casinos

Education: Attended Washburn University for three years and Wichita State University but never got his degree.

Quote: "You get the most experience from the business of life."

15. Alfred Taubman

Founder, Taubman Centers (TCO). Philanthropist

Type of Business: Shopping malls

Education: Attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for three years but left to start a family and his career

Quote: "Become an expert in one fundamental area of your market or business. No one starts out as a generalist."

16. Ty Warner

Founder, Ty, Inc.

Type of Business: Toys (stuffed animals)

Education: Dropped out of college to pursue a career in acting. Later founded Ty Inc.

Fun fact: The plush animals his company manufactured retailed for only $5 in the 1990s, but Beanie Baby-mania drove prices up to $30 or more for the hard-to-get characters.

Copyrighted, Business Week. All rights reserved.

[[d]3v|L]

Its everyone's dream.. How many out of these millions of people actually made it to be like them..

[hobbes]

How many of these millions of people who has degrees end up being one of them too? =)

[skinbone]

And if it is any worse, all the names mentioned are that of foreigners :0. And i think the degree student in China and Taiwan are taking on very humble jobs too.

[kueytoc]

Recruiters Reveal Pet Peeves About Job Seekers

Recruiter Roundtable Looks at Flaws to Avoid

by Yahoo! HotJobs

The Recruiter Roundtable is a recurring feature that collects career and job-seeking advice from a group of recruiting experts throughout the United States. The question we put before our panel this month is:

What is your biggest pet peeve about job seekers today?

The Price of 'Perfection'

My biggest pet peeve is perfect candidates. They only had successes, are perfect and can't see any improvement to make on themselves -- except maybe to "work a little less." People who are too insecure to admit their shortcomings or even their mistakes make me feel that they lack good emotional intelligence. In all the reference checks we reviewed at Checkster, none were 100% positive, so be realistic. If not, you will be seen as either not daring enough to perform difficult things, or stuck in a myopic belief that you are perfect.

-- Yves Lermusi, CEO, Checkster

Clueless Candidates

As a recruiter, there have been countless times when job seekers have asked, "What position is this for?" Job seekers shouldn't just apply to any job. They need to spend their time effectively finding jobs that are a match for their skills and interest.

-- Nga Nguyen, Technology & Operations Group Recruiter at Wells Fargo

Short-Cut Introductions

With more people looking for work in today's economy, I've been seeing an increase in what I call "lazy introductions" come across my desk. It goes something like this: "I'm writing you to introduce myself. I live in New York and I'm looking for a job," and in the signature is a link to a LinkedIn profile or possibly a resume. A brief introduction should come with a background, highlights, and reason for connecting. A job search is a job in itself and requires some personalization and effort for each and every introduction.

-- Lindsay Olson, partner, Paradigm Staffing

Can't Connect the Dots?

My biggest pet peeve is receiving resumes or applications that describe background and work experience wholly unrelated to the position being applied for. Also there is either no supporting material or a generic cover letter that fails to connect the dots between what's on the application and what's in the posted job listing.

-- Noah Apodaca, lead recruiter for staff at the University of California, Irvine

Don't Go Generic

Job seekers hurt their own cause when they don't focus on specific ways they can help potential employers and instead simply mass distribute their resume. Individuals need to show hiring managers what they can do for the organization, not the reverse. Thoroughly research companies where you want to apply, customize your resume and cover letter for each opportunity, and in your communications with employers highlight your accomplishments and skills that demonstrate how you can positively impact the firm's bottom line.

-- DeLynn Senna, executive director of North American permanent placement services, Robert Half International

[kueytoc]

British businesses say no economic growth until 2010

AFP - 2 hours 50 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - - The British economy is stabilising but growth will not return until the beginning of 2010, and then it will still be slow, the country's leading business lobby group said Monday.

In its latest forecast, the CBI said gross domestic product (GDP) would likely flatten out during the second half of 2009.

"The UK economy is stabilising, with the worst of the quarterly falls in GDP behind us, but it will take until the beginning of next year before we see a return to growth," it said, adding that this growth will be "modest".

It predicted the economy would retract by 0.1 percent in the third quarter of this year, zero percent in the fourth, and grow by 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent in the first two quarters of 2010.

"The return to growth is likely to be a slow and gradual one; difficult credit conditions are still affecting business behaviour," said CBI director general Richard Lambert.

He noted some analysts had begun to speak of "green shoots" in the recession-hit economy, including the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) which said that GDP grew in April, but expressed caution.

"It will take some time before we can be sure these shoots have roots we can depend on for sustainable growth and, in the meantime, the government must do everything it can to help firms get access to credit," he said.

The CBI forecast that by the end of the recession, Britain's economy will have shrunk by a cumulative 4.8 percent, including 3.9 percent this year, after five successive quarters of retraction.

This is not as severe as the recession of the early 1980s, when GDP fell by a cumulative 5.9 percent, it said, and predicted growth of 0.7 percent in 2010.

The business group said Britain's labour market was proving to be "even more flexible than hoped", with private sector employees accepting wage freezes and short-time working, and said this would limit job losses this year.

Yet unemployment is still likely to continue rising to a peak of 3.03 million or 9.6 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

On public finances, the CBI estimated that net borrowing will reach 12.2 percent of GDP in 2009-2010 financial year and 12.6 percent the following year.

[albinosage]

In response to original article CEOs Without College Degrees #9. Bill Gates

6 Inspiring Rags to Riches Stories (That Are Bullshit)

Everyone likes a good "rags to riches" story. After all, if some dude can go from living in a cardboard box to being the CEO of a major corporation, we can do it too!

Unfortunately, it doesn't take a lot of digging into most of these stories to find out they've been, well, inflated a bit. And sometimes, they're complete bullshit.

#6. Bill Gates

The Rags to Riches Story:

Bill was a college dropout who finessed his way into the upper echelons of IBM to sell his operating system. Now he sleeps on a bed made of solid gold. According to the media, Bill Gates is the Rocky Balboa of the business world. They've compared him to other college dropouts; from Kanye West to some guy who runs the IT Department at Bradley College. Gates proved that if you're smart and willing to work hard, you can build an empire! And you don't even have to go to college! Yay!

Why it's a Load of Crap:

First of all, the college Gates left was Harvard, not the community college that most of the people who cite his story are thinking of leaving. He entered Harvard by scoring 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT--the man was, and still is, a genetically mutated genius. But one with the type of parents who could afford Harvard.

In fact, Gates's parents have a lot to do with his success, and even why he was able to drop out of school. At a very young age, Bill was staying up all night experimenting with computer programming. Keep in mind, this was the late 60s and early 70s, so having access to a computer was like having access to a helicopter. He gained incredible amounts of experience because his upper class parents were able to enroll him in an exclusive prep school that had a computer available. This was only possible because Bill's father was a prominent attorney, and his mother's side of the family wasn't exactly poor either.

Full article from cracked.com here