As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEo turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders.
The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Krn Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey, "I can't think of a single search I've done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first."
Those who jumped without a job haven't always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commoditied exchange. Robert Willumstad left CItigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institurion three years later.
Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad on. "The traditional rule was it's safer to stay where you are, bu that's been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who've been hurt the worst are those who've stayed too long"
26. When McGee announced his departure, his manner can best be described as being( )
A. Arrogant B. frank C. self-centered D. impulsive
27. According to Paragraph 2, senior executives quitting may be spurred by ( )
A. their expectation of better financial status
B. their need to reflect on their private life
C. their strained relations with the boards
D. their pursuit of new career goals
28. The word "poached" (Line3, Paragraph 4) most probably means ( )
A. approved of B. attended to C.hunted for D. guarded against
29. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ( )
A. top performers used to cling to their posts
B. loyalty of top performers is getting out-dated
C. top performers care more about reputations
D. it's safer to stick to the traditional rules.
30. Which of the following is the best title for the text?
A. CEOs: where to GO?
B. CEOs: All the Way Up?
C. Top managers Jump without a Net
D. The Only way out for Top Performers
Text 3
The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional "paid " media-such as television commercials and print advertisements-still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create "owned" media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Webe site. The way consumenrs now approatch the board range of factors beyond conventional paid media.
Paind and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initiators for users' responses. But in some cases, one marketer's owned media become another marketer's paid media-for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We difine such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong tha other organization palce their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. Thies trend, which we believe is still in its infance, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further John& JOhnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies' marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.
The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign become hostage to consumers,other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesse that originally created them.
If that happends, passinate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company's response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly sites such as Twitter and the social-news sit Digg.
31. Consumers may creat "earned" media when they are ( )
A. obscssed with online shopping at certain Web sites
B. inspired by product-promoting e-mails sent to them
C. eager to help their friends promote quality products
D. enthusiastic about recommending their favorite products
32. According to Paragraph 2, sold media feature ( )
A. a safe business environment
B. random competition
C. Strong user traffic
D. flexibility in organization
33. The author indicates in Paragraph 3 that earned media ( )
A. invite constant conflicts with passinate consumers
B. can be used to produce negative effects in marketing
C. may be responsible for fiercer competition
D. deserve all the getative comments about them
34. Toyota Motor's experience is cited as an example of ( )
A. responding effectively to hijacked media
B. persuading customers into boycotting products
C. cooperating with supportive consumers
D. taking advantage of hijacked media
35. Which of the following is the text mainly about?
A. Alternatives to conventional paid media
B. Conflict between hijacked and earned media
C. Dominance of hijacked media
D. Popularity of owned media
Text 4
It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, “I love My Children, I Hate My Life,” is arousing much chatter-nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness, instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that “the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.”
The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive-and newly single-mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual “Jennifer Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.
In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, o sot any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn’t seem quite fair, then , to compare the regrets of parent to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.