Mention James Bond and what springs to mind? Guns, gadgets, heroics, fast women, fast cars... and the actor Daniel Craig as 007 on the beach in his teeny weenies.

But meeting expectations isn’t always that easy. The UK Secret Intelligence Service is having problems hiring dull real-world spies, as opposed to the “thrill-seekers and fantasists” who are queueing up to join, says its head of recruitment, Time (Dec 10) reports.

Getting the millennial generation into business school is giving academics a headache. Super-keen and super-connected, 24 to 26-year-olds want to land a dream job straight after university – and a podcast to tell them how to do it. Business schools are having to change tack to attract such demanding students, The Wall Street Journal (Dec 4) says. Shut-up-and-listen lecturing could be replaced by a talk show-style format that encourages audience participation.

One minute you’re cruising along enjoying your first term at business school, then reality bites, says a student on Businessweek.com. Panic, fatigue and the never-ending list of commitments soon begin to take their toll and it’s vital that students adjust their expectations to keep going. For example, by ditching the right to have a life outside school. “The MBA is designed to consume every moment and then some,” Sarah Baranowski says.

Studying is one good way to determine a career path that is right for you – alternatively, you could simply rely on your name and your subconscious to pick one for you. Nominative determinism is the tendency for people to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their surname, New Scientist (Dec 1) says. A paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology concludes that people are “disproportionately likely [to] choose careers whose labels resemble their names”. Tell that to Nicholas Burns-Cox, a consultant urolo-gist at Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton, a reader retorts.

Forget the seductive charms of super-spy 007, IT software is being developed to help companies to spot industrial spies, data thieves and even potential whistle-blowers. It identifies the words and topics that appear in employees’ e-mails, New Scientist reports. Not discussing social activities and/or mentioning sensitive material in external e-mails could mark you out as a baddy.

What else happened

Casual workplace? Be careful that it doesn’t trip up your career prospects, People Management (Nov 29) reports. Some 39 per cent of staff in the US have kissed a colleague, 45 per cent have fallen asleep at work and 22 per cent have stolen from their employer. More relaxed working environments are blamed for lulling workers into a false sense of informality.

Do you rate yourself as a detached, cool-headed, decision-maker? You might want to inject some passion into your thought processes, Harvard Business Review (Dec) advises. Investors playing a pretend stock market made better decisions when experiencing intense emotions, providing they didn’t allow their feelings to affect their ability to reason.

Being hated by your team might not sound the ideal scenario for a manager, but it can get people to work together, says management-issues.com. A survey found that teams perform better when they all agree, even if the source is a bad boss. “They can bond over it and laugh about it,” says Professor Michael S. Cole, who carried out the study.

Catch up with the latest management thinking from corporate leaders such as BT’s Andy Green and Tim Rollinson of the Forestry Commission at a lecture and networking event on January 31, 2008. Find out more about the event, run by The Times and the Chartered Management Institute, at managers.org.uk/event08

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