by Willy Franzen on February 12, 2009

It’s not big surprise that jobs are constantly in the news these days. That’s part of the reason Jason Seiden and I launched our course. People need help finding and landing jobs. People in the news have picked up on the need, and now it’s newsworthy if a company is hiring. Take this article from mlive.com’s Michigan Business Innovation Blog – it’s about who’s hiring in Ann Arbor. That’s obviously of interest to me, since so many of you are at both University of Michigan and Michigan State (as well as other great Michigan schools). There were some pretty interesting names on that list, and one that stood out to me was Compendia Bioscience. They’re Biotech meets Software, and they’re also part of the future of Michigan.
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all employers,
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biology,
biotechnology,
Michigan,
project management,
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by Willy Franzen on February 6, 2009

My Dad is an architect, and he often likes to send me suggestions on which companies I should feature next. Sometimes he finds some pretty cool stuff, and a month or so ago he sent me a link to the Winter 2009 online issue of HQ Magazine, which features an article called “Top 20 Places to Work.” Usually such lists focus on a range of reasons for a place’s being great to work at, but HQ is an architectural publication, so this list is all about office space (not the movie). The section of the article on Epic Systems says: “Epic’s campus fits into idyllic pastures and farmland, providing serene, relaxing views from within. Outside are hiking trails, playing fields, a treehouse. Meeting rooms have working fireplaces to further the sense of calmness.” It sounds amazing. Epic systems is a Wisconsin based, privately held, employee owned healthcare software provider.
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biology,
biotechnology,
botany,
consulting,
health care,
human resources,
information technology,
project management,
software development,
Wisconsin,
writing
by Willy Franzen on June 19, 2008

You’re sitting in class listening to your professor go on and on about how he’s so much smarter than the CEO of some company and how if he was in charge he’d do this and that, when you say to the kid sitting next to you, “If he’s so smart, why is he standing here lecturing instead of making bank in an executive level job at some company?” That’s a really good question. College professors are supposed to be the best minds in their respective fields, but they often eschew a big pay day for the safety of academia – hey, the hours are great. The folks at Keystone Strategy consider this a waste of resources, so they’ve put some of the top professors from Harvard Business School to work as expert advisors for their consulting firm.
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aerospace,
analyst,
biotechnology,
California,
consulting,
Massachusetts,
Utah
by Willy Franzen on April 19, 2008

When I was in college, the only studying of proteins that I did was in a class called Intro to Meat Science. Don’t believe me? Here’s the course listing. Learning how meat proteins react to salt or heat is extremely useful (and delicious) but not at all relevant to the non-profit organization that we’re featuring today (or if it is, I’ll be shocked). Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about biomedical research or cell biophysics, so all I can do is tell you a little bit about the New York Structural Biology Center and the entry-level jobs that they’re offering for new grads.
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chemistry,
New York,
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by Willy Franzen on February 27, 2008

Surgery takes practice. You can’t jump elbows deep into someone’s chest cavity and reroute traffic without having perfected the motor skills, knowledge, and composure required to do so. The problem is that practicing surgery is tricky. You need to do it on a living, breathing thing for it to be realistic. There aren’t too many people who are jumping at the opportunity to be cut up by aspiring surgeons, so that leaves only one viable option. Sadly, animals are used as proxies for human patients. Anyone would agree that this is an undesirable outcome, but there has been no other way to teach life saving procedures and develop new surgical techniques. The good news is that Sarasota, FL based Animal Replacement Technologies has created a brilliant solution.
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engineering,
Florida,
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by Willy Franzen on December 26, 2007
Most of our readers are high achievers, right? A lot has gone into getting you to this point. Hard work. Great parenting. Good genes. You can argue about it like Mortimer and Randolph Duke in Trading Places, but you’ll never know which of these (or other) factors is truly driving your personal successes – or will you? Today’s company hasn’t figured out the answer to that question yet, but they’re well on their way.
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