Some people love grocery shopping, some people hate it, and most people don’t have time for it. If your college campus was anywhere near a Wegmans, then you probably made time for the supermarket; however, once you start working a full-time, entry-level job in a city with no Wegmans, grocery shopping will likely become an imposition. That’s where FreshDirect steps in. They deliver fresh, affordable food to your doorstep quickly.

How Do They Do It?

Ordering groceries online isn’t a new idea, but doing it right is. There have been quite a few grocery companies that have offered online ordering, but most have missed the mark in one way or another. FreshDirect has mastered “just in time” production to get their customers the freshest food and the best prices. Grocery stores are expensive to run and middlemen hike up prices. FreshDirect avoids both of these costs by controlling the entire distribution process. They have a huge refrigerated facility, where they store and prepare food that is “made to order.” FreshDirect only operates in the New York City area right now, but they’re rapidly expanding.

Fresh Jobs

FreshDirect’s Jobs page shows quite a few openings, many of which appear to be entry-level. It’s hard to tell, since FreshDirect chooses not to fill in the experience box on many of the postings. The only job that is explicitly described as geared towards new college grads is as a FreshDirect Experience Analyst; however, these jobs also require little or no previous work experience: Merchandising Analyst, Purchasing Assistant, Purchasing Assistant, Produce, Operations Analyst – Plant Operations, Analyst, Quality Assurance, Logistics Analyst, and Junior HR Generalist, Plant Operations. The descriptions for each listing are quite detailed, so you should be able to tell which jobs will best fit your experience and education. All of FreshDirect’s jobs are located in Long Island City, NY, which is actually a neighborhood in the borough of Queens, not its own city. There’s not much more information available about what it’s like working for FreshDirect, but there is a photo tour of their plant.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• FreshDirect.com
• Jobs at FreshDirect
• About FreshDirect
• Photos of FreshDirect’s Plant
• FreshDirect’s FAQ
• FreshDirect in the Press

Do you get your groceries delivered? By FreshDirect? How do you like it?

Whether you hit the multiplex with your friends, had them over to watch a rental, or sat alone and watched in your room as you languished through your awkward stage (everyone has one), Friday nights in Middle School always seemed to revolve around movies. To get a rental, you’d have to beg your Mom to take you to Blockbuster. Then you’d have to lobby her on why you were mature enough to rent an R-rated movie, despite the fact that you just made it to legal age for a PG-13. Those days are long gone, and not just because you’re an adult now. Now, you either wait a couple days for the mailman to deliver your movie or you sit for 10 minutes while you download it. Netflix has ruined those cherished moments of arguing with your mother about movie rentals and late fees, but I think we can all agree to forgive them.

If your love of movies has persisted beyond your Middle School years, Netflix is the perfect place to begin your career. Not only do they look like a fun place to work, but they also have done a fantastic job of marketing their employment brand online. In fact, their list of 8 great reasons to work for Netflix made it to the top page of reddit. If you don’t know what reddit is, Wikipedia says it’s “a social news website where users can post links to content on the web. Other users may then vote the posted links up or down, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the Reddit home page.” Reddit users aren’t the easiest crowd to please, so it’s actually quite an impressive feat for a corporate careers page to get so much attention from them.

We sifted through Netflix’s 4 pages of job openings to find you the positions that we think are most suitable for a new college grad. There were 4 jobs that really stood out: Indie Films Content Buyer (this sounds so cool!), Replications Manager, Operations Coordinator, Site Content Coordinator – Electronic Delivery – all of these positions are located in Beverly Hills, CA. There is a lot of depth in Netflix’s job descriptions, but they could stand to be written in a livelier style. Netflix brags about being a “flat” organization in which people at all levels of the organization work on both high and low level tasks. That could be good or bad depending on your point of view. Typically a flat organization means opportunities to advance quickly for someone who is coming in at the entry-level.

Netflix also has a General Application for people who don’t see a position that suits their interests. Give that a try if you don’t see anything you like in their job listings. Or you could just sit at home and try to win $1 million from Netflix by building them a better movie recommendation algorithm.

Note: On April 24th we revisited entry-level jobs at Netflix.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• The Netflix Home Page
• Netflix Careers
• Job Openings at Netflix
• About Netflix
• A Blog of a Netflix UI Engineer
• A Netflix Fan Blog

Do you think Netflix’s business model can continue? Or will movie rental by download completely take over in the next few years?