by Willy Franzen on September 4, 2008
Since you’re looking for an entry-level job and not in one, you may not be familiar with corporate policies on instant messaging. That’s ok, since they tend to be all over the place. At some companies you are required to be available by IM, since it’s the main form of communication used in the work place. At other companies instant messaging is strictly forbidden and even blocked by the IT department. We’re not trying to get you fired from the job that you don’t even have yet, but if you absolutely need 5 minutes of contact with the outside world while at work, Meebo offers an easy way to get around company filters so that you can log into your AIM, Yahoo, Gchat, MSN, icq, or Jabber accounts. In fact, IMing behind your boss’ back probably isn’t a good idea for any entry-level employee, so maybe you should just use Meebo at home for its simple web-based interface, ability to log in to multiple accounts, and ease of use. Then again, you could just get a job at Meebo so that you’ll be encouraged to have Meebo open in your web browser all day long at work.
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by Willy Franzen on September 3, 2008
We haven’t been able to find any hard statistics to back it up, but we’re pretty sure that a lot of people use their dog’s name for their passwords. Just look at Paris Hilton, whose cell phone supposedly got hacked because someone was able to find her dog’s name on her MySpace page. That story has since been discredited, but it can be a fable for the 21st century. Instead of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” we will tell our kids “The Girl Who Used Her Dog’s Name As Her Password.” So, if you’re trying to guess someone’s password (which you shouldn’t be), their dog’s name is a great first guess. If you don’t know their dog’s name, guess “Max.” Apparently 1% (which is a lot) of dogs in the U.S. share that name. Marc Pincus really blew it when he decided to name is social gaming network startup after his dog. Nobody would have ever guessed Zynga – he wasted a great password.
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by Willy Franzen on September 2, 2008
There has never been a better time in history to find great reading material for free. The Internet is full of excellent content on nearly any topic. The coolest innovation has been blogs, which have changed the top down approach that used to dominate media publishing. Now, it’s quite easy to have a conversation with the author whose work your reading, whether it be through comments, e-mail, IM, Twitter, or some other preferred form of communication. This has led to more engaged audiences and, sometimes, a much quicker development of ideas. The only way to continue this trend, though, is to make sure that web authors are well compensated for their hard work. That’s where Federated Media Publishing comes in. The New York Times has proved that charging for access to content doesn’t work and that running engaging advertising is a much smarter business move. Federated Media doesn’t work with The Times, but they are working with a wide range of conversational media properties to monetize visits from highly engaged online readers.
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by Willy Franzen on August 26, 2008
Are you a superhero whose alter ego happens to be looking for a job? Just for cover, of course, because superheroes don’t actually need to work. You’ve managed to keep it quiet through your 4 years in college, but now that you’re going off on your own, you need a good place to hide out when you’re not beating up villains and saving the world. Why not work at the last place that they’d ever expect you to work – Marvel Enterprises. It’s so obvious that it’s completely unobvious. In all seriousness if you’re not familiar with Marvel, they’re “one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies.” They made their name in comic books, but they’ve expanded into tv, movies, toys, video games, and more.
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by Willy Franzen on August 22, 2008
Does job searching ever make you feel like a total idiot? You go to a company’s website. You look for their Careers page. You can’t find it. You look all over the place. You search Google. Finally, you find it. It doesn’t do you much good, though, because their job listings are difficult to navigate, the links that you bookmark don’t work when you try to come back, and you can’t figure out how to apply online for the jobs. This is a surprisingly common experience, and it’s representative of the complete ignorance to user experience that many companies and applicant tracking system providers show. Adaptive Path is a company that is all about user experience. They help other companies provide more usable products and services through consulting, training, workshops, and thought leadership. They also have a simple Jobs page that leaves no room for confusion (although it is a bit hard to find because they call it “Work with Us.”
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by Willy Franzen on August 18, 2008
I thought VitaminWater was one of those niche beverages that would build a cult following but never attain mass popularity. I was wrong. A $4.1 billion purchase by Coca Cola later, and Glacéau, the company that produces VitaminWater (SmartWater, VitaminEnergy, and FruitWater too), now has endorsement deals with Carrie Underwood, 50 Cent, Brian Urlacher, Shaq, David Ortiz, Carl Edwards, Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb, Tracy McGrady, David Wright, Gilbert Arenas, Tony Parker, Chauncey Billups, and many more big names; in fact, as I’m typing this and watching Olympic basketball, a VitaminWater commercial with LeBron James just came on. I guess that you can add him to the list. I can’t think of another product with such a strong endorsement team, which makes me wonder if all of these celebs and athletes are seeking out Glacéau about endorsement deals because VitaminWater is a product that they drink and love. Or maybe it’s just because Glacéau is reportedly throwing around 8-figure endorsement deals. Either way, they know how to build a brand.
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by Willy Franzen on August 8, 2008
Last week we told you about entry-level jobs at Sugar Inc., the rapidly growing online media company targeted to women. Today, we’re going to discuss another major online content player in the same niche, Glam Media. In fact, Glam Media lays claim to being the the #1 online women’s property as their network of over 600 publishers reported 77 million unique visitors last month. That’s an insane amount of traffic, and that’s why there are rumors that Glam Media might have a valuation north of a billion dollars. While Sugar Inc. has built its brand by creating its own network of sites, Glam Media’s rapid growth can be attributed to their advertising agreements with a wide variety of bloggers and site owners in addition to cultivation of their own online properties. Targeting advertising to women online is big business, and no other network can compete with the reach that Glam Media currently has.
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by Willy Franzen on August 7, 2008
Imagine getting a job as a MythBuster, except instead of debunking urban legend, you’re investigating real life problems that plague businesses and sometimes hurt people. That’s what you could be doing at Exponent. Founded in 1967 by five Ph.D.-level researchers, Exponent was originally known as Failure Analysis Associates. They started out in the energy industry studying stress and fracture mechanics, but very quickly they were “investigating and analyzing accidents and failures of all kinds.” They eventually became The Failure Group, and were listed on the NASDAQ with the ticker FAIL. In 1998 they realized that they had outgrown their name, and changed again to Exponent, because it means “one who expounds or interprets.” We don’t usually get so deep into how a company chooses it’s name, but with the popularity of the FAIL meme (see also: FAIL Blog), we thought that you might be amused.
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by Willy Franzen on August 6, 2008
What do gamers, techies, musicians, and pregnant women all have in common? They are all likely to read magazines published by Future US. My favorite Future US magazine is Mac | Life, while you may favor Nintendo Power, PC Gamer, or Guitar World. I’m not sure too many of you are big fans of Pregnancy magazine, but there’s probably some of you out there too. Anyway, Future US is a media company that focuses on special-interest groups (not the kinds that politicians always say they don’t have relationships with) by publishing high quality magazines and websites.
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by Willy Franzen on August 3, 2008
Now that you’re job searching, the college application process is probably long forgotten. There are some similarities in the processes, but applying to college is much more structured and standardized than applying for a job. Structure and standardization doesn’t mean easy. Applying to college can be daunting for even the most well groomed students who have had access to best tutors, college counselors, and coaches that money can buy. Talented students who come from low-income families face the same challenges, but they often face them alone without the guidance of people who have been through the process before. The Quest Scholars Program offers two programs, QuestLeadership and QuestBridge, to help high-achievieng, underserved students get into in some of the country’s top colleges and universities.
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by Willy Franzen on July 31, 2008
Sugar certainly doesn’t have the cleanest reputation. It’s accused of making us fat, rotting our teeth, and causing hyperactivity. Sugar Inc. is a company that wants you to throw out those bad associations you have with sugar and just think back to when you were a kid and sugar was the essence of everything good. Sugar Inc. isn’t in the business of sweets – they run a network of websites, but their CEO is named Brian Sugar and his wife Lisa Sugar is the Editor in Chief, so they’re running with the sweet play on words. Sugar Inc. consists of 15 style/entertainment sites – PopSugar, BuzzSugar, FabSugar, BellaSugar, CasaSugar, YumSugar, FitSugar, Geek Sugar, GiggleSugar, DearSugar, PetSugar, LilSugar, SavvySugar, CitizenSugar, and TeamSugar. You can probably guess from the names what topic each of the sites covers, but you should probably check a few of the sugars out to get a better sense of Sugar Inc.’s content strategy, which is to be “the definitive online media company for trendsetting, passionate women ages 18-44.”
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by Willy Franzen on July 30, 2008
“Just gas ‘em up and go!” is not the slogan that you’d expect to hear from an aerospace company, but that’s exactly how easy Masten Space Systems would like space travel to be. They’re a space startup, and they’re working on “developing a line of Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL) launch vehicles,” although Masten is also know for offering to send your junk into space for a reasonable fee. Anyway, the whole idea behind what Masten Space Systems is doing is to create rocket vehicles that are reliable and reusable.
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by Willy Franzen on July 23, 2008
Considering that it’s July, you probably don’t have hockey on your mind right now, unless, of course, you’re sweltering in a room without air conditioning dreaming of the cool air inside the rink. The offseason is a time for National Hockey League Teams to address their needs, and that isn’t only about the personnel who wear ice skates. It looks to us like summer is a big hiring time with NHL teams, so while most people are focused on baseball and the Olympics, you should get back into that hockey mindset and try to find a job with an NHL Team.
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by Willy Franzen on July 22, 2008
Are you a fashionista? Do you just like being around beautiful people? Do you secretly wish that you could be a model despite the fact that you are way too awkward to walk down a runway without tripping? If you said yes to any of those questions, then you might want to look into Ford Models. They’re a tough company to research, since there’s a ton of online information about them, but very little that is job related. Getting a job at Ford Models doesn’t look like it’s an easy task, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.
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by Willy Franzen on July 18, 2008
Sometimes I give people a hard time for buying Fiji Water, but I shouldn’t, considering that I occasionally drink it myself. I drink a lot of water, and Fiji Water is some of the best, but it seems crazy to have water shipped half way around the world when we have some of the world’s best drinking water sitting in our toilets (and coming out of our faucets too). Still, there’s something to be said for enjoying the luxury of sipping water that comes from an artesian well at the edge of a primitive rain forest. If you’re going to drink bottled water, it might as well come from somewhere that you could only dream of vacationing.
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by Willy Franzen on July 17, 2008
Although L’Occitane has a tab for Men on their website, I must admit that I’ve never used their products. When it comes to fragrance, skin care, body & hands, bath & shower, hair care, etc. I’m more interested getting the job done than enjoying the experience. I know that there are plenty of men (and even more women) who have a very different philosophy when it comes to these types of products, so I imagine that working for L’Occitane would be a pretty cool thing for a lot of you.
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by Willy Franzen on July 16, 2008
Remember when sharing photos meant getting doubles or triples printed at the photo processor? In just 5 years, that practice has almost completely disappeared as we’ve seen services like Flickr and Facebook Photos eat up the market. Free services are great, but they’re much better for letting people view your pictures than they are for letting people actually download your pictures. There are a lot of people who are really serious about their photos, and these services often don’t cut it for them. SmugMug is a a startup that offers premium photo sharing services.
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by Willy Franzen on July 14, 2008
Sometimes we come across companies that aren’t currently offering entry-level jobs but are just too cool to not post about immediately. Aeros Corporation is one of those companies. The people at Aeros think that they’ve seen the future of air travel, and it’s chubby looking – at least compared to the jets we travel on today. Why is it chubby? Because blimp-like airships are the future. Aeros currently considers themselves “the world’s leading lighter-than-air, FAA-certified aircraft manufacturing company;” however, the future lies in the Aeroscraft (you need to click the link to check it out) which is not quite lighter than air. It is to be a “partially buoyant craft [with] a rigid hull structure” that can takeoff and land vertically, hover for extended periods of time, land practically anywhere in any weather, and will be extremely safe.
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by Willy Franzen on July 11, 2008
Imagine that instead of graduating in 2008, you graduated in 1978. You’re a paralegal, and you’re working on a major litigation for a Japanese auto manufacturer. You are responsible for organizing thousands of pages of documents by keyword so that the lawyers will be able to quickly find relevant depositions. Doesn’t sound like very much fun, does it? Not too long ago this was a reality, and although we’re now mostly blind to the wonders of search, Laserfiche offered a revolutionary product in 1987 when they offered the first DOS-based document imaging system. Now paralegals could just scan these documents, and software would automatically index every single word. This may have been bad for paralegals (software replacing humans), but it was good for anyone who might consider working for Laserfiche. Although it may seem that companies could easily manage their documents now that most things have gone digital, they can’t. That’s why Laserfiche is still kicking around, helping organization manage information.
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by Willy Franzen on July 7, 2008
If you haven’t realized it yet, we’re big fans of social media. Twitter, Youtube, Blogs, etc. The better a company’s recruiting social media profile, the more likely we are to take notice of their jobs and write about them. We first found out about ZURB through one of their employees’ tweets on Twitter. We were impressed to see that they’re also blogging, Youtubing, and StandoutJobbing. What’s Standout Jobs? It’s a company that’s bringing Corporate Careers sites into the Web 2.0 world. Here’s ZURB on Standout Jobs. Before you go diving into ZURB’s social media profiles, you’ll probably want to know what they’re all about. ZURB “helps companies design better web sites, services, and products online.” They do so by helping other companies with user interface (UI) design, product strategy, identity design, SEO and SEM, team building, visual design, and grassroots un-marketing.
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by Willy Franzen on July 5, 2008
We hope you had a safe 4th of July. Unfortunately, every year some people don’t. Fireworks are a lot of fun, but they can result in some really nasty burns and injuries. Since we encouraged you to blow stuff up yesterday, we thought we’d counter that by featuring a non-profit organization that helps children who endure severe burns. The Shriners Hospitals for Children do exactly that. Who are Shriners? They wear funny hats. They drive little cars in parades. They’re Freemasons. And most importantly, they help kids through their hospitals. That’s going to be our focus today, since new college grads probably aren’t too interested in being part of a fraternal organization that seems like it probably has an average age north of 60. Then again, you probably got all hot and bothered about your college’s greek organizations and secret societies.
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by Willy Franzen on June 27, 2008
I used to be that kid who would come home from college, see someone who was in my 3rd grade class, and want to say hi. “Hey, I’m Willy Franzen, you sat next to me in Mrs. Phoenix’s class while we learning about multiplication. Do you remember me?” Questions like that would typically be returned with a blank stare. At some point I realized that just because I could remember almost anything, I didn’t have to make a fool of myself like that. Now that I’ve started a business and I’m constantly thinking of new ideas to help you all find great entry-level jobs, my brain has turned into swiss cheese. I have an almost constant feeling that I’m forgetting something. I can still remember my 3rd grade classmates, but those new ideas of how to double One Day, One Job’s daily readership with 5 minutes of work seem to escape me quite quickly. I need a 2nd memory, and Evernote is a web based service/application that can provide me with one.
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by Willy Franzen on June 26, 2008
In case you couldn’t tell by our post about Apple’s entry-level jobs, we’re really big Steve Jobs fans. That’s why we’re going to look at another one of the Steve’s projects (one that you probably didn’t even know was his) for exciting career opportunities for new grads. Steve Jobs started Apple, but left in 1985 after some disagreement with the board of directors. That left him with a lot of money and a lot of free time, so he did what any creative genius would do and purchased Lucasfilms’ computer graphics division from George Lucas for $10 million in 1986. It eventually turned into Pixar, which has put out computer generated classics such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. Pixar was bought by Disney in 2006, which made Steve Jobs Disney’s largest individual shareholder. Now that you know that Steve is even more of a genius than you previously thought he was, let’s look at what kind of entry-level opportunities Pixar offers.
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by Willy Franzen on June 25, 2008
Now that it’s summer, it may be hard to think back to having the sniffles and feeling a cold coming on, but try your hardest. You probably heard from various friends and family members who swear by this remedy or that remedy. Chicken soup. Zinc. Naps. Vitamin C. Ahhh…. Vitamin C. Some people swear by it, and others think that they’re nuts. You can drink OJ, use Airborne, or take Emergen-C – my favorite. You can also swallow cheap Vitamin C pills, but that’s no fun. Airborne got slapped with a false advertising suit for making claims that their product has the “ability to cure or prevent the common cold.” They settled for $23.3 million. Emergen-C doesn’t make such aggressive claims, although they do say that their product will “give your immune system a fighting chance.” In reality, it’s not all that important. Emergen-C is absolutely delicious, especially when mixed with orange juice. If it even makes you think that you’re going to feel better after taking it, then it’s doing its job – at least we know that it’s not less effective than Airborne.
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by Willy Franzen on June 23, 2008
For some new grads it takes them a realization before they can get anything done in their job search. For some companies it takes Realization to help them get projects done and accomplish the goals that they set out to achieve. Realization provides their clients with execution management systems that help managers do 2 simple things:
1. Keep all work across all departments and across all levels of management tightly coordinated.
2. Exercise proactive control – stamp out small problems before they become big problems that require firefighting.
These may sound like things that companies should be able to take care of themselves, but clearly they can’t. Otherwise, Realization wouldn’t exist.
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by Willy Franzen on June 20, 2008
This is what we like to see! One of our readers contacted us earlier this week to tell us about a company that he is interning for this summer. He’s been a Fan of One Day, One Job for quite a while, so he knows the drill around here. He says he’s really enjoying working for Echo Global Logistics, and that we should do a post about their entry-level jobs. There’s nothing like a firsthand recommendation from a loyal reader, so lets figure out what Logistics actually means and how it might be an interesting industry to consider in your job search.
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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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by Willy Franzen on June 18, 2008
If you asked me during any week but this one, I’d tell you that I don’t drink soda. Every year during my weeklong fishing trip with my Dad to Michigan, I make an exception for Vernors ginger ale (which is called “pop” here). I love the taste, but the reason that I give up my health conscious ways is that it just wouldn’t be a trip to Michigan without Vernors. Occasionally during the other 51 weeks of the year I’m tempted to give in and try a new soda that I’ve never tried before (stuff like Coke isn’t tempting at all), and some of the main culprits are the sodas produced by Jones Soda Co. How can you not wonder what Turkey and Gravy or Berries and Cream sodas taste like?
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