One Day, One Job » construction

U.S. Green Building Council

Willy Franzen — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:07:08 +0000

I live across the street from what was formerly the world’s largest building—the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. It’s massive at 4,000,000 square feet, which is extremely impressive considering it was opened in 1930. What’s even more impressive is that, with some debate, the Merchandise Mart is now the world’s largest “green” building. It is LEED-EB Silver certified, and apparently the retrofitting that they did to achieve this certification has cut utility bills by 10%. Upgrading one of the largest buildings in the world to be more energy efficient and environment-friendly is a daunting task, luckily the LEED Certification process provided the owners of the Merchandise Mart with guidelines to work to. The organization behind LEED is the U.S. Green Building Council, which is based in Washington, DC. They are a non-profit that is “committed to a prosperous and sustainable future for our nation through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings.”

LEEDing You to a New Career

We’ve heard a lot about green jobs over the past few years, yet we haven’t seen the growth to back up the talk. Although the U.S. Green Building Council is a non-profit that probably won’t grow as quickly as a for-profit focused on the $60 billion green building industry, they do have some pretty cool job offerings. Here are some stats that explain why the USBGC is doing what they do:

Buildings in the United States are responsible for 39% of CO2 emissions, 40% of energy consumption, 13% water consumption and 15% of GDP per year, making green building a source of significant economic and environmental opportunity. Greater building efficiency can meet 85% of future U.S. demand for energy, and a national commitment to green building has the potential to generate 2.5 million American jobs.

If you like where the USGBC is going, then you should check out their Jobs page. They have quite a few positions posted, and a number of them appear suitable for new grads. These include Associate – Chapter Leadership Development, Computer Systems Analyst, Education Review Associate, Executive Administrative Assistant, and LEED Technical Customer Service Associate. To apply for any of these positions you can send your “résumé and letter of interest with salary requirements and title of position applying for to jobs@usgbc.org.”

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you know about the U.S. Green Building Council?

Luck Stone

Willy Franzen — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:21:57 +0000

Although people mostly associate St. Patrick’s Day with drinking, I like to think of it in terms of searching for something good. Just think – there’s the four leaf clover, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and… ok that’s it. Well, you can also use St. Patrick’s Day as motivation for your job search. That’s why we’re looking at Richmond, VA based Luck Stone today. Not only are they a company that fits in with our St. Patrick’s Day theme, but they’re also a company that is all about searching for something good. The only thing that’s different about them is that they consider the stuff that you dig through to be the “pot of gold.” Yes, that’s right. It’s the stone that they’re after.

Bring Luck to Your Job Search

Lucky Stone “is the largest, family owned and operated aggregates company in the U.S. and is the 12th largest producer of crushed stone in the nation.” That means that they dig stuff up, and they sell it. It’s 21st century alchemy with an Irish flair! The good news for you is that you can stop eating your Lucky Charms in your underwear at noon every day and turn stone into a job because Luck Stone has a strong college recruiting program. Their job listings don’t show any jobs for new grads, but their College Recruiting page invites interested entry level candidates to contact their Talent Acquisition Consultants. It’s easier than finding a four-leaf closer, so get on it!

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

How are you celebrating St. Patrick’s Day?

Arena Stage

Willy Franzen — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:25:56 +0000

Continuing with our patriotic weekend, we’re going to take a look at Arena Stage, a non-profit theater company that produces “huge plays of all that is passionate, exuberant, profound, deep and dangerous in the American spirit.” They put out all types of productions “from vast epics to charged dramas to robust musicals.” Located in Washington, DC, Arena Stage has been around 6 decades and was one of the first non-profit theater companies. They reach an annual audience of over 200,000 people (we reach more here!) and strive “to instill in the public a life-long love of and participation in the theater arts through [their] education programs.”

Jobs Off Stage

Arena Stage has a number of job opportunities for the drama enthusiasts in the crowd. The most interesting opportunity is Audience Development Manager, which unfortunately isn’t described as entry-level. This job is all about “identifying and cultivating relationships with corporations and organizations to augment Arena’s group sales efforts.” They say that they want 3 years of prior experience, but if you did something like this in a college organization, it might be worth applying. Arena Stage also has job openings for Carpenters (set design), Inbound Sales Associates, and Telemarketing Sales Associates. If you want to get involved with a non-profit theater company, these are some great opportunities to get your foot in the door. We wonder if Arena Stage might have some opportunities specifically tailored to new grads, since they do appear to have a strong internship program. Keep an eye on their Jobs page, or send them an e-mail and see if they have anything else available.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

We hope you had a great July 4th weekend. We sure did.

ReliableRemodeler.com

Willy Franzen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:09:24 +0000

I’ve written before about how run down the house that I lived in during college was. It was in constant need of maintenance, which mostly consisted of quick fixes that would break within a week. The giant ball of mold that started growing out of the ceiling received a little more attention, but not much. The guys who did maintenance on our house were always nice (even if the landlord was a total jerk), but it made me a bit uneasy knowing that they had a key to my place – if you know what I mean. Since my roommates and I weren’t paying for the “maintenance,” we didn’t have any say in who was working in our house. If we did, we would have used a service like ReliableRemodeler.com, which connects quality contractors with homeowners.

Reliably Yours

ReliableRemodeler.com has “matched remodeling contractors to over 700,000 home improvement projects.” They’re located in Beaverton, Oregon and have a staff of over 70 people. Those 70 people must be doing a pretty good job since ReliableRemodeler.com was named by Inc. Magazine as the country’s 187th fastest growing private company with 1,109.7% 3-year growth to $6.8 million in revenue. ReliableRemodeler.com is in the construction business, and although they don’t actually do the construction, they need to know the business. Matching a contractor with a homeowner can be tough, as many factors go into the decision of whom to hire (here’s how it works). The company makes its money by charging contractors a monthly fee to be included on their site after going through a screening process. ReliableRemodeler.com also needs to know the Internet, because most of their business is done online. This makes for an interesting combination that should provide some exciting entry-level opportunities.

How Reliable Are You?

ReliableRemodler.com’s Jobs page is a bit sparse, and it fails to identify which of their jobs are geared towards new college grads. 3 positions are listed, all of which seem like real possibilities for entry-level candidates. Here they are with the descriptions from the site.

Affiliate Manager – Seeking an online marketing professional to recruit new partners and manage the day-to-day activities of our expanding affiliate program. In addition to recruiting and managing partners, this individual will participate in program development, and training.

Project Advisors – are responsible for answering incoming calls regarding remodeling jobs, making homeowner follow-up calls, performing windows-based data entry, and handling various customer service inquiries.

Area Managers – are the liaison between ReliableRemodeler.com and the member contractors. This position acts as the primary contact for all member contractors; responsibilities include approving new member contractors, matching contractors with remodeling jobs, and managing accounts receivables. Most importantly Area Managers are responsible for meeting sales goals on a weekly/monthly basis.

That’s all the information that ReliableRemodeler.com offers about careers. They invite interested applicants to send a cover letter and resume to rrjobs@reliableremodeler.com. We’d love to see them do a better job with their online recruiting presence. They look like a fantastic place for a young person to work, but it’s hard to find enough information to make you want to take the effort to apply.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Did your college housing have the same maintenance issues that mine did?

Pella

Willy Franzen — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:22:40 +0000

It’s hard for me to write this post, because I have a strong allegiance to Marvin, which is one of Pella’s biggest competitors. It started in 7th grade when I was working at my Dad’s architecture firm. The entire office was invited to a lobster lunch put on by some Marvin sales reps. My partner in crime (a friend of mine who was old enough to have the coveted title of intern) and I jumped at the chance to take a break from shooting rubber bands at each other and join the architects for a free lunch. We had to endure a long sales pitch about windows, like that South Park episode where the parents endure a time share sales pitch in return for a free skiing weekend, but when it was finally over, we chowed down. My then overweight 7th grade self put away a couple of lobsters and almost put one in my pocket for the ride home. It was by far the best day during my Summer job, but I’m willing to forget a couple lobsters and start pushing Pella, because they’ve truly impressed me with their college recruiting and entry-level hiring program.

Windows of Opportunity

Pella makes high end windows and doors. You can fluff it up by talking about how they provide great views in your home or office, but when it’s all said and done, they do something pretty simple, and they do it really well. So well, in fact, that they won the 2007 J.D. Power and Associates award for “Highest in Customer Satisfaction among Window and Door Manufacturers.” Pella also has a reputation as one of the most energy efficient window and door manufacturers. It’s logical that windows and doors are two of the places that your house or office is most likely to leak heat (in or out), so it’s great that Pella is so invested in energy efficiency. They even “earned the U.S. Department of Energy’s ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award for windows in 2007 for its leadership in manufacturing energy-efficient windows and educating consumers about them.” We keep saying it – a company that takes pride in its products takes pride in its people, and that means that Pella looks like a great place to start a career.

The Door to Your Future

Pella appears to have an extremely strong entry-level hiring and college recruiting program. Their College Relations page has links to all the pages you’ll need to research jobs at Pella. They include a page detailing entry-level positions generally as well as a page that lists all of the possible career paths at Pella starting at the entry-level for each. Although Pella does a significant amount of campus recruiting, they still seem to be extremely friendly to new college grads who want to apply online. We wished they’d link their fabulous College Relations section of their website to specific entry-level job openings, but unfortunately they direct all attention to their somewhat disappointing job search function. There’s no way to find just entry-level jobs, so you have to scan the postings for promising job titles (at least there are only 20 listings, so it’s not hard).

Our search turned up job titles like Department Manager, Human Resources Representative, and National Account Retail Sales Representative – all of which appear to be entry-level. There is also a listing for an Engineering Career Development program for new grads. Pella has locations across the country, but they are headquartered in Pella, Iowa. All of the job descriptions are well detailed, so start looking through Pella’s entry-level opportunities and see if you find anything anything that is better than free lobster.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have the inside scoop on working at Pella? Leave a comment and let us know.

Navigant Consulting

Willy Franzen — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:00:23 +0000

This time of year, many of the entry-level consulting jobs are already filled. It’s amazing and a little disappointing if you’re still in the job market, but a good portion of consulting firms fill all of their entry-level job openings six to twelve months in advance of when the new hires will start working. That leaves a lot of soon to be college graduates who want to get into consulting with limited choices. Whether you were turned down when you applied in the fall, never got around to applying, or just realized that you’re interested in consulting, the apparent dearth of consulting jobs probably has you considering looking at other fields in lieu of consulting. Don’t give up so fast! There are still a lot of great consulting jobs out there, you just have to look beyond the sexy names. As is typical in the industry, Navigant Consulting does most of their hiring through campus recruiting in the Fall, but they still have some entry-level job openings.

Although consulting may sound like a very specific industry, it’s actually a pretty vague term that describes any company that helps guide other companies. Every consultancy seems to have certain specialties, but the main idea is that you hire a consulting firm because they have expertise in something that your company doesn’t. Navigant Consulting specializes in litigation, financial, healthcare, energy and operational consulting services for government agencies, legal counsel and large companies that are facing the challenges of uncertainty, risk, distress and significant change. Navigant Consulting is especially focused on industries that are “undergoing substantial regulatory or structural change.” So, that means that when the government changes the rules that businesses must abide by, Navigant is there to straighten things out. Since we seem to be in a world where the government increasingly interferes with and regulate businesses, this is an area of consulting that should see significant growth. Just look at the results from Navigant Consulting’s most recent quarter.

So why should you apply for a job at Navigant Consulting besides the fact that you can’t find any other consulting jobs? Well, they were ranked on BusinessWeek’s list of “Best Places to Launch a Career” for the past two years (#53 in 2006 and #94 in 2007) and according to their recruiting profile from the BusinessWeek feature (this is really worth a look) they hire for approximately 100 entry-level positions every year. Since they’re relatively small company, entry-level employees make up a significant portion of their workforce. That should mean that there’s a youthful culture, which fits with what we’ve heard – that Navigant is more laid back than other consulting firms. We also like that they have a page about the career path for Navigant employees, since it makes it very clear what the opportunities for advancement are.

We like Navigant’s Careers Site since it has a lot of valuable content that is targeted to college students who are looking for their first job. The navigation is on the right hand side and is a little confusing, but the amount of information on their Careers Site more than makes up for it. We also like that it’s easy to find their entry-level positions, you just go here and click search. The job descriptions aren’t all that exciting, but they tell you everything that you need to know including minimum GPA, which varies by position. Current openings include: Energy Consultant in Burlington, MA, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC (yes, 1 job, 3 locations); Construction Consultant in San Francisco, CA; Healthcare Revenue Consultant in Washington, DC; and Disputes and Investigations Consultant in New York City, NY or San Francisco, CA (that’s two different positions).

That was pretty in-depth. We hope it wasn’t too much information, but there’s a lot to know about Navigant Consulting. Despite all we’ve covered, there’s a lot more to find out, so get researching!

Note: On April 25th we revisited entry-level jobs at Navigant Consulting. Since our original post, they’ve completely redesigned their site, so some things that we said may no longer be accurate. We took a brief look and fixed all of the broken links, and we have to say that site looks greatly improved.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

If you’re looking for an internship in consulting instead, take a look at our post on One Day, One Internship about internships at Navigant Consulting.