by Willy Franzen on September 16, 2008
Last week we featured FitBit, a company that was recently announced at the TechCrunch50. This week we’re looking at another startup that was announced at the conference. It’s called GoodGuide, and it’s aiming to be “the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental and social impacts of products and companies.” GoodGuide is pretty easy to use – you can input a product name to see all of the details of the product’s world impact, or you can look at a class of products to find the “goodest.” For instance you can look up Fantastik All Purpose Cleaner with Bleach specifically or you can just look at the ranking for household cleaners. It’s a great concept. They’re also apparently going to offer an iPhone application so that you can look up products as you shop for them in the grocery store; although, GoodGuide would probably prefer that you buy them online through their affiliate links.
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by Willy Franzen on September 12, 2008
Have you ever tried using a pedometer? It’s a neat idea, but it’s not very useful to know how many steps you’ve taken. To get a sense of how many calories you’ve burned, you have to do some calculations, and it’s pretty likely that whatever you calculate will be far from accurate. As technology continues to improve, we’re going to see more and more devices that provide data about our every day lives. The pedometer was the start, but things are going to get better and better. Fitbit is an impressive next step (pun intended!). We found out about them from Lifehacker’s list of Top 10 Up and Coming Products, and we’re pretty impressed. Fitbit automatically tracks your fitness and your sleep and then uploads the data to your computer wirelessly. They’re a startup that just launched at the TechCrunch50 Conference this week, and now that they’re out of stealth mode they’re looking for new people to join their team.
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fitness,
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by Willy Franzen on September 9, 2008
Consulting jobs are hot for new college grads, even though a lot of people ask, “What could a new grad possibly consult on?” The truth is that consulting firms love fresh talent. They pick the best and the brightest and put them to work on teams with experienced pros to solve problems that other companies are struggling with. If you’re thinking about a job in consulting, you might as well aim for the one of the best. Kurt Salmon Associates is a consulting firm that focuses on Consumer Products and Retail (Supply Chain and Growth and Profitability) and Health Care consulting. They’ve been named a Top 10 Best Firm to Work For by Consulting Magazine for six years in a row, so you know that they’ll take good care of you – if you can land a job with them.
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New Jersey,
New York,
Pennsylvania,
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United Kingdom
by Willy Franzen on August 28, 2008
Back before cell phones had color screens and GPS, digital service just meant that you were able to send and receive text messages. I was convinced that it was important to have a dual band phone – analog and digital. I was often off fishing in rural areas where digital cell service was nonexistent, so I figured that it was better to have crappy service than no service. We’ve certainly moved into the digital age of cell phones, but there are still all types of different cellular networks that require different frequencies and hardware to operate on. Vanu is a Cambridge, MA based company that is building a software based radio access network. What does that mean? Instead of requiring cellular providers to invest in new hardware for every network that they operate on, they can use a single reusable hardware platform to operate on multiple networks. Although the science behind what Vanu does goes right over our heads, we think that it sounds pretty slick. We featured Vanu’s internships yesterday on One Day, One Internship, and we realized that they also have some exciting entry-level job opportunities, so we’re talking about them today.
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by Willy Franzen on August 20, 2008
Software used to be all about personal computers. You bought a computer, then you bought software, and finally you loaded the software onto the computer. Whether you wanted to play a game, make a spreadsheet, or edit images, the process was essentially the same. We’re rapidly moving towards a future where much of the software that we use resides on someone else’s computer – a server – and we access it over the Internet. One obvious example of this change is Google Apps. Another less obvious example is Facebook. You may say, “But it’s just a website!” Yes, it’s a website that does a lot of things – it’s software. More and more developers are spending more and more time building applications that run “in the cloud.” The biggest challenge for these developers is ensuring that their applications scale – in other words, that they work just as well with 100,000 users as they do with 100 users. Building the software and hardware infrastructure needed to scale efficiently is a mountainous task, that’s why 10gen is building a software based solution that runs on most current hosting hardware. They envision a future in which a single developer can build a software product that serves millions of users without having to worry about scaling.
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engineering,
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New York,
quality assurance,
software development,
writing
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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account management,
advertising,
California,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
marketing,
product management,
sales,
software development
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 1, 2008
Bowling, billiards, and boating – sounds more like plans for retirement than what you’ll be doing after you graduate, right? Not if you end up working for Brunswick. They’re a company that has been in a lot of businesses since John Brunswick started the Cincinnati Carriage Making Company in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1854. They’ve added and dropped many product lines, even over the last 10 or 15 years, but recently they’ve settled on marine engines, pleasure boats, fitness equipment, bowling, and billiards. These groups of products aren’t necessarily related, but they’ve proved to be the most profitable for Brunswick over the years.
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Wisconsin
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 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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China,
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by Willy Franzen on July 3, 2008
Red wagon. Is any more explanation necessary? You’re probably already picturing Dennis the Menace pulling his Radio Flyer wagon behind his little red bike. Or maybe you’re thinking about your village’s 4th of July parade where all the kids decorate their bikes and pull wagons behind them with their younger siblings in them (ok maybe that’s just my memory). Nearly everyone has a childhood memory associated with Radio Flyer (hopefully it’s not because you have a scar from a spill you took out of a Radio Flyer wagon). What’s your Radio Flyer memory? If for some reason wagon rides and Radio Flyer weren’t part of your childhood, you can get up to speed with this video.
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Illinois,
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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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entry-level jobs,
operations,
project management,
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by Willy Franzen on June 21, 2008
Half of the news lately has been about high gas prices. It gets tiring, since the stories never bring a new angle. Oddly enough, gas has been relatively price inelastic until recently. Prices would go up, and people would keep on driving like they did with lower gas prices. We’ve finally hit a point where people are actually cutting back on their driving because gas is so expensive. Although we haven’t done any research to back this up, we’d bet that home energy use is even less price elastic that gasoline use. Most people’s Dad’s yell at them for leaving a light on, but they don’t take serious measures to limit their home energy consumption – it takes too much effort. The Association for Energy Affordability is a New York City based non-profit that promotes energy affordability through conservation in the home.
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energy,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
green,
New York,
non-profit
by Willy Franzen on May 26, 2008
Happy Memorial Day! First and foremost, this is a day to remember those who have given their lives to protect our freedom. Help us send a big thank you out to all of those who have ever served in the armed forces, while we remember those who are no longer with us. We considered writing about careers in the military today, but it seemed a bit out of our realm. If that’s something that interests you, then you should take a look at Today’s Military to get a better sense of the options that are out there. Instead, we’re going to stick with a Memorial Day tradition that we’re much better acquainted with – the barbecue. As the official beginning of summer, Memorial Day is the perfect time to fire up your Weber-Stephen grill.
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food,
holiday,
Illinois
by Willy Franzen on May 22, 2008
It’s safe to say that the environment is becoming a big political issue again. If the trend continues, a likely result will be increased government regulation. It’s important that our shared resources are protected, but government regulation often ends up creating intricacies and loopholes that increase the cost of doing business without accomplishing the desired beneficial outcome. It’s easy to say that companies should just suck it up and learn to stop putting the environment at risk, but that point of view fails to look at the whole picture. There are very few people in the world whose livelihoods don’t have an adverse impact on the environment, which means that more restriction can significantly decrease some people’s abilities to put food on the table (it can also significantly decrease a corporation’s ability to put billion dollar profits on the table). Businesses often have to jump through hoops to gain both government and community approval of environmentally sensitive projects, but they rarely retain staff with such specialties. Aspen Environmental Group is a company that provides the required expertise.
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by Willy Franzen on May 21, 2008
Have you ever seen those little LED flashlights? The ones that have a single tiny bulb but are many times brighter than regular old flashlights. They’re quite the modern miracle, but they’re nothing compared to the flashlights Intelligent Optical Systems is producing. To call them flashlights is actually an understatement, they’re really called LED Incapacitation Systems. They are the next generation in non-lethal weaponry, and they’re getting a lot of attention now that there’s a backlash against tasers.
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by Willy Franzen on May 7, 2008
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.
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Iowa,
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Ohio,
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Washington DC
by Willy Franzen on May 1, 2008
My house in college was not energy efficient, unless you consider the heating system’s not working half the time a feature of design. The doors and windows all leaked cold air in the winter, and it was impossible to cool the house down below about 95 degrees in the summer. We even tried covering the windows in the winter for added insulation, but it didn’t help much. Our monthly heating bills were outrageous despite the fact that my roommates were cheap and insisted on turning the thermostat down below the point at which our landlord warned us that the pipes would freeze. Energy efficiency was clearly not a priority for whoever built our house, but if it had been they could have hired someone like Rumsey Engineers to design it.
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by Willy Franzen on April 28, 2008
So what? I’ve become a mild Twitter addict. I keep finding internships by scanning tweets and following the links in them, but, unfortunately, I can’t say the same about entry-level jobs. The term entry-level is reserved mostly for job postings, while the word internship is near universal – so it’s used conversationally (like on Twitter). Yesterday, I found a link to a post by a Sun Microsystems employee who is looking for two interns. Her post led us to Sun’s main Careers site, which truly impressed us – especially because of the way that they present their entry-level job offerings.
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by Willy Franzen on April 9, 2008
If you don’t know what Google is, you have no business conducting your job search online. You should be typing your resume on a typewriter and sending it by carrier pigeon. We’ve been saying it over and over, but Google is the ultimate job search tool. They’re also the ultimate employer according to Fortune Magazine. With that said, many of you know that getting a job at Google is nearly impossible, especially now that most of their campus recruiting efforts are finished.
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by Willy Franzen on March 7, 2008
You probably don’t realize it, but the process that goes into printing things like cereal boxes and magazines can be extremely harmful to the environment. Your first thought might be that it’s because of all the forests that are cut down to make paper, but trees are actually a renewable resource when managed properly. It’s the chemicals involved in the printing process that can take a serious toll on both the environment and the health of the workers who use them. We’re not going to see an end to beautifully designed boxes of Lucky Charms and 324 page magazines that are 277 pages of ads, but there are ways to make the printing process greener (and we don’t mean by mixing blue and yellow ink). Amerikal is a company that is finding ways to allow us to continue with the luxuries of beautiful packaging, without the guilt (that you should be feeling now that we’ve alerted you to it).
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engineering,
entry-level jobs,
Illinois,
printing
by Willy Franzen on March 3, 2008
There’s a significant chance that you, as a college student, don’t have a landline telephone number, and instead rely entirely on a cell phone. Besides being a recipe for irritating recruiters (they hate doing interviews with people on cell phones, but they don’t really have a choice, now do they?), this also means that you likely have no appreciation for the complexities of phone systems. Neither do we. Businesses spend boatloads of money on complex phone systems that include extensions, voicemail, paging, and other features. For large companies, such systems are a necessity, but for smaller businesses they are often a front to make the company appear more professional to its customers. GotVMail Grasshopper is a startup that has created web-based phone management software that is affordable, easy to manage, and extremely flexible. Whether you’re a consultant named Gary (GotVMail’s mascot) or a college student starting a business in your dorm room, GotVMail offers tools that allow you to manage your telephone needs easily while looking like a real business.
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telecommunications,
Texas
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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biology,
biotechnology,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
Florida,
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by Willy Franzen on February 21, 2008
We mentioned a couple weeks back that Facebook now has a valuation on par with that of the Ford Motor Company. In our post about Facebook, we focused on how impressive the growth has been of “Web 2.0″ companies, but didn’t mention the equally impressive decline of American auto manufacturers. It’s sad to say, but the reason for the decline has a lot to do with foreign auto companies making better products, and doing it with American talent! Honda is one of those companies that has been kicking the Big Three’s butts by putting out great cars, and a big part of it has been because of their research and development.
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by Willy Franzen on February 5, 2008
BAE Systems is a global defence (they’re British) and aerospace company. They are quite huge, employing close to 100,000 people across the world, which means that they do an enormous amount of entry-level hiring. BAE Systems operates in a wide range of businesses – from land armaments to regional aircraft, from military air solutions to communications and electronic warfare systems. Their timeline of milestones will give you a better idea of the specifics of what they do. BAE Systems is probably not the best fit if you participated in a peace protest during college, but if you want to be in the industry that is pushing the bounds of engineering, it’s hard to overlook defense.
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by Willy Franzen on January 25, 2008
Solar power is one of those things that continues to amaze you long after you’re first introduced to it. Even if it’s just a photovoltaic cell connected to a lightbulb, the harnessing of the sun’s power always seems to generate a feeling of child-like amazement. Lucky for our planet, that youthful exuberance has remained in many of today’s entrepreneurs, even after they have grown up. Because of them, it seems that we might soon see the day when solar power moves from something that hobbyists play around with to a real source of sustainable energy.
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entry-level jobs,
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solar
by Willy Franzen on January 24, 2008
College is when you make decisions that affect the rest of your life. You pick a major, you choose to study (or party) hard, and you might even decide to ask out your future spouse. Then, one night, things get a little out of hand. You wake up on the living room floor of your apartment, you walk to the bathroom, look into the mirror, and see that you’ve managed to get a bit of ink on yourself. No, your friends didn’t shame you with sharpies. You got a tattoo. It’s not going to wash off, no matter how hard you scrub. Sorry, mom.
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engineering,
entry-level jobs,
New Jersey,
quality assurance
by Willy Franzen on January 18, 2008
Today’s post is probably a shot in the dark, but we love the company’s products, and it’s still MacWorld Expo week, so we’re going to write about them anyways. What Elgato Systems does is simple – they make products that allow you to watch television on your Mac. Their hardware devices are plug and play and their software is absolutely killer. It’s also a DVR, so you can record your shows, export them to your iPod and watch them wherever you want. You can even record Jeopardy!, export it, send it to a friend, and play over the phone – not that we’ve ever done that.
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Germany,
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