by Willy Franzen on February 26, 2010
I hope the title of today’s post didn’t make you hungry, because we’re not talking about jobs in organic food. Organic is a San Francisco based interactive marketing agency with a brand that has gained a lot of keyword competition over the past 16 years. Yes, people were eating organic back in 1994, but the word wasn’t nearly as common as it is today. Doing research on Organic is tough because the organic search results (excuse my SEO pun) have all kinds of other stuff in them (at least they own Organic.com). Either Google needs to get inside my head to discern my intent, or Organic is going to have to hope that artificial packaged, processed foods go back in vogue. Ok, enough of my ripping on their name—Organic was ranked by AdWeek as the #1 interactive agency in 2007. That fits in perfectly with my impression of Organic from browsing their website and looking at their work. In fact, I’m blown away by how good Organic’s website is. It’s easy to use, it’s full of information, and it’s gorgeously designed. Their corporate mantra is “Exceptional Experience,” and they certainly live up to it.
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by Willy Franzen on October 7, 2009
One of the more effective ways that I’ve found to teach online job search tactics is to use screencasting. I do a number of screencasts in Found Your Career, and they seem to work really well when walking people through how to use sites like Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook for job search. TechSmith is an Okemos, MI based company that is “the world’s #1 provider of screen capture and screen recording software for the individual and professional user.” They’ve been in the business since 1987—which is an insanely long time for a company in their industry, and they’ve actually been doing screen capture for most of that time. I’ve never used any of their products, but I’ve heard from a number of people who rave about Camtasia, TechSmith’s main screen recording software.
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by Willy Franzen on September 15, 2009
Today is the last day to enter our Maghound Your Way to a New Job contest. With so few entries so far, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll win a one-year subscription to an awesome new magazine subscription service (3 monthly magazines for free!).
I’m still on my Inc. 5000 kick, and today we’re looking at a company whose name immediately caught my eye. They’re called College Hunks Hauling Junk, and that’s exactly what they are. Omar Soliman wanted to make some money during the summer, so he borrowed his mom’s cargo van to start hauling away people’s junk. He then entered his business plan in the Rothschild Entrepreneurship Competition and won the $10,000 first prize. He realized that he had a business that he could grow, and now College Hunks Hauling Junk is doing $2.9 million in revenue. Guess that’s why Omar and his co-founder Nick were named (also by Inc.) as Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30. College Hunks Hauling Junk is headquartered in Tampa, FL, but through expansion and franchising they now operate in Anne Arundel, MD; Baltimore/Howard County, MD; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Indianapolis, IN; Little Rock, AR; Los Angeles, CA; Louisville, KY; Orange County, CA; Orlando, FL; Phoenix, AZ; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Richmond, VA; San Francisco/San Jose, CA; Tampa Bay, FL; and Washington, DC Metro.
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by Willy Franzen on March 31, 2009
My first introduction to William Shatner was watching Rescue 911. Little did I know that his body of work extended far beyond narrating a show about real life heroes. I imagine today’s children will have an equally narrow view of William Shatner’s career, as they’ll know him as “Priceline Negotiator.” (Can you read those words without hearing the corresponding tune? I can’t.) Anyway, the whole idea behind William Shatner’s newest role – besides his doing the commercials in return for stock – is that Priceline.com will negotiate the best deals on travel-related items like hotels, car rentals, and airline tickets. They also have a “name your own price” model that used to be the core of their business, but now Priceline has widened its focus to discount travel in general.
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by Willy Franzen on March 20, 2009
Every 10 years our country does a census to collect demographic data about our populous to drive public policy decisions. It’s an extremely big deal, and it temporarily creates 1.4 million jobs (according to government figures). But those aren’t typically the types of jobs that we talk about here, at least not the ones that send you door to door asking how many people live at a given residence. Luckily, the U.S. Census Bureau does a lot more than its once every ten years nationwide census. They are “the leading source of quality data about the nation’s people and economy,” so you’d be amazed by all of the things that they track. For instance, much of the economic data that you have been hearing about in the news lately – as in “Stocks plunge on weakened Monthly Retail Sales” – comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. If you’re fascinated by data or just love counting things, there aren’t many places that offer a more interesting work experience that the Census Bureau.
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by Willy Franzen on March 6, 2009
I know that despite the fact that I keep ripping on the traditional media – the old guard – I keep featuring their jobs here. I’m not being a hypocrite. I promise. I know that taking entry level jobs with companies that might not be around in 5 years isn’t the best decision, but if anyone can save the old media, it’s you. The new media has been created by the masses and has originated from young people with new ideas, which is just what these media behemoths need to survive. Of course these companies probably don’t realize how much they need you yet, but they do. Well, if you’re going to get a job in old media – like the magazine industry – you might as well go with the best. Condé Nast has a list of brands that is rivaled by few and includes Vogue, W, style.com, Glamour, Allure, Self, Teen Vogue, GQ, Details, men.style.com, Architectural Digest, Brides, Modern, Bride, Elegant Bride, Brides.com, Lucky, Domino, Cookie, Golf Digest, Golf World, Vanity Fair, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, epicurious.com, Condé Nast Traveler, concierge.com, Wired, Wired.com, Condé Nast Portfolio, Portfolio.com, WWD, FN, and The New Yorker. There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the industry, but those are still great names to be associated with.
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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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by Willy Franzen on December 1, 2008
You may have noticed that we occasionally run sponsored posts from companies who want to draw more attention to their jobs. We haven’t done that lately because we have more exciting things to tell you about like the job search training course that we’re working on, our partnership with VisualCV to help you build a killer online resume, and our soon to be announced contest where we’re giving away $6,000+ in HP and Microsoft products. When we do run sponsored posts, it’s always a pain in the butt to get paid. We have to fill out all kinds of forms and jump through lots of hoops to get a check sent. It’s quite annoying. Enliven Software is a startup based out of East Lansing, Michigan that makes the billing process a lot easier for small and medium sized companies. They’re aiming to be the “leading provider of secure, paperless electronic invoicing, online payables and electronic payment solutions.” Our Accounting function isn’t quite advanced enough to need their software yet, but I hope one day that I’ll be able to do all of my invoicing, billing, and getting paid online.
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by Willy Franzen on October 1, 2008
I never thought that moving to Chicago would prolong the baseball season for me. Living in the New York City area gave me 13 straight years of October baseball, and now that I’ve left, both Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium will remain empty for the rest of the fall before they eventually face demolition. It’s lucky for me that I’m now living in a new city that happens to have two teams that are still in it. I get a 14th straight year of local baseball in October! Playoff baseball is by far the most exciting baseball of the year, but it also means that season will soon be over. Those of you who are baseball fans know how long the winter seems when there is only hot stove chatter to keep you entertained while you wait for pitchers and catchers to report to Spring Training. While you’re still excited about baseball, you should start thinking about how you can land a job with Major League Baseball. Jobs with the MLB are in hot demand, so it’s a smart move to get familiar with their hiring process as soon as you can.
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by Willy Franzen on August 14, 2008
A company’s home page should make it instantly clear what the company is about. For many companies this is not the case. There’s all kinds of fluff that fails to give potential customers a proper brand introduction. Menlo Innovations doesn’t make this mistake. Their home page introduces a problem: “In 2004, the U.S. wasted over $55 billion on failed and poorly run software projects.” Then it identifies the cause: “These failures can be traced to a lack of understanding of the business issues being addressed and the wrong implementation methodologies being used.” Finally the home page poses their solution:
Menlo Innovations applies High-Tech Anthropology® to help our clients fully understand their business problems and opportunities. If the solution requires software, Menlo either develops the software within our Menlo Software Factory or The Menlo Institute trains your staff to use proven methodologies to develop the software themselves.
It’s clear. It’s concise, and it gets to the point. There’s no misunderstanding about what The Menlo Institute does.
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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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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 June 16, 2008
My Dad and I are now 2 days into our weeklong fishing trip. The first day was spent driving from Fairfield, CT to Ann Arbor, MI, where we stopped to spend the night. We ended up grabbing a late dinner at a pizza place that wasn’t very good. Pizza should always be at the very least very good, so that was quite a disappointment – especially considering Ann Arbor is a college town with an amazing number of restaurants. Had I been smart enough to pull up Yelp.com on my phone (they have a mobile site), I would have seen that our choice of a restaurant only had 3.5 stars on 3 ratings, and that 2 of the high ratings were for convenience or low price. Lesson learned. Luckily we redeemed ourselves with an awesome brunch at a place one of my Dad’s high school buddies recommended – it has 4.5 stars and is ranked the 2nd best Ann Arbor restaurant on Yelp.
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by Willy Franzen on June 3, 2008
People don’t typically associate technology and innovation with Detroit and the auto industry. Whether it’s deserved or not, American car manufacturers have a pretty weak reputation these days. It’s unfortunate because the decline of the Big Three has seriously hurt the entire Michigan economy. That’s why you see these commercials with Jeff Daniels that try to sell businesses on a Michigan location. Armstrong White is exactly the type of company that is going to bring jobs back to Michigan. They have built a business in Bloomfield Hills, MI that directly serves the auto industry, but is also high tech and extremely innovative. No, they haven’t developed some sort of alternative energy technology. They specialize “in rendering reality out of automotive 2D and 3D assets and digital landscapes for print, broadcast and interactive mediums.”
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by Willy Franzen on April 17, 2008
Most CEOs have resumes that include business school, many of years of experience, and boring lists of financial accomplishments. How would you like to work for a company where the CEO’s proudest accomplishments are his being named Bon Appetit Chef of the Year and International Food and Beverage Forum Restauranteur of the Year? Michael Mina of the Mina Group is just that CEO – Chef Executive Officer (sorry, that is a horrible pun). Making deals, like any CEO should, Mina formed a partnership with Andre Agassi, the tennis star, in 2002 that has resulted in the launch of a line of high end concept restaurants.
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by Willy Franzen on March 25, 2008
We love companies that take something ordinary and create a unique value proposition for customers by creating a meaningful brand identity (uh, are we getting too jargon-y?). Moosejaw is a retailer of outdoor gear. You can buy what they sell at a lot of stores, through a lot of catalogs, or from a lot of online retailers, but Moosejaw still has an insanely loyal customer following. Every day they get rave reviews and customer photo submissions. Maybe it’s because Moosejaw has really good looking models, or maybe it’s the fact that Moosejaw offers homework help and dating advice to their customers. We’re not really sure what it is, but they’ve got their niche figured out.
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by Willy Franzen on March 16, 2008
The One Day, One Job team is partaking in the tradition of Spring Break (even if some of us aren’t in college anymore), so our posts are going to be on the shorter side for the next week or so. We figure, time off from school should give you plenty of time to do the research yourselves, right? Our compromise is that we’re going to give you more links, and less commentary. How’s that? I’m enjoying the wildlife of Puerto Rico, which includes ospreys, tarpon, egrets, iguanas (invasive, but still cool to look at), and a lot more, so it’s appropriate that today’s entry-level jobs come from the National Wildlife Federation.
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by Willy Franzen on November 24, 2007
One amazing thing about the college experience is how much more tech savvy you become in just a few short years. It’s hard to imagine getting through college without the help of tools such as the Internet that were developed by universities and government entities for research purposes. Although technological innovation still occurs at institutions of higher learning, there is a clear lack of integration, standardization, and collaboration between these institutions when it comes to information technology infrastructure. While for-profit companies often have the business-driven incentive to standardize technology, non-profit educational institutions typically overlook the power of a shared infrastructure.
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