by Willy Franzen on February 10, 2010
The way that large corporations operate often boggles my mind. Take for example my friend who worked in the internal consulting division of a massive, well-known company. Despite being owned and operated by the company, his division had to bid against outside consulting firms for projects. There was a good reason for this (it forced the internal consulting division to watch its back), but it still seems a bit ridiculous. Another example of this kind of thinking is transfer pricing (don’t worry, I had to look it up too). It’s the “pricing of contributions (assets, tangible and intangible, services, and funds) transferred within an organization.” At first it may seem that since all of the money is going to the same place pricing things that are transferred within an organization doesn’t really matter. Unfortunately, that would cause all of the accountants in an organization (and the IRS too) to have a fit. So how do companies price these transfers? There’s no external market to set the price, and trying to do it internally can get really messy. That’s when companies bring in Ceteris a “global independent consulting firm specializing in transfer pricing, intellectual property and valuation services” that is headquartered in Chicago.
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by Willy Franzen on January 23, 2010
You thought that you were done with standardized tests. No more #2 pencils and filling in bubbles for you. Guess again. A career with the Princeton, NJ based Educational Testing Service would take you right back to Junior year in high school with all the standardized tests. They are “a private, nonprofit organization devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing.” They’re behind AP Tests, the PSAT, the SAT, the TOEFL, the GRE, and plenty of other tests that you may have taken during your academic career. Their aim is to “advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research,” and I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job. A lot of people have a strong distaste for standardized tests, but it seems that we are yet to find a better way to measure and compare achievement across groups. I was surprised to learn that the ETS is a non-profit organization, but it’s probably better for the people who take the 50 million tests that the organization administers annually.
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by Willy Franzen on November 25, 2009
Last spring when sports fans on the North Side of Chicago were still hopeful, Amy and I decided that we wanted to go to a Cubs game. It was the day of the game, and we didn’t have tickets. We checked out StubHub, and saw some pretty good prices, but we decided that waiting would get us even better prices. We waited. The prices went down. We waited some more. The prices went down some more. And then disaster struck. StubHub stops selling tickets 2 hours before a game. We were shut out. We ended up heading to Wrigley and buying from some “ticket brokers” outside of the park. We got a pretty decent price, and we had a great time (I may or may not have been listening to the Yankees game on my iPhone at the same time), but we were left with the question of when is the best time to buy tickets on the secondary market. Apparently SeatGeek has the answer—they’re a New York City based web startup that predicts the price of sports and concert tickets. We’ve seen similar startups succeed in the travel market, and I think this business may make even more sense for event tickets.
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by Willy Franzen on September 7, 2009
Having graduated from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, I spent a lot of time learning about work, employment, and labor issues during my undergraduate days. While most people think that Labor Day is all about the end of summer (sorry!) and not being able to wear white anymore, my school ensured that I was made more aware of the history of Labor Day. Oddly enough, ILR didn’t give us the day off from classes, but they did excuse us from classes if we went to a big Labor Day celebration with speakers from major unions. If that sounds like something that would interest you, then maybe you’ll want to check out jobs with the U.S. Department of Labor. There isn’t a more suitable employer to feature on Labor Day than our Federal Government’s Cabinet department responsible for promoting “the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States.”
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by Willy Franzen on May 31, 2009
For most of the jobs that we feature here, safety isn’t much of an issue. You may be concerned about job security given the current economic conditions, but not many of the jobs that we cover will put you in harms way—at least as long as you don’t tip back too far in your desk chair. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of dangerous jobs out there, and many of them are in the construction industry. It’s doubtful that the business of building things will ever be completely safe as long as humans are doing it, but CPWR is doing its best to improve safety in the construction industry. Their acronym used to stand for The Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, but now it seems that their full name is The Center for Construction Research and Training. They are a Silver Spring, Maryland based non-profit organization (despite their .com web address) that was created by the AFL-CIO in 1990, and they’ve become “an international leader in applied research, training, and service to the construction industry.”
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by Willy Franzen on May 19, 2009
If you’re an Internet geek like me, then you’ve probably noticed all of the buzz around Wolfram|Alpha. Some have dubbed it a “Google killer,” but as far as I can tell, they’re way off the mark. They’re wrong because Wolfram|Alpha isn’t a search engine – it’s a knowledge engine. The goal is “to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.” The concept is kind of hard to grasp until you try it, but once you see how it works, I think that you’ll be impressed. So, who is behind Wolfram|Alpha? Wolfram, of course! They’re based in Champaign, IL, and they’re “one of the world’s most respected software companies–as well as a powerhouse of scientific and technical innovation.” They’re the company behind Mathematica – a software package that excels in ” computation, modeling, simulation, visualization, development, documentation, and deployment.” I’ve never had the pleasure of using it, but I know math teachers who think it’s pretty awesome.
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by Willy Franzen on March 21, 2009
No matter what you’re doing, finding out what works and what doesn’t is the key to success. It may sound overly simple, but it’s amazing how many people, companies, and organizations keep doing things that don’t work based on thoughts and feelings. Hard, scientific research is often the only real way to figure out what works. Unfortunately, science and non-profits often don’t mix (remember how much trouble I had finding a math-related non-profit last week). One exception is MDRC, an organization that “is best known for mounting large-scale evaluations of real-world policies and programs targeted to low-income people.” They’re at the forefront of the science of doing good, and “over the years, MDRC has brought its unique approach to an ever-growing range of policy areas and target populations.”
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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 February 24, 2009
As far as I can tell, now is not a good time to be in Advertising. When the economy slows down, ad sales usually take a hit. I know that first hand, which is why we’ve moved towards offering useful products – like job seeker training – instead of selling ads to employers (remember: all of our daily posts are editorial). With that said, online advertising is still the future, and with the struggles that many publishers are facing, now is a perfect time for innovation. That’s what Rubicon Project is all about. They’re a Los Angeles, CA based startup that is “on a mission to automate the $65 billion global online advertising industry.” This means optimizing unfilled ad space through software. With 300+ ad networks to choose from, publishers just can’t possibly evaluate every ad network’s offers on their own. Rubicon Project can – in a matter of seconds – and then server the most profitable ad immediately.
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by Willy Franzen on November 26, 2008
Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I have cooking on my mind. I’m trying to make sure that I have everything that I need, because Thanksgiving Day always comes with some essential ingredient or cooking implement missing. A run to the store for an ingredient usually isn’t a problem, but a meat thermometer or baster can be a little tougher to find. That’s why you might want to make a day before Thanksgiving stop by Williams-Sonoma, and while you’re at it, you might want to think about what kind of jobs they offer. In case you’re not familiar with Williams-Sonoma, they’re “the premier specialty retailer of home furnishings in the United States.” Their brands include Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, PB Teen, Williams-Sonoma Home, and West Elm, and they “cover every room in the house: from the kitchen to the living room, bedroom, home office, and even the hall closet.” Williams-Sonoma, the brand, is best known for kitchen wares, which is why I associate them with Thanksgiving.
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by Willy Franzen on November 13, 2008
If I had known that today was World Usability Day, I would have waited another day to post about Hesketh’s entry level jobs. Unfortunately, I was out of the loop on this one, so I blew it. With that said, today’s company, Crowd Science, offers some pretty cool analytics tools that might help webmaster makes more informed usability decisions. It’s kind of a stretch, because most of what Crowd Science does is explore demographics, but who cares about World Usability Day anyway? (Ok, I do. A little bit.) So TechCrunch has dubbed Crowd Science as Google Analytics for demographics, and I think that the title fits.
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by Willy Franzen on February 10, 2008
Statistics in college is painful. It’s dry. It’s long. It pretty much sucks. Because of our high sample size, we can say that, with a high p-value, about most college stats courses. It’s really a shame, because statistical literacy is one of the most useful things you can pick up in your undergraduate years. It’ll change the way you think about politics and sports. It’ll change the way you read a newspaper. It will even make you question whether the prescription that your campus health clinic gave you is worth filling. By the way, when will they learn their statistics and stop asking guys whether they might be pregnant? If someone could figure out a way to bring statistics to life – to present even the driest data in an entertaining way – they’d be a millionaire. Or they’d start a non-profit organization called Gapminder.
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