One Day, One Job » travel

Rosetta

Willy Franzen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:31:08 +0000

I got a tip on this one from a fellow Cornellian (which is cool because a few of my friends from Cornell work at Rosetta). If you ever find a company that you think that we should feature, e-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com. We feature a lot of interactive marketing agencies because they’re usually pretty big on hiring young talent whether it be at the intern or entry level. Rosetta stands out because of their size and sophistication—they almost seem more like a consulting firm than a marketing agency, at least in the way that they present themselves. For instance, they recently become a “top ten interactive agency” by means of an acquisition. That seems so different from the image that most agencies try to portray, but it’s working. Through “dedication to client work within Consumer Products & Retail, Healthcare, Financial Services, Consumer Technology & Media, B2B, and Travel & Hospitality industries” Rosetta “has created enduring partnerships with [their] clients including Scholastic, Coach, Borders, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Nationwide, Marriott and Microsoft.” Those are huge names, so you know Rosetta, which is headquartered in Princeton with offices in New York, Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, and Denver, is capable of delivering results.

Relationships Matter

One of Rosetta’s key offerings is their suite of Relationship Marketing Services, which are focused on helping clients segment customers and offer “intelligent, personalized interactions across all online and offline channels.” This is just one part of the story, though. To get the full story on Rosetta’s offerings, you should take a look at this diagram. It shows how Rosetta walks clients through the marketing process—from creating the top-level strategy to using analytics to measure results. This means it’s not surprising that Rosetta’s job offerings are as varied as their service offerings—their Careers page is titled “Graphic Design Careers, SEO Jobs, and Financial Services Consulting Opportunities at Rosetta.”

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, Rosetta seems to have a strong connection with Cornell (and probably quite a few other colleges) based on campus recruiting. Interestingly enough, Rosetta doesn’t really have a campus recruiting page—just a profile of a new grad who went to work for them. From there you can find their job search function, which is pretty terrible. It does appear to let you search for specifically entry level positions; however, there are at least 3 different queries that you can use, and they all seem to deliver different results. Your best bet is to look at their full list of job openings, or to look for positions like Recent Graduate Business Associate, Recent Graduate Technology Associate, Associate Consultant, Account Executive, Technology Associate, User Interface/Rich Media Developer, Recent Graduate Business Analyst, and quite a few others. The way that Rosetta lists their jobs is really a mess, so you need to take note that different jobs with the same title may be in different practice areas. Additionally, single job postings may be for multiple locations. They do have some nice pages on their Careers site like Meet Our People and Fun at Rosetta, but the whole thing is disorganized. I expect a lot better from a top ten agency. You can apply online for any of these positions, so forgive Rosetta for the lack of usability on their Careers site and see if you can help them move further up the top ten.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Were you looking Rosetta Stone’s jobs?

Wagstaff Worldwide

Willy Franzen — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:00:39 +0000

This is a guest post by Heather R. Huhman. Heather is the media relations manager at a national health care professional association and entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com.

Interested in wine and travel? Then Wagstaff Worldwide might be the public relations agency for you! Located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, Wagstaff specializes in media relations but does offer other services such as creating customized public relations plans, setting up and executing social media strategies, event planning, tourism marketing, and editorial and copywriting expertise. Their clients include restaurants, hotels, international travel organizations, design agencies, wine and spirits, lounges and spas—and their client list is huge!

Cultivate Your Career with Top Tastemakers

Now, I realize that Wagstaff is “worldwide,” but their team isn’t really that large, and they have quite a few junior-level staff members. The company is currently seeking an Account Coordinator for its Los Angeles office. Candidates are expected to possess “excellent writing, presentation and sales skills, relevant experience in the hospitality, journalism and/or public relations industries and an outgoing personality.” Interested? Submit your cover letter, résumé and salary history to president Mary Wagstaff at mary@wagstaffworldwide.com. You might also consider following the LA office on Twitter. If you’re interested in working at one of the other offices, you should keep your eyes peeled for new job postings or use Wagstaff Worldwide’s Contact page to find the right people to reach out to.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What have you heard about Wagstaff Worldwide?

MMG Mardiks

Willy Franzen — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:01:57 +0000

Yesterday I mentioned that I hopped on a plane on Saturday. My destination was Aruba. I’m here now, and I’m enjoying 90 degree temperatures, lots of sunshine, beach volleyball, and hopefully some excellent fishing opportunities. It’s not hard to be convinced to head for a tropical destination in December, but choosing the right place can be a tough decision. That’s why it’s no big surprise that resorts and tourism boards invest a lot in public relations. Competition for tourist dollars is fierce, so firms like New York City based MMG Mardiks are often in high demand. They work with names like the Colorado Tourism Office, Sarasota and Her Islands, Hertz, Regent Hotels & Resorts, and The Renaissance Aruba Resort & Casino (not where I’m staying). MMG Mardiks also has locations in Kansas City, Ft. Collins, St Louis, and South Florida, which probably allows them to better serve clients in various locations.

Travel Public Relations with MMG Mardiks

Travel public relations and communications seems like a pretty cool field, and MMG Mardiks does it all. They provide “expert strategic counsel in traditional and digital media relations, branding, event marketing and crisis communications.” If you’d like to get beyond the buzz words and see some actual work that MMG Mardiks has done, you need to look no further than their case studies. You’ll get a good feel for how they operate and what kind of placement they can achieve for their clients. If the idea of working in Travel PR excites you, then take a look at MMG Mardiks’ Jobs page. They don’t have any specific openings for new grads posted, but they do invite applicants to reach out by e-mailing a cover letter, résumé, and salary requirement to Carla Brown at cbrown@mmgworldwide.com. I’ve heard that their internship program is excellent with real work opportunities that lead to full-time employment and that the company employs a lot of people in their 20s. Additionally employees get to travel to great places relatively often, so maybe you’ll get to make a trip to Aruba too.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Which of MMG Mardiks’ clients do you most want to visit?

Orbitz Worldwide

Willy Franzen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:55:09 +0000

Happy Friday the 13th! If you let your belief in bad luck and superstition affect you on a daily basis, then you’re setting yourself back in the job search. It really won’t do you any good. With that said, there are millions of people who suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia—the fear of Friday the 13th. One of the biggest symptoms of this phobia is an unwillingness to travel on Friday the 13th. There’s some debate as to whether this actually has a significant effect on the travel industry, but I’ve heard that you can get pretty good deals when the 13th day of a month falls on a Friday. Since I’m not a big fan of superstition—especially when it comes to the job search—we’re going to fly in the face of paraskevidekatriaphobia and take a look at jobs with Orbitz Worldwide. If you don’t already know, they’re a Chicago based online travel company. In late 1999 they were formed through a partnership between 5 major airlines—Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and American—to compete with Expedia and Travelocity.

Send Your Career into Orbitz

Although I couldn’t tell you what differentiates Orbitz from the plethora of other travel sites out there, I do know that I’ve used them before and would use them again. Their brands beyond Orbitz include niche plays like CheapTickets, eBookers, HotelClub, RatesToGo, Away.com, Asia-Hotels, and Orbitz for Business. Over the past decade Orbitz Worldwide has gone through a number of ownership changes, and now they’ve finally settled as publicly traded company. They have about 1,500 employees according to their LinkedIn profile, and their Job listings show that they have quite a few open positions. Unfortunately, Orbitz’s Applicant Tracking System is a total mess. It’s difficult to navigate, it’s ugly, and it also requires a session ID, which means that I can’t link you to specific job postings. Their Careers page does mention a Management Training and Development program, but doesn’t go into detail. They do have positions posted like Web/SEO Analyst (Sydney, Australia), Fraud Analyst (Chicago, IL), Search Marketing Analyst (Sydney, Australia), Air Strategy Analyst (Chicago, IL), and quite a few more. The ATS is scarier than any Friday the 13th horror movie, so I’m going to let you use your luck to find the rest of their positions.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Would you travel on Friday the 13th?

Smart Destinations

Willy Franzen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:45:42 +0000

Let’s say that you wanted to come visit me in Chicago. You’re not afraid to do touristy things, because you’re willing to accept the fact that you are a tourist. You’re going to visit the Art Institute, the Hancock Observatory, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Sears (now Willis) Tower. Then you want to take a ride on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel followed by an Architecture Boat Tour. That’s a lot of separate admission fees (and an exhausting day). With a Go Chicago Card from Boston, MA based Smart Destinations, you can pay once and do all these things and more. The card will even get you a discount on your Lou Malnati’s deep dish pizza. Smart Destinations offers the same service in quite a few other cities, and it seems to be pretty popular. While the Travel industry is struggling with the economy, Smart Destinations has managed 424.7% revenue growth over the past 3 years and #652 on the Inc. 5000.

Take a Trip to Smart Destinations

What Smart Destinations is doing isn’t all that complex, but it’s really… err… smart. By developing relationships with all of these individual destinations and trading lead generation for a substantial discount, Smart Destinations is able to make everyone happy while hauling in the cash. Or at least that’s what their 94% customer satisfaction rate seems to say. It’s a very cool business that has the potential for a lot more growth. If you’d like to be a part of that growth, you should consider Jobs at Smart Destinations. They don’t list specific opportunities, but if you use our “Do I Know Anyone at Smart Destinations?” feature below, you should be able to get an idea of what types of entry level jobs they have. I’d imagine Sales, Marketing, Engineering/Software Development, and Business Development are some of the most likely areas. You can reach out to Smart Destinations at careers@smartdestinations.com.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you tried using one of Smart Destinations’ products?

Kayak

Willy Franzen — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:32:15 +0000

Last week we took a look at Priceline’s Jobs, and since travel is always fun, we’re going to check out Kayak today. They’re a travel search engine that was started by founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia who decided to partner up into a “travel dream team” and build a “better online travel experience.” Unlike most travel sites, Kayak doesn’t sell anything to travelers. They’re an aggregator just like Google that scours the web for the best travel deals and returns them to you. What Kayak does sell is advertising. Just like how Google has “Sponsored Results,” Kayak integrates advertising with its search results. You can try to describe the business model with fancy words, but it’s really all about lead generation. Kayak, like Priceline, is based out of Norwalk, CT, which I find pretty intriguing. I wonder if there’s any particular reason that it’s beneficial for an online travel company to located in Norwalk.

Hop in the Kayak

After spending some time checking Kayak out, it seems to me that their big thing is simplicity. Using their search engine is pretty darn simple, and it also shows in how they express their corporate identity. For instance, Kayak’s About page isn’t particularly short, but it does a fantastic job of explaining who they are and what they do in plain English. I also really like what they’ve done with their Team page. This simplicity continues into Kayak’s Jobs page, which consists of a few bullet points on why you should work at Kayak in addition to a simple list of jobs. The job descriptions are also straightforward and get to the point. They have a number of Sales positions available; however, they seem to require a decent amount of experience. What intrigued me were the SEO Product Manager/Analytics Researcher (Concord, MA) and Search Marketing Analyst (France). These aren’t straight up entry level jobs, but if you’ve spent your college years learning (most likely self taught) about search and online marketing, then you might be the perfect fit. You can apply for all of Kayak’s jobs by e-mail, but the address depends on which position you’re apply for, so check out the individual job descriptions for more details.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Do you use Kayak to find travel deals?

Priceline.com

Willy Franzen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:39:36 +0000

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.

Entry Level Job Negotiator

Don’t you wish you had someone like William Shatner to negotiate your entry level job for you too? Ok, that’d be a little weird. Sometimes learning negotiating skills is better than having someone do the dirty work for you. I think that I’m glad that the way we find jobs online is different from the way that we find travel deals online. With that said, you can go to the same place for both if you’re interested in a job in travel or e-commerce. Priceline.com has a number of jobs that seem like they might be well suited to new or recent college grads. In their Grand Rapids, MI office there are jobs for a Japanese Translator and Customer Service Executives, while at their Norwalk, CT headquarters they’re looking for an Associate Regional Revenue Manager – Hotels. You can figure out how to apply from the job descriptions that I’ve just linked to. Priceline.com doesn’t have an About page, so there’s not a ton of information about who they are and what they’re about as a company, so you might want to do a little Googling to get more info.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Do you use Priceline.com to book your travel?

Clear

Willy Franzen — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:25:56 +0000

It seems like security lines at airports are either hit or miss. You’re through in a few minutes, or you’re waiting somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour to be x-rayed, questioned, prodded, and possibly poked. There’s probably a middle ground too, but you never seem to remember those experiences. You’ll often hear people say that they’d pay a lot of money to not have to wait in security lines. Well you can buy a private jet and avoid security completely, or you can invest $100 a year in a Clear Card. It won’t actually allow you to skip the security line, but it will definitely speed up the process. Someone should invent a “Clear Resume” that gets you an interview without all the hassles of cover letters, job applications, and screening phone calls.

Jobs in the Clear

The whole idea behind the Clear Card is pretty simple. We found out about it from Guy Kawasaki who is recommending it as a great Father’s Day gift and has a code that will allow you to get a free month added to your membership when you sign up. You allow them to collect some biometric data to verify your identity and submit an application to the TSA (don’t worry about Big Brother getting your fingerprints and iris scans, Clear has a stellar privacy policy). You get your card and get expedited through security. That’s all.

Clear is actually a part of a company called Verified Identity Pass, Inc., but they seem to be using the Clear brand quite a bit. For instance, the Verified Identity Pass Careers link redirects to the Clear Careers page, where you will find a few entry-level job opportunities. Clear is looking for Assistant Operations Managers in Atlanta and San Francisco. These jobs are geared towards people who have a background in hospitality management, and require a couple years of management experience in a customer service setting. Usually we wouldn’t consider that to be entry-level, but we know of plenty of students who have that kind of experience from campus jobs, internships, or volunteer work. Clear asks applicants to send a resume, cover letter, and salary requirements to careers@verifiedidpass.com with the job title in the subject line.

Clear is based in Palm Coast, FL, but doesn’t have any entry-level opportunities there at the moment. Keep an eye out, though. Clear appears to be growing quickly, as you’d expect for a company that offers such a useful service. We hope that more entry-level hiring is part of their growth plan.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have an airport security line nightmare story? Share it in the comments.

American Express

Willy Franzen — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:00:26 +0000

I love American Express. When my girlfriend ran over my iPod Nano (ok, I dropped it on the ground behind her tire and didn’t know it, my bad) their Purchase Protection Plan covered it. When my money was running a little short during the holidays, I won a 25% off Amazon.com coupon through their MyWishlist Promotion. It made buying gifts a lot easier. When my Mother and Grandmother went to visit my Aunt, AMEX provided a free companion ticket. It was 2 for the price of 1. There’s no credit / charge card company that treats its customers as well as American Express does.

They also treat their employees well. They’ve won more top employer awards than we care to list. Their products and services are unparalleled, they’re passionate about their business, and they always seem to put customers first. They have an amazing brand, which is the 15th most valuable in the world. Yes, their brand alone is worth more than $20 billion. This all translates into an extremely strong employment brand.

The Fun Begins

Unfortunately, American Express’ Careers website is a prime example of failure of the last mile; in fact, it’s an absolute disaster that diminishes the employment brand that AMEX has worked so hard to build. When you first get to American Express’ Careers Home Page, it looks ok. It’s titled “Staffing_Careers Home_US,” which is completely accurate, but neither welcoming nor user-friendly. This may not be a huge issue, but if you’re using Google in your job search, you’ll realize that when these titles show up in the search results, it makes it hard to find what you’re looking for. This may be a small nit to pick, but it’s representative of deeper problems that you will find as you navigate deeper into the AMEX Careers site – especially on their Campus Recruiting section (hey, at least they have one).

We appreciate that American Express has decided to provide visitors with a plethora of career related information, but they’ve done it in a fashion that cluttered, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate. We don’t want to rant too much, so we’re just going to highlight the areas that will offer you the most value. You can get started at either the Campus Recruitment Process page or the US Campus Recruitment page, unless, of course, you’re looking to work in Europe or Asia-Pacific (by the way, our international student readers will be happy to know that AMEX does offer visa sponsorship for many positions). Individuals with graduate degrees will want to look at the Global Leadership Express program. You’ll also want to read the Get To Know Us page to get a better understanding of the businesses that American Express operates.

You’ll probably find that these pages don’t really have the information that you’re looking for. For instance, the Campus Recruitment Process page talks mainly about internships. Even the pages with good information have poor navigation and formatting that make the content hard to absorb. It seems like American Express does a much better job of on-campus recruiting, and that online recruiting just doesn’t matter to them. You can end up wasting hours wandering around American Express’ Careers site, when all you’re trying to do is find job listings for college students.

So How Do I Find an Entry-Level Job at American Express?

Despite the lack of organization on American Express’ career site, it becomes pretty clear that entry-level hiring is a big part of what they do. Hiring occurs in 8 Functional Areas (American Express Interactive, Marketing, Customer Care, Risk & Information Management, Finance, Strategic Planning Group, Human Resources, and Technologies) and Four Business Units (Global Consumer & Small Business Services (GCSS), Global Business-to-Business, Finance, and Support Functions). Or at least that’s what they tell you. When you actually start searching for jobs on their site, you’ll see that jobs are actually organized by job function, which partially overlaps with the Functional Areas. Did we forget to mention that the only way to find a job on American Express’ site is to use their job search function?

Depending on how you navigate to AMEX’s job search function, you may get the impression that you can search specifically for entry-level jobs (especially if you came from this page). From what we can tell, you can’t. If you add the words “campus” or “entry level” to your search, you will find some appropriate jobs, but you’ll probably miss out on a lot of others. Your search will definitely be more productive if you can narrow it down using keywords related to the Functional Area that you’d like to work in, but who knows if such a tactic will even yield accurate results. It seems like the only way to find AMEX’s jobs for new college graduates is to wade through all their job listings, or to search your college’s job posting site for American Express listings. We wish we could go through all 566 jobs that are currently posted and pick out the ones that look suitable for new college grads, but we’ve banged our head against the wall enough tonight.

Why We Whine

Like I said in the first paragraph, I love American Express. I also hate sounding like a complainer, but it’s unacceptable for a company of American Express’ stature to completely ignore usability on their careers site. Just because the strength of their brand brings them more applicants than they’ll ever need doesn’t mean that they should overlook the opportunity to use the power of the Internet as a recruiting tool. One Day, One Job is about helping you find meaningful work after you graduate college, but it’s also about improving the way companies present their career opportunities online. If great companies like American Express can’t get it right, then who can?

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

If you have found any tricks to navigating the American Express Careers website, please share them in the comments section.

jetBlue Airways

Willy Franzen — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:00:19 +0000

Well, we made it back home from vacation, but not without 3 hours of sitting on the runway due to Curacao’s random decision to close their airspace. Our pilot told us that we had to file a flight plan through Venezuelan airspace instead, and Venezuela’s being run by an unfriendly dictator didn’t make that the easiest – or fastest – process. By the time our new flight plan was filed, Curacao had lifted the flight ban and we finally went on our merry way. As painful as it was to be on the runway for 3 hours, jetBlue made it pretty bearable. They gave us drinks and snacks, although they did plead with us to take it easy, as they were running out and did not have catering services at this airport. Of course the request to back off the goodies created a run on the galley, but the flight attendants were still able to do a full snack and beverage service in-flight despite the excessive pre-flight demand. It was also nice to have the most legroom in coach and a little tv in the seatbacks in front of us. Another One Day, One Jobber flew a different airline out of the same airport at the same time and had a much more miserable experience – no food, no movies, and too much air conditioning with no blankets. jetBlue has been ranked by Conde Nast Traveler as America’s Best Domestic Airline for 6 straight years now, and their unparalleled devotion to customer service is the reason.

We think the best place to find an entry-level job is at a company that does something you can be passionate about. The company you choose to work for should offer a product or service that you love, work towards a goal you admire, or be at the forefront of a field that you find fascinating. It is impossible to perform excellent customer service without extremely happy employees. We love the flying experience that jetBlue offers, and that’s why we think they might be a great place to work after you graduate college. They even offer a Customer Bill of Rights that ensures fair treatment and compensation for bad service when it happens. No other airlines can pull off this kind of guarantee with their pissed off flight attendants and incompetent ticketing agents. We’re not sure which came first, great customer service or great places to work, but we do know that the two are consistently linked.

As for finding a job at jetBlue, you’re going to have to go through their search page, which is unfortunate. A search only interface is a pet peeve of ours. We prefer it when jobs are listed in an organized format that is accessible to job searchers and search engines like Google. The good thing about JetBlue’s search interface is that it lets you specify your search to only entry-level jobs. We also recommend looking at jobs at the Professional level (2 to 5 years experience) because some of these seem to be a better fit for top college grads. We wish there was a descriptive term in recruiting that differentiates between entry-level jobs requiring little education and those that require a college degree (if you can think of one, leave it in the comments and maybe we’ll start using it).

We are consistently impressed with the attitudes of jetBlue crewmembers (what they call all of their employees). With a focus on a strong service culture and excellent benefits (we can’t find information on flying benefits for crewmembers, but we’re sure they exist), it’s not a surprise that jetBlue is succeeding because of its people. Although the only information about on-campus recruiting by jetBlue that we were able to find is that they went to a career fair at Harvard in 2005 and have had some sort of training partnership with NYU, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t looking to hire new grads.

Note: On April 23rd we revisited entry-level jobs at jetBlue Airways.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have any good flying stories from your Winter Break? Share them with us in the comments.