by Willy Franzen on November 24, 2008
I don’t recall having any friends in college who sent out their own holiday cards, but if you’re planning on sending out cards, you better get on it. Christmas is 31 days away. My family always tried to send out Christmas cards, but it usually resulted in a fight between my sister and me over which picture to use – if we could even get along long enough for a picture to be taken (yes, we were both in college at this point). With my sister’s and my being difficult and my mom’s procrastinating ability, Christmas cards almost inevitably became New Year’s cards, which typically arrived well after New Year’s. I’m not sure that Mountain View, CA based Tiny Prints could have helped with conflict resolution between my sister and me, but they can make it ridiculously easy to produce a beautiful holiday card.
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by Willy Franzen on November 12, 2008
As you may or may not know, every weekend we feature two non-profit organizations and their jobs. That means that in addition to looking at corporate websites all week, we also spend a considerable amount of time looking at non-profit sites. Since companies are usually trying to sell someone something, their websites tend to be both nice to look at and easy to navigate/use (with a big exception for many of the Careers sections of these corporate sites). With the non-profits there’s more variability – some sites are stunning and easy to use, while others could use a lot of work. Non-profits may not be selling a product or service, but they still need to sell themselves to donors, volunteers, job seekers, and even the people whom they’re aiming to serve. That means that design and usability isn’t something that they can ignore, and that’s why Hesketh, a user experience agency, “has developed practices and services that are specifically attuned to challenges faced by non-profits, higher education, member-based associations, and other organizations committed to socioeconomic development.” They serve corporate clients too, but Hesketh seems to be carving out a pretty cool niche for themselves (they’ve also literally carved out a new, old niche for themselves recently).
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by Willy Franzen on November 5, 2008
Typically when we feature a startup company and its jobs, the startup is at least mid-stage – they have a small but growing team, a product that has been released in some form to the public, and often have gone through multiple stages of funding. Today’s company, Maria Health, can definitely be considered early stage. They have a team of 7, an idea – not a product, and backing by one venture capital firm. They say that they’re going to change the way that you think about healthcare through “a web app which will provide users unprecedented transparency into their healthcare usage, options, and insurance coverage.” Although it’s hard to say what will actually happen down the road, you have to like the chances of a healthcare based startup in this down economy. Healthcare is an industry that just seems to keep growing and growing.
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by Willy Franzen on October 13, 2008
Ok, it may be politically incorrect to celebrate Columbus Day, but it’s just about the only holiday that I had off in college. Maybe it just happened to be a convenient weekend for Fall Break, but I still can’t believe that I didn’t have class on Columbus Day, but did have class on Labor Day (when I went to a School of Industrial and Labor Relations). Anyway, Christopher Columbus wasn’t much of a navigator. He had no idea where he was going, and he tried to take the long way around the world. Still, his ineptitude was the reason that he “discovered” the Americas. Had Garmin been around in the 1490s, Columbus never would have ended up where he did. Then again, the existence of a company built on GPS technology would have changed a lot of things for famous explorers five centuries ago. (Much like the existence of iPods – like the one we’re giving away – would have changed the world for musicians back then.)
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by Willy Franzen on September 29, 2008
What happens when you cross a traditional consulting firm with the feel of a web startup? You get AnswerLab. Studying consumer behavior is essential to increasing profitability when you’re in the business of selling products. For years there have been consultancies that have focused on how shoppers act in supermarkets or department stores, but analyzing online behavior is a completely different ball game. AnswerLab is a company of experts who “develop customized research studies that uncover key findings about our clients’ web presence through several methods including online user experience evaluations, in-person usability sessions, surveys and traffic analysis.” Their knowledge base is completely different from what you’ll find at most consulting firms, and that must be why they have such an impressive client list. When a user experience consulting firm can boast having been hired by Yahoo!, eBay, and LinkedIn, you know that they’re good. When you can add Pizza Hut, FedEx, and Honda to that list, you know that they’re one of the best.
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by Willy Franzen on September 22, 2008
When we review companies, we always like to look at their client lists. It’s a good way to see what a company has done and what kind of reputation they have. Visde’s client list speaks for itself. It includes Apple, Boeing, Disney, Intel, Macromedia, and Yahoo!. If Visde were an accounting firm or a waste management company, you’d probably nod your head and say something like, “Oh, that’s nice.” The reason this client list is so impressive is that Visde is a product experience design firm. They help some of the biggest names in product design with… product design. Some of their latest projects include a personal hearing aid remote control and a national ethnographic study of parents, teachers, and school administrators for online standardized testing. These are just two types of things that you might end up doing at Visde. Their main areas of expertise are Innovation Strategy, Design Strategy, Conceptual Explorations, User Research, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Visual Design, Industrial Design, Package Design, Web + Software, and Kiosks.
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by Willy Franzen on September 4, 2008
Since you’re looking for an entry-level job and not in one, you may not be familiar with corporate policies on instant messaging. That’s ok, since they tend to be all over the place. At some companies you are required to be available by IM, since it’s the main form of communication used in the work place. At other companies instant messaging is strictly forbidden and even blocked by the IT department. We’re not trying to get you fired from the job that you don’t even have yet, but if you absolutely need 5 minutes of contact with the outside world while at work, Meebo offers an easy way to get around company filters so that you can log into your AIM, Yahoo, Gchat, MSN, icq, or Jabber accounts. In fact, IMing behind your boss’ back probably isn’t a good idea for any entry-level employee, so maybe you should just use Meebo at home for its simple web-based interface, ability to log in to multiple accounts, and ease of use. Then again, you could just get a job at Meebo so that you’ll be encouraged to have Meebo open in your web browser all day long at work.
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by Willy Franzen on September 3, 2008
We haven’t been able to find any hard statistics to back it up, but we’re pretty sure that a lot of people use their dog’s name for their passwords. Just look at Paris Hilton, whose cell phone supposedly got hacked because someone was able to find her dog’s name on her MySpace page. That story has since been discredited, but it can be a fable for the 21st century. Instead of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” we will tell our kids “The Girl Who Used Her Dog’s Name As Her Password.” So, if you’re trying to guess someone’s password (which you shouldn’t be), their dog’s name is a great first guess. If you don’t know their dog’s name, guess “Max.” Apparently 1% (which is a lot) of dogs in the U.S. share that name. Marc Pincus really blew it when he decided to name is social gaming network startup after his dog. Nobody would have ever guessed Zynga – he wasted a great password.
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by Willy Franzen on August 22, 2008
Does job searching ever make you feel like a total idiot? You go to a company’s website. You look for their Careers page. You can’t find it. You look all over the place. You search Google. Finally, you find it. It doesn’t do you much good, though, because their job listings are difficult to navigate, the links that you bookmark don’t work when you try to come back, and you can’t figure out how to apply online for the jobs. This is a surprisingly common experience, and it’s representative of the complete ignorance to user experience that many companies and applicant tracking system providers show. Adaptive Path is a company that is all about user experience. They help other companies provide more usable products and services through consulting, training, workshops, and thought leadership. They also have a simple Jobs page that leaves no room for confusion (although it is a bit hard to find because they call it “Work with Us.”
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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 July 31, 2008
Sugar certainly doesn’t have the cleanest reputation. It’s accused of making us fat, rotting our teeth, and causing hyperactivity. Sugar Inc. is a company that wants you to throw out those bad associations you have with sugar and just think back to when you were a kid and sugar was the essence of everything good. Sugar Inc. isn’t in the business of sweets – they run a network of websites, but their CEO is named Brian Sugar and his wife Lisa Sugar is the Editor in Chief, so they’re running with the sweet play on words. Sugar Inc. consists of 15 style/entertainment sites – PopSugar, BuzzSugar, FabSugar, BellaSugar, CasaSugar, YumSugar, FitSugar, Geek Sugar, GiggleSugar, DearSugar, PetSugar, LilSugar, SavvySugar, CitizenSugar, and TeamSugar. You can probably guess from the names what topic each of the sites covers, but you should probably check a few of the sugars out to get a better sense of Sugar Inc.’s content strategy, which is to be “the definitive online media company for trendsetting, passionate women ages 18-44.”
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by Willy Franzen on July 7, 2008
If you haven’t realized it yet, we’re big fans of social media. Twitter, Youtube, Blogs, etc. The better a company’s recruiting social media profile, the more likely we are to take notice of their jobs and write about them. We first found out about ZURB through one of their employees’ tweets on Twitter. We were impressed to see that they’re also blogging, Youtubing, and StandoutJobbing. What’s Standout Jobs? It’s a company that’s bringing Corporate Careers sites into the Web 2.0 world. Here’s ZURB on Standout Jobs. Before you go diving into ZURB’s social media profiles, you’ll probably want to know what they’re all about. ZURB “helps companies design better web sites, services, and products online.” They do so by helping other companies with user interface (UI) design, product strategy, identity design, SEO and SEM, team building, visual design, and grassroots un-marketing.
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by Willy Franzen on June 27, 2008
I used to be that kid who would come home from college, see someone who was in my 3rd grade class, and want to say hi. “Hey, I’m Willy Franzen, you sat next to me in Mrs. Phoenix’s class while we learning about multiplication. Do you remember me?” Questions like that would typically be returned with a blank stare. At some point I realized that just because I could remember almost anything, I didn’t have to make a fool of myself like that. Now that I’ve started a business and I’m constantly thinking of new ideas to help you all find great entry-level jobs, my brain has turned into swiss cheese. I have an almost constant feeling that I’m forgetting something. I can still remember my 3rd grade classmates, but those new ideas of how to double One Day, One Job’s daily readership with 5 minutes of work seem to escape me quite quickly. I need a 2nd memory, and Evernote is a web based service/application that can provide me with one.
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by Willy Franzen on May 29, 2008
Most people like shoes. They protect your feet, offer support, and keep you warm. Some people love shoes – love them to the point that their loved ones (not the shoes) are likely worried about them. Oddly enough, the people who deeply love shoes often seem most interested in shoes that barely protect their feet, offer little support, and provide little or no warmth. We don’t really get that. Zappos.com puts these people to shame. As a company they have a shoe obsession that is far worse than that of the most Sex and the City addicted, Daily Candy reading, New York City fashionista. Why do we say that? Because Zappos.com is obsessed with everything shoes, not just the shoes of some designer whose name you’re supposed to know.
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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 April 8, 2008
It wasn’t all that long ago when most people were afraid to buy things online. As the general public has become more comfortable with doing transactions on the net, the need for businesses to go online has obviously continued to increase. It’s easy for a large, well-known business to put together a website and start an e-commerce venture, but the transition has been much more difficult for small businesses like those that sell handmade crafts. With no brand recognition and limited resources to build a good looking website, it’s hard for mom and pops to win the trust of online consumers. For this reason, many have relied on eBay as a way to sell their wares. Unfortunately, eBay has become a hot bed for scams while continuing to raise their fees. Luckily for craft lovers, Etsy has stepped in as “a place to buy and sell all things handmade.”
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by Willy Franzen on November 29, 2007
When you started college, the Goldilocks economy (not too hot, not too cold, but just right) was cooking along with a nice balance of fear and optimism. You knew from freshman year that you wanted to get into real estate because, as they say, they’re never making any more of it. Well if you’ve been paying any attention to CNBC lately, real estate is not the place to be looking for an entry-level job. So how can you find a company in the industry that hasn’t cut out new hiring because of the down market?
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