by Willy Franzen on April 5, 2008

We’re going to try something a little different today. We want as many of our readers as possible to take a few minutes to take this test. After you’re done, report your score back to us in the comments section. This isn’t a competition to see who gets the highest score, so don’t be embarrassed if you don’t score very well. This test was administered to a large sample of American 17-year-olds, and the results, according to this report, weren’t too pretty. The results of the test tell a sad story about the state of cultural fluency in today’s youth. In fact, it looks to us as though the results are understated because respondents had a pretty good shot at guessing the correct answer due to the multiple choice format. This test and the report on the results were both put together by Common Core, a non-profit organization that wants every student to graduate high school with “an understanding of culture, the arts, history, literature, civics, and language.”
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by Willy Franzen on March 18, 2008

“May you live in interesting times.” It’s allegedly a translation of a Chinese proverb, but Wikipedia can’t even figure out who actually said it first. Regardless, a job at the Federal Reserve Board should be extremely “interesting” over the next year (at the very least). With Bear Stearns almost falling into bankruptcy, and a lot of other investment banks in trouble, a job in finance doesn’t look nearly as attractive as it did a year ago. Still, if you’re interested in economics, finance, or a related field, a job at the Federal Reserve Board is a great alternative. Although connected to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Board is a different entity. If you don’t already know, the Fed, which is led by Chairman Ben Bernanke, is responsible for crafting the monetary policy that supports the American economy.
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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 March 15, 2008

When we first decided to feature non-profit entry-level jobs on weekends, we saw it as a way to do some good while adding variety to the types of jobs we feature each day. We didn’t realize that an impending (possibly already happening) recession might change the outlook for college students who are in search of a first job. We can’t predict how the economy will affect entry-level hiring, but we do know that non-profit jobs can be more stable during downturns. We’re not saying that a job at a non-profit is recession proof, but the nature of a non-profit (at least a well funded one) makes them a little less sensitive to a short-term recession. One example of a well funded non-profit that is hiring aggressively at the entry-level despite the threat of recession is the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, “a private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare.”
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by Amy Gordon on March 9, 2008

What do John Hope Franklin, Paul Samuelson, Linus Pauling, and Jonathan Franzen have in common? Besides having last names that begin with a male first name, they were Fulbright Scholars who have gone on to acheive greatness in their respective fields. John Hope Franklin received a Presidential Medal of Freedom (America’s highest civilian honor), Paul Samuelson is a Nobel Laureate in Economics, Linus Pauling received the Nobel Prize for his work in Chemistry, and Jonathan Franzen is a novelist who just so happens to have an awesome last name.
The Fulbright Program aims to promote peace and understanding through educational exchange. It was created in the aftermath of World War II through the efforts of Senator J. William Fulbright, and today, is considered to be one of the most prestigious academic awards world-wide. In fact, more Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes than those of any other academic program.
Institute of International Education, aka IIE, manages the Fulbright Program, along with 250 other programs worldwide, and serves over 20,000 people from 175 nations each year.
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by Willy Franzen on March 8, 2008

If you’ve visited our about page, you might have noticed that I (Willy) am a fisherman – a fly fisherman to be more precise. Those of you who are unfamiliar with fishermen might think that sport fishing has a negative impact on the environment, but the opposite is typically true. In fact, sportsmen often make the best conservationists – mostly because they have a vested interest in protecting the resources that are necessary to the enjoyment of their sport. For this reason many conservation organizations have been formed by groups of sportsmen. One such organization is Trout Unlimited, which aims to conserve, protect, and restore North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds.
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by Willy Franzen on March 5, 2008

Typically young children are quite realistic about their career aspirations. They want to be firefighters, policemen, and teachers – professions that are in constant, steady demand. The more ambitious children might want a job as a doctor or veterinarian – still steady, but requiring a significant investment in education. It almost seems that as children we’re more realistic about life and careers than we are when we reach adulthood – except those kids who wanted to be astronauts. Since the beginning of the space program, there have only been 321 astronauts selected. Ever. There’s no surefire (or easy) way to become an astronaut – pilots, schoolteachers, doctors, scientist, and engineers have all been astronauts – but if selection as an astronaut is one of your life goals, you need to start preparing now. If you’re not ready for the commitment that it takes to be an astronaut, there are still plenty of entry-level jobs at NASA that will enable you to have a meaningful impact on the space program and NASA’s other endeavors.
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by Willy Franzen on February 28, 2008

This time of year, many of the entry-level consulting jobs are already filled. It’s amazing and a little disappointing if you’re still in the job market, but a good portion of consulting firms fill all of their entry-level job openings six to twelve months in advance of when the new hires will start working. That leaves a lot of soon to be college graduates who want to get into consulting with limited choices. Whether you were turned down when you applied in the fall, never got around to applying, or just realized that you’re interested in consulting, the apparent dearth of consulting jobs probably has you considering looking at other fields in lieu of consulting. Don’t give up so fast! There are still a lot of great consulting jobs out there, you just have to look beyond the sexy names. As is typical in the industry, Navigant Consulting does most of their hiring through campus recruiting in the Fall, but they still have some entry-level job openings.
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by Willy Franzen on February 16, 2008

Rocks and Minerals, Romance Quarterly, Preventing School Failure, Demokratizatsiya, Behavioral Medicine, and Historical Methods. No, this isn’t an excerpt from one of those spam e-mails with random words that don’t make any sense, but a small sampling of titles put out by Heldref Publications. As a non-profit publisher, Heldref Publications aims to provide a forum for scholarly discourse in the approximately 50 titles that they publish. These titles are geared towards academics in a wide range of fields, as you probably gathered from our first sentence. Those fields include “research and practice in K-12 and higher education, world affairs and political science, history, world literatures old and new, the arts, popular culture, psychology, social sciences, health, and the environment.”
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by Willy Franzen on January 31, 2008

For those who don’t attend “Blackboard schools,” Blackboard is a company that develops software to facilitate e-learning. In other words, your professor can post a syllabus, grades, announcements, and readings on the Blackboard course site. When we first considered writing a post about Blackboard, we thought we’d try to appeal to the Blackboard lovers. We know they’re out there, but after a thorough search of Facebook, it seems that this demographic isn’t yet ready to publicly declare their love for Blackboard. We were expecting a group named Blackboard Addicts Anonymous for compulsive grade checkers, but instead found a host of other Blackboard related Facebook groups.
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by Willy Franzen on January 13, 2008

On many college campuses there’s a constant battle between the old and the new. We’re not talking about Senior-Freshmen rivalries – that’s so high school. We’re talking about the state of constant construction that is as much a part of going to college as wearing flip flops in the shower. Administrators and trustees are left to decide whether it is better to make do with the quirky inadequacies of a building from a century ago, or to knock it down and build a new monstrosity in the latest architectural fashion. There is a fine balance that needs to be achieved between architectural and historic integrity and function. Unfortunately, it seems more and more common that campus decision-makers are deciding in favor of state of the art facilities built atop the graves of their obsolete predecessors (I guess you know what One Day, One Job’s stand on this issue is).
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by Willy Franzen on December 30, 2007

The SEED Foundation is a nonprofit organization (and the last one we’ll be featuring this year) that builds urban public boarding schools to prepare kids in underserved communities for college. They opened their first school in Washington, D.C. in 1998 and will be opening their second in Maryland next year. Amazingly, 97% of SEED graduates go on to college, and 85% are on track to graduate after matriculating. Some of them might even be your classmates
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by Willy Franzen on December 22, 2007

Americans for the Arts is a non-profit organization that represents and serves local communities in its efforts to create opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. Whether you’re interested in painting, dance, theatre, or sculpture – Americans for the Arts wants to enhance your ability to access artistic creativity, whether it be your own or someone else’s.
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by Willy Franzen on December 16, 2007

What’s more fun than a playground? Nothing. That’s why you should work for KaBOOM! - a non-profit organization that envisions a great place to play within walking distance of every child in the USA. Darell Hammond started KaBOOM! in 1995 with its first community playground build after he read about two children who suffocated while playing in an abandoned car in Washington, D.C. He wanted to make sure that a tragedy like that would never happen again. Today KaBOOM! is building hundreds of play places every year and giving children – especially those in low-income, urban neighborhoods – safe places to have fun.
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by Willy Franzen on November 26, 2007
Say you and your college roommate are having a disagreement over whether Uncle Jesse from Full House’s last name was Cochran or Katsopolis. 10 years ago, resolving such an important dispute would require either endless hours of watching Full House reruns or the consultation of an astutely knowledgeable third party – maybe your brother who has no job and watches tv on the couch all day. Today a quick Google or Wikipedia search can resolve the dispute (the answer is both – John Stamos asked that his character’s name be changed after the first season from Cochran to Katsopolis to represent his Greek heritage).
When businesses, legislatures, arbitration panels, and regulatory boards have important disputes like your hypothetical dispute above, they can’t just use Google to find the expert opinions and advice that they need. LECG is a firm that provides experts in a wide variety of fields. LECG’s experts provide independent expert testimony and analysis, original authoritative studies, and strategic consulting services to a list of clients that includes Fortune Global 500 corporations, major law firms, and local, state, and federal governments and agencies.
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by Willy Franzen on November 17, 2007
Welcome to the first Non-Profit Weekend on One Day, One Job. Every weekend we will shift our focus to career opportunities in the non-profit sector. Everybody needs to do something to make the world a better place, so we want to do our part by bringing attention to great entry-level jobs at charitable organizations.
Did you know that eating wild salmon is the best way to save wild salmon? It seems counterintuitive, but that’s the word that Save Our Wild Salmon is trying to spread. Their goal is to restore sustainable runs of Pacific salmon with a focus on the Columbia-Snake River Basin. Unfortunately, there is a lot more action needed to save our wild runs of King, Coho, and Sockeye Salmon and Steelhead than choosing to eat wild fish, but that’s the best way for an average Joe to make a difference. Want to do more? Why not take a job at Save Our Wild Salmon?
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by Willy Franzen on November 16, 2007
Normally on One Day, One Job, we try to focus on jobs that are below the radar. We know you’re visiting the big job boards, going to on-campus recruiting events, and hopefully using google to find jobs. Every day we like to show you career opportunities that you haven’t seen before, but today we’re going to talk about a company that you’re likely familiar with. GEICO has their online entry-level recruiting down to a science. Researching careers at GEICO may be so easy a caveman could do it, but we still want to put them in the spotlight as an example for other companies to aspire towards.
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