Electronic Job Fairs Innovate Industry and Create New Opportunities

If you’re like me, you’ve been reading the news over the past months about the economic slowdown and how college grads are facing lower salaries and tighter job markets. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more students are heading to college than ever before. The number of college graduates is rising and that means fiercer competition in a tougher labor market. If you want a great job in your field with a good starting salary, you better work at it smarter than everyone else. One of the newest and innovative ways to do this is through electronic job fairs.

I spoke with Jason Vrane, Chief Marketing Officer of EJobFairs.net last week and had the chance to see first hand how E-Job Fairs can be a valuable source for solid employment opportunities. Ejobfairs.net minimizes the hassle of traditional career fairs by allowing employers to search and reach out to specific candidates and speak with them. “It’s a great time saver because you are engaged primarily with people who see potential value in you as an employee for their firm,” Vrane said. The site, which is currently working on a second round of funding, plans to add many more tools for both job seekers and employers to maximize the experience and create even more productivity. You can visit their site at www.ejobfairs.net to see a demo and view upcoming e-fairs.

There’s an old adage that sales is a contact sport - the more people you contact, the better your sales will be. Translated for jobs, the more exposure and networking you do will ultimately increase your odds of finding the right career move for you. What I like about Ejobfairs is that it leverages the technology to create more effective exposure for everyone.

Forget about the economic statistics and make it happen. You are now one step ahead of the rest. Whether you’re a recent graduate looking for a great starting job or a seasoned professional looking to make a switch, electronic career fairs are a great way to get started.

Mobile Marketing - Could it be Cool?

The second I heard the words "Mobile Marketing" I thought of the spam box on my email, full of offers for free Ipods and get-a-way trips. My initial reaction to the concept of mobile marketing was quite negative and the future was looking bleak.

At last though, I thought, could there be a way to make mobile marketing valuable for consumers? I brain stormed a few examples and want to see what people think about using SMS in marketing strategies.

1) Airline Companies - This was the first example I thought of: Airliners. Southwest paved the way for paperless E-ticketing. Using text messages to notify customers that they can check in or perhaps sending a text about cheap rates in their area could boost revenues for the airliners and at the same save consumers money.

2) Ticketmaster.com - Receive a text message when tickets go on sale for that band you've been dying to see. I can't tell you how many times Rush has been to Jacksonville and I missed out on the show because I forgot! If I had been reminded to get those tickets I could have seen Neal Pert rock a ten minute drum solo!

3) CNBC - Text me the opening numbers of the NYSE, DOW, and NASDAQ. Be the wise guy at work who knows everything before everyone else. Sound smart and look good for clients and bosses and be the king of the water cooler. Oh yeah, CNBC can throw a few ads up - Not to mention grow their branding efforts.

Maybe mobile marketing isn't all bad? Maybe it's just change that I was afraid of. I hope that ad executives and marketing officers will stay creative and remember that the best way to gain and keep consumers under their guise is to keep providing them will good value. If I start getting spammed I'm going to take the high road - I'll sue somebody.

A Complete Guide to Internships

Internships are becoming more and more important in obtaining a great job right out of college. I found this article and thought it would be helpful for anyone looking to do an internship over the summer or in the upcoming year.

By Derrick Dortch
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, March 12, 2003; 4:00 PM

If you want a great job after college you must do more than earn good grades and get involved in extracurricular activities. Good grades and extracurricular activities are looked upon favorably by employers but they are not enough. According to the 2001 Job Outlook Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers say that the perfect candidate is a graduate who brings relevant work experience to the table. This experience is mostly gained through internships.

The purpose of this article is to provide you with information on internships and give you a starting strategy to get one.

What Is an Internship?

An internship is a structured learning experience in a work setting that gives a student the opportunity to learn about a career interest and gain valuable knowledge and experience in a particular field. In an internship, you work just like an employee but your purpose is to receive mentorship, supervision, and training. Internships are designed to assist students in the career exploration process to determine if that career matches their interests and skills.

Are Internships Important?

Internships are very important to a college student preparing for the world of work. It should be seen as an integral part of your academics. To get this relevant experience, students should intern with employers who are doing the kind of work they are interested in pursuing after college. Here are a few reasons why internships are so important.

Internships:
•Test your skills and interests.
• Provide insight into prerequisites needed for employment.
• Develop a network of professional contacts for future opportunities and references.
• Increase your awareness of the skills you need to develop.
• Provide valuable work experience such as workplace communication skills.
• Build a strong resume.

How Early Should I Begin Planning for an Internship?

Plan your internship as soon as possible. If you are able to intern your freshman year that is great but it should be a priority for your sophomore and junior years. Take your first semester in college and get acclimated but after you are settled, consider talking to your career center about internships and how to develop an internship search strategy. Even if you are not sure what you want to do, exploring various fields will help you decide on what career match your interests, passions, and goals.

When Are Internships Available?

The majority of internships take place in the summer but many are available year around. In Washington D.C. and other major cities, companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations will have interns working during the fall, spring, and summer semester.

How Early Should I Begin Applying?

Application deadlines vary from organization to organization. Summer internship positions in large organizations or very competitive internship programs sometimes have deadlines as early as October, November, or December. Others will have deadlines in February, March, or April. It all depends on the organization and their hiring process. During the beginning of the fall semester or even at the end of the summer begin planning where you want to intern in the summer. Check with the organization(s) about the application procedure and deadline. Remember proper planning and preparation are key to getting the internship you want.

How Many Hours Should I Work at an Internship?

Summer internships can be full or part-time positions depending on the organization. If you decide to intern during the fall and spring semesters, it is recommended that you work 10 - 15 hours a week maximum. Remember that your academic studies are a priority. Exceeding 15 hours at an internship during the semester/quarter is not recommended unless your class load is light and flexible.

Are Internships Paid or Unpaid?

Summer internships can be paid or unpaid depending on the organization and career field. The majority of summer internships are paid. If a summer internship is unpaid they may only require you to work part-time so that you will be able to get another job. Internships during the academic semester/quarter many times are unpaid but there are a few organizations where interns are paid. Some organizations will pay for travel to and from work so make sure you discuss this with the internship provider before accepting a position.

Do I Need to Do Anything Before Looking for an Internship?

Whether you are just beginning your career exploration process or if you're a veteran, there are some steps that are always helpful to follow. This process should begin with a self-assessment. Evaluate your interests, skills, and passions. Select the career fields that match you the best.

Where Do I Find Internships?

Your career center. The staff and resources of your college/university career center are available to help you find an internship. There are private career consultations and workshops. Most career centers also have a library and Web site with a number of books and online resources to help you find an internship. Career centers usually maintain internship opportunity listings online or in their resource area.

The Internet. Use the search engines on the Web and see what you discover.

Company Web sites. Most companies will list internships, summer opportunities and special programs in the employment or career opportunities section of their Web site. Look for Career Employment/Opportunities on the home page. This link is sometimes on the home page but if it cannot be found look in the site index, contact us, about us or search sections of the Web site.

Online internship listing services. There are a number of online internship search engines available for you to conduct your search.

Career books. There are a number of books published on internship opportunities. Two of the most popular are "The Internship Bible" published by The Princeton Review and "Peterson's Yearly Internship Book" published by Thomson Learning. Libraries and bookstores usually have a good selection of books on internships. Also online bookstores like Amazon.com are good resources as well.

Newspapers. Look in the employment section of newspapers. If you see a full time listing that interests you, contact that company and see if there are any internships available. Every spring, The Washington Post runs a section in the employment guide of internship listings.

Career fairs. Each university will usually have an annual career fair with companies, organizations and agencies looking for interns. Talk to your career center and find out when the career fair will be held and how to prepare it.

Alumni. Alumni can be a great resource for information on internship opportunities in their career field or place of employment. Contact Alumni Affairs/Relations office for alumni contacts in your field(s) of interest.

Network contacts. Networking is very important in your career development. Joining associations and attending professional events and job fairs will help you build your network. Use contacts to learn about opportunities that are available in your field of interest. Each career area has at least one association and newspaper or journal. Associations for various industry sectors and career fields (i.e. American Management Association, American Medical Association, etc.) may have internship listings in their publications or Web sites. Check out AssociationCentral.org for a directory of associations listed by industry or career field.

Professors/Professional staff. Many professors or professional staff will have contacts outside the university in organizations of interest. At many colleges and universities, a good number of professors are adjunct and maintain a professional job outside of teaching. They may have internships at their place of employment or know of organizations in need of interns. Talking with them about your interests may yield great contacts and opportunities.

Parents, family, and friends. Share your career interests with your parents, family member and friends. They may know of a contact who can help you get an internship in that area of interest.

Develop your own internship. You may know of a contact in a career field of interest. Talk with them about an internship in their place of employment.

Explore each of these options carefully and you will find that there are a number of internships available. Although there may be many opportunities remember there are many college students like you working to get the internship. Make sure you waste no time in sending out your sales package to assure your candidacy. Now you know where you want to intern, go for it!

Follow the Trends

• Almost 70 percent of executives around the world say that global social, environmental, and business trends are increasingly important to corporate strategy, according to a McKinsey survey. Yet relatively few companies act on the global trends they think will affect them most; among those that do act, only 17 percent report significant benefits.
• One reason might be underinvestment in trends. For instance, many companies that pursue growing consumer segments in emerging markets build operations there but don’t develop lower-cost products.
• Companies that don’t act on trends they think will be important cite a shortage of skills and resources, higher strategic priorities, or a lack of possible responses to these trends.

Click here for the complete article

The Coming World of Collaboration - Follow up

Howard Rheingold, author of Street Mobs and invited lecturer at California’s renowned TED conference explains the phenomena of collaboration and its evolutionary effect on creating new forms of wealth and perhaps reforms to traditional economic theory. He initially notes that traditional success in both business and politics was fueled by the notion of Darwin’s biological theory of evolution; that the strongest and fiercest survive. But while this ideology has held true throughout the life of capitalism – he’s sure to emphasize that capitalism will continue to rule – the birth and growth of technology has vastly spread cooperation, collective action, and complex interdependencies. This, he notes, has forced competition to make a little room.

What Howard is really trying to get across to us is that through the cooperation, collective action, and interdependencies new forms of wealth can and are being created. In an example he gives early in his lecture he compares this collaboration to prehistoric times when small family units survived by hunting small game like rabbits and other animals. At some point however, hunters gathered together and collaborated to hunt the massive mastodon. His point being that today we can collaborate to conquer bigger “game.”

While the ideas presented could be criticized as rudimentary, it’s no farce that this level of collaboration is occurring today and is being led by some of the world’s biggest corporations. IBM, Sun Microsystems, and other leading IT firms are open-sourcing much of their software and encouraging other developers, be it graduate students or high school kids, to work and advance the available research. Toyota gives extensive training to its suppliers to help them increase their production efficiency even though many suppliers also work with their direct competitors. Even within these fierce markets, companies are opening up and welcoming collaboration. Why? Rheingold argues this is happening because it is a certain kind of sharing in self-interest.

For example, by allowing bloggers to earn money through its Adsense program, Google enriched itself by creating a new market for advertisers. Amazon.com opened its application interface to over 60,000 designers which in turn has grown the number of Amazon stores significantly while making money for virtual store owners. EBay, the auction giant, created an enormous market by creating a feedback mechanism that allows users to trust each other. All these examples reinforce how collaboration can turn a Prisoners Dilemma into an Insurance Game.

The Prisoners Dilemma, as in all game theory, states that “the only concern of each individual player is maximizing his/her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff. The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution—that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperate.” The distrust players have for each other in this model is what dictates their rationale. If both could trust each other, they would be apt to work together and obtain larger rewards. This model in which trust is present between actors is known as the insurance game. This is what is beginning to happen. The most evident example of this is EBay. By establishing trust between buyers and sellers a huge new market was established where lower prices are often found for buyers and many new markets for goods that normally can’t be sold are now a click away for sellers.

These actions are all about self-interest to grow and add more to the already existent. Rene Descartes, the famous philosopher explained that we need a new way of thinking to understand absolute truth. While absolute truth would be nice, we can start by understanding the sociological and economic evolution that is the future of commerce and innovation. Globalization is shaking the foundation of traditional thought. To finish, I will leave you with the question Rheingold poses in his book Street Mobs. Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of the most powerful entrenched interests? The answer seems to be getting clearer.

Sources:

TED Lecture – http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/216

Wikipedia: Game Theory & the Prisoners Dilemma –

Trackback: http://grantdeken.blogspot.com/2008/04/coming-wold-of-collaboration-follow-up.html

The Coming World of Collaboration

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons.

You can learn more about Howard Rheingold and his work by visiting his blog at http://www.rheingold.com/

Trackback: http://grantdeken.blogspot.com/2008/04/coming-world-of-collaboration.html

Young People Embracing Entrepreneurship

I found this survey on Inc. Magazines entrepreneurial section of their website (www.inc.com) and thought I would post it up and see if there's much of a response...

"A recent survey commissioned by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found that four out of 10 youths between the ages of 8 and 21 either have started or want to start their own business in the future.

Of those who have the entrepreneurial spirit, 92 percent said they want to found a business to use their skills and abilities, 89 percent want to build something for their future, and 85 percent hope that creating their own company will result in a high salary, according to the survey of 2,438 young people.

Overall, 63 percent of all respondents said they think that if they work hard enough, they can start their own successful business. (Source)"

With the amount of information and tools at the tips of peoples fingers it's now easier than ever to accomplish the goal of starting your own business. I'm curious to know who many people reading this are interested in being their own boss some day??