Oct

31

Corporate America vs Entrepreneurship

Filed Under Career | Comments

I came across this article, Why do you work so hard?, from SFGate.com. The article is targeted toward anyone who is over-worked in their corporate job and questioning why and how that happened to them. Why are they in a job with excessive hours and workload? Why are they stuck with in unsatisfactory career which is causing negative effects on their personal life?

This article forces you to think about your career and what you are willing to sacrifice if any changes need to be made. How do you come to that decision to make a drastic career change? It depends how bad your current situation is. Certain types of commitments obviously make it harder and riskier for someone to make any sudden career changes. Here is some good advice from the article:

It is not for everyone. It implies incredibly difficult choices and arranging your life in certain ways and giving up certain luxuries and many, many people seemed locked down and immovable and all done with exploring new options in life, far too deeply entrenched in debts and family obligations and work to ever see such unique light again. Maybe you know such people. Maybe you are such people.

But sometimes people do take those risks and suffer the career loses for the greater good of their personal life.

Not long ago, the CEO of one of the largest and most powerful international real estate firms in the nation quit his job. Stepped down. Not, as you might imagine, for retirement and not to play more golf and not to travel the world staying only in Four Seasons suites, but to work on rebuilding his relationship with his estranged wife.

The way we think about our careers needs to change. Entrepreneurship is not taught enough in today’s society therefore many people don’t know what their other options are besides Corporate America.

We always think such lives are for others and never for ourselves, something people with huge chunks of cash reserves or huge hunks of time or huge gobs of wildly ambitious talent can do. It is never for us. And truly, this mind-set is the national plague, a fate worse than death.

Because of this, very few people break from the norm and go on to do great things in business. We need to learn from the people that do and keep educating ourselves to make better career choices.

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Oct

28

Incongruities in Business

Filed Under Books, Innovation | Comments

In Peter Drucker’s book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, Chapter 4 is dedicated to incongruities. He defines an incongruity as a discrepancy, a dissonance, between what is and what “ought” to be, or between what is and what everybody assumes it to be. In regards to business, an incongruity is a symptom of an opportunity to innovate.

In the book, he goes on to provide some good examples of incongruities in business and how they were resolved. He ends the Chapter by stating:

The incongruity within a process, its rhythm or its logic, is not a very subtle matter. Users (or customers) are always aware of it. What is lacking, however is someone willing to listen, somebody who takes it seriously what everyone proclaims: That the purpose of a product or a service is to satisfy the customer. If this axiom is accepted and acted upon, using incongruity as an opportunity for innovation becomes fairly easy-and highly effective.

The only limitation is most incongruities are identifiable to people only on the inside of a certain industry or service, and someone on the outside will not even be aware of it. It is up to an entrepreneur to identify it and take action in coming up with a solution to exploit the incongruity.

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Oct

27

Leopard missing hard drive bug

Filed Under Apple | Comments

Many people (including myself) may have panicked a little when Leopard did not recognize their internal hard drive. It will, however, locate an external hard drive if you have one connected. There should be no reason to use disk utility or resort to a clean install if this happens to you.

After doing some research on the Apple support forums, I found a simple suggestion and solution in this discussion: just wait. It took my computer a few minutes before my hard drive appeared grayed out and then a minute later I was able to select it. Other people have reported it took up to 15 minutes for their hard drive to appear. It should not make any difference whether you have Disk Utility open or not.

Forum member ‘fancontrol’ explains what is most likely happening:

When Leopard checks for available installation volumes it does a quick check to find out if the file system is dirty/clean. If the file system is dirty than Leopard does a full file system-check on that volume. This process is running in the background and makes the volume disappear. The file system check can take up to 20 minutes depending on the size, speed and number of files on your drive. Once the file system check is finished, the volume should reappear. As it turns out the file system check on Leopard works different than on Tiger.

Apple should really have included a progress bar when the check is running (rather than doing it in the background) and letting the user know what is going on.

I definitely agree, a progress bar would have been smart. My total install took over an hour and went very smooth otherwise. I did the default upgrade and everything was exactly as I had left it in Tiger which was very comforting.

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Oct

24

Working for Staples, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Apple, and AT&T

Filed Under Misc | Comments

This article is meant to help people who are thinking about employment with any of these retailers. I worked many years in retail when I was younger and this article will cover 5 of the retail jobs I held before graduating college.

What I am going to do is give a general summary of my experience working at these stores and whatever additional information comes to mind. This article from Fast Company also got me thinking and I may go into further detail on some of this retail experience at a later time. Some of the things I will briefly cover now are: training, job difficulty, and pay. I worked in these stores from 2000 to late 2006 and have them listed in order of employment, starting with Staples when I was youngest and ending with Cingular – the new AT&T. I have moved on since then to the corporate world.

What everyone should take into consideration while reading this (which should be common sense), is that my experience certainly does not represent the way it will be at every store. I think the two factors that will play the biggest roles in an overall retail work experience are: the employees you work with (management in particular) and the customers you will have to deal with. The hourly pay will also vary between different locations and your prior experience. So let’s begin…

Staples (approx. $7/hr)

Here, I mainly worked the customer service desk which meant being a cashier and answering the phone. Training was mainly one-on-one from what I remember and the POS system was very easy to use. The environment was OK and I was fortunate to work with some nice people. Management focused a lot on the store image. This is basically your local grocery store for office supplies. Most people came in, got what they needed and were on their way.

There were no real benefits since I only worked part-time. One downside was most of the employees were very lazy in my store so you couldn’t really depend on anyone to get something done. Overall, a pretty easy and simple job with decent pay if you are young. I worked at a fast food restaurant for my very first job, and this was certainly a huge step up from mopping greasy floors and changing garbage bags full of soda.

Overall Rating 4/5

Radio Shack (approx. $7/hr + commission)

I spent the longest time here out of all these jobs, for no particular reason. I honestly don’t know how Radio Shack is still in business. Who goes there to buy anything but resistors and fuses anymore? The training was not very good which makes it tough to help the customers who come in looking for small parts. Most of the time after searching for 20 minutes you’d find out the $1 part they needed was out of stock anyway. It’s hard training yourself on the 2,000 small parts and accessories Radio Shack sells. Be ready to try and sell and then up sell customers on the stores products, especially cell phones and satellite installations.

These are smaller stores which means it will not be as busy as the larger retailers. There were many slow days & nights when you did nothing for hours except maybe sell a phone battery to a senior citizen and stock products. Not good for the paycheck, but less stressful. All employees had to attend a monthly training class which usually focused only on selling cell phones and satellite service. The POS system was not very user friendly. Avoid this store if it is not in a busy location and if you are not very good at sales because you will end up working for close to minimum wage with no real benefits for part-time employees.

Overall Rating 3/5

Circuit City (approx. $10/hr)

I worked here for one holiday season, the busiest time for a store like this. Training was mainly computer and reading material based, so very dry and boring. It is a large store with many employees and managers so you will get to know a lot of people. Prior to me working there, the pay structure was much better because of higher paying commissions. It then changed unfavorably for the employees, obviously to save the company money. So while I was there, the only commission that was made was by selling extended warranties.

The employee discount was average at best. It’s nothing spectacular considering better deals can now sometimes be found online at other retailers. Just to warn you, working on a Black Friday meant everyone needed to be there 5am and work the registers for 12 hours straight. Management did focus a lot on overall store sales here and everybody’s sales were tracked to see who wasn’t selling. Most of the employees besides a few really didn’t know much about what they were selling which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. But the customers that came in generally were not very tech savvy either.

Overall Rating 2/5

Apple (approx. $11/hr + quarterly commission bonus)

I applied here right around the time I started becoming interested in Apple products. A new store was opening very close to home so I applied online. I ended up getting the job even though I was not very knowledgeable with Apple products (I didn’t even own an iPod). The interview was conducted with 6 people in one room and was about 30 minutes long. They asked me about my prior retail sales experience and asked me some general questions about Apple products, which were not difficult since I told them I was new to Apple. Training was 6 full days from 9-6 in a nearby hotel before the store opened. If you are hired for an already established store, I believe you train mainly on the back computer and during regular hours with an assistant manager. There are ongoing training classes held in the store on Apple’s software titles which management encourages you attend.

You will work with a very diverse group of people. They try to hire genuinely nice people, so if that is one of your traits, you should get along with mostly everyone. Weekdays were OK here, but Saturdays were extremely busy. Especially since the store I worked in was not very large and located in a very busy shopping mall. There were days when I worked from the beginning to the end of my shift non-stop (besides breaks). You do get a couple 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute break if you work a full shift.

Partial benefits were available to part-time employees and full benefits with 401k and stock options available to full-time employees. Employee discount was 25% once a year and 15% three times a year on hardware, and a crummy 10% to use anytime in the store. They don’t give any discounts on software but you should be supplied with the latest iWork, iLife, and a free .Mac account for your length of employment. All employees at my store also received an iPod nano before opening which you get to keep after a certain amount of time. I believe they may have stopped giving out the iPod’s for new stores though.

The quarterly bonus depended on how well the store did and on the total hours you worked. As long as you are in a busy store (which most all Apple stores are nowadays), you can expect a pretty good commission check. All your sales are tracked on an individual basis and each month you sit down with a manager to see where you are not performing. All employees now have to use the wireless EZ-Pay systems that email purchase receipts so this means many repetitive conversations with customers explaining to them how the system worked and convincing them that there was no need for a paper receipt. Overall, it was good job. I got to learn a lot about Apple products and also got a MacBook Pro at 25% off.

Overall Rating 4/5

AT&T Wireless (approx. $12/hour + commission)

The interview was held with the store manager. They look for people who are knowledgeable with mobile phones and wireless technology. The training will either be in store or a week long out of store if there is one being held close to your time of hire. Once you are hire, there are online training courses which must be completed regularly. The stores are smaller in size but can get very busy on the weekends and many weekday nights. The store itself does not carry a large inventory which makes it easier to keep organized and stocked.

Another job that is hourly pay plus commission. Your sales will vary depending on the time of year, how aggressive you are, and some luck. It is a pretty competitive environment because of the large commission aspect so be prepared to work for your sales. What made it kind of hard to sell was not having many good phones to sell at low prices. Most people nowadays expect a free phone with a 2 year contract, but it was rare to see that while I worked there. Full-time employees get full benefits with 401k and paid time off. The biggest perk is getting a free cell phone to use with unlimited minutes and data, but on an average network.

Overall Rating 3/5

In Conclusion…

I do not regret working any of these jobs. I was able to save a good amount of money and pay for all my expenses through college. I learned a lot from my experience and I think some of the things I learned to deal with have helped me become a better rounded person. Most importantly, you will learn how to interact with people, how to deal with stress, and many other selling and customer service skills which can help you a great deal in business.

Please correct me if I am wrong about anything in this article. Let me know about your own experiences with these stores or any other retail job.

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Oct

22

Standout Jobs to help employers produce recruiting videos

Filed Under Marketing, Videos, Web | Comments

Standout Jobs is one of the first companies that will help employers produce short videos for open job positions or general recruiting. The main idea behind these videos is to illustrate to potential employees what it’s like to work for the company, which will hopefully gain their interest. Before, the only way to know about a great company was by hearing from friends and family or from someone on the inside through word-of-mouth. It is quite obvious that video recruiting will not take off fast because it is a very new type of recruiting, but it should be a steady, gradual growth.

I think being an early entry into this type of job recruiting will be a major advantage for Standout Jobs when they fully launch their service (Fall 2007) and become better established. I will go even further and say that I think they will be successful with creating the tipping point for video recruiting. But, I do not think video recruiting will completely replace online job listings.

I came across the first Standout Jobs video job ad at the FreshBooks website a while back and was reminded of this video when I read an article in Entrepreneur titled Recruiting 2.0. Freshbooks found out about Standout Jobs through their first job ad video uploaded to YouTube. The FreshBooks blog summarized this service and introduces us to how Standout Jobs was started by founders Fred Ngo and Benjamin Yoskovitz. The blog post encourages employers to:

Get away from the 1950s. Use the power of new services like YouTube to tell the human story. Show the quirks and personalities that characterize the company. Expose the culture and the emotional drive and the funny bone to the world. Demonstrate that your company is not your average a 100-person team, but a place where the inspired come to inspire.

What makes some of these videos very attractive to potential employees is the comedy and creative approaches taken in some of them so far to get attention. I am unsure if Standout Jobs is behind all creative development or if it’s a joint collaboration between them and their client. The main idea behind this creative approach is: Who wouldn’t want to work for a fun, creative company? The only problem I can foresee is that some companies might try to portray a “fun” environment just for the video, therefore misleading people about their company. Hopefully it will be easy to see past this by getting the sense that they tried too hard.

What surprised me so far about Standout Job’s strategy, is that it does not look like they will be hosting the videos, but instead they will be hosted elsewhere. Then the hiring company will decide how they want to showcase them, most likely by placing them in their blog or just hoping they spread by themselves on popular sites like YouTube. I think as Standout Jobs grows and builds a name for itself, more people will go to their site directly just to view the new video job ads.

These recruiting videos could be a huge success with similar young entrepreneurial tech companies like Xobni, which has also already consulted with Standout Jobs to help them produce a video. For example, I could also see a company like skinnyCorp (parent company of Threadless) using this type of recruiting. They are a young, successful company with a very cool environment. Connected Ventures (parent company of College Humor) made this video for fun and 4 million views later, their inbox was overflowed with resumes and they are still getting them to this day. Another thing that certainly surprised me was when I saw that Standout Jobs was not even making video ads for their own job opportunities. What’s up with that?

I certainly can’t see large companies like IBM or GE consulting with Standout Jobs anytime soon. If these ads prove to be successful, they might get the attention of other large companies like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon who like to promote their unique work environments. Some more examples of similar types of video recruiting are Yahoo’s video here and Google’s video here.

Check out the Standout Jobs website for their latest work and to get an idea of what video recruiting is if you are unsure. If the video is done right and it spreads successfully, the best candidates will come to you. This is currently an unconventional method of recruiting, but it can be a very effective way to attract great employees in the future. Well, that is if your hiring. If your not hiring, then I would advise against making a video with your employees for fun and posting it online.

Update: I received an email from one of the co-founders of Standout Jobs which points out that their focus will not only be on videos, but to also help market and build their client’s brand through other tools. Something else to look out for in the future.

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