A Unique Niche Website for Non-Traditional Employees

I just found out about a new website called Hard2Hire.com which is just what the name sounds like: its for people who have a hard time getting hired and for the employers who are willing to give them a chance. Right now there are more than 100,000 potential employees with profiles on Hard2Hire and more than 2.8 million job listings on the site. Pretty impressive numbers I think for a new website.
Originally, Brian Poe, Founder and CEO of Hard2Hire.com and author of A Guide to Expungements and Pardons, set up the website to help ex-offenders find jobs once they had served their time. He has expanded the site to offer jobs for other non traditional folks like the elderly, disabled workers, and laid off workers.

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10 Free Computer Applications – Must Haves!

The following guest post from Dr. Debi Yohn could come in handy for college students and their parents
LifeHack.org is an amazing web site, probably one of the best on the net. They recommend these FREE computer programs:
OpenOffice.org: A top-quality, full-featured office productivity suite — word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, graphics editor, database, the works! Can save and open most Microsoft Office formats. If you have MS Works on your PC, ditch it and get OpenOffice.org instead. Available for most operating systems.
GIMP: A powerful, full-feature photo editing program, comparable to Photoshop. Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.
KeyNote: Even after 2 1/2 years of being abandoned by its developer, KeyNote (not the Mac presentation software) remains the best free outlining software, with support for rich text formatting, plugins and macros, hotkeys, and a lot more. Can be run from a flash drive, too.

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The Key To Finding ONE JOB During A Recession

If you’re job searching at the moment, let me ask you a question – how many jobs do you want?
Just the ONE right?
If you’re looking for just one job, it doesn’t matter how deep the recession is, how many job cuts are announced each day, how much doom and gloom there is in the environment – if you’re only looking for one job – one job will be out there. (Really, it will).
That’s the same attitude I had during the recession of the early 1990′s when I graduated with no relevant experience and a fairly average academic record. I kept telling myself “I only want one job – there’s one job out there with my name on it, I just need to go out and find it.”

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Resume “feature creep”

Ok – how many resumes have I reviewed, written, edited – not sure, but it feels like millions. One thing I have to say over and over again is don’t let your resume end up with “feature creep”.
Feature creep is a term for over doing it on product options. I came across the term in a book I’m currently reading called Made To Stick, by Dan & Chip Heath. They use a remote control as an example – sure, an engineer can make your remote do 12 billion things – but when is too many too much. When do we get away from ‘elegant design’ and into too ‘complicated’ for anyone to use.
It struck me that the same thing happens with one’s resume. We want to add ‘everything’, all our features, including the kitchen sink to our resumes and we over do to the point of zero white space, eye exhaustion and complete boredom on the reviewers part.

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10 Things To Know About Severance Packages

You’ve just been notified of your last day of employment. Your supervisor hands you a severance agreement and release and your mind is flooded with questions. How can this happen? Can they do that? Unfortunately, if you are an employee your employer can terminate you at any time, without notice and with or without severance.
After the shock, here are a few things you should consider when reviewing a severance agreement and managing the transition from one company to your next opportunity. Continue reading about severance packages …
Article courtesy of Salary.com&reg

Personal Branding Interview: Sally Hogshead

an interview by Dan Schawbel
Today, I spoke with Sally Hogshead, who gives sound advice on how to radically engineer your career and why doing things differently than everyone else will help you stand out. She is an author, speaker and media commentator, who brings years of experience to this interview. We talk about her fancy website, some of the research she’s conducted, how she got Careerbuilder to sponsor a book tour for her and reflections on her own personal brand. The main takeaway is that you don’t have to do what everyone else does in life. You don’t need to be afraid of putting your creativity out there for people to see.
Your website is extremely cool and bold. You even have your own Flash intro with sperm! Why should people invest money in their own websites instead of getting free hosting? Why is this good for personal branding?
When it comes to making a first impression, your website is every bit as important as your dress and demeanor. For many of us, it’s even more important because the people we want to reach might never actually meet us. That’s not to say your website needs to be complicated or expensive–not at all. It can be simply executed with brilliant content. But no matter what you can afford, it should very accurately communicate the specific qualities of your own personal brand.

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Gear Up for an Entry Level Job With Patagonia

You have to love it when a small company grows into something big. It’s hard to believe that some of today’s major corporations were started with a couple of people in a garage. What’s even more extraordinary is when a small company that gets big never loses sight of who they are. That’s the story of Patagonia, a company that started out making tools for climbers. They are now a “worldwide business that makes clothes for climbing – as well as for skiing, snowboarding, surfing, fly fishing, paddling and trail running.” You’ve probably heard of Patagonia, and there’s a good chance that you own something made by them, whether it’s a polar fleece, a windbreaker, or long underwear. With a winter like this one, Patagonia gear is especially necessary for avoiding frostbite. Despite advances in technology and amazing business growth, Patagonia continues to take the same approach to their business – their “product design demonstrates a bias for simplicity and utility” and their “values reflect those of a business started by a band of climbers and surfers, and the minimalist style they promoted.” Patagonia makes exceedingly cool products, and they are the definition of a cool place to work. Continue reading about Patagonia…
Article by Willy Franzen of One Day, One Internship and One Day, One Job

Entry Level Jobs With Helen Keller International

I’m sure that all of you learned the story of Helen Keller in elementary school, but just to refresh you she was a woman who overcame growing up both blind and deaf in the late 1800s to graduate from Radcliffe College magna cum laude. These days that would still be impressive, but it’s amazing that she did that when she did it. (She had a tutor spell textbooks letter by letter into her hand.) After graduating from college, Helen Keller made it her life’s work to help blind and deaf-blind people. She founded Helen Keller International in 1915, and it has been “devoted to fighting and treating preventable blindness and malnutrition” ever since. Continue reading about Helen Keller International…
Article by Willy Franzen of One Day, One Internship and One Day, One Job

Venture Capital Internships With vSpring Capital

I don’t think that we’ve featured any internships in Venture Capital yet, but today that’s going to change. From what I’ve heard, it seems like there just aren’t that many internships in VC to start with, and when there are, they get snapped up almost immediately. That’s why I was pretty interested when I got word that vSpring Capital is now recruiting for their Summer Internship Program. They’re based out of Salt Lake City, UT, and they’ve funded a portfolio of companies that work in the Software, Communications, Internet, and Life Sciences industries. I don’t recognize any of their portfolio companies by name, but some of them look pretty cool, so you should check them out. Continue reading about vSpring Capital…
Article by Willy Franzen of One Day, One Internship and One Day, One Job

Get Animated With a Blue Sky Studios Internship

This weekend my Dad e-mailed me about a company that had just moved to Connecticut (where I’m originally from). Connecticut has been working hard to attract the movie industry to the state – they even have what is called a “Hollywood East Task Force” in Hartford – so it’s big news when a company like Blue Sky Studios makes a move to Connecticut because they’ve been bribed by tax credits. It certainly brings a lot of jobs (and internships) to Connecticut (even though New York loses just as many.) As interesting as it is that Connecticut is trying to become “Hollywood East,” it’s not nearly as interesting as what Blue Sky Studios does. They “pioneer creatively superior photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation for the feature film, television and entertainment industries.” Put more simply, they’re behind feature films like Ice Age, Horton Hears a Who, and Robots, and some pretty cool shorts too. Continue reading about Blue Sky Studios…
Article by Willy Franzen of One Day, One Internship and One Day, One Job