By setting up a Google Alert for your name, you can easily keep track of when you are being discussed on the Internet and how extensive your Web presence becomes. Your alerts are handy for connecting you with people that discuss you on the Web. Hopefully, it’s all positive info, and you can enjoy increased alerts as you expand your interaction through the Google world, blogging and social networks.
Without my Google Alerts, I would never know how many different locations I can find to buy books written by the Jewish author of same name. That’s an added bonus.
Of course, for you college crazies, a Google Alert can also help you combat negative press out there. Didn’t know those Flickr pictures you tagged of yourself showed up on Google when someone searched for your name? Well, now you do, and you can go take care of untagging and removing the things better kept private when you apply for a job.
It’s a good idea to set up a Google Alert just so you are aware of what your potential employers will find when they type in your name and punch the dreaded “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. You don’t want it to be your Xanga from 1994 where you ranted on how much you hated your homeroom teacher, do you?
I bet the last thing you want to hear when you are coming out of college is that your grades will get your nowhere. In fact, as a night owl of both college and high school, I like to think that the hard work I put in to pull A’s was all worth it.
He argues that getting the grades is not always worth the sacrifice. Sure, having good grades when you can get them is the perfect scenario, but your priorities might be out of whack if you pull the kind of all nighters that Jon did limiting himself to just 3-5 hours of sleep most nights.
Of course, Jon has lots of work experience that allowed him to be very successful in getting a great job straight out of college and wasn’t planning on pursuing more degrees or law school elsewhere. He had a lot going for him. If you don’t have the kind of expertise that Jon did, your grades might matter more. At the same time, if you have the opportunity to get the kind of work experience that Jon did, even if it means sacrificing a few A’s for B’s, it might be worth it.
Having real world work experience is better than grades in my book, and proving yourself in the work force is much more valuable than proving you can slave away in a classroom.
Don’t become a slacker in college, but know that a healthy dose of networking and work experience can get you an amazing job opportunity just as much as grades can.
A guest post I wrote for Business Pundit this week went live today. I have to thank Rob for presenting me to a new audience of business moguls and young leaders. If you haven’t seen the post, check it out and become a regular of Business Pundit like me. The post discusses a new breed of employee that may or may not define the generations coming out of college today. I hope you enjoy it.
For those of you here for the first time, consider subscribing to my RSS feed and perusing the recent posts. Here’s a few you might find of interest:
I can’t emphasize enough how important I think it is to surround yourself with quality, motivated people–especially in a startup situation where your few employees are led by that strong support of the chief officers. CEOs cannot make any calls based upon personal relationships. They must pick the people who will create the best environment for success to help them lead the company. Keeping the bad ones only makes it worse.
The presence and influence of bad chief officers’ makes the employees under them revolt and despair. From such corruption lies perversion. All the good employees will be gone and the rest of the workforce will adapt to the changes and become just as corrupted as their superior. How can a company survive if everyone is only thinking about profiting themselves? What is worse is when these officers start to work with the enemy.
The blame for failure in leadership always falls on the CEO whether it is their own leadership or the leadership of those close officers around them. Make sure you select the best, inspiring people who get the job done, and don’t be afraid to quickly replace those individuals who don’t fit the needs of the job.
If you are not familiar with Threadless.com, they make shirts. Unlike most companies who choose their designs based upon focus testing and select influential parties, Threadless uses the crowd.
Similar to SnorgTees.com, Threadless accepts user-submitted designs. They use a public rating system to determine what shirts to print; therefore, they let the crowd run their product development like open source software.
According to MarketingVOX, the company expects $15 million in sales this year. It emerged from the minds of two Chicago art students who put in just $1,000 seven years ago.
Launched in September, the store has become a great brand-awareness opportunity, since most people coming in aren’t familiar with the website.
And in terms of getting those familiar with the brand incentive to come in, the retail location launches new shirts three days before they hit the web.
When you are young and not so full of cash, the best thing to do for a a business is to make the office a comfortable place to function. You might even go off the deep end providing comforts like extra plush chairs. All five of the top 5 items mentioned by the Texas Startup Blog are related to making the office comfortable. Money is better spent on these comforts than intense spending in advertising or over-the-top software.
Comfortable chairs.
Creature comforts such as ergonomic keyboards (if they are requested).
Bigger monitors.
Free soft drinks.
White boards.
The benefit of this investment may not be immediately obvious, but by making it more comfortable to be there, you not only breed goodwill and morale by making the office nice for the workers, but you also get a higher production out of these morale-boosted and comfy workers who can stay at the office longer.
With free caffeine, nice viewing monitors and plenty of white board space to dream–or plot–tons of work can get done no matter how many hours of the week it takes. I know I do.
Of course, these tips are mainly geared at tech startups who need the large screen real estate for coding and engineering projects, not necessarily every small business that you have in mind. Free soft drinks and white boards can be fairly universal, but chairs/monitors/keyboards might not matter to a company where employees are constantly on a computer.
A recent study proves that we are all seeking that chance to be our own boss these days.
The Foundation commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct an online survey of 2,438 youth ages 8 to 21 about entrepreneurship. It shows that four in 10 young people would like to start their own business in the future, while another 37 percent believe starting their own business is a possibility. Those who want to have their own business say their top reasons are to use their skills and abilities (92 percent), build something for their future (89 percent), be their own boss (87 percent), see their ideas realized (81 percent) and earn lots of money (85 percent). In the United States, 63 percent of respondents in the Harris survey already believe that, if they work hard, they can be entrepreneurs.
The possibilities excite me because a larger number of young entrepreneurs means greater risks and great advancements in the world of business and tech. The study also shows that a large number of young adults are looking to specialize and make use of their unique skills rather than becoming another one of the drones–see the 92 percent that want to start their own business to use “their skills and abilities.”
Good luck to us all. You know where to find the tips for your trade–right here at wannabeMogul.com, the home of the future of business.
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