Startuply Blog

So asks Tom Davenport in an article on the Harvard Business Review. All I can say is that we’re working on it.

Communities built around niche job boards like Startuply are a big part of the fragmentation that’s currently happening in the online recruiting industry, and distributed job networks that shift the publishing model from push to pull will be another big part of the solution.

How do you see the future of recruiting?

Peter Merholz has a great new post up on his (new!) blog/column that points out  the divide between natural or evolved human behavior, organization and expression and the narrow work roles we’ve been boxed into in the last hundred years. I love some of his conclusions:

As I’ve been thinking of this technological revolution, I’ve realized we need an organizational revolution. The organizations many of us work in remind me of the state of computer technology from five years ago:

They’re remarkably confining.

We’re placed in hierarchical org charts, remnant of railroad and factory operations of the 19th century, and find ourselves in silos that prevent us from collaborating with our colleagues.

We’re given job titles with an explicit set of responsibilities, and discouraged to perform outside that boundary.

We’re discouraged from being too social, from engaging honestly about our emotions, as such behavior is “unprofessional.”

We thus leave the office having only engaged a small part of who we are.

Is it any wonder that most companies deliver such poor customer experiences? They can’t even create a good staff experience, and that’s something they have a higher degree of influence over! The companies that do best in serving others are those that do best in serving themselves. In your business, encourage yourself and those around to do something that’s so simple, it’s truly profound (and maybe a little bit dangerous) — be human.

For many of us, one of the major joys and attractions of startup life is the freedom it provides to break out of the boxes (literally) of stereotypical Corporate America, both physically and intellectually. It’s pretty exciting, too, to watch as startups change the world by recognizing the artificial distinction between the professional and the social and help make work more human.

Welcome back, kids. I hope the week treated everyone well. While Summertime is coming, don’t pull a Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff.  Now is not the time to sit back and unwind. Put back the ice cream and leave the AC off for now.  Fear not kids, there will be time for more ice cream later because right now there are jobs to be had.

This week is about avoidance. No, this is not about giving false numbers or hiding from debt collectors, your parents, friends and significant others. These are tips to avoid when you’re applying for jobs. Colin Stewart, a columnist for the OC Register lays out some great tips for job seekers.

Mistake 1: Show your desperation

Mistake 2: Do all your searching online

Let’s break it down. Mistake number one, showing your desperation. This would be bringing pictures of your pets and loved ones to show your prospective employer. Yes, we all need money but desperation isn’t good at 2:00 am or at 2:00 pm for an interview. Your dog is cute but tears about how you are going to feed Don Vito are best left for your Tumblr . Go strong and confident and show your future employer what you’ve been doing on your time off. Take advantage of the face-to-face to show how you’ve been successful under stressful situations.  Be smart. It’s the best way to roll.

Mistake number two, do all your job searching online. I admit this is a fault of mine. I mean who leaves their apartment anymore? If I can’t find a Web site, Yelp review or forum for your product it probably isn’t worthy of my purchase. Although with unemployment my purchases are left to rice, and if I was lucky enough to buy anything it’d be the item on the sale. To be honestly, and this hard for me to admit, there is life beyond the tubes of the Internet. Talk to friends, go to networking events and look beyond the walls of job sites. Job sites are a great place — not going to lie. They can introduce to you new people and opportunities. Just don’t rely solely on e-mail. Take a lesson from the game Girl Talk and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.

Have better advice? Share your tips in the comments below.

Rachel (@raee) is one of the bloggers you’ll be reading here. She offers ways to look for jobs, tips for building up your resume, and other assorted  and priceless job-seeking information. She is currently freelancing in PR and blogging about her unemployment experiences over at www.recentlylaidoff.com. Go check her site out!

My name is Rachel and I’ll be one of the bloggers you’ll be reading here. I’ll be offering ways to look for jobs, tips for building up your resume and job-seeking information here. As for me, I was laid off January 16, 2009 from a PR agency that worked in video games and interactive media. I’m currently freelancing and blogging about my unemployment experiences at www.recentlylaidoff.com. I look forward to blogging here and answering your questions about the best way to cook dried beans while applying for jobs at the best start-ups.

It’s not your father’s country anymore, well good morning to you as well CNN.  While it may not be our parents country or our grandparents country either, it’s still our country. So whether you are in line with me for unemployment or you’re just beginning to look for a new job, take every opportunity you can. It’s really up to you.

1. Network. Is it me or does it seem that everyone keeps talking about networking? If we say it three times will we get a job? It worked for calling Beetlejuice but then the undead do have a bit more time on their hands and less rent to pay. Networking won’t guarantee a job but will help you get your foot in the door. Sending out blind resumes and cover letters is not enough. Sorry, kiddo. Write, call, go to events and make yourself known. Meet people and find out who works for the companies you want to. It’s a full time job.
2. Be open and available. When I was first laid off I called everyone I knew and told them my situation. I did it so that they knew, as friends and former colleagues, and second if they heard of any openings they may think of me.  This is not a time for embarrassment. It’s a time to lead yourself to your next job. No one else will do that for you.
3. Information Interviews. Coffee. We all love our caffeine. Who doesn’t enjoy a sugar-free Red Bull or chai latte? Find a spot and take someone out for coffee. This isn’t a date but you’re paying for drinks. Words of advice: don’t ask about open jobs. It’s not appropriate. You are there to take this opportunity to talk about the trends in the industry, what are factors for growth or weakness in the market, and listen to what they have to say.  Always follow-up with a thank you letter and keep in touch. More than likely if you’ve impressed the person enough they’ll let you know if there are openings or where to find them.
4. Freelance/volunteer. You have the time so use it. Build your own brand and sell yourself. You may not have a full time job but look at what skills you are missing and work on fixing them. Find some work you can do and volunteer for it. It doesn’t have to be a soup kitchen for you to volunteer. You can build Web sites, design brochures — whatever your skill set is there is a need. You may not get paid in dollars but if you can meet that right person or put it on your resume, it’s invaluable. Plus it gives your warm fuzzies. Honestly, who doesn’t like warm fuzzies?
5. Hobbies. Learn a new trade. I have been teaching myself PHP, French and hopefully piano — still working on finding one to practice on. Sleep is great and so are reruns of Family Ties but really what else can Alex P. Keaton do for you? Stop saying I want to learn this and start learning it. Plus it totally works as a pick-up line at the bar. No one likes an employed bum but an unemployed bum learning a trade — now that’s good.

This market is tough. It’s no game. There’s no reboot here. Adapt, change and own it. As much as we’d all like a sympathy job it’s not going to make you happy in end. Start researching and building your future. There is no better time. If this were a musical we’d all break out in no day but today.

“But people are often successful not despite their dysfunctions but because of them. Obsessions are one of the greatest telltale signs of success. Understand a person’s obsessions and you will understand her natural motivation. The thing for which she would walk to the end of the earth.”

from Peter Bregman’s great post “The Interview Question You Should Always Ask.”

What do you do in your spare time?

At almost three weeks old, this may be a little dated according to Internet time. That being said, I can’t resist throwing this piece your way. Eric Ries, over at Startup Lessons Learned (one of my favorite blogs), has some great points on the role of the hiring manager in guiding discussion and group decision making in the hiring/recruiting process.

Check out Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds.

We’ve had a few users/friends point out some Startuply job listings that don’t correspond to listings on the company websites themselves. What’s going on? Well, not to put too fine a point on it: some of the jobs are no longer current.

We want Startuply to be more of a directory of Startup jobs than just another job board. It’s part of the reason that we’re rabidly staying away from a pay-per-job posting model. Jobs are free to post, and they never expire - and most companies actually take down listings for positions that they’ve filled.

Not all do, though. So we are starting to put particular effort into doing some basic QA to make sure that every job on Startuply is so fresh and so clean (clean). If you happen to run into a bad one, please let us know at support AT startuply DOT com, too.

So: we’re doing our best to make sure you’ve got easy access to the world’s best startup jobs, all in one place. Thanks!!

In a turn loaded with self-interest, here’s a repost of http://ventureswell.com/iteration.

Iteration

Release early, release often.

Evolution = change/time. As far as I’ve come to understand it, the motivation behind iterative and lean development is to accelerate the number of OODA loops that can be executed in any given period of time. Each increment of change is less, but so is the time.  Having the t in the denominator magnifies the effect of delta(t), and combining that with an accelerated compounding schedule (as in interest that compounds weekly or monthly instead of yearly) further increases the advantage of the fast mover.

I think of it as evolutionary development. The idea is to cram as many effective generations into your runway as you can. Life on earth has been iterating for billions of years, but neither you nor your organization have that long. You can iterate too frequently, too. Remember that the release itself is the last part of the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) cycle; without careful observation and sufficient and significant data, you can lead yourself astray. This is why I try to distinguish “effective” generations or iterations from inappropriate ones; Life has had plenty of dead ends.

It’s kinda interesting to note that the biggest/most complex organisms on earth also iterate the most slowly, with generations that take decades at least. The analogy seems to apply to bigger and more complex organizations, as well, with one important difference - companies can consciously restructure their own internal workings in ways that living creatures cannot. I don’t doubt that it’s harder for large and complex companies than small and agile ones to accelerate their effective iterations, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Harder just means “more fun,” anyway.

Interested in agile, lean and iterative development? Make sure you read Eric Ries’ Startup Lessons Learned, Evolving Excellence, and Venture Hacks. What other great material is out there???

We’re excited to announce that we’re preparing the private alpha launch of JobSyndicate, the new job affiliate network.

What’s a job affiliate network? JobSyndicate is our way of getting jobs in front of great candidates where they already live online. We get targeted distribution for jobs by combining our ad widget technology with contingency recruiting “bounties.” [We think of this as infrastructure + incentive]

How does it work? Employers use JobSyndicate to put recruiting bounties of $2,000-$20,000 on high priority job openings. Affiliates then use our customizable widgets to publish these jobs on their blogs, websites, communities and social networks. Candidates apply directly from the ads - publishers keep their traffic and we get accurate tracking - and when someone gets hired, the publisher earns half the bounty. Employers get targeted distribution for their jobs and pay only for results, and publishers now have a way to escape the CPM/CPC volume game and capture the true value of their networks.

We’re not looking for a big press launch at this point, but we are interested in speaking to employers and publishers who are interested in participating in this private test. Employers just need to be willing to put a minimum $2,000 bounty on a job (pure contingency with a 60-day guarantee), and we’d prefer bloggers/publishers with at least 5,000-10,000 monthly users. JobSyndicate is built for the long tail, because the best talent doesn’t hang out on mainstream websites.

We only have a handful of spots open at this point, but I’d love to discuss. You can reach me anytime at luke(at)jobalchemist(dot)com.

Thanks, and Happy 2009!

Cheers to you, 2008 - aloha to both a great year past and an ever better one present. Ben, Loc & I have been working on job-related software for more than a year now; we spent an amazing summer in Cambridge with Paul Graham and the amazing Y Combinator crew; Startuply has been alive for more than 5 months. Since launch, we’ve originated more than 18,000 unique applications for jobs at hundreds of the world’s best startup companies.

So what’s happening in 2009? A ton. The first and most relevant resolution is to actually use this blog, so stay tuned for at least 1-2 posts per week. That’s a commitment (thanks in no small part to some prodding from our friends at TicketStumbler, the best site to by cheap sports tickets AND cheap concert tickets, too).

We’ve also got some news on JobSyndicate, our new job affiliate network. We’ve got software, folks. And it works. More on this tomorrow.

We have plans that will dramatically improve Startuply for both job seekers and employers, and we’ll extend the model to new verticals, too. So much stuff is coming that I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or hide under my bed.

So please, stay tuned. Happy 2009 from the Job Alchemist team!!!