Looking good is key to interviewing well. If you’re not confident in how you look, you won’t be confident in how you speak. Clothes matter. Luckily, dressing well doesn’t have to be expensive. We’ve worked out deals to get you $50 off your first order at Bonobos and free access to Gilt Groupe’s daily sample sales. You’ll look good, feel good, and still have some money left to celebrate landing an internship.
I just got back home to Chicago on Saturday, and I arrived to see the latest issue of Inc. Magazine waiting for me on the kitchen counter. It’s a big day for me because it’s the Inc. 500 issue where they list the 500 fastest growing private companies in the United States. It’s my absolute favorite tool for finding new companies to feature, which is why we’re going to take a look at ModCloth today. They came in at #2 on the list with 17,191% growth over the past three years to get to over $15 million in revenue. And all of that growth has been “built on a foundation of love for vintage and retro clothing.” The company, which is based in both San Francisco and Pittsburgh, was started by high school sweethearts Eric Koger and Susan Gregg Koger, and they aim to “provide a fun and engaging shopping atmosphere” for their customers by using social media to interact with them. ModCloth is big on democracy, so customers actually get some say in the direction the company’s buyers take. Continue reading about ModCloth…
Looking good is key to interviewing well. If you’re not confident in how you look, you won’t be confident in how you speak. Clothes matter. Luckily, dressing well doesn’t have to be expensive. We’ve worked out deals to get you $50 off your first order at Bonobos and free access to Gilt Groupe’s daily sample sales. You’ll look good, feel good, and still have some money left to celebrate landing a new internship.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I have quite a bit of traveling ahead of me. I’m hoping to spend a good portion of the time reading books, but I have to admit that I’ve been terrible about reading lately. Running a business makes it hard enough to find time to read, and when I do have time, it seems that my laptop makes it too easy to read articles and blog posts. I’m also torn about whether I should buy more hard copy books or invest in an e-reading device like an iPad or Kindle (it seems the Kindle is the winner for heavy readers). You’re probably thinking about how you don’t care about my reading habits, but they’re actually really important when looked at through the lens of a company like Hachette Book Group. If a big reader like me is reading fewer books, then they have some big challenges ahead of them. And that’s why the publishing industry is an exciting place to be right now. Hachette, which is headquartered in New York City, has a simple mission: “to publish great books well.” From 1837 when Little, Brown and Company was founded (they’re now part of Hachette), up until just a few years ago, the way they went about pursuing that mission didn’t change much. Lately, it’s been changing a lot. Continue reading about Hachette Book Group…
It’s been quite a while since we looked at internship in microfinance. I’m not sure whether the recession has had something to do with it, but it seems that there has been a lot less buzz about microfinance over the past year or two than there was in the preceding years. Maybe it’s just me. For those of you who don’t know what microfinance is, Wikipedia defines it as “the provision of financial services to low-income clients, including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services.” Put more simply, it’s the act of lending small amounts of investment capital to people who wouldn’t have been able to borrow money in the past. Microfinance is a great alternative to many other forms of aid, because it helps build economic foundations that respond to market incentives. MicroFinance Transparency is a Lancaster, PA based non-profit organization that is working to ensure that the field of microfinance stays true to its goals of helping to alleviate poverty. Because microfinance is unregulated and fragmented, MicroFinance Transparency acts as a watchdog that promotes transparency in the industry. Continue reading about MicroFinance Transparency…
There has never been a better time in history to find great reading material for free. The Internet is full of excellent content on nearly any topic (such as finding internships). The coolest innovation has been blogs, which have changed the top down approach that used to dominate media publishing. Now, it’s quite easy to have a conversation with the author whose work you’re reading, whether it be through comments, e-mail, IM, Twitter, or some other preferred form of communication. This has led to more engaged audiences and, sometimes, a much quicker development of ideas. The only way to continue this trend, though, is to make sure that web authors are well compensated for their hard work (pay me!). That’s where San Francisco based Federated Media Publishing comes in (we originally covered them on One Day, One Job almost two years ago). Few web publishers have figured out how to effectively charge for access to content, yet many have learned that running engaging advertising can be a big win for all parties involved. Federated Media doesn’t works with a wide range of conversational media properties to monetize visits from highly engaged online readers through advertising. Continue reading about Federated Media Publishing…
When I started One Day, One Internship, I expected a more active commenting community. I didn’t realize that most internship seekers don’t like talking publicly about their internship searches, and I also didn’t realize that most of you have nothing to say about a company that you’re hearing about for what may be the first time. When you add in the fact that most of you are reading via e-mail and not using the site, it makes sense that only a few of the posts get most of the comments. Most of the conversation surrounds controversial employers like The Landers Group (MLM scam) or Professional Sports Publications and special offers like those that accompanied the posts on Gilt Groupe, Bonobos, and Groupon. I find that it’s much easier to interact with you all through Twitter (follow me @willyf) and our Facebook page. BackType is a San Francisco, CA company that helps you follow online conversations. They started out by helping you track your blog comments across the web, but they’ve noticed the same thing that I have, so they have moved away from focusing on blog comments and towards real-time conversation tracking through sites like Twitter. They needed to build a business on top of their technology, so they decided to build “an analytics platform that helps companies understand their social impact” instead of building a hard to monetize business that serves people who comment on blogs. Continue reading about BackType…
Guys, need some great fitting pants to wear to an interview? Check out Bonobos! They make the best pants that I’ve ever worn (I have something like 12 pairs) and they’ll give you $50 off your first order. Just e-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com, and I’ll send you the coupon code.
Occasionally I’ll realize that I’ve covered a company on One Day, One Job, but that I haven’t let all of the current students know about the company’s internships. That’s the case with Eventbrite, a San Francisco based events management company. Odds are that you’ve used Eventbrite to register for some sort of event or even to put one on yourself. They make ticketing and registration stupid simple. Seriously, any idiot can put on an event with Eventbrite. If you’re putting on a free event, they’ll let you do everything for free. And if you’re charging for an event, Eventbrite will take a 2.5% cut. With over 14 million tickets sold to date, it’s quite clear that Eventbrite isn’t just some startup without a revenue model. They’re already generating revenue and delivering an awesome product experience. Continue reading about Eventbrite…
I’m not on a government transparency kick or anything, although I’m not one to to put much trust in those who govern. It just happens that both non-profits that I’m looking at this weekend are focused on helping the public be better informed about what their leaders are actually doing. Today we’re going to look at the Washington, DC based Sunlight Foundation, which is an organization that “uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable.” It used to be that the major media outlets controlled most of the information that flowed out of our government. Sometimes they’d do a good job of reporting, but they need to maintain relationships with government officials if they want the stories to keep coming. Now we live with technology that allows anyone to reach a massive audience. It’s slowly changing the way that government works, and the Sunlight Foundation is pushing to make that happen more quickly. Continue reading about Sunlight Foundation…
I have a good friend from Cornell who has been working in the world of education since he graduated with me in 2006. He often sends me recommendations of companies that I should feature, and I’ve actually covered quite a few of them. Earlier this week he sent me a note about Achievement First, a New Haven, CT based non-profit organization that manages charter schools across Connecticut and New York. (Sidenote: Having a friend like mine who is super-connected and aware in a particular industry or area can be huge for your job search.) Achievement First got its start in 1998 when a group of founders got together with the goal of creating a public charter school. They succeeded, and the result was Amistad Academy—and it’s been an amazing result. Over the past 7 years, Amistad Academy students have beat state averages in reading and math on the Connecticut Mastery Tests. In 2003 they built on this success by making Achievement First a separate entity to take the lessons learned from Amistad Academy and spread them throughout the region. Since then Achievement First “has grown into a network that includes 17 academies under nine charters in four cities.” Continue reading about Achievement First…
I hate the term Millennial when it’s used in the same way that Generation Y is. A lot of career advice these days is focused on generational issues, but I just don’t buy into it. Yes, old people and young people have different attitudes, but that’s nothing new. There are way more important things to be talking about, which is why I get visibly irked when the word millennial comes up. (And I’m proving my point right now by being a 25 year old grumpy old man.) My bad attitude should explain why it took me a second to warm to the idea of Millennial Media, which is a Baltimore, MD based mobile advertising company. By millennial, they mean next generation/futuristic, so they’re ok in my book. The company apparently has the largest mobile advertising network in the country, and they claim to reach 83% of the U.S. mobile audience. Continue reading about Millennial Media…
Think that one company every day isn’t enough? Take a look at our archives. We’ve featured nearly 800 companies so far, and you can access our profiles on all of them.
Lately I’ve been getting a number of e-mails from concerned internship seekers (you can reach me at willy@onedayonejob.com). They seem to be worried about the “One Day, One Internship Effect.” In other words, they think that they have no chance at landing an internship with the companies we profile because the companies get flooded with résumés as soon as we post about them. First of all, that’s silly to worry about. Just apply and do your best and don’t worry about the competition. Second, as much as I’d like to be true, we’re not quite there yet. One Day, One Internship has thousands of readers every day, but most people don’t apply for most internships. I’m not going to give you the actual stats, but luckily there are tools that allow you to see how much traffic a given website gets. One of those is Quantcast, which is headquartered in San Francisco with another office in New York City. Their estimated data isn’t the best—they can’t even come up with an estimate for One Day, One Internship—but their data on larger sites and on sites that have agreed to share their numbers is insanely useful. Continue reading about Quantcast…
The way that large corporations operate often boggles my mind. Take for example my friend who worked in the internal consulting division of a massive, well-known company. Despite being owned and operated by the company, his division had to bid against outside consulting firms for projects. There was a good reason for this (it forced the internal consulting division to watch its back), but it still seems a bit ridiculous. Another example of this kind of thinking is transfer pricing (don’t worry, I had to look it up too). It’s the “pricing of contributions (assets, tangible and intangible, services, and funds) transferred within an organization.” At first it may seem that since all of the money is going to the same place pricing things that are transferred within an organization doesn’t really matter. Unfortunately, that would cause all of the accountants in an organization (and the IRS too) to have a fit. So how do companies price these transfers? There’s no external market to set the price, and trying to do it internally can get really messy. That’s when companies bring in Ceteris a “global independent consulting firm specializing in transfer pricing, intellectual property and valuation services” that is headquartered in Chicago. Continue reading about Ceteris…
I’m a big proponent of making personal finance part of your career planning. By managing your money wisely (even if you barely have any as a student), you’re creating a project for yourself that you can use to demonstrate to employers how you’ll be an effective intern. When I need information on personal finance, I always look to Ramit Sethi, the founder of a website called I Will Teach You To Be Rich and the author of a book by the same name
I have to admit that the “jobs” that I’m most concerned with today is Steve Jobs. I can’t wait to find out what Apple is announcing today, and I wish that I had some relevant internships to bring you. I don’t, but I did come across a really cool list yesterday called 5 Butt Kicking Companies You (Probably) Never Heard Of. The list is exactly what it promises, as it features 5 later stage startups that are growing rapidly and hiring lots of people. The first company on that list is Palantir, a Palo Alto, CA based company (with another office in McLean, VA) that “is working to radically change how groups analyze information.” They were founded by former PayPal employees and Stanford computer scientists. Right now the company is focused on two verticals: Government and Finance. Both areas deal with massive amount of data and information, so it makes sense that Palantir is starting with them. Continue reading about Palantir…
I live across the street from what was formerly the world’s largest building—the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. It’s massive at 4,000,000 square feet, which is extremely impressive considering it was opened in 1930. What’s even more impressive is that, with some debate, the Merchandise Mart is now the world’s largest “green” building. It is LEED-EB Silver certified, and apparently the retrofitting that they did to achieve this certification has cut utility bills by 10%. Upgrading one of the largest buildings in the world to be more energy efficient and environment-friendly is a daunting task, luckily the LEED Certification process provided the owners of the Merchandise Mart with guidelines to work to. The organization behind LEED is the U.S. Green Building Council, which is based in Washington, DC. They are a non-profit that is “committed to a prosperous and sustainable future for our nation through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings.” Continue reading about U.S. Green Building Council…
Even though it seems that the economy is crawling its way to recovery (I’m seeing more entry level and intern opportunities than I did last year), we have a long way to go before the finance industry gets back on its feet. Yes, the stock market is doing well, but don’t let that fool you—things are still a mess. One company that should do well during this time is Argus Information & Advisory, a company based in White Plains, NY. They “assist financial institutions in making marketing and risk management decisions.” That’s going to be a big business for years to come. I’m just hoping that bad advice from Argus wasn’t part of the reason we ended up where we are. Whether that’s the case or not, I imagine that the demand for services that help “manage the tradeoffs among price, product, risk, and customer behavior along the customer lifecycle to increase profitability” will be in high demand. Continue reading about Argus Information & Advisory…
I love playing with data. I’m always poring over Google Analytics looking for ways to improve things on my sites. If you’re like me, then you’ll almost certainly enjoy Swivel, the “YouTube of data.” They’re a San Francisco based company that makes it extremely easy to visualize and compare data. For instance, you can take a look at cities with low temperature variance and how their highs and lows vary over the course of a year. (I can tell you that Chicago is not on that list with a high of 12 degrees today after much warmer weather just a few weeks ago.) I still haven’t figured out how to make the most out of Swivel, but I definitely see the potential for using it to identify some interesting relationships. Continue reading about Swivel…
As a Yankees fan I am obliged to hate anything and everything related to the Red Sox—and even Boston sports in general. That’s why it pains me to cover NESN (New England Sports Network) today. They’re one of the most successful regional sports networks (RSNs) in the country ratings-wise (#1 for 6 straight years), and they do it in the 7th biggest media market. NESN is jointly owned by the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins, whom they cover along with the Celtics, Patriots, and plenty of local college teams. They were launched in 1984, which makes Watertown, MA based NESN one of the oldest RSNs in the country, and they now reach more than 4 million homes. I still don’t understand why anyone would want to watch Boston sports on tv. Continue reading about NESN…
Last spring when sports fans on the North Side of Chicago were still hopeful, Amy and I decided that we wanted to go to a Cubs game. It was the day of the game, and we didn’t have tickets. We checked out StubHub, and saw some pretty good prices, but we decided that waiting would get us even better prices. We waited. The prices went down. We waited some more. The prices went down some more. And then disaster struck. StubHub stops selling tickets 2 hours before a game. We were shut out. We ended up heading to Wrigley and buying from some “ticket brokers” outside of the park. We got a pretty decent price, and we had a great time (I may or may not have been listening to the Yankees game on my iPhone at the same time), but we were left with the question of when is the best time to buy tickets on the secondary market. Apparently SeatGeek has the answer—they’re a New York City based web startup that predicts the price of sports and concert tickets. We’ve seen similar startups succeed in the travel market, and I think this business may make even more sense for event tickets. Continue reading about SeatGeek…
Amy, my girlfriend, loves trivia. There’s no better way to win her over than to ask her a quiz question or share a random factoid. Since she travels every week for work, I recently bought her The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia
It took long enough, but Internet video is everywhere. Yes, we had online video 10 years ago, but now it actually looks good—and works. The main reason for this is that end users (you and me) finally have technology in their homes that can handle playing online video. This means high speed Internet connections and computers with enough processing power to not crash when a website uses a Flash video player. The issue for content creators is that delivering video still poses some challenges. Sure, I was able to produce an online job search training course that relied heavily on video with little trouble, but I wasn’t delivering video to thousands or even millions of people (I wish I had the problem). As your use base increases, the challenge of delivering video increase exponentially. Moreover, managing video content in an organized fashion is a completely different challenge than organizing text and images. Brightcove is a Cambridge, MA based company that provides an online video platform for many of the worlds biggest brands. Continue reading about Brightcove…
One of my goals with One Day, One Internship is to get more interactive. I’d like to get more feedback from you, the readers, on what you want to see, and I’d also like to use the collective wisdom of thousands of college students to develop better content. The best way to do that is through reader surveys, which is why I recently signed up with SurveyMonkey. They’re a Menlo Park, CA (formerly Portland, OR) based “startup” that has been helping people run online surveys for the last decade. While most Internet companies that started in 1999 have since flamed out and most companies started in the 2000s have relied on flashiness to bring in venture capital money, Survey Monkey and its outdated look have been laughing all the way to the bank. By providing a dead simple way for business owners (they’ve worked with more than 80% of the Fortune 100) to collect data, SuveyMonkey has built an insanely successful business. Continue reading about SurveyMonkey…
I guess it’s a little awkward when you find a company that immediately makes you think of a very similar, more successful company. In this case, when I came across ideeli, I immediately thought of Gilt Groupe (which we covered a while back). Both are New York City based startups that offer online sample sales that give shoppers the opportunity to buy luxury goods—mostly clothing and accessories—at serious discounts. According to Wikipedia a sample sale is “used by retail businesses in order to discard excess merchandise.” That’s exactly what these companies do, but they’ve moved the entire process online (which is way more efficient). Both sites require invites to get in on the deals, so if you want to try ideeli click here and if you want to try Gilt Groupe click here. Although I haven’t made any purchases on either of these sites, my girlfriend Amy loves this way of shopping. There’s the element of surprise, because you never know what you’re going to find, yet you still get to enjoy the ease of shopping online. Continue reading about ideeli…
Libraries used to be their own little kingdoms of knowledge. If you needed to research something, you’d go to the library and hope that they had what you were looking for. If they didn’t, you were out of luck. The Internet has changed everything. Now we live in a world where our libraries are interconnected and information resources can be shared instantly between institutions. And even there is a resource that can’t be shared electronically, you can track it down instantly. A big reason that this is possible is Dublin, OH based Online Computer Library Center. They started in 1967 as “a regional computer system for 54 Ohio colleges;” however, they have since grown to serving “more than 71,000 libraries of all types in the U.S. and 112 countries and territories around the world.” They’re better known as the OCLC, and they’ve very much an Information Technology focused non-profit. Continue reading about Online Computer Library Center…
Buying a product online is easy when you know which specific brand and model you want, but finding the microwave with the largest capacity or an LCD TV that swivels isn’t always so easy. There’s so much information out there on products, that finding specific details that are important to you (but not everyone else) can be frustrating. Wize is a San Mateo, CA based startup that is trying to make online comparison shopping more intelligent. If you’re buying on price, you already have plenty of product search engines that will make your decision easy for you, but who’s going to tell you which washing machine is most water efficient? That’s what Wize is all about. They’re scouring the Internet for all of the information that is buried in reviews and making it easily searchable so that you can choose the right product for you. It’s still in its early stages, but it seems like a pretty cool approach to e-commerce. Continue reading about Wize…
As a kid, I always enjoyed a good playground. What kid wouldn’t? It’s your first sense of danger. Monkey bars, slides, and contraptions that spin you around until you want to throw up may not seem all that dangerous now, but I’m sure that there was a point in your life when you were intimidated. And that’s why you grew up to be such a successful young adult—all that time on the playground. PlayPumps International also brings success to children through playground equipment, albeit in a very different way. Of course they enable kids to enjoy childhood and have fun in the face of danger just like all playgrounds do, but they are also helping to end poverty in developing nations around the world. You’ll see why in a second. Continue reading about PlayPumps International…
At some point during my Junior year in college (by the way I’m back at Cornell for the weekend), I got the bright idea that I could wear slippers as shoes. These weren’t flimsy slippers, these were sturdy leather ones with shearling lining. They were made by Orvis (where I interned and had an awesome 50% employee discount), and they were great. I loved sitting in class knowing that my feet were more comfortable than everybody else’s. Then I came back from Thanksgiving break. I was admiring the Christmas lights that my roommates had adorned our otherwise aesthetically unpleasing house with, and I slipped. See, my slippers had flat rubber soles. My feet came out from under me as I fell down a muddy slope. My right hand came down hard on the sidewalk, and I had a broken wrist. I gave up wearing slippers for a while, but when my Mom bought me a pair of UGG slippers with proper soles, I reverted. Now UGG slippers are my go to shoes during the winter, and I’m a huge fan of Deckers Outdoor Corporation. They’re the company behind UGG, Simple, Teva (is it Tee-va or Tevv-a?), Tsubo, and Deckers, and they’re headquartered in Goleta, CA with a location in Flagstaff, AZ as well. Continue reading about Deckers Outdoor Corporation…
I love statistics—especially when applied to sports—so it should be no big surprise that some of my favorite blogs include The Wage of Wins Journal, Sabernomics, and FanGraphs. Surprisingly, the statistical knowledge found on the best blogs these days is often far ahead of what you will find in the front offices of many major sports teams. The reason for the recent advancement in statistical sports knowledge of laypeople has a lot to do with how easy the Internet and computers have made it to collect and analyze in-depth data. A big reason that sports data is available is because of Northbrook, IL based STATS. Their story is pretty cool. They were founded in 1981 and “began as a grass roots operation tracking baseball in a unique, esoteric fashion.” Now, they’re “the world’s leading sports information, content and statistical analysis company.” I guess that numbers worked out for them. Continue reading about STATS…
For most of the internships that we feature here, safety isn’t much of an issue. You may be concerned about internship security given the current economic conditions, but not many of the internships that we cover will put you in harms way—at least as long as you don’t tip back too far in your desk chair. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of dangerous jobs out there, and many of them are in the construction industry. It’s doubtful that the business of building things will ever be completely safe as long as humans are doing it, but CPWR is doing its best to improve safety in the construction industry. Their acronym used to stand for The Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, but now it seems that their full name is The Center for Construction Research and Training. They are a Silver Spring, Maryland based non-profit organization (despite their .com web address) that was created by the AFL-CIO in 1990, and they’ve become “an international leader in applied research, training, and service to the construction industry.” Continue reading about CPWR…
I never really had a use for URL shortening services until I started using Twitter, but now that I’m trying to cram messages into 140 characters, I use them all the time. Honestly, I almost always use TinyURL.com, but I should be using Bit.ly. Their service is more user friendly, and they allow you to track your links to see how many clicks they get. That can be pretty useful – especially for Internet marketers, but I’m still not sure what Bit.ly, which is based out of New York City, looks like as a business. URL shortening has a ton of users, but what’s the revenue model? I don’t know, but it’s not my job to know. Some people whose job it is to know have invested $2 million in Bit.ly, so I wouldn’t be too worried. Maybe, as ReadWriteWeb suggests, it’s all about the data that Bit.ly collects. Continue reading about Bit.ly…
My first introduction to William Shatner was watching Rescue 911. Little did I know that his body of work extended far beyond narrating a show about real life heroes. I imagine today’s children will have an equally narrow view of William Shatner’s career, as they’ll know him as “Priceline Negotiator.” (Can you read those words without hearing the corresponding tune? I can’t.) Anyway, the whole idea behind William Shatner’s newest role – besides his doing the commercials in return for stock – is that Priceline.com will negotiate the best deals on travel-related items like hotels, car rentals, and airline tickets. They also have a “name your own price” model that used to be the core of their business, but now Priceline has widened its focus to discount travel in general. Continue reading about Priceline.com…
