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In any given week, I meet with two or three entrepreneurs who want to talk with me about their business--just to get some feedback.  They know that I used to be on the venture capital side and vet business plans and ideas on a regular business.  I'm happy to do it when I take some interest in the idea, mostly when I feel like I can add some value.  Plus, I feel like it's actually useful for my own business--to see what technologies and processes other people are using and to help generate new ideas.  I've been very fortunate to learn from folks like the guys at Union Square Ventures, to see successful companies get launched and grown, and to have the opportunity to run a business on my own, so I do feel like I have something to add.  That's why I'm teaching entrepreneurship at Fordham University.

However, I'd imagine finding me as an up and coming entrepreneur must feel a little bit like finding the A-Team--especially if you weren't in established innovation networks.  You can't even go see Mr. Lee at the Chinese laundry first.  (If you don't get it, you didn't grow up in the 80's.)  I don't put myself out there as an expert for hire or have a fancy nickname for myself like Dr. Startup.  In fact, a lot of really good people in NYC to talk to about your startup idea are totally under the radar--just helping give feedback to whoever just happens to stumble into their network.

On the other hand, a lot of the people most above the radar on this kind of thing aren't exactly people I'd recommend to go see.  I have to assume every city has this, but I like to call them the "Venture Vultures"--various startup strategy folks with murky resumes who will promise to connect you to capital, technology help, strategy help who simply don't have a lot of there there.  In the Web 2.0 boom, tons of people hung up shingles offering to up startup businesses, and I'm hoping the recession will weed out most of these folks, because I think a lot of them do more harm than good.  When entrepreneurs with real potential run into these pseudo-virtual incubator strategy consulting types and get bad advice or no real results, and that's who they see trumpeting themselves in the community, it gives the community a bad name. 

The reason why these folks can self-promote their way to noteriety, however, is because of an educational vacuum for new businesses in NYC.  If you had an idea for a new business, or you had already built a product, service, or technology and you needed business strategy help, where would you go?  What about if you were a student?

If we really wanted to improve NYC's ability to support innovation, more so than money or space, I think putting more effort into educating students about entrepreneurship would be worthwhile.  The bottleneck for creating new companies in NYC isn't desks or angel capital--we have plenty of both--it's the fact that there just aren't enough entrepreneurs with good ideas who know how to execute on a business.  We need more students learning the technologies that allow innovation and more students taught how to turn their passions into ideas--and then into businesses (or just find their passions in the first place).

EDIT: Let's be clear on what I'm saying.  I think NYC is a great place to start a business--I just think that not enough of the best local minds are in the mindset that such an endeavor is possible or worthwhile.  On top of that, those that really want to learn need more access to the experienced people who can teach them best practices.  I actually think the infrastructure for a startup here in NYC is pretty good--we're just not getting enough new entrepreneurs at the top of the funnel.  New York City schools don't exactly pump out lots of students with the business or tech wherewithal (or interest) in starting a new company (athough perhaps that might change now that they can't just assume they'll get hired by big banks anymore).  NYC students are taught how to work for big companies, not to start small ones. 

I'm specificially interested in programs for students.  It's an entirely different thing to take someone who has already established themselves in a career and help them with a new business idea.  They at least have networks.  They know people in their industry and they have a sense of how to create value. 

I want to meet whoever is working with local students.   In fact, Fordham has generously donated space for about 100 people during the day from 9-5 at their Lincoln Center Campus on Tuesday, April 28th to bring everyone educating local students interested in entrepreneurship together.  I'd like to hold a small conference to share ideas, solutions, best practices, and step one is figuring out who is out there.

If you are involved with a university incubator, tech transfer office, entrepreneurship program, degree, or certificate, or if you just teach students in programs and subjects likely to create innovators, please get in touch with me.

I've created a form to gather all the interested parties.  Even if you can't make it on that day, please let me know who you are and what you do.

You can find the form by clicking this link.

He's familiar with "management management". ^{link »}

tags: mar 09, unemploymentality.com

unemploymentality.com/2009/03/recession-job-hunti · Original page

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I can stay on my feet like nobody's business. I don't mean in terms of taking a punch. I mean that I never slip and fall to the ground. There have been too many times to count, like with dress shoes on ice or misstepping up a flight of stairs, where I say to myself "Wow, I can't believe I didn't fall flat on my face there." In particular, when something causes one of my feet to just completely wipe out, I'm incredibly good at shifting my weight and recovering without a fall. In fact, I sometimes think that I'm so good at it that I might be the best person in the world at doing that one tiny insigificant thing--not falling when a foot that I'm planting on loses traction.

Do you ever have that? Where you do something totally random so incredibly well over and over again where you think that you may very well be the best person in the entire world at it?

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

I hadn't seen this before.  It's really amazing.  The woman in the blue scarf pictured above gives my favorite answer--a world where every closet connects to someone else's closet and you can use it to travel to meet someone new and have breakfast with them.

That's kind of how I think of Twitter.  I wonder if she Twitters.  Probably.

"I sent a cover letter. It should be getting me that job now."

"No, Lieutenant, your job search is already dead."

Alison Doyle defended cover letters today and was rather dismissive about the idea of finding your job by connecting to someone using social media.  I won't take up the social media debate now, but I will put to bed the idea that you should spend any time whatsoever on a cover letter.

What gets read first, a resume or a cover letter?  Ask anyone who has ever hired anybody in the last twenty years.  The answer is a resume.

Here's the short version of the proof, then:

Is your resume awesome? 

If no, then I'm throwing it right in the trash, along with the cover letter, which I didn't read, because your resume isn't awesome.

If yes, and it does not come with a cover letter, will I contact you?  Of course!  Half the resumes I got were from resume databases or LinkedIn, so much of the time, a resume or profile is all I have anyway.

Once you get contacted, then it's up to you and who you are... and that's what you were trying to do with the cover letter in the first place--get a response.  No hiring manager has ever contacted someone with a mediocre resume who wrote a really nice cover letter.  They never get to the cover letter of a mediocre resume--they don't have time!  If they say they did, they're lying to make it seem like they do extra work like read all the cover letters than come in.  I'm sure they don't rip the tags off their pillows either. 

More important than a cover letter, if a resume contains a link to a site, I am going to visit it.  If this site is a blog, and you write about your passion for the industry you're looking to get into or your insights, I'm going to be pretty damn impressed.  I certainly won't ask for a cover letter after that.  Think of this like rock, paper, scissor.  Resume beats cover letter.  Awesome blog beats resume and obviously also beats cover letter. 

No, you can't submit the link to your blog on the front end of a company website, but would Alison suggest that if I was hiring someone to run the career guidence office at a school, that being the About.com job search guide since 1998 wouldn't be enough?  Why would you even ask for a resume at that point?  When I left Oddcast a year and a half ago, no one asked for my resume, but I got 25 job leads from people who had been reading my blog for years.  Cover letters?  What's a cover letter?

Well, Alison defines a cover letter as "...a document sent with your resume to provide additional information on your skills and experience."

She suggests the following format:

1. First Paragraph - Why you are writing
2. Middle Paragraphs - What you have to offer
3. Concluding Paragraph - How you will follow-up

You know, because that's the "basic format of a typical business letter."

A typical business letter?

Has anyone actually received a "business letter" in the last five years?  (Besides ones from daughters of Nigerian generals looking to deposit money in your bank account or official looking solicitations for credit cards.)

Today, professionals are sending one line e-mails from their Blackberries that affect millions of dollars.  Have you ever seen what three paragraphes looks like on a Blackberry?  It might as well be Paul's Letter to the Corinthians.  People want just the facts, as quickly as possible.  Three paragraphes of prose and I'm either on to the next e-mail or I'm asleep.

It's funny, because, today, she expanded her definition of a cover letter to include "via email or a LinkedIn message".   Can you even type three paragraphs into a LinkedIn message?  I'm pretty sure there's a character limit, and if there wasn't, I'd think the person was just trying too hard or didn't really understand normal behavior on that site.

Twenty years ago, cover letters served a purpose.  They introduced who you were and how you found the position--because before widespread use of the internet, how you found anything was actually interesting.  Now, asking how you even know someone is becoming a joke, because we're hyperconnected.  As for who you are, we all know that your cover letter is your marketing pitch--no hiring manager takes that seriously.  They'll do their homework to figure out who you are.  They'll ask Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn who you are, who you're connected to, etc... and if they can't find you there, for a growing percent of the few available jobs, you might as well be persona non grata.

In today's world, if you're contacting someone you don't already know to get a job, you've essentially already failed.  It's too easy to find people and use your network to reach them that coming in without a recommendation reflects pretty poorly on the candidate.  If I was going to hire you to do sales for me, I certainly wouldn't expect you to just cold call all your leads.  I'd hope you'd at least figure out how to be innovative and networking savvy enough to find your say to a warm intro.

And yes, I know, not everyone uses the internet, and not everone can afford a computer, and three quarters of the world lives under the poverty line--I get it.  It's a terrible situation, but we're talking about job advice written on blogs.  There's a clear target audience here of people who have some amount of advanced education, socioeconomic mobility, etc.  For *those* people--if you're thinking a cover letter is going to get you anywhere, you're wasting your time.

There are also some jobs out there where your digital presence just doesn't matter at all because you're basically talking mass hiring of a certain particular skill.  Take nursing jobs.  Hospital systems need to hire 1000's of registered nurses a year.  So long as they have the right certifications and whatever references are needed check out, you're basically in, or at least in line.  Many civil services positions are like that as well.  However, not only does a digital presence not matter to be a police officer or a firefighter (Good thing for my dad, a 20 year FDNY vet), you also don't need a cover letter.

So let's focus on jobs that supposedly need a cover letter--jobs that are sought after enough where the candidate is looking to stand out from the crowd.  So we're assuming a crowd here.  Now put yourself in the position of the hiring manager.  Not only do you get 100's of not 1000's of resumes for each position that you have an opening for, but you're searching resume databases to find candidates, too.  It's physically impossible for anyone to read more than a handful of cover letters. 

Even resume expert Louise Fletcher says that "back when I worked as an HR manager, I never read cover letters".  Louise worked as an HR manager back in 1995.  She did say that her boss liked to read them, but assuming her boss was probably at least 5-10 years older than her, if not more, you're talking about a guy who started his career in the early 80's--almost 30 years ago.  Are we really giving advice to people on how to get hired by dinosaurs are should be dispensing advice on how to be the most innovative candidates out there and to try to get hired by the most innovative companies.

But Alison says "Innovation works for a lot of people/industries. Not others."

Everyone who wants to get hired into an industry that doesn't value innovation, raise your hand.

Ok, everyone with your hands raised, finish up working on those cover letters!

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As the Dow dipped into the 6000's and we wondered how low it would go,perhaps even 5000, is there any doubt in our minds that fear is the mantra of the day and investors are just running scared?

Forget fundamentals.  Forget earnings.

Everyday, we keep hearing how much worse it's getting.  Jobless claims, layoffs, falling revenues.  It's economic armageddon in an echo chamber.  Turn on the TV and feel like shit--and the networks are tripping over each other to make it sound worse and worse.  Remember, fear drives ratings.

"How the falling economy increases preditory behavior on MySpace...  tonight at 11."

"Mother of four kills her neighbor and feeds him to her kids after getting laid off.  What's the job status of the people on *your* block?"

"When we come back, what you don't know about the stimulus could kill you."

Well, is it me, or isn't the government supposed to be really good at keeping secrets and lying to us?  I mean, it's been almost 60 years since Roswell, right?  We still don't know who shot JFK either. 

Why can't we get some good old fashion men in black action on this economy?  For starters, let's start releasing economic data that isn't as bad as expected--and little by little turning it up.  So, one month we have job losses that aren't as bad as predicted.  Next month a little better.  Next month, flat unemployment.  Would anyone even really notice the difference between 8.5% unemployment and 8.3%?  It's not like turning on the TV during a blistering heatwave and having the government trying to convince you that it's 45 degrees. 

Then, we'll start paying off reporters and influencing them to write positive stories about people returning to the malls and getting jobs.  I'm sure there are more than a few reporters, given what they make, that would post a slanted story in exchange for having their credit card debt just mysteriously disappear due to a "computer glitch".  Economic stories are slanted anyway.  Think of all those holiday shopping stories.  You can't say anything significant about same store sales just by walking the stores, yet hundreds of stories get written every year before the numbers come out about how good of a season it is--and it directly affects how many people come out and shop.  It's all a matter of crafting a story--and some story angles would be a lot more helpful than others right about now--instead of the same old media scare tactics. 

See...  It's happening already.  Did you see this bullshit housing starts data?  Up 22%!!  Who in the world is *starting* a house right now?  Is there anyone out there who has seen ground broken on a new house?  No... no one... It's totally made up data, but yet the market rallied on the news.

Am I ok with being lied to?  Absolutely.  Why?  Because right now we're being bombarded with so much "truth" and in such a manner that it's almost like being lied to.  Sure, financial institutions are in serious trouble... and yes, some people might have to move out their houses into apartments...maybe many...  but half of this whole financial armageddon is due to the media preying on people's fears.  Is it me or aren't you afraid to even open up your wallet?  Because of fear, valuations can't stabilize.  I say the government should be acting like a doting parent and not only telling us it's going to be ok, but backing that up with some fuzzy math that says it is ok.  I'll pretend I believe it.

The other day, I wrote about how something seemed, well, gray at SXSW--like something was missing. It had been kind of--meh.

I felt like there were too many panels that just went through the motions, and the parties were just kind of crowed and rather uninspired.  Throw in some nippy, cloudy, rainy weather on top of that and what it all was amounting to wasn't a heck of a lot.

Then, something happened on Sunday. 

The sun broke out in the afternoon and it got warmer.  Almost like magic, the buzz started to return.  People got excited.  More people piled out into the surrounding streets, filling Austin with geek chatter.  I had a fantastic sushi dinner (yes, sushi...  we had all had more than enough ribs over the course of the weekend) with the Angelsoft folks--we could have featured our discussion as a panel in itself, talking about what makes content inspiring both online and in person.  Around nine last night, I wandered over to the Tumblr party at the Cedar St. Courtyard. 

The line was pretty long, but luckily, we spotted David Karp and he slipped us in the upper patio door.  Two minutes later, he was bringing food to his guests--quite a number of platefuls at a time.  Perhaps he's done the busboy thing before. 

Cedar St. Courtyard is a fantastic open venue with neighborhoody/block party feel.  The crowd was really fantastic.  Everyone was in a good mood because of the weather.  I met John Malone for the first time and we had a really great conversation.  Apparently, he's been lurking around my blog for a while!  I also caught up with Richard Johnson again after seeing him earlier in the day.  Peter Kafka was there, too, and we were joking around about how much easier it was to catch up with NYC people while we were in Austin--no calendars, no conflicts.

If you're ever in the middle of an otherwise dull conference, do yourself a favor--find the New Yorkers.

Around midnight, Gary Vee tweeted:

"Going to my hotel room to pick up 6 cases of wine and bring it to the Tumblr party let's make it a 1230am thing .. I'll tweet when Rdy"

I don't have to tell you how much of a party it became after that.

Between the venue, David and John's hospitality, and Gary Vee going the extra mile, this was the embodiment of what SXSW was supposed to be--inspiring people gathered together in an inspiring place for a blending of the professional and the social.  Even people who weren't at the conference were tweeting that it was obvious that the Tumblr party really rocked.  So thanks to all involved... Spending my night at Cedar St. really turned the whole event around for me.

Now if only everyone else had dance moves like Crystal Beasley, then we really would have had something. 

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Launchcakes, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Kristin Maverick was nice enough to send us cupcakes to congratulate us. Jen already ate hers.

I just had a guy stop me in the hall at SXSW.  We passed each other in the middle of a session block so it was obvious where I was coming from.

"Hey, did you just come from a panel that sucked?"

"Yeah."

"What was it?"

I think that's how a lot of people were feeling.  Except for Leah Buley's panel, I haven't seen very many "amazing" mentions in my SXSW Twitter stream.

There's definitely something in the air here this year that hasn't been here the last two--or something lacking, rather.  I feel like people are waiting for something--perhaps a little expectant--both the attendees and the panels.  The assumption that something amazing would happen simply by getting a critical mass of creative people in Austin for a few days... just... well.. hasn't really panned out before.

Maybe it's Twitter's fault.  People have been asking and wondering what the killer app of SXSW was going to be this year--as if what happened in 2007 with the Twitter explosion just happens every year.  The idea that the gods of SXSW just magically pick a startup to bless each year is kind of silly. 

Get over it: Twitter was *the* perfect app right at the right time at the ideal venue--stars aligned, lightning strike, never going to happen again.

And the panels...  Well, they just seem kind of... tired.  I've never been picked to be on a panel, but if I was, boy would I go out of my way to setup something exciting.  I'd be doing cartwheels on the panel...getting up from behind the panel and walking through the audience.  INTERACTING (since this is SXSWinteractive, right?)  I don't feel like many of the people I've seen have been particularly appreciative to get their spots.  A lot of people say that if you've been picked before, you've got a good chance to speak again.  Maybe that shouldn't be.  Maybe we should do a clean slate next year--all new, first time voices--unless you totally rocked your panel so much that no one said it was bad and people were talking about it for days--and maybe that's like 10 panels... tops.

The economy has forced people to rethink their businesses to focus on the bottom line.  How do we drive revenue, drive adoption, focus, focus, focus?  That is, except for companies that got a bailout. 

Perhaps SXSW is the victim of an emotional bailout--the carryover of buzz from the past, because I don't see it refocusing itself on the bottom line: amazingness.  People here seem to be waiting for a government bailout of a billion amazingness points instead of creating amazingness on their own. 

I'm going to be spending more time with the education track folks in the next day or so, because they're fighting a good fight and I think the kinds of teachers that are here are the really passionate ones... but if I run into another social media marketing expert looking for the next killer SXSW app, I'm going to throw up the ribs I ate for lunch the last two days.

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