The Lighter Side

by Bill Clerico, guest blogger

Deciding to start a company is no small consideration.  It requires vision, patience and confidence (or arrogance).  When one has spent years working for someone else, receiving a steady paycheck in exchange for doing specific tasks, it can be downright daunting.

Last fall, I left the salary (and brutal hours) of an investment banking analyst for the life of an entrepreneur.  With a partner and close friend, I am building WePay.com, a new type of online bank that looks and feels like a social network.  The salary is gone, but the hours haven’t gotten much better.

There were more sacrifices to be made.  I moved from the downtown Boston neighborhood of Beacon Hill to the much more “modest” suburb of Revere, MA.  My credit card balance has seen better days.  My weekend beverage of choice (Hendrick’s on the rocks) has been replaced by dollar drafts.  I couldn’t be happier.

For me, the creative freedom of starting a company has far outweighed the sacrifices.  I wake up every morning to work on a problem I am passionate about: making it easy for groups of people to collect and manage money.  I was always “that guy” collecting the checks for ski trips and hounding people for their march madness pool money.  When Rich and I are done, “that guy” will be obsolete.

Though I am still learning as I go, I’ve scraped together a few thoughts to impart to would-be entrepreneurs:

• Find an idea that you are truly and utterly passionate about.  Some days, you’ll have nothing to cling to but that passion.  If you don’t believe in the success of your business unconditionally, how can you expect someone else to?

• Find investors, alternate sources of income, or both.  If your business won’t generate revenue right away, make sure you have some cash to pay the rent.  These days, investors are hard to come by, but it might be worth checking out angelsoft.net for some ideas, or searching for entrepreneurial networking events on meetup.com.  Think about skills you have that can help you make money.  Can you help build websites?  Tutor?  Walk dogs?  Craigslist.org can be a great resource to find odd jobs.

• Participate in the community.  Find local events in your area, and join Twitter and other social networks online.  The relationships you build in the both the real and virtual worlds will pay dividends in the form of customers, partners, investors and employees.

• Build a great team.  Someone who claims to be good at anything is usually mediocre at everything.  It’s a competitive world out there, and mediocre companies rarely do well.  Give yourself an honest self-review, find your weaknesses, and find partners, employees or advisors that can help you overcome them.

The good news is that few people have the guts to strike out on their own, so the mere act of going for it sets you apart.  And hey, if all else fails, you can always go get a job (though the title on your business card might take a hit).

Bill is the CEO of WePay.com, and maintains a personal blog at www.billclerico.com.  He can be followed on Twitter at @billclerico and @wepay.

by Lee Sure, guest author

After a few years of working and several failed attempts at getting in to med school, a friend called me telling me she applied to law school.

Her dream had been to become a doctor, to stitch up bodies, to write prescriptions, and to make her family proud. She called me to ask what my experience was like (I’m a second year law student at Georgetown). When I asked her why she applied to law school, she said it seemed like the second best way to work in the health care industry. “A law degree is so versatile,” she said.

Reasoning such as “it’s a versatile degree” or “this is the best way I can engage such-and-such a field” are the types of conclusive and generic reasoning that show law school was a fallback for her. Add mediocre LSAT scores, loads of debt (say $180,000 over three years), and an embroiled legal industry and you have front-row tickets to a boring, slow-motion train wreck. She was misguided by the idea that “more is better.”

The flaws in her reasoning aren’t confined to law school. For thousands of people each year, this short-sighted thinking overlooks the real price of getting a graduate education. Read the rest of this entry »

A successful friend — my career advice maven — offers the following advice for recession job hunters: don’t worry about the salary. In good ‘ole 2006, when job hunting was like fishing with dynamite, salary (and therefore opportunity cost) was more important. Today, a job hunt requires less explosives and far more tactical skills.

Few candidates have leverage these days when it comes to comp. negotiations. This doesn’t mean you should accept a pittance; it just means that there are more important things to focus on. For times like these, he recommends that people look two to three years down the road and make career moves that put them in good shape for an economic upturn.

A good job during a recession showcases one of the following characteristics:

1. The ability to develop skills and connections that help you get your dream job when the economy recovers
2. The opportunity to benefit financially (and directly) from a surging economy

These suggestions are straightforward, but the implications are far-reaching. Thinking about these two maxims, the following four strategies emerge as attractive options:

1. Work for the government
2. Start your own company
3. Get involved with a non-governmental organization (NGO)
4. Start freelancing

Each week we will publish an article on one of these four strategies. To keep it relevent, each article will be guest-authored by someone who has been successful with one of these strategies. Stay tuned!

Headhunter. Staffing agent. Recruiter.  Or my personal favorite: poacher.

For those of you looking for a service job, you’ve probably encountered a headhunter or two during your job search. There are literally thousands of them in this country. Increasingly, they act as gatekeepers between job seekers and the best opportunities out there. I’ve worked or spoken with about 20 different staffing firms. In the end, I got my new job thanks to one (props to Joanna).

Working with headhunters is tricky, though.

First off, headhunters are paid by the employer. Their commission is typically a percentage of a candidate’s first year salary. This creates an incentive for them to place you, but do not be mistaken: they do not always have your best interest at heart. Once you’re interviewing with a firm, it is common for unscrupulous headhunters to lie their faces off to sell you on taking the job. There are exceptions (again, props to Joanna), but this seems to be the norm.

A good headhunter will make you feel like he or she is working for you. Keep in mind that despite the title of “staffing solutions professional” or “human resources consultant,” headhunters are essentially salespeople. Likewise, it is always your job to sell yourself to them as you would in an interview. The more likely they think you are to get hired, the better an effort they will put forth.

Lastly, it is always in your best interest to work with multiple headhunters. You don’t need to tell them, but the more lines you have in the water, the more likely you are to catch a jobfish.

After over five months of glorious scruff, the time finally came for me to shave my layoff beard. It was truly bittersweet. Each forgetful time that I try to twirl my mustache or brush my chin between my thumb and index fingers is a reminder of how great it was to have a beard. Treasure yours while you can.

The upside is that I’m now employed (which has its perks). I landed a job in corporate strategy by using some of the know-how that I accumulated while researching TheCanned.com. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be working double-time to share more tactics for navigating the job markets. TheCanned.com will continue to be the best site out there for people facing unemployment. And to prevent us from losing our edge, we brought on two new writers this week, Jennifer and Jeff.

If I had to narrow it down, I would say these four things helped me the most throughout my 5 months of unemployment:

1) Staying busy: you know what they say about idle hands…. Helping to build and market TheCanned.com not only kept me busy, but it also gave me a passable answer for the dreaded interview question of “What have you been doing with yourself since you got canned?”

2) Being selective: I took every interview I could get, but I was very selective with what opportunities I pushed on. A good push involves reaching out to your network, and you can only do that so many times.

3) Focusing on opportunities: I kept an updated list of every potential lead that I had. This helped me to consistently feel like I was making progress, and to remember that I had options.

4) Working with headhunters: of the nine or ten interviews that I got, all of them came through networking or headhunters. I’ll post more on working with headhunters later, but for now suffice it to say that the more the better.

More information will be forthcoming. For the time being, I think I’ll go tape over all the mirrors in my apartment so I don’t have to see my clean-shaven face.

As companies across the country shed jobs like they’re going out of style, it’s no small wonder that for most Americans, buying a new car falls just behind fixing the busted septic tank on the to-do-list.

Don’t get me wrong – we’d all love a fresh new set of wheels. With the economic 8-ball still touting “future uncertain,” many are opting to squeeze a few more miles out of the old rust wagon rather than compile more debt.

But what if you NEED a new car but you’re worried about your financial future? Try Hyundai.

In an attempt to combat the economic uncertainty afflicting would-be car buyers, Hyundai is rolling out a new plan to attract customers: a return policy. As reported by MSNBC, the auto company will now allow new car buyers to return their vehicles up to one year from purchase in the event of “life-altering circumstances” such as a layoff, job transfer, or even personal bankruptcy for the self-employed.

The “Hyundai Assurance Program” is the first of its kind. With millions of Americans facing the possibility of unemployment, look for other companies to introduce offers aimed at luring back hesitant customers worried about a forthcoming pink-slip. The silver lining, I suppose.

Sure: a Hyundai might not be your dream car. But it’s only a coat of paint and a fresh set of rims away from being a stock car on the upcoming Fast and the Furious movie (you know, Vin Diesel is all over this.) Just make sure you ditch the spinners and neon lights before you try to return it.

– Jeff Gardner

The BBC recently ran an article titled “Is sexual desire in recession?” in which it entertained the possibility that economic anxiety will have a negative impact on libidos this Valentine’s Day. Apparently self-esteem  falls with the markets, or so some experts say.

I don’t know how things will pan out on the other side of the pond. But here, in America, I have an alternative view to cling to. A couple years ago The New York Times Magazine ran an op-ed called “The Economy of Desire” in which the authors of Freakonomics attempted to explain sexual behavior in terms of rational price theory. We’ll use their assumption to make some predictions for this Valentine’s Day.

In price theory, consumption decreases when the price of a good rises and vice versa. Since sex doesn’t have an explicit price, except with prostitution, let’s look at the implied prices.

Buying drinks, meals, tickets, chocolates, and roses are all prerequisites for an intimate Valentine’s Day. Prices are falling (the CPI dropped 0.8 percent in December). If we assume that average prices have dropped to accommodate falling incomes (personal income only fell 0.2 percent in December), then the impact of the recession will be a wash and everyone will get laid just as much as they have every other year.

It gets better. In economics, expectations matter more than anything else in the short run. The media has been stuffing our heads full of rising unemployment figures and dire economic forecasts for so long that I doubt your Valentine is expecting much. Grab a bottle of two-buck-chuck and a copy of Love Actually and count yourself  fortunate. The price of getting lucky hasn’t been this encouraging in a long time.

Don’t let impotence in your professional life equate to impotence on February 14th. Valentine’s dating might not be this cheap again until, say, 2010!

The nicest part about getting severance was that my health insurance continued after I got canned.  It was one less thing to worry about.  After the severance period was up, though, there were lots of tough decisions. COBRA is insanely expensive.  Continuing my group coverage through COBRA would have cost me almost $600 per month.  I ended up going with Healthy NY at less than half that, but sacrificed some coverage in the process.

A recent study shows that for family coverage, COBRA eats up 84 percent of unemployment benefits on average.  For individual coverage it’s a more “manageable” 30 percent.  Either way, the outlook for paying bills and putting food on the table is grim.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (that $787 billion stimulus bill that will likely be signed into law by week’s end) sets aside $24.7 billion to help offset the costs of COBRA.  Uncle Sam will pick up 65 percent of your premiums by issuing a credit directly to your employee benefits provider.  You are eligible for this subsidy for nine months if you were laid off  on or after September 1st, 2008.  Your nine months of eligibility start the first month that you receive a subsidy and no subsidies will be issued for premiums that you have already paid.

If you already opted out of COBRA, contact your former employee benefits provider.  If they are willing to extend group coverage, you still qualify for this subsidy.  Unfortunately for me, I got canned on August 27th — four days shy of eligibility!

To learn more about COBRA, check out this page on TheCanned.com.

Today, TheCanned was listed on CNBC’s On The Money “Sites of the Day.” You can find it here. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we will be mentioned by Carmen Wong Ulrich on her program tonight (2/10/09) at
10PM EST/7PM PT.

Island Caretaker
Tourism Queensland, Australia

This is the best job in the world, or so the press seems to think. You be the judge: how does $100 grand sound for six months of lounging in a luxury beach front villa in Queensland? Your only duty would be to enjoy the islands of the Great Barrier Reef and blog about it.

There is no catch. This is a promotion from Tourism Queensland. Sure, there have already been 9000 applicants (I’m about to be one of them). But hell, a job at Starbucks is probably pulling in close to the same number of applicants in this economy. You choose: make custom coffee drinks for the soon-to-be-canned, or get intimate with a hammock in the land down under.

One lucky duck will actually get this job, starting July 1st. The application deadline is February 22nd, so get moving. Click here for more details.