Hey CSPD readers,

It’s been a while since I’ve written and I apologize for that, but I’m back with a new article. I was fortunate enough to have a great job with an online social network startup by the name of Anthillz. Though I no longer work with Anthillz as heavily, due to the fall semester, I think working with a startup was a great experience and I want to try and convey why I think other students might get alot out of the experience like I did.

1. In a startup, no one specializes. Sometimes you have to do gruntwork, sometimes you can sit in on strategy and staff meetings. A startup is a great opportunity to try many facets of a business and figure out what you do and don’t like doing.

2. You can get given a load of responsibility. Think of it like sports: it’s like being 3rd in line on the depth charts for a position. Say… Wide Reciever. Suddenly, we have an injury and a trade and now there is no one left but you. Perhaps the team can work to get a new guy, but you are right there to take advntage if you are up to it.

3. Everyone wants to have a young Protege. Maybe I was always around nice entrepreneurs and kind investors (oxymoron? joking!), but I felt like everyone wants a mentor. It’s amazing how positive and helpful everyone in the new venture community is that I’ve met thus far in Philadelphia. I say take advantage of their eagerness to educate by learning everything you possibly can from them.

4. You’ll be surrounded by others who want to change the world. I can’t really attest to the corporate culture of a financial institution but I sure do know the culture of startups is full of optimists with grand ideas and aspirations and it’s really great to be able to share ideas and collaborate on projects together.I love the people I met while working with the startup.

5. Work with a startup while you can! I admit it. I at times had a hard time with the pay I was getting. Thing is, I’m glad I was able to do this now while I have so little bills. If I thought it was a financial stress to work with a  startup as a junior in college then I can’t imagine how much more difficult it is to do with a family and a home.

Startups are hard work, but the knowledge and connections you can make can be priceless. On the upside you could be in on a fun ride of quickly growing company (maybe even with stock options!). However, most businesses fail, but even so I doubt you would regret the time you spend with a startup. I know I won’t regret my time with a startup.

It’s been a bit since my last post, and I apologize - but it’s for good reason…

I have been working full time with a Philly Tech Startup. We are creating an online marketplace for high performing freelancers to easily find serious employers with cool projects. We specialize in tech jobs at the moment, including: Creative services, programmers, writers/editors, marketing, SEO, etc. If any freelancers are browsing this blog and have the bandwidth for some high paying jobs I suggest taking a peek of the website at Anthillz.com - We offer Free 30 Day Signup…

Anyway - enough plugging, I wanted to try and give all you job seekers out there a peek at what a day in the life is like for a Marketing Intern with a tech startup. I had applied to a ton of companies at the Spring Connection and Entrepreneurship Job Fair and got 3 serious responses. I then eventually narrowed it down to the startup I currently work for. I just wanted to open with that and say that working with a startup is an amazing experience, and I’m infinitely better off this summer then I would have been had I gotten the corporate job.

Today - A day on the job with a Tech Startup

9 AM - Woke up at my off-campus “dorm-room” at Temple University. (Note this is during the summer)

10 AM - Checking email, reading blogs about Freelancing, reading forums about Freelancing (We call this Market Research)

11 AM - Lunch/Calculus Homework (I take Calculus for Business in Summer I, with Kapanjie -he rocks)

12 PM - Briefly play around with a programming language I’m trying to learn (Ruby On Rails) then head out to the Subway to make the journey to the office.

1 PM - After taking Subway to cityhall, then switching to Blueline, and then walking a few blocks to the UPenn Science Center I am finally at the office. I make a stop at the coffee machine on my floor before making my way to my desk.

2 PM -  By 2 some of the others have arrived and I’m going through my days goals with my boss, the CEO of our startup. I start during my daily routines like keeping a pulse on Freelance Blogs and Forums. I then do maintenance on our company blog like writing articles and figuring out traffic patterns and then do some promotional work to get more visitors.

3 PM - After doing my daily routines, I’m now working on today specific stuff like perfecting copy on our website/email/miscellaneous marketing materials. As well as setting up a new round of Adwords testing in which I’m going to be testing specific keywords for SEO reasons.

4 PM - I’m reading an article my boss sent me which is from a venture capitalists blog. It’s pretty good. Then I head off with all the companies working in our group space (science center is an incubator for small businesses so it houses about a dozen of us startups on the floor I work on) to go to a Fishbowl - where one of the companies tells us some specific issues he’s dealing with in his company and we all discuss and try to help with whatever is needed.

5 PM - The Fishbowl goes on a bit and we’re helping the company figure out the best distribution scheme and pricing strategy for his product. It’s pretty interesting to hear all the entrepreneurs input on his problem, I even chimed in a bit.

6 PM - We end the Fishbowl and go to casual-dinner in the conference room for tonight’s speaker who was John A. Loftus who is an accomplished serial entrepeneur who switched to the darkside and is a venture capitalist currently.

7 PM - The lecture goes on, it’s a very good speech where Mr. Loftus discusses the 5 M’s he looks for in companies to fund: Market, Management, Model, Momentum, Moat.

8 PM - Lecture ends and the team gets together for an overview of our immediate plans, and what to do for tomorrow (because tomorrow I’m not going into office, I’m just working remotely from the dorm room and doing a conference call after my calculus exam tomorrow night)

9 PM - I’m about halfway home by 9. Waiting for the Subway at City Hall which is taking longer than normal…

10 PM - I’m home by 9:30, and writing this article by 10… Voila

It goes without saying… I love my job.

I was so excited and anxious that I couldn’t sleep. I had 2 job fairs the next night and I couldn’t wait to go hand out resumes and try to get some kind of connection to the companies I thought were a fit.

I had done my homework and already looked up what companies were going to be at the 2 fairs and then researched them so I would be able to talk with the recruiter about their company and then applied to all the jobs both through FoxNet but also through their respective company websites.

First up was the Entrepreneurship Job Fair. It was one of the first of it’s kind apparently because of how it focused on those going for a major, minor or certification in Entrepreneurship. So all the companies at the job fair were small and some even pre-revenue startups.

I had already reviewed the employers at this job fair and knew I had 6 specific companies I was interested in giving my resume too and that I have 3 in particular which were especially intriguing. They were all small tech companies from around Philadelphia and one just outside of the North East.

The conversations went well and I gave them all my “Entrepreneurship” resume which accented my entrepreneurial activities more than my “Finance” resume which was designed to get me a job with a Finance firm.

I was a little surprised by how interested people were in my blog and other websites that I have. I hadn’t even written it on my resumes yet it was the most interesting piece of my resume to some. I started jotting down my blog URL on the bottom of resumes as I spoke with the potential employers.

This carried over to the 2nd Job fair of the day - Spring Connection. At this job fair my major didn’t seem as highly respected. Everyone wanted accounting or finance majors. I applied to several finance firms, some marketing firms, and to some banks. Most companies smiled while we spoke but then would softly tell me how competitive it is for a sophomore to get one of their internships. It’s frustrating at times, you want to say “Either let me apply and give me a chance, or tell me not to even apply because you don’t give it to sophomores”.

Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to say how unimpressed I was with one massive financial company - who shall remain nameless (hint: they use more nautical terminology than a 35 year old basement dwelling Pirates of the Carri bean fan). They came and presented to my HR class and I liked them then. Especially their in-company “university” - I love that kind of limit less opportunity for growth aspect. However, at Spring Connection they botched their banked goodwill by treating me, a sophomore, like a second class recruit. I won’t be dignifying them with an application next year.

I’ll admit that in retrospect I realize how unhappy I most likely would have been had I ended up getting a job with one of these massive corporate firms. The kind of culture I am looking for at the moment just doesn’t match most of these like I had convinced myself it did. I knew that a normal corporate internship wasn’t what I wanted to use my summer for. If I was going to stay here and work instead of going abroad somewhere then I wanted to make sure that I had a job that was going to challenge me and provide the opportunity for growth as well as educate on the startup environment in Philadelphia.

In my next article I’ll tell you all about how I followed up and got a job!

By: Joe Norton 

In this post, I’m going to discuss the ”Resume Critique” portion of the CSPD Process… oh the terror…

Someone is going to tear apart your resume! How awful, right? they are going to tell you everything you formatted wrong, everything you worded poorly, and even tell you whole sections which need to be removed or added. Sounds terrible, right?

Actually… isn’t it exactly what you want? Don’t you want a recruiter, a professional resume reviewer, to critically analyze your resume and make it as good as it can possibly be? Of Course!

When I went to CSPD to get my resume critiqued I was alittle nervous but I also had the feeling I was going to do pretty good. I had worked hard on my resume and it’s subsequent re-writes and I was sure that I had honed this draft down to a science.

I waited a few minutes before being greeted by the professional recruiter, that’s one thing you must understand - CSPD gets local recruiters of prominent corporations to come in and give up some of their expensive time to help you get a job.

It wasn’t long before we were in one of CSPD’s little offices and he was going at my resume with a red pen. Sure, it was alittle gruesome to see so many red marks you’d think he was drawing a volcanic eruption - but at the same time I knew that each of those marks was him letting me know “fix this now, or pay for it later”.

He asked me a few times to discuss things on my resume, which it should go without saying - you should be able to intelligently discuss EVERYTHING on your resume. You need to be able to discuss why you transferred, what you do in so-and-so club, how you like your boss at X job, etc. It went pretty well though, I knew that he was helping me get prepared for the interviews with corporate recruiters that would really matter - this was just practice.

The critique ended well, and I had a list of slight corrections to make to my resume. He gave me his card and told me that I was welcome to send him my further revisions of the resume to perfect it more, and he wanted me to keep him informed where I got a job.

I ended up writing him back and forth a few times, sending him revised resumes and him helping me slowly get my resume to it’s ideal state. It wasn’t more than 3 versions later when he said - that’s it. It’s perfect.

All in all, the CSPD resume critique was a great experience and I made a friend of a local HR professional.

By: Joe Norton

I already have a resume, I thought to myself, what point is there in re-doing it? I had already spent considerable time putting down all my leadership roles, athletic endeavors and past work experience. I had already had this resume reviewed by several people, including my Dad who works at one of the finance firms I was hoping to get an internship with. As far as I knew I was going to sit around during this resume seminar and twiddle my thumbs waiting for the clock to tick by.

It wasn’t until the 2nd half of the double header when I learned about the fox resume, how wrong my current resume was, and why I was having such a difficult time getting past the resume drop and into the interview.. .

Recruiters get so many resumes that they go through them just looking for the ugly ones with poor formatting and immediately sort these out of the process without glancing at the content of them. I was shooting myself in the foot by using a non-standardized format I made myself. Using the Fox Signature Resume format I would have a tried and true resume format that is visually appealing and best of all it’s streamlined and efficient in displaying all the information that goes on a resume.

All the formatting of my resume was wrong, I used like 5 lines for my name, address and contact information. I had done tabs and non-traditional spacing all over in the attempt of organizing the info my own way; I didn’t realize how poorly I utilized the space on my resume till I saw the Fox Signature Resume and noticed how it fit much more content, and still looked appealing and not blocky.

In terms of content: All of my extracurricular activities were from my high school days. To my dismay, I was told that employers don’t care that I was the captain of the football team, or that I was the student council vice president in high school . Only college stuff should go on my resume, I was told. This meant about half my resume was totally based on the wrong time period.

Do What I Did, Find SPO’s you find Interesting – I decided on joining several SPO’s so I could get some relevant extracurriculars on my resume and not look like a slacker who attends class but does nothing else “productive” with my time. Once I started going to meetings I couldn’t stop because I quickly became immersed in the organizations and even ended up becoming a webmaster for one, not long after joining. Joining SPO’s for your resume alone is a waste of time I think, fortunately many of you will find that you enjoy your organization and get the opportunity to train yourself in leadership, organization and time management (more fun than it sounds) when it comes your time to take an officer position.

All of my job experience, I learned, was poorly worded and turned off recruiters. I had to re-write all of it and throw some action verbs at the start of every bullet and re-narrow the focus in explaining my experience. I realized that I really hadn’t done myself any favors with the way I had crudely described my experience. I had written the bullets in terms of what I did for the company physically, not necessarily how I added value to the company.

It took a few re-writes – but eventually I had perfected the new format and re-worded my descriptions of past job experience and I was ready for the final stage of getting the Fox Signature Resume complete – and that was the resume critique.

Get Started on Your Fox Signature Resume with the CSPD Resume Guide.
The following samples should be helpful in putting together your own resume:

Sample Resume - MIS Majors
Sample Resume - Marketing Majors
Sample Resume - Accounting Majors
Sample Resume - Human Resource Majors