Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life

It’s safe to say that from the time we were pretty young our parents, our teachers, and maybe even our first employers have always stressed that for any job we need the same basic skills.  Communication skills, organizational skills, leadership abilities, teamwork experience… you know what I’m talking about.  However, from my own personal experience, there are a lot of things (silly somewhat embarrassing to admit that you don’t know how to do things) that nobody will ever say that you need and unfortunately these are the things that you will most likely be asked to do on your first day.  Below, I have listed some that I have come across and how I’ve discovered to handle them.

Make Coffee: I know, that sounds incredibly stupid but think about it.  Imagine  it’s your first day working for a real design firm and you really want to impress your coworkers and do everything right to prove that you belong there when your boss asks you to make coffee.  Simple enough, sure you can do that, child’s play right?  However when you approach the coffee machine and realize you have no idea how that particular one works, that’s where the trouble starts.

How to Handle it: Whatever you do, do NOT ask someone how to “work it.”  Instead, do one of these two things:  1.) Look for the instructions or 2.) Google it!  Chances are if you Google the brand of the coffee maker, you’ll find instructions on how to work it.  A bit of advice:  do NOT simply “figure it out” yourself.  It won’t leave a favorable impression if you break the coffee machine or flood the kitchen area with coffee.

Create an Excel Spreadsheet: Sure we all claim we can do this on our resume, and yes it is not difficult to open up Excel and start typing the information.  But your boss wants it formatted a particular way and you have no clue how to replicate it.  Also, if your company primarily uses Macs, you may have to use Numbers (a similar software to Excel but different enough to stump you) then what?

How to handle it: Yes you could click around and figure it out….and take your whole first day to do it!  Yes, you can also Google step by step how to create it, but assuming it’s more complicated (in the design world it usually is!) that could be just as time consuming as simply clicking around.  My advice?  Look on the company server.  Spare yourself the time and effort, find an existing spreadsheet that is formatted correctly and use it as a template.  Word of caution:  Do NOT replace your “template” with your new spreadsheet.  To avoid this mistake, immediately save the document with a new name.

Call XYZ and Verify Information: Time after time I’ve been asked to do this or have seen a fellow entry-leveler assigned to do this and there always seems to be a slight panicked look in there eyes.  Imagined you are asked this.  Mostly likely a slew of thoughts will run through your head:  “You want me to talk to a person?  I went into design to avoid this!  What do I say?  Will they be able to tell that I’m new and be annoyed?”

How to Handle it: Relax.  This will hardly be an involved or complicated conversation, but it IS important!  Ideally, you’ll have used phone etiquette several times but in case you haven’t, here’s some advice.  Be very polite and put on your “grownup voice.”  Do not mumble, use slang or “uhs and ums.”  What helps me most is writing down what I’m going to say (a script if you will) and just refer to it.  Do NOT simply read from it…you may be hung up on for fear of being a recorded message.  Also, remember to sound friendly.  It’s okay to make a little joke and if it’s a client or corporation that your company works closely with, introduce yourself.

So there you have it.  Three Simple things that you’ll most likely be asked to do on your first day that you can now be completely comfortable with.  As some parting advice, I’d like to leave you with a thought.  Think of your first week as an on-the-job interview.  You want to show that you are the best candidate for the job and that the company has made the right choice in hiring you.  This is the best way to build relationships with your coworkers and overall transition well into the team.

What do you think?  Leave me a comment

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• The How to Use OrangeSlyce.com for Students
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A few weeks ago, we gave a few tips on how to design your business cards. Having a well made business card is one of the best investments for the money you can ever make.  That card costing pennies to make, could lead to that big sales deal worth thousands of dollars.  You may be tempted to make your own business cards using whatever software came with your printer, but stay away from that junk.  It’s too easy to tell the difference between a professionally made card and one made on software designed for your grandmother to use and printed out on a printer thats cheaper than the ink used to print it.  Professional printers can be found locally and online, and designers can be found right here at OrangeSlyce!  We’ll go over a few options when it comes to printers.

Finding a local printer
One of the benefits of using a local printer is you can pick them up the day they’re ready.  If you’re on an urgent deadline like a networking event or convention, a local printer can often get your cards finished much faster than an online shop.  You can also feel the paper they are going to use before they print.  Many times they will also have a portfolio on file of either previous print jobs, or samples.  Look through them carefully.  You’re going to be trusting the shop with your company’s brand and identity.  Check to see if they have satisfaction guarantees and shop around for pricing.  You might find Kinko’s will charge less but will have lower quality.  A smaller print shop might charge more but the quality is exceptional.  Check online ratings sites like Rate it all! or Yelp for reviews.

Online printers and deals
If you’re not on a time budget, there are deals to be found online.  Here are just a few I found when searching online.

123print.com – Comes with an easy way to upload your design as well as an online app for creating your own.  They all offer thousands of designs to choose from if you aren’t interested in making your own.  Packages start as cheap as $3.95 for 30 cards and you can get 5000 cards for just under $100.  Be sure to check out their price chart.

Overnight Prints – By offering prints overnight, this aptly named company can be a solution to someone who needs cards quick, but can’t get to a local printer.  Prices start at $1.98 for 25 cards with regular ground shipping, with priority shipping available.  Use the promo code 20BCARDS to get 20% off.

Vistaprint – For those on a budget, Vistaprint offers cards at the right price – free!  Though you still pay for shipping, have a limited selection of designs, and they slap the Vistaprint logo on the back, it’s a great option for those on a budget.  They also have premium cards which allow you to upload your design.  When you’re done ordering your business cards, check out the other products they offer like stamps, pens, checks, car door magnets, post cards, brochures, flyers and many more.

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I usually don’t jump on and write blog entries (I leave that to better writers in the company). However, as the CEO and engineer behind OrangeSlyce, I know that this will help some startups looking to simplify billing with Chargify. For those of you who don’t know, Chargify is an easy-to-use service to manage recurring billing, with features such as hosted payment pages, subscription management and simplified payment gateway setup. What initially attracted OrangeSlyce to Chargify was the customizability of the hosted payment page. There are plenty of services that offer hosted payment pages, including PayPal, but none offer much in the way of style customization. Chargify gives you the ability to add custom CSS and even Javascript to your payment page, finally making it possible to match your entire brand. PayPal seems to think slapping a logo on the page is “brand matching” – we obviously disagree.

Chargify specifically targets web-based services and SaaS companies with a recurring billing revenue model, e.g. $30/month (possibly with multiple tiers). This works great for most startups, but what if you sell one-time services? At OrangeSlyce, we sell freelance job postings for a one-time fee. This model is obviously applicable to all job boards who only charge per post. We were interested in using Chargify, but it took us a while to hack together a way for single item payments. Chargify outlines this solution for one-time purchases, but unfortunately coupon codes simply don’t work with it.

We finally came up with the exact setup to create single item products for one-time payments, with working coupon codes:

1. Setup a new product family like you would for a recurring item. Note: Chargify used to have a drop-down for “product type” with only one option of “recurring.” It seems they got rid of this.
2. Create a new product within the family using the following setup (Important! This is the only configuration that will work with coupon codes).
3. Set the “one-time, up-front charge” to $0. (I know, you’d think this is where you’d put the one-time fee, it got us too).
4. Set a trial period of 1 month that costs whatever one-time fee you want to charge.
5. Set the “after the trial, a recurring price of” to $0 and to reoccur every month.
6. Set the “recurring charge will expire” to 1 day.

Here is screenshot of what your Billing Structure should look like:

This is the only configuration (trust me, we tried them ALL) that will simulate one-time, single-item charges AND allow coupon codes to work. Other configurations will charge correctly, but the coupon codes won’t have any effect.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well there’s one slight problem that we still need to fix. On the hosted payment page, your “purchase summary” will display your hackerish options:

• 1 month trial at $49.99 (or whatever you set as your fee).
• $0.00 recurring every 1 month thereafter.

I know if I saw this confusing purchase summary, it would make me second guess the company and probably close out the window. Thankfully, Chargify’s custom CSS options gives us control. Simply add these 2 lines of CSS code to the custom CSS box and it will hide the confusing, unnecessary purchase summary text:

.section_one { display: none; }

.tint { display: none; }

This will hide all references to monthly billing or recurring payment. Personally, I think Chargify is an excellent, much needed service so I’m hoping they release official one-time payment product types soon.

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Customers and employees come and go and fads roll in and out like the tides.  However, businesses and industries try to make plans for these changes.  The universe never gives us a sure thing when it comes to life or business.  A wise Air Force captain once said “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” and sometimes things do go horribly wrong.  Business Continuity Plans, or BCPs, are essential for businesses of all sizes.  For example, due to poor planning 44% of businesses that experience a fire fail to reopen.  Planning for the absolute worst may make you seem like a worrier, but when fire, flood, plague, power outage or 2012 happens, you’ll be glad you came up with a plan.  When coming up with your BCP, follow these five phases:

1 | Analysis
Go through your entire business and document all processes and procedures.  Take inventory of all equipment – desks, computers, filing cabinets, even employees.  Get contact info for all employees, suppliers, and major clients.  You’ll need to know every gritty little detail of your business for the next step.  Also in this step, start thinking of possible worst case scenarios for each area.  These could include a fire in the office, a disgruntled employee sabotaging equipment or stealing data, or a security hole that allows a hacker to steal information.

2 | Solution design
Using the information you gathered, start building solutions to potential threats.  Threats can include anything that would disrupt your business – natural disasters, utility outages, cyber attacks, terrorism or even just construction on the street outside your business.  Lumping these threats into groups is a great way to start.  Focusing on data security helps mitigate threats of hackers as well as employee theft.  Maybe this is also a good time to take paper records and start digitizing them, or removing paper and going completely digital.  Have a system to back up your digital records.  Perhaps outsourcing key processes would not only spread your risk thinner, but reduce costs.  This is also the time to review and update your insurance.  Since we took stock of all our assets, signing up for disaster insurance to replace losses is much easier.  You’ve also gathered your employees’ contact information – put together a contact sheet and distribute it to all employees.  If there is a total loss to the building you work in, have your employees plan to work remotely for a period of time while you look for a new building.  Your BCP will be different from other businesses’, so tailor it to your needs and risk tolerance.

3 | Implementation
Now that you’ve got plans and procedures for your BCP, implement it!  Coordinate with your staff and set the expectation that if things go wrong they should follow the plan.

4 | Testing
Once you have your BCP in place, make sure to test it out periodically – annually or biannually should do fine.  Try to create a situation that is out of the ordinary but your business will be able to sustain the impact.  Unplug a server and see if the workaround in the plan is successful.  Run a fire drill and send all employees home for an afternoon to work there.  After each test, review whether the plan kept you in business or if you would have had a much larger negative impact.

5 | Maintenance
Over time your BCP will change as your business changes.  Make sure to update things like employee contact info or department changes and communicate those changes throughout your company.  Verify that your insurance is up to date.  Maybe you have decided to have all employees work at home and there isn’t an office anymore to insure.  That needs to be reflected in your BCP.  Update information security policies and ensure all security software is up to date.  Any new processes also need to be documented.

Now that you have a solid process for ensuring your business will survive catastrophe, put everything together in a binder and make several copies.  Give all critical personnel their own copy.  Keep a few visible around the office and make them brightly colored.  Keep one in your car.  You’ll never know when or where you’ll be when you need to reference it.  This binder will be your strength during the toughest times.

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• Using Twitter Effectively: Seven Guidelines Every Business Should Follow
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Meet our second student of the month:  Nicole Kutz!  Nicole is a very talented and driven Art Studies major in her senior year at Arizona State University.  After creating exceptional work for us at OrangeSlyce, we realized that this gem of an artist should be our next Student Spotlight.  We asked Nicole a few questions about freelancing, her career goals, and of course, OrangeSlyce.  Here’s how the interview went:

OS:  So what got you interested in Art Studies?

NK:  Ever since I was a little kid, I loved to draw and paint.  My school work was always covered in doodles!  I hope to write and illustrate books eventually, so I wanted to be able to learn the basics about a wide variety of mediums that I could use to achieve this goal.

OS: That sounds really fun!  So what compelled you to join OrangeSlyce?

NK: Actually, a friend emailed me the link to the specific job (drawing illustrations for the OrangeSlyce website) because he thought it looked like something I would be interested in.  The more I learned about it, the more appealing the concept was.

OS: And what appealed to you about OrangeSlyce?

NK:  I liked that, as a student, I have job information without making any initial commitments.  Also, since it’s marketed to students, I know my crazy school schedule will be taken into account from the beginning.

OS: Well said!  So then have you found any other jobs through OrangeSlyce?

NK: I have done a little bit of checking since I started work for OrangeSlyce.  I am currently employed with an engineering company, so I’m not exactly needing any more work at the time.

OS: Do you have any advice for freelancing students?

NK: Being unsure and not knowing all the answers is okay, but being impolite is not!  As long as questions are respectful and you truly apply yourself to learning as much as you can as fast as you can, I have found that people are willing to work with you and help you.

OS: Good advice.  So just to mix it up here, what would be your dream job?

NK: My dream job would be to do writing/freelance writing in between traveling around taking photographs for magazines and books.  Hey we can always dream…..

OS: Of course we can!  So to build on that, do you have a motto or work philosophy?

NK:  My parent’s always taught me to do my best, strive for excellence and work hard and honestly.  It may sound cliche, but it really pays off, especially as I get older and my actions have a larger influence on my reputation and future.

OS:  Thank you Nicole for taking the time to answer our questions.

NK:  Thank you so much for the opportunity!

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Lots of people have toyed with the idea of starting their own business, becoming their own boss, or somehow changing the world.  However, most people are downtrodden by bullet points that have been engrained in them, about how starting a business isn’t worth the trouble.  Today we’re going to put some of these ideas where they belong – in the dump.

1)   XX% of Small Businesses Fail
I laugh every time I hear this statistic.  Sometimes it’s 50%.  Sometimes 90%.  It’s the idea that because you are a small business you will fail, regardless of who you are or what your business is.  This automatically puts risk on being an entrepreneur that most can’t stomach.  There are two things wrong with this fact – the definition of small business and the definition of failure.  First, ‘small’ covers such a huge range of businesses.  How do you define the size of your company?  Revenue?  Number of employees?  Carbon footprint?  Secondly, how do you define failure?  Has the time commitment and stress of the company gotten to you and you voluntarily close down?  Or have you missed your revenue target and only made six figures instead of seven?  Most would consider that a successful exit.

2)   It Takes Money to Make Money
You’ll be told you’ll need a building, employees, equipment, and inventory and you’ll need money up front to even get your dream off the ground – yeah, if you’re in a capital intensive industry.  Using all the free tools and resources online, starting a business has never been cheaper.  Starting a blog and selling shirts on Cafepress.com requires exactly $0.00 (that’s American dollars, by the way), and you don’t need to manage inventory.  Even if you need monthly costs for online storage and servers, it’s getting cheaper every day.

3)   You Need a Rock Solid Business Plan
The myth is that you need a great business plan, usually to get business loans or secure funding, in order to be successful.  Having a focus or a target market is a good thing.  Having a document that you will measure the rest of your life against isn’t.  If you do have a business plan, save the trees and don’t bother printing it out, because it will change constantly.  Part of being a startup is flexibility.  Think of companies who are now offering radically different services and products than when they first started – Google comes to mind immediately.

4)   You Need a Great Idea
The inspiration for this post comes from a friend of mine.  He’s a great guy.  He’s even letting me be his best man at his wedding.  He’s the type that has tons of ideas and knows he’s going to be a millionaire because of them – yet, he does nothing with those ideas.  It turns out ideas are like belly-buttons, everyone has them (unless you were born in a test tube).  It’s what you do with your ideas that will matter.  Even if your idea is something that’s been done before, if you do it better your product will take off.  Which leads us to…

5)   You Need to Be First
Many people instantly give up on their dream the second they hear that someone else already has something just like it.  This is actually a good thing.  You now have a real world example that you can watch and follow.  Improve on their shortcomings.  Learn from their mistakes.  Facebook certainly wasn’t the first to offer people a way to connect with their friends, but they have the most users in the world.  Apple wasn’t the first to make great computers, portable music devices, phones or even tablets but they are now the biggest consumer electronics company in the world.

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A few weeks ago, we wrote a little bit about how Twitter is changing advertising.  We suggested that businesses get a Twitter page, but we left you all hanging–we didn’t tell you how to do it.  Social Media platforms are a potentially effective tool, but, like any tool, you don’t get much out of them if you don’t know how to use them.  With that in mind, here are some guidelines that will make your Twitter page pop.

1: Figure out your audience

Unless you’re already famous and loved, you’re not going to be very effective if you can’t nail down a target audience.  You should have answers to each of these questions:  What customer base are you trying to reach?  How old are they?  Are they predominantly male, female, or neither?  What sort of groups do they run in?  Do they appreciate formality?

2: Design an appealing background that fits your brand

It’s shocking how many supposedly professional twitter pages either skip this step of put in some bare minimal effort.  We’re talking about the public face of your business–you can not afford to mail this in with a design that either looks crappy or does a poor job of conveying the message you want it to convey about your business.

If you’ve covered Step 1, you should already have some idea of what you want your background to look like.  If you still need help from there, we’d honestly suggest hiring a designer to help you out.  It won’t cost you very much–pardon the plug, but on OrangeSlyce.com you can easily hire a qualified student to design your twitter background for about a hundred bucks–and it will save you the time and hassle of trying to get everything “just so” by yourself. 

Ed. Note: We’re actually taking this exact route with our own Twitter background right now, because our current one is a little too stodgy.  So if you look at our Twitter page in a week or so and it looks nice, then you’ll know we gave you good advice.

3: Reach out to your audience

Everyone wants to know how to get followers.  The only long-term answer is by providing interesting content, but you can still prime the pump a little bit.  Think about the sort of groups your target audience belongs too, and the sort of profiles that they might follow.

Follow popular users (and maybe dig through their followers and follow some of those followers).  Just don’t go crazy following people, for two reasons: Twitter frowns on that (and has been known to suspend or delete accounts for excessive follower churn).  Besides, nothing screams “spammer” like a profile that’s followed 1000 people and only had 20 followers.

4:Be Human (not a spammer)

People who use twitter (at least the ones who actively use it) are generally a savvy bunch when it comes to spammers.  This is because seemingly 60% of Twitter profiles (and like 80% of the people who will follow you) are spam bots designed to peddle shady wares.  People are going to be understandably skeptical of your businesses’ Twitter page–your job is to convince them that you’re for real.

The way you do that is by being human.  Don’t just bombard your followers with links or advertisements, talk about your experiences, lessons you’ve learned, and funny thoughts you’ve had.  In short, write things that your target audience might find interesting.

If you want more help on writing interesting content, check out this post on getting retweeted over at TwitterTips.

5: Be thankful

On your Twitter’s homepage, you’ll see a link along the right side that says “@(YourUsername).”  Click this link, and you’ll be shown all of the tweets that people have directed at you.  Reply to these, whenever possible, and thank people (either as a tweet or as a direct message) whenever possible.

6: Retweet other people’s content from time to time

If someone tweets something that might be interesting or useful to your audience, you should absolutely retweet it.  First, because it provides value to your users.  Second, because it’s the nice thing to do.  Still not convinced?  Then just think of it as a means of building political capital with those people.  They’re a lot more likely to retweet something you post if you’ve done the same for them.

7: Remember you’re still writing for your business

It can be easy to get carried away with Twitter.  Before you post anything, ask yourself “am I putting on a good  face for the business?”  We’re not advocating that you go into a shell (far from it!) but we’re also not advocating that you share too much.  Did you have a great time at a local restaurant last night?  Tell people about it.  Did you have a really great time at a local night club last night?  Keep that one to yourself.

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It’s that time again.  Time to buy all of your textbooks, start getting up early, and prepare yourself to actually do well this semester.  But let’s be honest, after about oh I don’t know say the first week the newness and excitement of a fresh semester wears off and keeping up with our assignments is a slippery slope.  So what can we do to make Dean’s List this semester?  Well, this is what I’m doing:

1.)   Write Everything Down!  I know I’m a broken record if you read my blog “College Got you Stressed? Five Tips to Help You Relax” but seriously this does help.  I detest having to open the PDF of the course syllabus, scan through the various sections and finally (after five minutes) find what’s due the next day.  If you write down all of the assignments in a planner, you can simply flip to a page and see what’s due in seconds.  It really is a beautiful thing!

2.)   Highlight Your Text Book!  I’m going to tell you what no professor ever will: taking notes is a waste of time, paper, and effort; all you really need to do is highlight important information.   Highlighting is so much more practical because then you don’t have to worry about losing your notes or finding them on your computer if you type them.  Give it a try, I promise you’ll never go back to note taking again.

3.)   Go to Class!  I know you hear this ALL the time, but do you actually listen to it is the real question?  Probably not.  I know how it is, when no one is making you (Ahem, your mother) and in a lecture when there really aren’t a lot of consequences if you do skip, temptation to ditch is high.  My advice?  Take classes with friends (or better yet make a friend in your class).  In my own experience, I am much more likely to attend a class if I have a buddy to suffer through with…I mean learn with!

4.)   Don’t Over Do it!  Last semester I enrolled in a whopping 21 credits!  I know; I have no idea what I was thinking, but regardless learn from my mistake.  If you are taking a class that seems unnecessary and is extra drop it!  If there is no immediate value from taking the class then don’t bother.  Why solicit the extra stress?

5.)   Take Breaks!  You know how nutritionists preach everything in moderation?  Well the same rule applies to school.  Make sure you’re studying and doing your assignments but also plan time away from the books and away from work to do things for fun.  Ultimately, if you are working hard and doing all that you can for your classes your grades will reflect that.  So go ahead, take a break.

What do you do to succeed in school?  Let me know.  Leave me a comment

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The goal of OrangeSlyce has always been to build a platform for students and small businesses to connect as two perfect entrepreneurial complements. Each group offers the other unique growth opportunities that OrangeSlyce is built to cultivate. Since the launch of the website, we have identified an opportunity to simplify and ease the connection between students and businesses by narrowing our focus to design projects and expanding to a nationwide user base.

The Changes:

When you visit the new website, you can expect to see a few changes:

1. As always, a fresh new look. We’re kind of suckers for design too.

2. In line with the new focus, when you post a project the categories are now all design related.

3. To ensure all project postings are relevant, projects will remain open for two weeks for students to apply to (starting from the time of payment).

4. In order to maintain and improve the site, all postings will have a posting fee of 5% of the chosen budget ($10 minimum).

5. The instant matching service for up to 5 recommended students is now included with each posting.

6. OrangeSlyce is now a nationwide service.

The Reasons:

1. To sustain and grow as a community we need to guarantee opportunities for both businesses and students. It’s a “chicken and egg” kind of problem. By narrowing to a single population OrangeSlyce can offer a continuous stream of projects to students and a plethora of designers to businesses creating a better service for both communities.

2. There is a HUGE gap in the online design community. There is nothing that caters to student designers. And that’s just sad. I was reading the HBR blog before writing this and found the OrangeSlyce mantra “Learn By Doing” confirmed again in an article entitled, “Higher Education is Overrated; Skills Aren’t.”  This is how education should work.

3. An extension of #2 really: The alternatives are unacceptable. A student trying to compete on Elance is like trying to push health care reform through Congress; it may work, but only by making serious sacrifices. Students shouldn’t have to set their education on the back burner in order to practice their skills under realistic circumstances.

And ”Spec work,” is a joke. It’s just unhealthy for all parties. To quote the AIGA, ”designers should be compensated fairly for the value of their work and should negotiate the ownership or use rights of their intellectual and creative property… Clients risk compromised quality as little time, energy and thought can go into speculative work, which precludes the most important element of most design projects—the research, thoughtful consideration of alternatives, and development and testing of prototype designs.”

Correct.

Still OrangeSlyce

We saw this as a chance to fill a real need and grow a sustainable community service. We’re still the same group of student entrepreneurs working pro bono and we want to thank everyone that has contributed to OrangeSlyce so far. It’s your site, you helped build it and allowed the OrangeSlyce team to have fun guiding the development.

As we move forward, we hope to add new nationwide segments to the OrangeSlyce service building a community dedicated to providing students and small businesses opportunities to collaborate and grow successful.

As always, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email at info@orangeslyce.com, with any questions or concerns regarding the new OrangeSlyce!

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I’ve always found the statement, “You can’t compare apples and oranges,” ridiculous. Of course you can.

As long as there’s some level of commonality (e.g. these are both fruit) there’s a purpose to looking at the differences.

Case in point: Matt Butson’s resume.

Matt is not your average man. He’s not your average young entreprenuer. And he doesn’t present your average resume.

Check this out:

Needless to say, it’s a little more.. dramatic than usual and it certainly abandons any of the preconceptions of what a resume looks like, but there’s a benefit to holding this apparent heresy to the light of what a resume “should” be.

The rubric: Glenn Kelman’s guest spot on Guy Kawasaki’s blog which presents the simple likes and dislikes of an active CEO. I’m not gonna go through all 29 points (cause it’s pointless and actually more lazy in my opinion) but rather extrapolate and apply.

Three pluses:

1. This is the most easily read resume I’ve personally seen. You don’t even have to “scan” it, you just have to look at it.

2. It’s directly customized to the job. Matt created this resume to apply to Apple. What company would better appreciate the aesthetically clean, novel, and “outside the building where the box was sitting” approach to a resume?

3. Clear personality and personal branding. The resume breaks down like this: here’s what I do, here’s where I’ve done it, here’s how to get a-hold of me so we can do stuff.

The Twitter address is nice too. It’s a cut above @gmail.com.

Three minuses? Let’s just call them suggestions:

1. I think it would be better to note the  single, most personal tangible accomplishment from each entry in the “Work” section.  Something that adds personality, something to talk about. Specific, like how many videos Matt cut at ASU.

2. Clean up the lines in the images. I know it’s picky, but–in my mind at least–it’s kind of like spell checking.

3. State your objective. If Matt simply say’s at some point, “I want to work for Apple,” it helps crystalize the fact that this particular document was created for this particular purpose. Effort, above and beyond.

I would do it something like this:

Totally subjective though.

The Juyce

The most important conclusion of the three pluses: Matt seems interesting to talk to. And that’s a fact. At OrangeSlyce’s Young Entreprenuer Happy Hour last Friday, we discussed topics varying from the potential influence of Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty on pop music to the U.S. Department of Education’s criticisms of for-profit higher education.

As Kelman says in his piece for Kawasaki, a resume is simply, “a request for a meeting.” Be interesting.

One last idea. Kelman’s piece links to the great Seth Godin’s musing on resumes. Take it with a healthy dose of salt, but consider Godin’s criticism: “Why bother having a resume?”

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