Can Your Favorite Color Determine Your Ideal Job?

After reading this article, I debated whether to tag this post as a legitimate jobseeking tip or as just for fun. Not being one to make hasty decisions, I diplomatically decided on both.

While I wouldn’t put full stock in this test, it does at least offer some explanations. The test is based on the “Dewey Color System” which shows how your favorite color corresponds to how you attack job tasks.

Here are the results:

If you prefer: yellow, purple and white: You're the communicator.
You create profitable perspectives -- how to break into new accounts or be heard by other employees. By simply identifying a client's point of view, you develop strategies that open doors, even if they had already been shut. Your excellent communication skills can create problem-solving forums. Careers in corporate communications, marketing or religious occupations work best.

If you prefer: red, green and black: You're the investor.
You know the value of money and resources, as well as the intrinsic worth of each co-worker's contributions. Your supportive, yet analytical personality works best in finance, accounting, banking, manufacturing, property management, production analysis, investment, money management, consulting, product sales or teaching.

If you prefer: blue, orange and brown: You're the activist.
Your strong community beliefs and no-nonsense approach improves services for those around you. Occupations where you can improve existing specifications or impact social values work best for you. Consider careers in engineering, building, or developing new programs, companies or products. Also consider law enforcement, firefighting, social or government work.

Eating the Elephant One Forkful at a Time

Startup Nation has an interesting series of articles that I think everyone will find useful, if not entertaining. They are a collection of tips, hints, and advice written by people who have started successful startup business from their college dorm rooms. If anything, this proves that space and resources can be overrated when it comes to forming a business nowadays.

Personally, I find the following quote to be spot on:

“My best advice is to think BIG! When you start your business you're tempted to see the entire scope of the project, break it down into manageable little forkfuls, and then eat the elephant one bite at a time.”

Converting Your Resume to Plain-Text

Have you ever found yourself applying to a job online, only to find that they ask for your resume to be included in the body of the e-mail? This can be not only become a total time drainer, but if done improperly, your resume could end up looking like gobbledygook.

Have no fear, here is an article to the rescue! It lays out the process step-by-step for a variety of formats.

Now that you have the formatting covered, would you like some help on actually getting that resume polished to get you the job?

How to Dress for Interviews

While dressing appropriately for an interview differs greatly depending on the type of job your applying to (for example, you wouldn’t dress the same if you were applying for the CFO position at a Fortune 500 company as you would if you were applying to the neighborhood burger joint), there are a few key principles that it would behoove you to follow:

1. Dress One or Two Levels Up
2. Caution Is The Better Part of Valor
3. Use Your Judgment
4. You Might Not Want to Be Too True to Yourself

Expanding to China

If your startup company is looking to expand, why not consider China, the most enormous market in the world that has recently opened up to outside business?

While this may sound like a great idea, it is not as easy as it seems. While expanding into China can be a very lucrative venture it comes with its fair share of red tape.

Startup Nation has a very interesting article on the subject. It’s a great read whether you are ready to move your business eastward or you’re just interested in the idiosyncrasies of conducting business in the world’s most populous country.

Five Tips to Getting a Startup on Its Feet

Startup Nation is a good source for information on getting your startup company rolling. They have taken the time to lay out five basic tips for making your endeavor as painfree as possible.

1. Research: A good deal of fear stems from the unknown aspects of starting a business, so if you're not taking the time to research your business idea and the competitive market, you’re not taking one of the first steps in knocking out those doubts. Knowledge about your market, your targeted customers, your advantage, and your competition help you to question the basis of your business idea and business plan. You’ll gain much-needed clarity - and position yourself to be decisive about your opportunity.

2. Protect your idea: Reserve a website name, check with the Patent Office to learn about what steps you can take to protect your idea, take the steps to build up protections for your concept and idea before you even officially start up a business. If you haven’t yet, contact a reputable intellectual property attorney to walk you through what the process is for applying for a patent or registered trademark. Having these kinds of defensible advantages can settle your mind and set you off on the right foot.

3. Start part-time: Instead of making the leap from your current job to running your own startup “cold turkey,” consider keeping your job for security and start your business on the side part-time. This will help you avoid taking unnecessary risks and it will ease the transition financially.

4. Outsource: To keep the complexity of your startup to a minimum, consider outsourcing functions like accounting, payroll, information technology, public relations and more. Often its the overwhelming demands of starting a business that scare off many would-be entrepreneurs, but there’s simply no need to wear every hat in a business anymore. You might even want to outsource manufacturing, packing and shipping, and sales. Keep your strongest skills and most strategic activities - perhaps things like design, marketing, or customer interaction, just to name a few - in-house.

5. Be willing to fail: Come to terms with the fact that the best entrepreneurs fail, but don’t let a fear of failure be the reason you don’t start a business. If you’re smart you can limit those failures to small battles along the way, and learn incredibly valuable lessons from each of those failures. Losing those minor battles is okay, because the key is to win the war! Know that failure is something that’s just part of business - as it is in life - and that you can work through those failures on your way to success.

Monkeying Around: Worst Summer Jobs

As summer sadly comes to a close, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on our worst summer jobs. I can think of a few personally – picking up trash on the freeway, washing dishes in a truck-stop diner – but none of them match the terrible, if not strange and possibly illegal, job mentioned on the Monster boards:

“How I wanted to earn money in the summer of 1983 -- enough dough for hot dates, ice cream and Springsteen tickets. Because my older sister had an in at an amusement park in central New Jersey, I was a shoo-in to get the job at the parking lot detail.

About halfway through the summer, I got promoted to work the end gate at the Safari. My responsibilities were laid out by my manager. He dropped me off at the end gate of the Safari and asked Jose to show me the ropes -- or the bat, that is.

You see, the end gate was a passage to the real world for the monkeys and baboons. The inner fence was controlled electronically as cars drove up to it to exit the final portion of the safari. About 30 yards after that gate was my new post. The gate remained open until the safari closed. Here, Jose showed me how the baboons and monkeys would try to make a break for it by riding atop a car, under a truck or just plain rush my gate. I was trained on how to use the Baboon Beater -- a three-foot-long, six-inch-round bat -- to dissuade our fuzzy friends from exiting.

As weeks went by, the baboons and monkeys learned to respect their new master as I maintained a batting average that would assure me a seat on any major league team. One day, I fell asleep on the job in my booth. As I lay asleep inside my booth, the baboons surrounded me. And they had my bat! I had left it outside the booth against the side. One baboon started banging the bat against the roof of my booth as I awoke in horror. I scrambled to close the door just in the nick of time. I spun the tiny latch and felt a sense of security -- but not for long. They had me right where the wanted me: Stuck in the wooden shed with Plexiglas windows in 90-degree heat. Luckily, I had a radio and called for reinforcements. All this to earn $5.75 an hour and break every child labor law at the age of 15!”

Now I’m curious... anyone out there have a story that compares to this one?