Financial turmoil creates greater risks in job hunting

With the financial downturn getting progressively worse, the job hunting picture for students has grown murkier. In my own case, I've seen the companies I've applied for make major changes, whether that is laying off thousands of workers or even getting bought out.

All told, it's really making me wonder whether I should make the effort to work toward getting hired by some of these companies. It seems at this point that most of the financial services companies, along with banks, are going through such a rough period that any hiring they actually do is not guaranteed at all.

In the end, this is the business world, and there are no guarantees in business. Rather, it is a matter of working just a bit harder and researching companies just a bit more, in order to ensure the position a new college hire gets isn't swept out from under them in a matter of weeks or months.

Strive for best fit, not "best job"

The career fair is upon us today, and with over 400 companies represented between the two days it's very difficult to decide which companies to even speak with, let alone which you want to work for. If we as students are overwhelmed by the number of options, however, I can only imagine how the company representatives feel as they get bombarded with questions, resumes, and puppy dog eyes from hundreds of students pleading for a job or at least an interview.

The solution for both parties seems simple, and it's the subject my column: No matter how outstanding you are, the rest of the applicant pool is just as smart and just as talented. Likewise, from the corporate perspective, the top students you want to hire all have countless options before them. The emphasis cannot just be on how wonderful an applicant is, or how prestigious the position is. Rather, the question has to move to one of fit: Is this the company that is most in line with my goals? Is it the one to which my background holds the most appeal?

In the real world, however, these sorts of questions are notoriously hard to evaluate. You often don't get a feel for the culture of a company until after you've worked for them for a while, and companies are well aware that the interview process doesn't tell them nearly everything they would like to know. The solution to that remains elusive. Whoever finds it will, I think, make the world of job-hunting a much better place. And probably make a boatload of money in the process.

Tradeoffs between time, money shaped by tradition

After a brief hiatus, I am back to writing my regular columns for the Technique. This one might be called the last column of my "Kazakhstan series," though I never thought of my columns like that.

While I feel like I ramble a bit, the thought process isn't so complicated. People have to make a tradeoff between money and convenience, and that's the quintessential question of product development. When you read advice for product development, one of the key points is always that your product should be a painkiller, not a vitamin: In other words, your product needs to solve an actual problem the target audience has, not just make things marginally better. If it isn't, you've basically created a luxury item. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it completely changes your target audience and approach.

More critically, I think that when it comes to the issue of software development, creating "luxury items" doesn't work. I mean, sure, you could consider something like Adobe Photoshop a luxury item because you can get The Gimp for free, but Photoshop is the industry standard software that professionals rely on to do their work. It solves the pain these people have of photo and image editing more effectively than anything else.

In web applications, the situation is even more stark. There are a select few applications that actually cost money to use (and don't have a free version), and with a few exceptions these are targeted at businesses. If your target is the casual user--the one who might carry two cell phones because it works out to be cheaper--your product just may not be worth paying for.