DecisionDesk

Apply. Review. Decide.

[decisiondesk]

UnCollege Movement Enlists DecisionDesk To Help Screen Gap Year Program Applicants

UnCollege, the social movement started by Dale J. Stephens, which aims to change the popular notion that attending college is the only way to become successful, is now using DecisionDesk to screen applicants for its UnCollege Gap Year program. DecisionDesk, a service company that helps organizations evaluate multimedia-rich submissions, will now help facilitate the application process for the Gap Year program by enabling UnCollege to easily accept and review digital videos, applications, and recommendation letters submitted by applicants through an online portal.

The UnCollege Gap Year is designed to give people the tools to succeed in a world where having a college degree alone is no longer the competitive advantage it used to be. The program engages ten people, ages 18 to 28, in a year-long process of self-directed learning. Participants spend three months in San Francisco learning how to create individual learning plans, three months living abroad, three months pursuing a creative project, and three-months completing internships.  The idea is that the experiences and knowledge gained through the program will leave participants better equipped to succeed than if they had attended a traditional four-year college.

Though not a traditional scholastic course, there are a few requirements that prospective applicants must meet in order to obtain admittance into the Gap-Year program. They must possess extraordinary intelligence, unstoppable motivation, and an unflappable integrity. Given the limited slots offered, and the challenging nature of the program, only those who possess these qualities are considered for acceptance. Therefore, it is crucial that UnCollege reviewers be able to quickly, easily, and above all, accurately evaluate hundreds of applications to determine which applicants are truly best suited for the Gap Year program. By having candidates apply through DecisionDesk, reviewers can collaboratively evaluate all applicant submissions in one convenient location, rather than spend endless hours sorting through giant piles of DVDs and paper mailed in from all over the world. They can even keep track of their progress from individual dashboards, ensuring that everyone stays on schedule and nothing falls through the cracks.

The CEO of DecisionDesk, John Knific expressed his company’s excitement at being involved in such a unique program. “It just goes to show that there are many different paths to success,” said Knific. “The UnCollege movement is teaching people how to adapt to a changing world that rewards practical experience far more than it does theoretical knowledge. We are thrilled for the opportunity to help UnCollege locate the best and the brightest talent to take part in their amazing Gap Year program, and look forward to seeing all the amazing things that come as a result of it.”

About UnCollege and The Gap Year Program

UnCollege is a social movement started in 2010 by Dale J. Stephens, which aims to change the popular notion that attending college is the only way to become successful. The UnCollege website provides numerous resources for those who wish to define their educational paths such as forums, workshops and mentors. 

About DecisionDesk

DecisionDesk™ is a service company based in Lakewood, Ohio and Brooklyn, NY that utilizes cloud-based software to provide clients with the ability to process high volumes of applications with video by automating their application submission and review processes. John Knific, Eric Neuman and Marc Plotkin founded DecisionDesk™ in 2010. They represent over 200 organizations across the world and have processed over 58,000 applications to date.     

  To learn more about UnCollege and the UnCollege Gap Year Program, visit www.uncollege.org.

To learn more about DecisionDesk™, call [phone] or visit www.DecisionDesk.com.

DecisionDesk Media Contact:

Jessica Blaine

PR and Marketing

[phone]

[email protected]

[decisiondesk]

Top 10 Reasons to "StartUp" in College, and DecisionDesk's CEO, John Knific's Response

In response to the recently posted article "Top 10 Reasons to Startup in College" by Under30CEO, I say "THERE's ONLY 10 REASONS?!"

As an Entrepreneur in Residence at Oberlin College, many students ask me how DecisionDesk's co-founders dealt with the risk of running a startup full-time out of college. My response is usually, "what risk?" The point of college is to explore what you want to do. Often times, this also means figuring out what you don't want to do. There isn't a better time to get lean, build a minimum viable product, and test a market. Not to mention, you will be ahead of the curve if you leave college with great business and startup mentors in your network. Seasoned entrepreneurs love helping young entrepreneurs. I think there's an inherent trait in most entrepreneurs that they love to share their story, and by proxy, 'teach' entrepreneurship.

Oberlin College is among a growing population of schools and incubators that provide students with startup capital and the resources to test their startup. I'm a firm believer that a startup is NOT a smaller version of a large company. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a sustainable and scalable business model. DecisionDesk grew out of a college startup called CitizenGroove. The year of learning the ropes (in addition to the 10 reasons in this article) helped us successfully execute a pivot, launch our initial product, better understand our market, and scale into a venture backed company. Plus, you're already on a ramen noodle diet making no money… which is a lot harder to go back to after you've had the taste of a stable salary…

-John Knific, CEO at DecisionDesk

Here's a link to the article: http://is.gd/TPE34V

And a link to John Knific's Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnknific

[decisiondesk]

Lev Gonick Joins DecisionDesk Board of Directors

On April 24th 2013, Lev Gonick was elected to the Board of Directors of DecisionDesk Inc., a software-service company that simplifies application tracking for university admissions and corporate recruitment. The board chose Gonick because of his deep experience as a thought leader in the educational technology industry and his contributions to multiple successful ed-tech companies.

"As Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology at Case Western Reserve University, he transformed the school into an IT leader. Having him on our board is not only hugely validating of our technology, but will help give us insight into the future of our industry” said CEO of DecisionDesk, John Knific. ”We’re thrilled to have Lev join us. His reputation as a thought leader in the education space is second to none and he has already begun to open doors for our company. “

Gonick is a co-founder and recently named CEO of OneCommunity, an award-winning organization that created a connected community throughout Northeast Ohio through ultra broadband wired and wireless network connectivity. For over 11 years, Lev acted as Vice President for Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He currently serves on a number of other boards, including Monarch Teaching Technologies, (educational software developers for persons with autism), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Bellefaire JCB for Children, Groundworks Dance, and Cleveland Independents (Restaurants).

"DecisionDesk is the most important workflow product after you establish [email protected]. The process of shaping an incoming class is part art and part science” said Gonick. “DecisionDesk provides your entire admissions team with the workflow tools to receive the most creative and innovative applications to your school. After more than 25 years in higher education, I think DecisionDesk is the perfect platform solution to allow schools to create a relationship with your prospects from day one. If that resonates with you, I know you'll want to try DecisionDesk."

Source: http://www.decisiondesk.com/lev-gonick-joins-decisiondesk-board-of-directors/

[decisiondesk]

HiVelocity.com Interviews DecisionDesk CEO

John Knific of DecisionDesk

Meet John Knific, founder of DecisionDesk, an application manager for performing arts students. What is DecisionDesk?  DecisionDesk is an applicant tracking system that simplifies incredibly complicated admissions and recruitment processes. We specialize in handling multimedia for video interviews, auditions and portfolio submissions. Our application manager is already used by over 100 universities and 50,000 college applicants. We manage the largest network of performing arts opportunities – over 200 – in facilitating auditions for 17 of the top 30 conservatories in the U.S. How did you come up with the idea? My co-founder and I were both music majors and active performers while studying at Case Western Reserve University. The company grew out of an ePortfolio service we started on campus that allows students to upload and share materials they were working on. We shopped the technology to several regional universities, including the Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin College, and Baldwin Wallace University. A ubiquitous pain point was the inability to process and distribute multimedia in the admissions process. As students, we also identified how terribly cumbersome the admissions and audition process was. It involves paper portfolios, burning and mailing dozens of DVDs, and expensive travel. We quickly packaged our technology as an applicant tracking system and launched 12 Beta Universities in 2010. Our clients loved it. We had 100-percent buy in our following year, and we moved forward under the new name DecisionDesk. What was the biggest surprise in starting your business? There are constant surprises. It's true that entrepreneurship is a game of execution, not ideas. You have a lot of romantic notions of having a startup as a college founder. We've learned that it takes a special fit and adaptable excellence to excel in a startup environment. We had some rough hires in our initial period of scaling, picking talent with a laundry list of credentials without completely understanding the organizational fit. As Thomas Edison put it, "Vision without execution is hallucination." Where did you find your first employee? Luckily, our third co-founder and CTO Eric Neuman is an incredibly talented software developer. We met at Case. Eric was the guy on campus from San Francisco who roller bladed to class, had a wrist strap for his PDA (personal digital assistant), and worked at NASA over the summer writing code for drones. In a team of three, you need a hustler for sales, hipster for design, and a hacker for coding. He was our hacker. As a result, our team of three was able to crank out the first version of DecisionDesk completely in-house. After a huge growth in clients and funding, we quickly scaled the team from three to eight employees in 2011, then again from eight to sixteen employees in 2012. What does a typical day in your business look like? I can tell you we're not a punch in at 8 a.m., punch out at 5 p.m. kind of company. There is work happening around the clock in both our Cleveland and New York office. We build our product in iterative cycles and constantly infuse data from the market place. We're lean in that regard, always pushing and getting feedback from our current and prospective customer. Our sales and business development teams develop campaigns around these cycles. I spend most of my day overseeing these campaigns, keeping a constant eye on cash, identifying needed talent, and always zooming out to make sure we're pointing the company in the right direction. What are some of the advantages to doing business in Ohio? In my experience as the CEO of a high-growth technology startup, there are a number of advantages to doing business in Oho. Costs of doing business are lower than most major cities, and there is great access to talent through the large network of universities in the state. There has also been a huge push over the past few years to seed more software as a service company, increasing access to capital and mentorship for idea stage companies. What resources or organizations in Ohio did you take advantage of and how did they help? We've benefited greatly from Ohio's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Right out of college, DecisionDesk won a variety of idea stage competitions and grants unique to the region. This includes LaunchTown, Civic Innovation Lab, GLIDE Innovation Fund, and COSE Arts Entrepreneur Award. Shortly after, the North Coast Angel Fund engaged DecisionDesk and helped us raise over $1,000,000 in equity through their network. The State of Ohio recently provided DecisionDesk with an Innovation Ohio Fund Loan of $750,000, allowing us to invest heavily in scaling our product and engineering team. In addition to this tremendous access to seed stage capital, we've built a powerful network of mentors and advisors that now extends well outside of the region. Fundable, an investor crowd-sourcing platform based in Columbus, helped us push that last portion of our angel round. We filled over $250,000 of it within two weeks as a result. Can you share a funny or amazing entrepreneurial experience with our readers? Very, very early on, Marc and I were coming up with an idea for a music social network – an idea fueled by beer and conversation more than market research. I took the idea to Ed Caner, who was forming the entrepreneurship program at Case. He told me the idea didn't seem to solve a real problem, but we should consider bundling it in a way to sell to schools. I left that meeting thinking, "Selling to schools, how would we do that? I don't think that's the right route." So much for that assessment! What inspires you? Great artists and entrepreneurs working together. The cross section of beautiful design, real market need, and effective execution. What founders do you admire and why? When I was asked this question as a music student, I always tipped my hat to the jazz greats. Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, etcetera. The people I really wanted to be like were the modern performers who found a whole new voice and interpretation to the genre, and made it accessible to today's audience. I'm going to go with a similar answer. Jobs and Gates are the archetypes of entrepreneurship, but Jack Dorsey is more accessible. He's taken two modern, complex problems and made brilliantly simple solutions. One for communication (Twitter), the other for payments (Square). Now he's throwing his hat into the ring of healthcare IT, or so the rumors say. Mikkel Svane is proving that enterprise customer service software doesn't have to suck at ZenDesk. In fact, it can be awesome, and they're about to do $70 million in revenue having started in 2007. What’s next for you? We're out of the validation phase and on to growth and scaling. There's a whole new set of challenges and opportunities that accompany this phase of our company. We're aggressively bringing on the talent needed to become the best talent screening application possible.     Interview by Joe Baur

[decisiondesk]

DecisionDesk CEO, John Knific, Mentioned In Huffington Post

Why a Liberal Education Creates Great Entrepreneurs

John Dearborn

President, JumpStart Inc.

Posted: 04/15/2013 4:15 pm

When then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2 in March 2011, the device and its characteristics weren't the only things dominating the news cycle. In fact, one particular quote from Jobs' speech proved to be somewhat controversial. "It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough," he said. "It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices."

Jobs' declaration that Apple's innovations drew inspiration from the liberal arts and humanities spawned plenty of passionate debates in the press, mainly because this belief ran counter to the theory that tech entrepreneurship stems from a business or engineering background. More and more, there are good arguments for why a liberal education--a broad definition encompassing everything from history, literature and languages to mathematics, science and psychology--creates great entrepreneurs. Based on core aspects of a liberal education as put forth by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, here's why these students can thrive in entrepreneurship.

"Liberal education is an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity and change."

Few things are more uncertain than an entrepreneurial endeavor. It's why so many companies pivot, for starters, or shift focus after inadvertently finding a better direction. But scientists are also used to switching gears after an experiment might not produce data to support a hypothesis, and some of the most disruptive

scientific discoveries

--including penicillin and x-rays--occurred accidentally. 

In addition, taking a kernel of an idea and making it a reality requires both abstract and analytical thinking--two things stressed in the humanities. Grinnell College graduate Hilary Mason is a self-described practitioner within the "data science" movement, which she says is "fundamentally about learning about human behavior from the data exhaust that we generate." She's applying this in her role as chief scientist at URL-shortening website bitly.com. "I'm a huge fan of the liberal arts approach of teaching you to think, analyze, and communicate, then sending you out into the world to cause trouble,"Mason told The Grinnell Magazine. "My Grinnell education didn't prepare me directly for the work that I'm doing, but it did give me the tools that I needed to focus my curiosity."

"It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g. science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest."

Entrepreneurs need to be aware and attuned to the world around them. The premise of a liberal education is based on a well-rounded curriculum that exposes people to many different areas of study, ensuring they can learn about (and be open to) new ideas. However, being required to hone in on a more specific aspect helps teach students to focus and become an expert on a single topic--useful skills as well for tech entrepreneurs, who have to be vigilant about keeping up with advancements and competition within their chosen sector. 

Such foresight proved valuable to DecisionDesk CEO and Co-Founder John Knific, who studied music and biology at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University. His company's initial concept was to be an online network for creative-minded students to post and share video portfolios. But after finding that colleges increasingly needed a way to streamline their admissions process if a video audition or other creative portfolio was required, DecisionDesk pivoted. The Cleveland-based startup now provides a cloud-based applicant tracker system to over 100 organizations worldwide. "Originally, a vision for this company was a product," Knific says. "The vision for our company now is being the leader in admissions in higher education. We're driven more by the marketplace as opposed to this concept of a cool product."

"A liberal education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills."

A liberal education dovetails neatly with social entrepreneurship, a category whose 

primary focus

 is to "[identify and solve] social problems on a large scale" and "advance sustainable solutions that create social value." This education's emphasis on communication also aligns well with vital skills entrepreneurs need--such as being able to craft a concise elevator pitch, or be able to explain to investors what their product, service or idea is or does.

However, entrepreneurs of all stripes need critical thinking skills and the willingness to question the status quo. Those qualities stood out to Sean Marsh, a Bowdoin College graduate who did some research and discovered that fellow alums of the Maine liberal arts school had founded tech companies worth sizable amounts of money. "This data supports a long held intuition that successful entrepreneurs have the ability to think in dynamic and non-linear ways and then to aggressively challenge conventional wisdom in pursuit of an innovative endeavor," he wrote on VentureFizz.

"[A liberal education helps students develop] a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings."

Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum--and neither should entrepreneurship. 

Put nicely by Mary Godwyn

: "The liberal arts and entrepreneurship share the same critical, forward-thinking orientation: They involve the study and analysis of what is (for example, the current state of the economy, social justice, citizenship and community affairs, business environments, and public and private needs) and, by identifying and evaluating opportunities for improvement, consciously contribute to what will be."

Now, none of this is meant to diminish the value of engineering and other technical or business disciplines that could be quite instrumental in entrepreneurial ventures; their value is unquestionable. As we've discussed before in this space, education--whether liberal, business or even as part of a formal entrepreneurship program--helps students develop the traits and qualities that make for a successful entrepreneur. Regardless of a student's background, however, ideas (and enthusiasm for those ideas) trump all. When faced with a new venture, I'm always asking myself, can I connect to the idea? Does it seem truly breakthrough? Most importantly, can I get caught up in the entrepreneur's passion for it? The latter is especially important to Cleveland Whiskey CEO Tom Lix, who teaches entrepreneurship at a Northeast Ohio's Lake Erie College. "I just think, 'Follow your passion,'" he says. "You've got to be excited about it. If you're not excited about it, it doesn't matter that it's a great idea."

  Follow John Dearborn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jumpstartinc

[simpleactually]

I unabashedly love the art of metaphor. I find it to be uniquely powerful in that it allows one type of thoughts to be overlaid or substituted for another. In discussing testing regimes with our Q/A manager at DecisionDesk, I stumbled upon a new and useful metaphor; web-application as a...

[simpleactually]

I just got a chance to read the NYT article The Ivy League was Another Planet and it really resonated with me. The fact is, getting a position, be it as a student in a college or as an employee at a company, is a preponderously difficult task fraught with artificial barriers and requirements for...

[decisiondesk]

The following is a blog post written by DecisionDesk's very own CTO, Eric Neuman in response to the New York Times article The Ivy League Was Another Planet.  

[decisiondesk]

Great illustration of why it is so important to find the right people for your orgnization. DecisionDesk helps employers and applicants find the perfect fit, saving everyone time and money. 

[decisiondesk]

FlashStarts™ Teams up With DecisionDesk™

FlashStarts, a for-profit Cleveland software startup accelerator, has teamed up with DecisionDesk to implement an innovative method of accepting and reviewing business plan applications. As a result of the partnership, DecisionDesk’s submission management platform has increased both the efficiency and the effectiveness of FlashStarts’ application process, allowing evaluators to provide higher quality feedback to applicants at a much greater rate than before.

FlashStarts Inc. runs an accelerator for those who “want to build great companies fast.” Their program admits ten teams of one-to-three success-hungry entrepreneurs, and provides them with seasoned mentors, constant feedback, customer validation, and up to $20,000 in startup capital, in exchange for 6% equity in their new companies.  The participants benefit by receiving focus and guidance that can only come from the wisdom of mentors with years of experience in the creation of multiple successful companies.

 But wait, there’s more: starting this year, FlashStarts is now offering a new summer apprentice program in addition to its current accelerator and intern programs. The apprenticeship concept is specially designed for solo entrepreneurs, those who want to learn about entrepreneurship, and for those without a complete team or an idea. Charles Stack, CEO of FlashStarts, explains, “We will match you up with a person who has complementary skills and with an idea that we think has legs.” It should be noted that most accelerators do not accept applicants who fall into this category. “I have been a solo entrepreneur in all of my previous startups, so it didn’t seem right that we wouldn’t accept other teams of one.” Stack says he believes that the inclusion of the apprentice concept fulfills the needs of an underserved market and further differentiates FlashStarts from other accelerators. 

In order to become a participant in either program, candidates submit a media-rich application that is evaluated by a team of reviewers. This is where DecisionDesk comes in. Rather than have reviewers try to coordinate multiple schedules to conduct live interviews, or have participants mail stacks of DVDs and flash drives back and forth, candidates instead upload their videos to FlashStarts’ online application through DecisionDesk’s cloud-based platform, where reviewers can evaluate the applications and provide immediate feedback while reducing costs and turnaround time. 

Stack and DecisionDesk’s CEO, John Knific, have worked closely together since being paired up a at a business competition several years ago (a competition which Knific won). Stack subsequently invested in the company and has followed its success closely ever since. So, when the FlashStarts team decided to develop an accelerator, and realized that a multi-user, multi-media application process was needed to facilitate it, DecisionDesk was the obvious choice.

 DecisionDesk’s multi-reviewer flexibility along with its multi-media capability has made FlashStarts’ submission process exponentially more effective and efficient. According to Stack, the process requires the submission of two videos: a customer sales pitch and a team bio. The first video allows reviewers to determine, from a customer’s perspective, how well thought-out a business plan is, as well as gauge the team’s ability to sell it; while the second video provides reviewers with the opportunity to get to know the applicants as people. DecisionDesk’s service allows the reviewers to access these videos, evaluate them, and provide feedback. This rapid turn around is key, given that FlashStarts application process is iterative, meaning that as soon as applicants submit their plans, they begin receiving feedback, make adjustments, and resubmit their plans for more feedback. “The method of physically bringing the teams in was just a scheduling nightmare,” remarked Stack. “DecisionDesk allows our applicants to quickly create a video from their laptop and post it through the platform so that we can review it and get feedback to them in a much more efficient fashion.” 

By partnering with DecisionDesk, FlashStarts reviewers will be able to evaluate more applications faster while providing higher quality feedback to each applicant, allowing the accelerator to better serve its participants while benefitting from the same time-saving and money-saving advantages that over 100 organizations already using the service have been experiencing for years. “DecisionDesk’s services can easily be used by any organization that wants to utilize a multi-reviewer multi-media application process,” said Stack, “that to us is the real sweet spot and it really does make the whole process more efficient. “

About FlashStarts

FlashStarts, Inc. operates a startup accelerator and provides services to startup CEOs, venture capital firms, and accelerator/incubator programs. The FlashStarts Startup Accelerator is a new 12-week summer program in which teams receive capital and mentorship in exchange for equity. 

About DecisionDesk

DecisionDesk™ is a service company based in Lakewood, Ohio and Brooklyn, NY that utilizes cloud-based software to provide clients with the ability to process high volumes of applications with video by automating their application submission and review processes. John Knific, Eric Neuman and Marc Plotkin founded DecisionDesk™ in 2010. They represent over 100 organizations across the world and have processed over 56,000 applications to date.    

To learn more about FlashStarts visit www.flashstarts.com.

To learn more about DecisionDesk visit www.decisiondesk.com.

[decisiondesk]

DecisionDesk Nets $1.7M to Help Colleges & Companies Pick The Best People (Exclusive)

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/decisiondesk/

March 21, 2013 9:30 AM 

Sean Ludwig

Ever had to collect thousands of applications and whittle them down to find the best hundred candidates? Universities and businesses do it all the time, and it’s not an easy task.

New York City-based DecisionDesk wants to change that. The company takes the application and selection process into the cloud, promising to make the lives of administrators a lot less stressful. And it just raised $1.75 million in new funding to keep innovating.

Here’s how it used to work: Let’s say you are a music program for a major university. You get hundreds (or maybe thousands) of video auditions when students are applying to your program. Employees at the college have to review all of these materials to select the right candidates. But most of the software used to process these materials is on-premise, so the review process is not easy to manage among remote and traveling employees.

DecisionDesk skirts all of those conventions by streamlining the process and offering its software in the cloud, making it accessible from any browser and on mobile devices through HTML5. On the back-end, everything runs on Amazon Web Services. To date, the company has processed more than 56,000 applicants, more than 200,000 files, and about 100,000 reviews.

“This opportunity presented itself when we looked at the legacy providers in the market,” DecisionDesk CEO John Knific told VentureBeat. “Some of these services aren’t even online and require you to locally store content. People are still sending DVDs and cassette tapes to these programs.”

Not only does DecisionDesk’s software streamline the application process, but it also does advanced filtering. This way, if a candidate has a major red flag (like they don’t actually play an instrument), they can be taken out of the reviewing process faster.

“We’re allowing the entire application and decision-making process happen in one product,” Knific said. “There’s big savings in time and money.”

Knific said the average amount of time saved on each application is two hours. The company’s biggest clients have as many as 5,000 applicants for a single program, which means up to 10,000 hours can be saved with each batch of applicants.

DecisionDesk is already working with a number of universities and prestigious programs, including the University of Michigan, University of Southern California, Northwestern University, Carnegie Hall, and the Fulbright Scholars Program. But much like hot research startup Qualtrics, DecisionDesk is building its roots in academia and then plans to branch out to bigger companies.

“We’d like to disrupt other areas that focus on tryouts and auditions,” Knific said. “In theory, we could replace casting agencies. We’d also like to get into HR.”

To help with its mission of making the application process easier, the company has raised new funds, which come in two parts. DecisionDesk took $1 million in capital from angel investors in Ohio and New York, led by North Coast Angel Fund. DecisionDesk also scored a $750,000 loan from the state of Ohio, called an “Innovation Ohio Fund Loan.” Combined with $400,000 in prior seed funds, the company has raised $2.15 million in funding to date.

The new funding will go toward expanding its 15-employee team and working on with new products. The company says it is discussing future funding with several VC firms.

 by Taboola

[decisiondesk]

Social Media Internship Opportunity (NYC)

Ever gotten a company's attention over Twitter? Know how to create multi-party conversations from a Facebook post? We'd like to have you.

We're seeking a Social Media/PR intern to work out of our New York office. You'll be engaging in meaningful dialogue with clients and users over Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and more. Our users are fast-paced and announce their feelings about our product very quickly to a wide audience. We'll need you to help broadcast the victories, and mitigate any negativity.

Don't have experience doing this for a company? That's ok, send your resume to [email protected] for review and write something about how your social media experience in a personal or professional capacity make you perfect for this job.

This position does provide an opportunity to grow into a full time associate position. 20 hours/week minimum, Monday/Wednesday/Friday must be present in Brooklyn office, Tuesday/Thursday remote work.

[decisiondesk]

DecisionDesk Pays Out Colleges Via Dwolla

DecisionDesk helps colleges improve the complex application review process by allowing prospective students to add photos and videos to their applications. Check it out:

Organizations in the creative industry – like performing arts colleges for example – rely heavily on video during the admissions process when in-person interviews and auditions are not possible. As a result, the administrators at these colleges have to deal with mountains of video footage, usually sent on DVDs or via YouTube links pasted throughout thousands of emails, application forms and resumes. It’s all pretty difficult to keep track of, especially as an application is passed from reviewer to reviewer.

DecisionDesk includes a simple and trackable review flow, rich analytics, and the ability to easily include photo and video on an application – saving admissions and HR departments time and money, while also helping them find those standout students or employees.

How they use Dwolla

DecisionDesk will use Dwolla to streamline the way that they payout application fees to their partnering colleges. Currently they are using Dwolla with Ithaca College and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and are set to bring on more colleges for the fall semester.

“Dwolla was an easy choice for DecisionDesk. The logistics of managing applications for over one hundred universities is very complicated. Dwolla allows us to send application fee payments to our clients faster, easier, and cheaper.” — John Knific, co-founder & CEO

Are you a college administrator, or even an HR representative looking to revamp the way that you accept applications? Check out what DecisionDesk can do for you.

[laureateconnect-deactivated2018]

Education is always a wise investment and formal education increases your self-confidence, helps you reach your goals, improves your attitude by learning and sharing knowledge and increases your earning potential. Learn more from the following infographic.

[decisiondesk]

[decisiondesk]

100 Clients And Counting...

Since its founding in 2008, DecisionDesk has grown at an astounding rate. Just last week they blew through another milestone and signed their 100th client. With over 55 thousand applicants processed, more than 205 thousand files submitted and over 97 thousand reviews performed using their software (and counting) DecisionDesk is taking media -rich application submissions by storm.  What was once a small team of only four has now become a thriving company of 19... and they are still growing! In fact DecisionDesk is always looking for fresh talent to join their team as they keep getting bigger. Check out the Jobs section on their website to stay up-to-date with new and exciting career opportunities. Happy Deciding Everyone!

[decisiondesk]

For years, American colleges have been ill-equipt to defend against application fraud, especially at this level. By using DecisionDesk™ to screen applicants, schools can better protect their talent pool and their scholarship money from the unqualified and the undeserving.

[decisiondesk]

President Phillips Announces NHSHO Change

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American String Teachers Association  

      National High School Honors Orchestra

Note from the President:

Good News!  

  The application process for the 2014 National High School Honors Orchestra (NHSHO) will be easier this year.   

  This past January, the ASTA Board of Directors approved the use of DecisionDesk. This software simplifies what the state chapters need to do for the applicants and allows broader access for participation. As always, there will be a national committee to review the applications. Of note, DecisionDesk was successfully implemented for the 2013 ASTA's National Solo Competition audition materials.   

This method of audition benefits students too-it allows applicants to gain experience by directly applying to a program online . . .  the trend of the future.

Additionally, state chapters are no longer limited to nominating just 30 students from their state. Teachers, who are ASTA members, can now nominate their own individual string or wind students. The teacher only needs to provide the web address to their students for them to apply. ASTA believes this process for NHSHO will reach more students otherwise overlooked with the old application method.  

Applications Due: June 15, 2013

Apply Here Audition Repertoire Available

 ASTA Welcomes

Gary Lewis as NHSHO Conductor

Now announcing: The 2014 NHSHO concert program will be Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op. 47 by Dmitri Shostakovich.

American String Teachers Association | [email protected] | http://www.astaweb.com/nhsho 4155 Chain Bridge Road Fairfax, VA 22030