Profmomteach

A mom/professor's views of business, finance and life.

[profmomteach]

Only 17% of upcoming May college graduates have job offers lined up. Way more have student loan payments due in six months after graduation. Bubble much?

[profmomteach]

A very cool marketing campaign that leverages the use of insurance (one of my former industries) to make a Super Bowl "bet" with customers. Until I read the article, I thought the jewelry store was going to be in financial trouble but, no, they got a policy with Lloyd's of London (I was once there) to cover their promotion that if a safety was scored in the Super Bowl, certain purchases would have the price paid refunded - and the buyer could keep the gifts. I assume the policy cost a lot less than the $70k that was refunded. And according to the owner, it brought in a lot of business... Amazing idea and great use of insurance. My husband and I were talking about the great mozzarella cheese stick recall (it's a big deal here - both my kids love the Polly-o string cheese sticks) -- and he was saying how he could not imagine how much money Polly-o was losing and I explained to him that they probably have insurance to cover the estimated revenue and other costs that go into a recall and delay of production. I do not think he is the only person who is unaware of how much a company - especially a large multinational one - can insure themselves for and against certain risks... Just a little education on this cold morning :). If only I could insure against having to go out in this winter's polar vortex...

[profmomteach]

Great tips on how to write a cover letter. Writing why you would like to work at the company, what you can do in the role and a story about yourself is so simple and yet so hard. Even "harder" sending it to the "right" person -- all awesome advice...

[profmomteach]

And one of the predictions I made to my classes for the past few semesters is coming true - manufacturing is returning to the US or "reshoring". This is good news on the one hand because we do need jobs. On the other hand, I had also predicted that the US would become a low cost manufacturer (like China) in the future as we struggle as an economic powerhouse... I hope that prediction does not come true...

[profmomteach]

This is awesome!! I remember 1995 and using the internet for the first time -- and how stagnant it was - just a place to see text and maybe some pictures. This guy talks about how it's impossible to do digital publishing because "who would want to read something on a disk" -- and yes, now, in 2014 (and even back in 2006 when I worked at a major publisher); digital publishing is decimating the printed world. Flashback central - who could have predicted how much of our lives would revolve around technology and smart phones? Definitely not this guy that wrote this article :).

[profmomteach]

The high unemployment rate seen during the Great Recession has pulled back to 6.7 percent, but some of the lost jobs simply aren't returning.

Ok so jobs report in December was bad. So bad that the Fed is now confused as to what to do - because they already said the plan was to taper off the bond buying but after December jobs report, that might not be possible... And January job numbers are always bad. And unemployment rate has dropped but a lot of people have just given up - if you are not looking for a job, you are not considered unemployed... That is a big number of people who have just given up.

And this is part of it - these are some disappearing "middle-class" jobs. It is scary because some of them are more upper middle class (insurance underwriter with a salary of 65k) and a lot of them are more lower-lower middle class (23k anyone? In NYC, I do not think so).

The data entry one floored me - I would have assumed these jobs were gone a long time ago - first to India and then to scanning technologies that convert type to data-text. Good read and I am glad to be back on Tumblr from my hiatus :).

[profmomteach]

Took the holidays off - happy new year, belated :). Re ADHD not being "real" -- I appreciate his viewpoint but he has not met with everyone who is classified as ADHD and in fact his sample size of his clients only is too small and convenient to make larger assessments from (just my two cents). However, it is interesting to think about whether doctors probe enough or just lean on the ADHD and drugs prescribed as answers....

[profmomteach]

Fun thinking about how many of these items I can "do"... I used to code, I have done training for the past 10+ years (including training on project management for some major companies all over the world), Marketing research also is something I have done and excelled at... It is interesting to me as I consider going back to work full time and thinking about how to best make that move from adjunct professor back to what made me such a great teacher - my real life work experience. Or considering publishing my Nanowrimo entry on Amazon and collecting royalties :). I used CreateSpace to get my two free copies of my work and I had no idea how easy (and free) it was to select distribution channels through Amazon -- and to potentially have people reading my words on their kindles or book apps on iphones. It is scary... Here is to 2014 and new exciting things!!

[profmomteach]

A lot went on in 2013... "Big brother" and technology kind of go together -- I know the fitbit flex I wear every day since 12/13 gives a lot of information about my activity levels, sleeping habits and I am assuming there is location information (also on my iPhone although I guess I turn that off) but the payoff for me is tracking my progress and activity level so it's ok. I did see people on the fitbit forum who decided it was too much information to give and decided to stop wearing it. I was psyched that last week, I walked over 100k steps or almost 50 miles -- yeah, I am bragging :). So technology is something we use every day and will become more pervasive and it is a hot area to watch for the future :).

[profmomteach]

Whoa - "the tweet heard round the world " is true! For a while HasJustinelanded was trending. I cannot imagine what it felt like to become this infamous so quickly though looking at her past tweets, I am surprised this did not happen sooner. It is a quiet week at most companies so everyone who was "working" was tweeting about this and really gave it a lot of attention. That being said, she sounds like a horrible person or maybe just has no filter but as the (former) head of global PR for a large company, this is utterly unacceptable.

[profmomteach]

Whoa if 50 is the new 35, does that make me 12??

[profmomteach]

RIP young man. What a sin. We really need better mental health services in this country...

[profmomteach]

Further proof social media can be career ruining -- or perhaps this individual would have ruined her career some other way but this tweet is so stupid and so wrong, she deserves the backlash....

[profmomteach]

It's like the episode from Seinfeld -- how "disastrous" it was to be given the 646 area code for Elaine...

[profmomteach]

A Harvard student was charged Tuesday with making a hoax bomb threat just so he could get out of a final exam. Eldo Kim, 20, of Cambridge, Mass., was scheduled for a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court. He could face as long as five years in prison, three years of supe &

Wow. This really makes my head hurt. The student used an anonymous email address but LOGGED into it from his Harvard mainframe based computer. Ouch. All of a sudden, failing that exam does NOT seem so bad, now does it?

[profmomteach]

I speak about this "exporting" of jobs a lot as a prof. Think about how a plumbing or police job could be exported - not many, right? Then think about how a technology job could be exported- a lot... And that 40% stat of people who do not finish a 4 year degree is sobering. Those folks will still have loans or just the opportunity cost of the lost years without getting a degree. There is a focus on what we do - think about the last time you met someone and they did not ask you what you do for a living. Pretty rare, right? And there is a "ranking" so to speak - so someone who can say, "I am a Vice President at a financial services firm" can feel important (though maybe hated for being part of financial services) and someone who says, " I am a sanitation worker" might not feel as "important". But think about this - who gets a pension after 20+ years? (Here is a hint - not the Vice President). Something to think about....

[profmomteach]

I have been hearing about the bitcoin a lot over the past few years. It still does not seem to be a common thing for people to know about or use. And the values of it can fluctuate up to 30% in one day. I did read recently that a casino owner in Las Vegas is accepting bitcoin to buy his 7m$usd home and somewhere else about someone using bitcoin to become a "millionaire"... Is it the future? Currency is an issue for everyone - if you travel or if you own a business and do international transactions or even if you hold investments. The dollar used to be so strong - when I lived in Europe in the late 90's, every dollar gave me 2,500 lire and dollars were coveted so if you had dollars to pay for something, you would get a big discount. Now, with the euro, the dollar is weak. Actually, not just the euro... Having the option of a currency that is not tied to a country is intrigueing and maybe used for nefarious purposes ... For now. But it is not necessarily a bad thing.