TradeUp

The bridge between education and employment.

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1,700 users in the first 24 hours (Part 2)

Act Three: Unprepared— by design.

My cofounder and I found ourselves hours away from the largest event event we’ve ever hosted— projectXpresso. PX promised to pair up over 1,400 aspiring professionals with 700 existing professionals for 15 minute information interviews over vidchat. But with hours before it was supposed to start, we ran into a problem— all we had was an excel spreadsheet of 2100 names and a single page website. Without imagining that our little marketing experiment would go so well (to hear more about how we acquired 2,100 registrants in just under 36 hours, check out part one of this post), we very quickly realized that we were in for a long night ahead of us. 

Thanks lean startup, now we’re screwed. 

Act Three: Screw your fancy machines.

We found ourselves in a unique situation where we quickly realized that the best option was solving this problem by hand, not by leveraging oft fetishized machine-tinkering methodologies. After removing the 8 or so redditers who aspired to become Batman (we actually introduced them to each other— although we have no idea if they met up), we quickly realized that we were gaining insights no machine could tell us. 

We were able to fill very both very specific requests (such as one student who wanted to meet with a systems engineer at a space company, and we had a systems engineer from NASA register) and more eccentric requests (such as a student who aspired to become a professional story teller with someone who was already living that dream). Aspiring game designers were paired with noteworthy professionals from Disney and EA, both of which we had multiple professionals donating their time. We scoured linkedin profiles of our users to make sure we knew what jobs people had and what jobs people wanted to learn about. We even emailed our users to ask them for clarifications— and they emailed us right back blown away at the level of detail we paid to them. Of course, there were some requests that totally missed, and the off ratio meant that not everyone could be paired, but in sum we were able to send to hand paired emails introducing nearly 1,400 people to each other. 

The British Are Coming!

After spending over over 14 hours pouring through linkedin profiles and personal websites of our users to figure out what they really wanted, we realized that we had only paired people together in our excel spreadsheet— no one had received an email from us. But no fear, it was only 1am — plenty of time. But, then came the emails. Excited users from Europe started emailing us asking us if we had forgotten them— we had forgotten the 10 hour time differential! We entered panic mode— woke up some friends and began the tedious process of emailing each user personally with an introduction. 

5am— only 50% done emailing every user by hand. It was time to give up our love of the manual process and bring out the scripting languages. After 20 minutes we were able to write a script that automatically emailed the rest of our users with introductions, but not without an apology for not doing it by hand!

Finding ourselves again exhausted, we quickly crashed with the satisfaction of knowing over 1,400 people had the opportunity to speak about the sort of professional work that interests them. The email introductions were simple, and we encouraged registrants to jump on Skype for the one-on-one conversations. Though we were left with two last qualms -- would people actually do this? and, if they do, will people really enjoy this experience?

Act Three: They like us. They really like us!

The results we received were as positive as the number of registrants suggested they might be. We woke up to dozens of emails of people thanking us personally for spending the time to help them. Furthermore, our users enjoyed talking to each other so much they went beyond our expectation and on average spoke for over 30-minutes with their mentees, with many conversations lasting over an hour. (These insights all came from a survey we sent out following the event, so there may be a selection bias). Most excitingly, 95% of the respondents said they were interested in participating again.

Here's your chance to join in on the fun: ProjectXpresso returns on February 1st. You can signup at www.ProjectXpresso.com

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1,700 users in the first 24 hours (Part 1)

The Prologue.

During a night of frustration about how to get the name out about TradeUp.io (see what I did there?), my cofounder and I recalled a conversation with our friend Gabe. He was telling us about the time he visited his alma mater to promote google recruiting and got swarmed by students treating him as royalty. Expectedly, what came next were swaths of emails thanking him for the conversation and throwing in tidbits about some inside joke they had developed during their minutes of intimacy -- all in an attempt to spark his memory of the occasion -- leaving sacrifice at the temple door of google in hopes of admittance. I'm sure we can all cringe thinking back to those overly formal emails we shot out before we truly understood the dynamics of the business world.

The truth is, Gabe has very little say in whether or not these well-intentioned students actually land their dream gig at Google. But, he can provide some really awesome insight into whether or not Google is actually good fit for them. Alas, the students we're unable to break out of their professional goal and ask these real questions of value.

But what struck a chord with me was the fact that Gabe was able to capture an audience of attention that found great value simply in connecting with him.

Act one: Setting The Stage.

We decided that this irresistibility factor could not be isolated to Gabe alone (sorry, Gabe). Instead students all over the country would be dying to gain credible insight from people who live out their professional dreams. And, we were willing to take a bet on the fact that goodnatured professionals like Gabe received altruistic warm-and-fuzzies being able to help out people that, not so long ago, they once were. To rationalize this detour from mission critical we would make sure it wasn't a costly bet. Enter ProjectXpresso: an online career-fair aimed at pairing aspiring professionals with existing professionals for one-on-one video chats. We gave ourselves 48 hours to put the whole thing together.

We threw together a quick landing page, and shot out emails to some of our friends explaining the concept and asking them to seed professional side of things. After showing the landing page to a bunch of friends, and confirming it gets the message across (well, Gabe told us he would instabounce), we threw together a quick launch plan. If it worked, we'd grab the attention of the very audience our startup is trying to address -- student job seekers, and if it didn't we were out no more than a couple day's work. Our plan was to grab some willing professionals off the hacker news community, hopefully get a bit of press coverage, and then swing around to university career centers to get students on board. 

We waited up till about 5am -- the time we read it was best to throw a link up on hacker news -- and watched nervously as our post fluctuated on and off the front page. Then it stuck. Slowly rising towards the top where it started to attract more and more traffic to the site. Then, while we were feverishly watching our Google Analytics dashboard, we began to see traffic pick up from Reddit. Turns out that a complete stranger(!) liked the idea so much s/he posted it onto r/internetisbeautiful. Prompt the debate between my cofounder and I about whether or not they were applauding our idea or our design (always a touchy subject). Numbers began to swell, and our fear of having way more students sign up than mentors started to come to fruition. A fear we decided to put aside during our 'don't over think it' phase. Except, this all happened before we could call a single university career center. Exhausted, we crashed, figuring we would deal with the mess we created in the morning.

Act Two: The intermission.

Once we woke up -- at 2pm -- we were pleasantly shocked to find the numbers. Over 1,000 people had signed up for ProjectXpresso in these few hours, and the number of professionals started to equalize the hoards of students that has signed up the morning. We were still going strong: over 80 people were logged on to the site at any given time. Once we started looking at the data, we were surprised to find that there were many professionals from the same companies, we theorized we were starting to spread by word of mouth. This hunch was later confirmed once we sent out a survey. But, since the numbers were still off, we decided to institute a wait list for students, asking them to tweet to jump to the front of it. And we all know the internet loves wait lists. By the end of the first 24 hours we had over 1,700 participants signed up. More surprisingly these people ranged from Bakers to Systems Engineers at NASA to Award winning Game Designers. Eventually, we tapped out at 2,100 participants leaving us with the task of now pairing up the participants by hand.

To be continued….

To preregister for the next ProjectXpresso, check out ProjectXpresso.com

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TradeUp Announces ProjectXpresso

Professionals from Google, Microsoft, Deloitte, amongst others, agree to commit 15 minute of their time towards helping aspiring professionals better understand their careers.

New York City, NY—November 11th, 2013 – TradeUp (www.tradeup.io), a company focused on leveraging 21st century solutions to prepare the next generation of professionals, today announced the launch of “ProjectXpresso” a popup internet career fair that will pair aspiring professionals with industry experts for 15 minute informational interviews on November 16th. You can signup to participate in this mentor-for-a-minute experience at www.projectxpresso.com.

With professionals from flagship firms like Google, Microsoft, IBM and Deloitte already committing 15 minutes of their time on November 16th to speak to students aspiring to break into their respective industries, TradeUp hopes to raise awareness about what it takes to get a job and to pull back the curtain on what day-to-day life is like at these firms.

“One of the most overlooked issues people have when applying or preparing for a career is being able to identify exactly what it would be like to live that job,” said Jonathan Friedman, co-founder of TradeUp. “It’s amazing how insightful a simple conversation with the right person can be at helping people understand whether or not they are heading in the right direction.”

TradeUp is on a mission to solve one of the largest issues facing the US economy: the widening skills gap. By 2020, an estimated 1.5 million jobs will go unfilled, according to a study conducted by McKinsey & Co. This can be attributed to a mismatch between the skills employers are seeking and the skills candidates possess. Drawing back the curtain on what skills professionals rely on day-to-day is one of the strategies TradeUp has taken to address this US skills gap that has recently fueled immigration reform as US tech firms have voiced their needs for a greater population of qualified candidates than can be domestically found.

Registration to participate in ProjectXpresso, both for professionals willing to share their experiences and for students or job seekers, is open until 11:59pm November 15th at www.projectxpresso.com. TradeUp will then pair together participants based on mutual interest and arrange the one-on-one informational conversations over video chat.

A graduate of DreamIt Ventures’ NYC accelerator, TradeUp aims to bridge the gap between education and employment through skill validation, training and tracking. TradeUp is on a mission to bring online education to its potential by providing economic opportunity to every online learner.

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Leveraging online education for your dream job

In this digital era, there exist a plethora of online courses available for career advancement. Millions of students are already taking advantage of these incredible resources. As competition gets stiffer for jobs in the status quo market, it is necessary to gain all advantages possible in order to pursue your career. Utilizing online education tools can give you a massive edge when searching for jobs as those tools can greatly expand your employee skill set. The current job market is overrun by a mismatch of skills and available labor. Even students coming out of universities may realize that they need additional training to be ready for what their dream job entails in the real world. Even if you are currently employed, online education is a great way to build your resumé to change careers if you are dissatisfied with your current position. Companies such as Udemy, Coursera, and Udacityoffer a wide variety of classes available to take from the comfort of your own home. Whether you are interested in literature, history, or any other academic area, you will be able to find online courses that fit your passions. Through online education you can obtain a specific set of job skills to distinguish yourself from other applying for similar job positions. With online job training so prevalent, education has never been so accessible and flexible!

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Online Courses on Nursing

The status quo job market is currently in need of more nurses. Now is the perfect time to begin your nursing career. If you do not have the time or money to pursue a professional degree at a university, there are plenty of incredibly helpful online courses available to properly learn the profession of nursing. Websites such as Coursera and Udacity offer an innumerable amount of useful online nursing classes. Through EdX and Udemy you can take classes that are specific to your individual skill level. The degree to which you can specify what you want your course to look like is impressive. It is possible to specify the difficulty level, course load, approximate hours of work, and subject of the course you sign up for. Through these easily navigable websites, you can craft a path to your dream-nursing career. Below are 4 online courses you should definitely try if you want to become a nurse:

Human Growth and Development- This course taught by a wide array of professors atTufts University including Professor David Adler will give students a strong foundation in human developmental tracks. In particular, this class focuses on the relation diseases and conditions have on stunting mental and physical growth. Additionally, it seeks to convey to budding nurses that learning about more general growth patterns can give great insight into the ailments of individual patients.

Critical Analysis of Popular Diets and Dietary Supplements- This course is taught by Professor Lawrence J. Cheskin of the medically prestigious Johns Hopkins University. This course analyzes the efficacy of common dietary supplements and diets and aims to utilize results to further inform individuals on various health matters. In addition to listening to a lecture series, students will also be encouraged to do hands-on dietary research and exploration on their own.

Nursing Fundamentals- This course offered by Kaplan University will give students a general background in all matters necessary to be a successful and effective nurse. Students will go over several interesting nursing topics such as patient safety, vital sign analysis, personal care, and much more. For beginners with limited nursing experience this course is a fantastic way to gain sufficient knowledge to jumpstart your nursing career.

Utilization of Nursing Research in Advanced Practice- This course taught by a plethora ofUniversity of Michigan professors including Professor Sonia A. Duffy is an advanced course intended for individuals who already have a background in nursing. Students are encouraged to take a more quantitative and research-based approach to nursing. It also helps to foster leadership in the nursing force so as the improve creativity and independence in the status quo nursing system.

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Online Courses for Photography

A career in the arts can be extremely enriching.

Although many individuals have the creative passion to pursue photography or some other art form, not all have the technical expertise. However, becoming a professional photographer has never been so accessible. As long as you bring the motivation and love for art, websites such as Udemy, Coursera, Udacity, and EdX can provide the extra knowledge required to take your craft to the next level. Even if you are not ready to pursue photography for your entire career, photography is still a great hobby to practice on the side. Because these courses are all online they can be taken in your spare time. Online courses fit in with your schedule, which makes it easy for you to maintain both your professional and hobby lives. Online education is revolutionizing the way people learn. Since much of photography includes digital editing, these classes work perfectly on the Internet. You can both study and learn online, as well as upload your photographs and check your progress in real-time. Below are some of the best online photography classes available on the web:

Digital Photography- This course offered by Professor Marc Levoy of the prestigiousStanford University teaches students how digital cameras work, how to best take pictures with them, and much more. The course also analyzes the work of famous photographers so as to provide models for future students to aspire to. Professor Levoy also provided assignments that online users can use on their own to personally track progress. This course is also completely free!

Professional Photography- This course is offered by the New York Institute of Photography and provides amateur photographers the skills to take photography from a part-time hobby to a full-time profession. The course covers many important topics such as the importance of natural light, landscape photography, digital processing, and much more. For those that feel as though they could be taking better advantage of the opportunities photography offers them, this is the course for you.

Fundamentals of Digital Photography 2013- In this class taught by Mr. John Greengo of the company creativeLive, students learn tips on how to pursue a famous photography career. The class is structured into 5 day long workshops. Mr. Greengo actually interacts with his students live via video chat. This course is extremely interactive as students are able to learn directly from Mr. Greengo with a question and answer session after each lecture.

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Free Online Accounting Courses

Your dream accounting career is just a couple clicks away.

Online education course providers such as Udemy, Coursera, Udacity, and EdX offer top of the line courses in accounting. Whether you want to become a professional accountant or just learn about accounting for your own personal affairs, taking online courses is an extremely enriching experience. While sitting on your own couch it is possible to select and choose classes that are tailored to your level of interest and proficiency in the academic field. Through the internet, you can test out and take only the specific types of accounting courses you would enjoy. If you have a solid foundation in accounting already, you can even go more in-depth to explore a wide array of more specific accounting professions such as bookkeeping, tax accounting, and payroll accounting. The possibilities and opportunities you will unlock while enrolled in online accounting courses are endless. Below are the 3 of the best free online accounting courses.

Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting - This course taught by professor Sugata Roychowdhury of MIT will teach you the basics of accounting while also allowing you to track your progress through comprehensive exams. Some sample lecture topics include long term debt, marketable securities, and revenue recognition.

Corporate Finance for Health Care Administrators - This course taught by professor Jack Wheeler of University of Michigan will give you a very strong foundation in corporate finance for administrative purposes. It will also provide you with specific problem sets so that you can test your own knowledge. Professor Wheeler strikes the perfect balance between teaching both the theory and practice of accounting.

ACCT 615 - This course taught by Dr. Asokan Anandarajan of NJIT is a fantastic starting point for beginners interested in accounting. Although the course is designed for amateurs it becomes gradually harder as the course progresses to make you an expert accountant by the end. Although the course is intensive, it is also very flexible as subscribers are able to decide how much time to allocate to their learning each day.

How to Become a CPA 

Every state has different rules on how to become a CPA. Most states say that you need to have a Bachelor’s Degree with “x” number of credit hours in Accounting classes. For example, New York requires 120 hours of coursework and must have taken classes in the fields of financial accounting and reporting, taxation, cost or managerial accounting, auditing and attestation. There is no age requirement, proof of citizenship or major in accounting.

After years of education, there is one more test you need to take. The CPA exam is reported to be among the hardest tests in the world. The AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) suggest around 300-400+ hours of studying for the CPA exam. This behemoth of an exam takes information that you have learned all 4 years of college and puts it into one exam.

The reason for this heightened difficulty is because passing the CPA exam is worth it. There is a massive financial difference between non-CPAs and CPAs. There is always work for CPAs as well. Because you will be certified, you will gain more respect and more job offers than non-CPAs. If you are thinking of taking the CPA exam, take it. The renewal process is a different blog post entirely.

The Benefits of Becoming a CPA

Many of the benefits of becoming a CPA are obvious, starting with the high salary, the ability to move financial mountains, the knowledge to start your own CPA firm. CPAs earn 10-15% more than non-CPAs working in accounting related jobs. CPAs are also first in line for jobs, ahead of the non-CPAs. You are far more credible than non-CPAs and it shows that you have a strong work ethic and have a certain level of mental aptitude. The benefits of being certified are many, but there are many skills that are not as obvious.

Not only do CPAs learn how to file taxes and manage money for the companies they work for, but those skills can be taken home and practiced on personal financials. Practice makes perfect and in this industry, that practice can be used to save huge amounts of money. You can also share the wealth of knowledge you’ve obtained to your friends and family to save them money as well.

You can also change industries without learning new skill and staying in your comfort zone no matter what company you work for. CPAs have incredible job stability and their skills are needed everywhere. From large companies, non-profit, movie production companies, and individuals, CPAs are needed in any industry. There is an expected 16% growth in the accounting profession according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means another 200,000 jobs in the field from 2010 to 2020.

CPAs are also a select number of people. Getting certified takes numerous hours of work and studying. The exam is considered one of the hardest exams in the world. CPAexam.com says that you should spend 400 hours studying for the four sections of the exam. Once the test is passed, the benefits are very important and needed. After those 400 hours of studying, that certificate is a badge of your hard work, dedication, and vital knowledge that many people need for their companies and personal finances.

How to renew your CPA CPE Online

CPE, or continuing professional education, is the process of taking continuing education courses to maintain a proficiency in contemporary accouting priciples. In most jurisdictions, participating in a minimum amount of CPE credits is mandated in order to legally practice as a certified public accountant. Every state has a different time when CPAs need to renew their CPEs. In Florida, for example, CPAs must renew every other year, whereas Virginians must renew every year. This is to promote the highest quality of accountants. Firms need to make sure that the certification gets renewed to make their company more secure and to ensure quality performance. There are various opportunities to complete these continuing education credits online through online educational content. Furthermore, there are some accredited free courses, often offered by large accounting firms.

Free Online CPE Courses for CPAs

There are many opportunities to acquire CPA CPE-credit hours through free online seminars and webcasts. The following are some great places to start your search for these free online accounting courses:

Thought Center Webcasts - Ernst and Young's online learning resource center provides prerecorded accounting seminars as well as live webcasts pertaining to a broad spectrum of topics relating to accounting, assurance, tax, transactions and advisory services; Though this gives you the option of watching the prerecorded seminars on demand, at your own leisure, CPE credit is only available for the live webcasts. This is consisten with the restrictions associated with CPA CPE requirements mandated by most state boards of accountancy. Regardless, E&Y's Thought Center is a great place to find free online CPE courses.

EisnerAmper’s Executive College - EisnerAmper's has a fairly substantial free CPA CPE course offering. This is available not only to employees and clients of the firm but also to prospective and currently licensed accountants. A unique aspect of EisenerAmper's Executive College is that if you create an account, you can track your CPE credits as you take courses on the platform. This ensures you are on top of your requirements and have easy access to your certificates of proof if you were to be audited.

PwC Open University - Supported by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, PwC Open University, provides sponsored continuing professional education for accounting professionals. Their courses are accredited by NASBA (National Association of State Boards of Accountancy). It is important to check with appropriate state boards of accountancy's to ensure that these courses can properly count towards their respective CPA CPE requirements.

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Google Joins the Open EdX Platform

Today, Google announced a new collaboration between the Course Builder platform, Google's experimental open source educational platform, and edX, a leading open source MOOC platform created by MIT. According to the press release published this morning,

"Google and edX have a shared mission to broaden access to education, and by working together, we can advance towards our goals much faster."

Google hopes to lend its technological infrastructure and academic resources to continue strengthening the online education space as made available by the edX platform.

Course Builder came out of Google's experiences producing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Power Searching. The success running this course led Google to open source the platform constructed on Google technologies involved in making their initial course possible.

Since the initial release of the Course Builder platform, Google has followed on with four new versions trying to provide for the best way for Universities, non-profits, businesses and individuals to publish openly available online courses to large internet audience. The platform draws on core Google products and technologies like their App Engine, YouTube, Google Groups, Google+ and Hangouts.

Google themselves have uploaded and taught five open online courses in the past year, reaching nearly 400,000 interested students. Other institutions, such as Indiana University and the University of Arts Berlin, have uploaded courses on topics ranging from Hyperbolic Spaces to HR Management techniques. The edX platform currently lists offers over 60 MOOCs, a list constantly growing and updating over time.