I plan on surfing this wave for one hell of a ride.  My mission is to spotlight Women in Technology in New York City and create a meet-up for us to connect as peers, mentors and friends.  As Marlo Thomas put it on the new Women’s Page of the Huffington-Post that launched this past August; “You need to lift up many women, not just one woman.  For women there’s safety in numbers.  If you have only one woman at the table, she’s a pest.  Two women? That’s a team. But three? Now that’s a coalition.”

This past December Caroline Turner wrote in her article, Why women abandon the C suite-and how to get them back, “Women now represent about half of the hiring pipeline, entry-level positions and total workforce.  But at each level of management, women represent a lower percentage.”

The 2011 Catalyst Census showed women representing 47.6% of today’s workforce; in the 2011 Fortune 500 women represented only 14.4 percent of executive officers, and only made up 7.6% of top earners.  The good news is that Prior Catalyst research also revealed that advancing women to leadership positions is good for women and good for business.  The census found companies with more women in top leadership positions, on average, far outperform those with fewer.  Another new Catalyst release, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards (2004–2008), indicates that sustained gender diversity in the boardroom correlates with better corporate performance―and not by just a little. Companies with three or more women board directors in four of five years, on average, outperformed companies with zero women board directors―by 84% return on sales, 60% return on invested capital, and 46% return on equity.

My research has shown me that women even if they don’t literally leave, they disengage or just quit climbing.  As women in leadership roles, we need to strive to inspire our people and inspire our fellows.  Helping and connecting with other women in the NYC Tech frontlines will produce high level support in turn re-engaging ourselves while simultaneously making us more confident leaders

Our Time is now and these women are doing it.  Let’s take a look into who they are, where they work and what they’ve accomplished.

Arianna Huffington is the president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of thirteen books. Her news blog site has become the most widely read, linked to and frequently cited media brands on the internet.  She has been twice named to Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. 

Heather Harde

Vice President, TechCrunch

Heather Harde has help bring TechCrunch from her boss’s living room to being acquired for a reported number between $40-50 million by AOL.  Heather spent the previous decade at News Corp., where she learned much of the discipline and skills needed to turn a group of bloggers into a media powerhouse.  In Fast Company magazine Harde says, “I had an appreciation of how difficult it was to create a brand in media. TechCrunch had become a brand. It now needed to scale into a media property.”

Chloe Sladden

Media Partnerships, Twitter

Sladden is responsible for partnering Live tweeting during media broadcasts.  In 2010 she brought “Live Tweeting” to be a key part of the MTV Video Music Awards which resulted in over 11 million viewers, the highest rated show since 2002.  Sladden also pioneered the first time a major news organization partnered with Twitter during the 2008 election.  She had a call to action to vote in the morning via twitter, and then journalists followed up with a live chat in the afternoon.  She is currently working to bridge Twitter’s API and TV, news and entertainment platforms.

Rachel Sterne

Chief Digital Officer, New York City

Sterne started GroundReport in 2006 and has become the Web’s best real-time-news portals according to Fast Company Magazine.  The role has led her to be the Chief Digital Officer in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.

Jessica Kahn

Vice President of Engineering, Disney Mobile

Jessica Kahn is the brains behind the Tap Tap Revenge which is the most popular iPhone game.  She manages engineering, operations, and strategy.  Kahn thought she’d be a lawyer, until she took a coding class her senior year at Dartmouth.  Kahn was also an Apple software engineer for almost 10 years.

Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss

Co-Founders, Rent the Runway

This duo’s e-commerce company Rent the Runway allows women across America to rent instead of purchasing luxury designer dresses and accessories.  Hyman and Fleiss are on track to revolutionize the fashion industry.  The pair met at Harvard Business School and is taking a customer behavior of buying to renting.  Converting those I’ll only wear that once purchases into rentals.  The site works as a hotel reservation site and women can rent a dress for an occasion starting at $50 receiving the dress for up to eight days. 

Enter W.I.Ny.C;)

Let’s take action and impact ourselves and support other woman.  I present to you,  Women, Inspire, New York City – W.I.Ny.C .  A technology based meet up for Women in NYC. 

On the last Thursday of every month we will meet up and have a selected speaker lead a topical round table discussion.  W.I.Ny.C.;)’s meet up will be a place for women to share their story, future goals as well as current challenges.   Our first meet-up will be February 23, 2012 at my office, located at 11 East 44^th Street, suite 1200.  We will start at 7pm, please let me know if you would like to join us.

I can be reached at troelser@talener.com

I look forward to meeting you.

Question 1: What do you consider to be the top three, in terms of job market, salary, etc?

-          1) Object Oriented Java-Script

-          2) Ruby on Rails

-          3) Mobile Development- Android, Objective C, Cocoa

-          Salary ranges: Mid-Level $75,000 to $100,000, Sr. Level $110,000-  $140,000

Question 2: What do companies look for when they’re hiring tech professionals?

-          Proven track record of career development

-          How the candidates got started in technology

-          Outside interests, side projects

Question 3: What is causing the talent shortage in technology, lack of IT Professionals or that there are not enough whose skill sets are up-to-date?

-          Since 2000/2001 College Graduate levels have been cut in half.

-          2007 was the bottom, 12,000 vs, 24,000

-          2012 levels are increasing, but only to 14,000

-          Every industry complains about a lack of quality, not the quantity

Question 4: What makes a good IT professional? How can students or aspiring IT professionals decide which concentration, such as computer support, database administration or software engineering, is right for them?

-          Logical, Math-focused, Problem solver, slightly introverted

-          Software engineering departments are directly interacting with Business Units now, more than ever

-          DBA- the highest paying support type of role

-          Computer Support- a good entry level role

Questions 5: What’s rewarding about a career in IT?  What’s challenging?

-          Rewarding: Cross Industry and Cross Country, Constantly Changing, much more visible career than ever before (Apple Effect), High Paying Career, Adds a lot of value

-          Challenging: knowing that you are at the right company to advance and stay current with technology, to keep up with all of the latest and greatest technology (Staying Current), hours can be long and sporadic

Question 6: Have you seen a recent increase in people entering the field?  So you think the number of tech students and experts to continue to grow?

-      Yes and Yes 

Question 7: Because it’s such a fast-changing field, how can continuing education affect someone’s IT career long-term?

-          A career in technology is not all about the degree, more about the on the job experience and solving real-world problems

-          Technology is a passion and not always a perfect science, lots of moving parts, Server, Client, Hardware, Software, Service Provider, Data, etc.

-          Advanced careers and training are more relevant for MGMT, Leadership and career switches

Check it out here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-tech-career-guide-20120130,0,7208981.story

And feel free to share it.  Enjoy!

Link to the article is here:http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/26/can-you-snag-a-tech-job-with-training-alone/?section=magazines_fortune

Enjoy!

Here is a link to the article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2012/01/22/6-new-job-titles-that-4g-will-deliver/

We want to wish you all a Happy Holiday Season and we look forward to working with you in the New Year.

77% of smart phone users looking for jobs use a mobile job search app.  The reasons why job seekers prefer a mobile job search app:

• 36.27%   Quickly react to new job postings
• 23.79%  Being able to job search anytime
• 17.65%  Discreet way to search for a job

Who’s searching? The top 5 job app downloads by category:

• 24.8%  Entry Level & College Grad
• 20.9% Geographic focus; 54.4% Manhattan, 21% San Diego, 13% Canada, 11.6% Philadelphia
• 8.3%   Finance
• 6.2%   Healthcare
• 6.0%   Technology

Although there are 77% of job seekers using mobile job search apps only 20% of fortune 1000 companies have a mobile optimized site, this number drops further when looking at small to medium sized firms. 

A study done by a recruiting research lab, Potential Park, spoke with 350 top employers in the US, Europe & Asia and found that only 7% have a mobile version of their career website and 3% have a mobile job app. 

Since only 30% of mobile devices are smart phones, this number is expected to exceed 50% in the next 12 months, it seems that we’re only getting started.  It would only make sense for companies to have mobile career sites and possibly mobile career apps. 

A Separate Study done by Potential Park showed that out of 150 Employers that were polled, 75% of respondents said they were planning to have either a job app or mobile career website by September of 2012. 

How could mobile career sites and apps be effective?

One company, PNC Financial Services Group, has developed a mobile website targeted to college and graduate students.  The website contains employment opportunities and offers a place for candidates to leave contact info without going through a full application process.  They also have mobile interview which is similar to a voicemail system.  The mobile interview asks a question and then beeps.  The candidate then responds to the question.  The applicant can complete the interview at his or her convenience and the recruiter can listen to his or her recorded answers later. 

Most people are wondering if this is all hype but since we’ve gone from 0% of traffic from a mobile device to an average of 5%-10% in just the past 12 months, with little effort in the industry, it doesn’t seem that way.  So get ready because it’s only getting started.

To see Kristin’s Current Events Presentation, you can view the video on our Livestream channel: http://livestre.am/1bgTM

As usual, the board is impossible to read, but the notes should be covered in the bullet points above.  Feel free to reach out with comments and questions!

Think of Twitter not as the red-headed stepchild to Facebook, but as an efficient news site where anyone can be a reporter but the dispatches must be no more than 140 characters long.  This method is quick and to the point.  In other words “Cliff Notes” for News.

For their study, the research team gathered information on 41.7 million user profiles. They pulled 106 million tweets and followed 4,262 trending topics, identified through hash tags.

Unlike with most social-networking sites, a standard Twitter user does not need to get the permission of another user to follow that person’s missives. With Twitter, anyone can follow anyone else (as long as that person makes his or her tweets public).  This approach, is closer to that of blogs, which can be subscribed to via an RSS feed. This led the team to ponder if Twitter was more of a news medium than a social-networking site.

Like other forms of media, including news outlets, Twitter has its stars. About 40 Twitter accounts have more than a million followers.  The data indicates that building this level of popularity cannot be achieved simply by tweeting as much as possible. Rather, all the most popular Twitter accounts belong to celebrities, who are famous in channels other than Twitter. 

The messages themselves more closely resemble those of a news format as well. Of the tweets studied, more than 85 percent were news-related in some way.

The news aspect of Twitter is reflected in the question its users are now asked when posting tweets “What’s happening?” – as opposed to the earlier question, “What are you doing?”   That hunger for knowledge has helped separate them from the pack.  And many people use the service to search for up to the second information about unfolding events, such as a sporting event or a natural disaster. 

The researchers compared how often Twitter contained the first mention of a breaking news event to how often the CNN Headline News site got the scoop. While CNN broke the news first more than half the time, news appeared on Twitter before CNN a considerable number of times as well.

 Twitter rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.  It is often best described as the SMS (Short message Service) of the Internet.

In closing, whether you have been paying attention or have just started to step back and take notice,  Twitter is now, and is the present and future for our news.  So embrace this phenomenon, because it isn’t going anywhere for a long time.

To see Pat’s Current Events Presentation to our NY office, you can view the video on our Livestream channel: http://www.livestream.com/talener/video?clipId=pla_c79c7e18-b2b7-48f5-9e3b-bca87d5c3631&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb

Because the notes on the board are a little difficult to read, here is a summary:

Twitter: Not Another Social Network – The Next Generation of News

• Twitter: online social that is used to send and read texts up to 140 characters know as “tweets”
• Of 106 million Tweets, more than 80% were news-related in some way.
• News Aspect of Twitter is reflected in the question it now asks it’s users: “What’s Happening?” as opposed to the previous “What are you doing?”

Navigating a job change can be a stressful and hectic time.  In an effort to help ease some of your stress and help you plan your switch more effectively, we here at Talener have put together a list of things to keep in mind/consider when changing jobs.

Last week we covered Location, Location, Location and Compensation.  This week we are looking at Technology and Growth:

Technology –Is the technology the same or similar to the technology you are working with now or is it something completely new and exciting?  Will you have to take additional certifications or learn a new programming language or methodology?  How well equipped are you to make those sorts of transitions? Does the new company pay for training/tuition reimbursement? All of these are things to consider when making a switch.

Growth – Is there opportunity to learn from and grow within the team?  If so, how much?  Will you be the junior person on the team with an opportunity to move up the ranks within or are you the senior person on the team with the responsibility to train junior people?  Know where you are coming in so you know what is expected from you and how you can move within the organization. Make sure you are asking questions about both of these things as they will impact how competitive you are in the office place as well as how you continue to bring value to the team you are joining. 

Stay tuned next week for two more tips on what to keep in mind when you are leaving a job and be sure to check back in with us tomorrow when we are posting the link the the Livestream Q&A we did last Thursday and will hopefully have a post from our fearless leader about Interviewing 101. Have a great day!

Agencies work urgent jobs. – “Urgent” in this case means it is a real job that is an immediate need for a company; not a position that they would like to       have, but will only fill when they find the right person or mix of skills or the stars align in the perfect way.  Working through Talener ensures that the job is real and they are looking to fill it in a timely manner and that the validity of the opportunity has been vetted before you take time off work or away from other aspects of your job search to go on an interview.

Agencies work with high paying customers. – What this means for you is that the companies we work with are in a better position to provide better benefits, higher salaries, etc.  In our experience, a company is not going to pay an agency fee and then turn around and refuse to pay top talent what they are worth.  In addition to that, working through Talener gives you a middle man in the negotiations that can help take some of the stress out of getting a company to match or beat your current bonus structure or benefit package, etc.

Agencies work with Top-Funded Start-Ups. – Everyone loves the idea of getting in on the ground level of a start up, but often what makes the difference between a start up that barely scrapes through its first year and a start-up that is poised to take the market by storm is its initial funding.  When Talener is working with start ups, we talk to them about their funding (Are they on their first round or second round?  Who is funding them?), how their product is developing, and if the monetization of their product is going as they’d hope.   These are many of the same questions potential investors would ask, and we ask them because when we place people at these sorts of start ups, those candidates are making an investment in that company’s future and we want to make sure that we guide everyone toward the right match.

Tap into the Agency’s Network. – You hear it over and over again in life “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  While that may not always be the case, unless you have a large network, an Agency can give you a direct line into hiring managers and companies that you might have trouble accessing under regular circumstances.  When you apply to a job on line, what happens to your resume and cover letter?  If you are lucky, you get an automated response, but many times, your submission disappears into the unknown.  A direct line to the hiring manager side steps that frustration and gives you an advocate who can talk up your skills and your fit for a particular job.

Overall, I would say that a major plus of working with an agency is that as a job seeker, you spend so much time trying to get through screenings and resume reviews and portfolio reviews without ever being able to talk to the person who makes the final decision.  Many times candidates who may be the perfect fit for the job are screened out by other people before the hiring manager ever sees their stuff because they are missing this certain skill or the HR person didn’t feel they were a fit for the company.  An agency in general, and Talener specifically, can be an advocate for you in this process to help you get around the laundry list of “must haves/nice to haves” to what the job actually entails.  Meeting with you ensures that we can let our hiring managers know who you are as a person – not just an anonymous list of skills and projects – and what you are looking for from a job and from life in general.   An Agency can match people with people as opposed to people with a list of requirements.

If you have any questions about the process here at Talener or would like further information, please feel free to reach out to us via email or the comments section below.

Have a great day!