Before you even fire up the computer, decide on the 3-5 most important attributes of a successful worker in your business. You will attract better matches when your job listing describes what is important in a new recruit. It will also help make filtering through all the applicants significantly easier.

Especially in today’s economy, you’ll no doubt have a lot of people respond to your job opportunity. You need to remember all along the way the things that matter most to your business. One of the things that is important for us is that our writers pay extremely close attention to detail. When we create a job listing, we state in the first sentence that that’s what we’re looking for. Then we proceed to state the exact steps that they need to take to be considered. It always surprises me at how many people don’t follow our directions, even when we’ve stated in the first sentence that we won’t consider anybody who doesn’t follow all the directions. Because we embed a test into the application process, we’re able to weed out in just a matter of seconds about 80% of the applicants.

Be up front with your applicants. For me this means highlighting the advantages of working with your company as well as disclosing the significant disadvantages. Although some might not agree, I like to state a salary range directly in the job posting and outline what it takes to get raises. Sure, this gives the other person a slight advantage in negotiations, but it also reduces the time spent on back-and-forth on every project. This will allow you both to spend more time on what matters most–your product.

Back in February, my friend and I started a business that we named GrabContent. In a nutshell, we create custom, search engine optimized articles in order to help our customers improve their websites’ organic traffic. You’re probably wondering why we’re doing this and how we plan to compete against the jillions of other writers in the world. The current problem is that it takes quite a bit of turnaround time when you need large numbers of articles, and you don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the writing. We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves to solve these problems without charging more.

I won’t reveal our secret sauce, but in the next few blog posts, I’ll talk about some of the things we’ve learned along the way. I’m hoping to be able to talk about how to select writers, what writers can improve on, and how we’re managing our technology back end.

Update: Apparently WordPress wasn’t displaying the code correctly. I’ve saved the file locally so you can install it just by clicking here.

#!/usr/local/bin/python2.5

locals()[action](app_name, server, session_id)

To give you a feel for what they have to offer: I was looking for a document to help me lay out Skill Capture’s financial projections. My search for “financial projection” gave me 250 resulting documents. I didn’t even bother looking at any of the documents past the first page because I found several really useful ones right at the top of the search. I downloaded the xls files and was ecstatic to find that they were full-fledged spreadsheets with formulas to calculate lots of things automatically.

I did several other searches for documents on the service and found that each of my searches had an equal abundance of quality results. This is something I’ve wanted for a long time and I’m extremely excited that I found it.

Stock Exchange
Free Photos Bank
photocase
OpenPhoto
Morguefile
BigFoto
Pixel Perfect Digital
FreeImages
FreeFoto
Aarin Free Photo
NASA
NOAA
National Park Service
gimp savvy (Index of other free stock photo sites)

Here are some of the ideas that I thought were cool.  The purpose of Onevite (later called 1nvite) is to send one invite that will add a person’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social network accounts all at once.  Wishing Well (later named FavorWish) was a website where people can list their wishes and have their wishes fulfilled (described as a “pay it forward for the web”).

I chose to join the eco-friendly commuting competition project.  We named it TripChamp.  This project utilizes a competition setup to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint.  We’ll be marketing to businesses that want to help their employees be more eco-friendly.  Watch the TripChamp Screencast.

The people on our team were Dave Albano, Kevin Leneway, Nina Strasser, Elizabeth Grigg, Angela Chin, and me.  Our team worked out really well.  Dave was our leader and provided the vision.  Nina, Elizabeth, and Angela worked on designing the UI and the page content.  I worked with Kevin on doing the actual programming.  I did most of the database interface and functionality while Kevin did the styling and screencast.  It all worked out well.

We developed the website using CodeIgniter.  This helped A LOT in getting the website live as quick as possible.  Using DX Auth and CodeIgniter sessions cut a lot of the programming work involved.

I learned a lot from this weekend.  I networked with lots of really bright people and I’m already looking forward to the next one!

Some database planning

Watching the progress reports

Although there are several blogs and flickr galleries on the internet where people post their art, there wasn’t any site that really serves as a community–share and see others’ artwork, talk and learn about techniques, get ideas, etc.  Right now it’s just a gallery–sort of a Digg for light graffiti.  But I’m working on adding a forum and more “best practices” info.  If you have any advice, requests, or bug reports, please email me!

Local print shops
I called up various print shops near me as well as national chains like Kinko’s and Office Depot.  It was really pricey!  For business cards with full color on one side, I was quoted $80-200 for 500 cards.  Office Depot had 500 cards for $30, but it was only for one color and you had to use their templates.

Online print shops
VistaPrint
I didn’t need to research VistaPrint too much.  It’s likely that you’ve already heard of it.  It seems to be the biggest name printer on the internet.  But I wasn’t impressed.  First of all, I don’t like companies that spam, and I get tons of spam from them.  Secondly, they give out tons of free business cards and people give them to me all the time.  I didn’t like the quality.  The budget-priced cards are really dull and I definitely didn’t want people getting that impression about my business.

48HourPrint
When I got the sample materials from 48HourPrint, I was impressed.  They looked like a high quality printer with really good service and fast turnaround.  The only problem was, when I looked at their prices, they were pretty high compared to the alternative online printers.

UPrinting
I liked the interface of the uprinting website the most.  The sample materials were great and were really helpful in helping me  understand the options.  The interface for uploading your design was really nice.  The prices were about the same as PrintPlace, which were the lowest I’ve found.  It also has a nice interface for you to design your cards directly on the site.  What was the dealbreaker?  I requested a sample kit (as I did with all the online printers) and when it didn’t arrive within a week, I requested another.  I eventually got one about 3 weeks after my initial request.  If the company doesn’t impress you to get your business, how are they going to treat you after you’ve given them business?

PrintPlace
PrintPlace is the online printer that I ended up ordering my business cards from.  The best part about them is that they have the cheapest prices available.  Their website, in my opinion, is ugly and sort of hard to use.  But once you get past that and figure out how to use it, it’s great.  What’s great is that they have people running the IM service.  So you can get help with knowing how to set up your design (borders, printing area, etc).  I placed my order for full-color one-sided glossy business cards and it arrived exactly as requested.

There are a number of reviews talking about how bad PrintPlace is.  My guess is that they didn’t follow directions carefully.  When you order things on PrintPlace (not just business cards), they give you a ton of options (paper thickness, finishing, etc).  When I started, I didn’t know what some of the options were.  But after looking at the sample pack and asking questions on their IM service, I figured out what it all meant.  Also, a common problem is how you set up your design.  You’ll need to use CYMK color, otherwise the color might come out wrong.  You’ll need to set up specific margins and borders for the print to come out correctly.  Again, IMing the people on the website would give you the exact specifications for that.  As you can tell, I was really pleased with the service.