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Tag: Entrepreneurship (page 1 of 3)

Impact Apprentice takes over TalentEgg

Ever since I got involved with (and won) Impact Entrepreneurship Group’s “Pitch Competition” last November, I’ve stayed really closely connected to the young student leaders who make so very many things happen at Impact.

This week, one of Impact’s 10 initiatives for the year took place – Impact Apprentice. Every seen the show “The Apprentice”? Well this was set up similarly – 32 contestants (narrowed down from 450 applicants) all vying for the title of Impact Apprentice.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to host 2 teams, split into “boys vs girls”, at the TalentEgg offices and have them compete in a challenge that addressed real business issues that we face at the company. It would be hard to accurately express just how impressed Cassandra, Steph and I were as we watched the final presentations at the end of the day.

In the end, the girls team won. Congratulations ladies – you really blew us away!!

You can see a slideshow of a few pictures we snapped below, and we’ll be posting videos of the final presentations later today as well. Enjoy! And if you’re interested in learning more about Impact or getting involved as a student (highly recommended!) – check out their website.

2 years of TalentEgg.ca

Wowee.

Today is the two year anniversary of the launch of TalentEgg.ca. As I mentioned last year on this day – I will always remember sprinting to the subway station to pick up copies of the Metro with my picture in it and a profile on TalentEgg – officially launching the site and the business.

Year 1 was a roller coaster. And guess what? Year 2 was too.

Yesterday morning I met with a recent graduate to chat about TalentEgg. About 10 minutes into the conversation, she said “Wow, you have a lot of milestones happening and coming up right now”. And it’s true, between moving to a new and bigger office (1500 sq ft!), re-developing the site (for the 4th time), building a sales team (we’ve eggspanded to 6 people!), and the other 75,000 things happening, we’re really going through a transformation.

As a business, we’ve left the startup phase and are into growth mode. Q1, 2010 was good, Q2 will be even better.

As a service to students and employers, we’re not ‘shiny and new’ by virtue of being young anymore, we’re ‘shiny and new’ because of the fantastic content that we’ve learned to consistently produce – from jobs, to articles, to our new “Focus” series. We’re shiny and new because we’re always innovating, and always surprising our stakeholders – in a good way.

Over the past year, we’ve helped thousands upon thousands of students (now 50,000 each month!), and over 200 employers connect. In year 3, we’ll be expanding our service offering, strengthening the WIN WIN WIN value proposition we offer all of our ‘clients’ – employers, students, and now educators too.

In our new Answers section, there was recently a thread about keeping a really, really long resume with all of the things you’ve ever done, so that when it’s time to customize your resume for a specific job, you can easily pull out the experiences that relate the most.

Well, I have a secret little document hidden on my computer where I try to keep track of all our accomplishments at TalentEgg. I’ll share a few from the past year:

– Creating content partnerships with The Globe and Mail’s GlobeCampus and T.O.Night magazine
– Presenting our strong thoughts on Campus Recruiting and Gen Y to employers through Graham Donald’s Campus Recruiting Forums (in Toronto, Edmonton and Waterloo), The Conference Board of Canada, and Canadian Government, as well as through the Canadian HR Reporter
– Contributing a quote to a book to be published this spring, and being featured in a textbook on Advertising to be published in 2011
– Recognized as Media for various events, from the launch of the movie “Post Grad” to Canada’s Next Top Ad Exec, to the launch of new products such as books and the Poken!
– Winner of the IMPACT pitch competition!
– Presenting at numerous Universities and Colleges on entrepreneurship and job hunting
– Launching the website, again, as well as various new products – TalentEgg Answers, LAUNCH Magazine, Focus on Retail (and the Focus series in general)
– Reaching 30,000 then 40,000 then 50,000 in monthly unique visitors
– Signing on more and more employers that we are so, so proud of
– this was definitely a year of major leaps for Editorial on TalentEgg, and Cassandra and I were lucky to working with some the best people in the world – with a special shout out to the assistant editors and writers for The Incubator and Launch

Each week, the TalentEgg team sits down together on Friday afternoon and shares successes from the past week. Given that each week, each member of the team has successes to share, you can imagine that this list is by no means exhaustive.

There’s a joke in our office. Apparently I’m always saying “GUYS, WE’RE AT THE TIPPING POINT. LET’S PUT OUT HEADS DOWN – WE’RE ALMOST THERE!”. The truth is, I recognized long ago that I’m always reaching for the next goal, and so “THERE” doesn’t really exist.

I’m very much looking forward to another year of chasing big goals, and continuing to surprise our audience (students, employers, educators) with a product that is constantly evolving and innovating.

On Wednesday, April 7, I’ll be appearing on Canada AM, talking about our 2 year anniversary and providing tips to students looking for meaningful summer work. RW&CO Yorkdale graciously provided an outfit for me for the occasion (video to come!). Check it out: 8:15am on CTV.

…Thank you sincerely for another eggcelent year!

What users want

When we returned from the holiday ‘break’ at the beginning of January, I sent an email out to all registered TalentEgg users asking “What can we do better?”

We got tons of responses and have already gotten to work implementing and taking action on the requests, suggestions, and ideas.

Some people told us about specific programs and employers they wanted to see, ranging from the ‘big guys’, to requests for more presence from certain industries, like Media and Advertising:

“I will like to more about graudation rotation programs, and companies like Bell, Rogers, TD, RBC, BMO ”

“What I’d really like to see is more creative jobs with employers like Adobe and Ubisoft. It’s very difficult to find jobs in the ‘creative’ feild.”

Others offered encouragement for our new initiatives:

“I’m looking forward to seeing what video aspects will be included on the site for 2010! Mostly, I have really enjoyed reading the articles and find them helpful/motivational.”

A few recent grads and students told us what features they’d like added to the site:

“Develop a mobile app!”

..And there were also people who took the time to thank us. Honestly, comments like these make my day (week! month!)

“Thank you for starting up Talent Egg, it is really a great resource for new grads like myself who are struggling to find meaningful work!!!”

“I think what you’re doing is amazing. Your website really helps students find great and meaningful jobs. Kudos to you!”

Milestones at TalentEgg

Every once in a while, we have weeks at work that I know are special.

This past week was one of those weeks.

1. We had our first real physical growing pains. And I don’t say “first real” lightly. Those of you who have been following TalentEgg will know that we started out in a secretary’s desk, then as we grew to three people moved into a single shared cubicle.

2. We welcomed two new interns – Pia and Natalia, who are both fantastic.

3. We were grouped in with the Government of Canada’s Job Bank. And with Vestiigo as well!

4. Traffic on all TalentEgg properties hovered at around 2,000 EVERY DAY.

5. A random brainstorm gave birth to a fantastic idea. Cassandra, Dan, Antonio and I went to Dim Sum (in Scarborough?!) on Sunday and hashed it out. We’ve decided to execute and we’re all very excited. Expect to hear more about this in the very near future.

I’m sure I’m forgetting so much more. It was a stressful, exciting, creative, egg-celent week. Hoping that this week is even better 🙂

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