Austin's Thoughts

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

First print write-up!
2007-09-11 20:03:00
Thank you Philadelphia Bulletin! ... now if you could only post this online
More About: Write , Print

First Jobs of the Rich and Famous
2007-09-10 23:19:00
  Brad Karsh, President of jobbound.com posts this lists of celebrity first jobs. Encouraging huh? On July 10th, I posted a few others here. Does anybody know any others?
More About: Rich , Jobs , Famous

An interesting school program
2007-09-05 20:05:00
This article in the Indy Star profiles the new Providence Cristo Rey High School which is based around a strong work-study component where students spend a day a week working in corporate offices across the city, earning the money that pays for about three-quarters of their tuition."The teens do clerical and office work normally done by adults in companies such as Ice Miller, AIT Laboratories and Eli Lilly and Co."According to the article this method has led to a great deal of success, the school claims that "Other Cristo Rey schools in most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country boast that 96 percent of their students go to college and say that only 6 percent of their students have ever dropped out."More proof that it is beneficial to put high school students to work, and an interesting model for making it happen.
More About: Interesting , Program , Gram , Eres

Teen workers make big impact on local economy
2007-09-04 17:47:00
An article on the impact of teenagers on the Maryland state economy. Surprise! It's fairly significant. According to the article, Youth between the ages of 14 and 18 accounted for 4.3 percent of Maryland’s work force, nearly one out of every 20 workers, according to a department report released in March and based on 2005 statistics. Another interesting tidbit, "Approximately 131,000 Maryland teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 were part of the state’s work force in 2006, according to the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation. Of those, 115,000 found employment, while 16,000 did not, the department said."read more | digg story
More About: Economy , Workers , Local , Make , Worker

A description of myfirstpaycheck.com - a job posting site for young people
2007-08-30 21:31:00
Thank you phillyist for the great write up! read more | digg story
More About: People , Site , Young , Description , Posti

Murals grace Dartmouth Middle School walls thanks to youth program
2007-08-29 17:32:00
Another example of what sounds like a great youth employment program. This one in Dartmouth has high school students painting murals over the summer in a local middle school. It provides a great opportunity for students to learn work skills, stay busy and make an impact on the community. We need to have more of these programs. Does anyone know of similar successful programs like this in Philadelphia?read more | digg story
More About: Youth , School , Grace , Middle , Program

This is the perfect time for job hunting!
2007-08-28 21:03:00
Each year, July marks the crest for youth employment as high school and college students finish the school year and enter the job markets. Now, as the school year starts off again, many of these students go off to school leaving plenty of businesses scrambling for employees. Now is a great time to find a part-time job for the school year, check out myfirstpaycheck.com for great job listings in the Philadelphia area. Who wouldn't want to be a Shift Supervisor at Ben & Jerry's or a Video Store Manager at West Coast Video?
More About: Job Hunting , Time , Perfect , Hunting , Hunt

Welcome guests from facebook!
2007-08-28 21:00:00
As you can hopefully tell, this blog is where I post articles about, and discuss, youth employment trends. I also try to keep our friends, friends, and other admirers posted on the business of myfirstpaycheck.com There are sometimes typos, and sometimes the site isn't too pretty, but I like to think that we're providing a lot of good information for our readers.  Please let us know what you think, keep coming back, and pass on our site to your friends. We could not have gotten this far without the help and support of our friends and family. We really appreciate your support.
More About: Guests , Facebook

The Facebook Economy
2007-08-27 05:45:00
A great description of facebook, social networking, and business, this article in Business 2.0 focuses on the potential of facebook applications. We're starting to build one at myfirstpaycheck.com - do you have any suggestions for what our facebook app should do?read more | digg story
More About: Economy , Facebook

Out of the fry-cook position, into the boardroom
2007-08-23 21:32:00
Back on June 2nd, Celeste wrote about the new campaign McDonad's is starting to trying to recruit teenagers to work for them. It seems like others are just starting to catch on, this article from Crain’s Chicago Business describes the campaign in more detail, and provides a few interesting facts."The declining number of teenage job-seekers presents a super-size challenge for many companies, but few more so than McDonald’s, where 40% of the top 50 managers—including CEO James Skinner—worked their way up from the cash register or fry vat, and which more than ever needs qualified workers to keep service from bogging down in an era of computerized cash registers and electronic ovens.""For years, McDonald’s has manned its crews largely with teenagers. In the 1990s, 45% of its U.S. employees were under 20. Today, it’s 33% of the workforce, which totals 650,000 employees.""It’s not just that fewer teenagers are working at McDonald’s—fewer are working, period. Last year a...
More About: Cook , Posi , Position

YouTube tests 10-second ad format - CNET News.com
2007-08-22 21:04:00
After more than a year of promises, Google unveils ads that are mostly transparent and vanish quickly. Has anybody seen this? I don't think I'll mind as long as I can keep watching the remix of the singing in the rain video, wow. Seriously though, an interesting new way of presenting ads to viewers. I think this will be a good unobtrusive method.read more | digg story
More About: News , Youtube , Tests , Format

Newsmaker: The secrets of a teen's Internet success - CNET News.com
2007-08-22 21:00:00
Interview with the girl who created MyYearBook.com - I don't know anybody who is actually a member of the site, but it is growing by leaps and bounds. Interesting information about new media, web development, and entrepreneurship. I wish them the best of luck read more | digg story
More About: News , Internet , Success , Secrets

Facebook Group
2007-08-16 21:36:00
I started our first facebook group, "When I was your age, myfirstpaycheck.com didn't exist..." in a couple hours (during the work day when people shouldn't be checking facebook) we had 17 members, not bad.Celeste is going to start a group too, do you have any suggestions for what she should call hers?
More About: Facebook , Group

SEO is the new first job for teens; flipping burgers is so last century
2007-08-15 20:02:00
A great story from a proud father! His daughter has become a professional blogger.  He writes, "It all began when my daughter was 15… she turned to SEO and blogging instead of babysitting or running a paper route as her part-time job and turned her love for the Neopets into a profitable venture — with the help of a few smart SEO decisions. For one, Chloe used the keyword research tools Google Suggest and WordTracker to select both the name of her blog and its categories. The name became “The Ultimate Neopets Cheats Site” because it included the highly popular search term “neopets cheats.” She set up her blog through WordPress.com, and within a couple weeks it appeared on Page 1 in Google for “neopet cheats”. Chloe also devoted a bit of time to link building, through trusted blogs like Blogger Stories. Wanting to turn her blog’s popularity into dollars, Chloe was excited to add Google ads onto her blog, but found out the hard way that this wasn’t possi...
More About: Teens , Flipping , Burgers , Lippi , Century

Still Jumping Into the Job Pool
2007-08-14 17:18:00
A great article in The NYTimes about young people entering the work force. Not just an end of summer fluff piece, it describes the jobs young people take, the benefits and advantages to working, as well as examining the reasons the number of young people working are declining. Too bad they didn't mention myfirstpaycheck.com though :)read more | digg story
More About: Pool , Jumping

Getting a Boost Up the Ladder of Success
2007-08-13 20:36:00
I received a sweet email from my friend Erin last night, she wrote, "I had this article saved on my desk for the last month, mostly as a note to self to someday create what Ben Stein describes. But after learning about MyFirstPaycheck, I realized it would much better suit you. Basically Ben describes his privileged upbringing, hanging around elder economists and having U of Chicago alum hook-ups, but then wonders how kids without theses things get anywhere. He suggests that someone create an organization linking undermentored students with access to finding entry-level jobs. Your MyFirstPaycheck idea is a brilliant one, and I'm excited to see where you and Celeste take it. Perhaps you already read this article last month, but in any event, I vote you email the Stein himself and describe the project. At the very least it'll grant him a peace of mind that his dream, or a permutation of his dream, is in-the-works." It's an incredible email, and a great piece from Ben Stein. I had...
More About: Success , Boost

Venture Capital Firms Set Their Sights on New Ideas -- Not New Technologies
2007-08-09 23:10:00
Knowledge @ Wharton (a great site) has an article examining the differences between companies based on great ideas, and those based on great technology. Myfirstpaycheck.com is deffinitly a good idea, we bought our most complicated programing form combtail.com. Does that mean we'll succeed? I sure hope so.
More About: Ideas , Venture , Sights , Venture Capital , Technologies

Woo-hoo teenagers!
2007-08-09 20:39:00
From the NYTIMES, "The nation’s high school seniors performed significantly better on the first nationwide economics test than they did on other recent national exams in history and science, and demonstrated higher than expected understanding of basic market forces like supply and demand than officials expected." The article points out that students did better with economical logic then the terminology of economics and the actual way that financial systems work... I almost don't know how to respond to this, of course people are going to have a better grasp of things that they deal with on a daily basis. I didn't take the quiz but from the two example questions the article uses to make this point, I'm surprised the difference isn't more varied then 80%/21% The article highlights, "a question that asked students to identify the most likely effect of an increase in the hourly wage of baby sitters. Eighty percent of students answered correctly that the time spent by teenagers on...
More About: Teenagers , Teenage , Ager

More ideas for myfirstpaycheck.com
2007-08-08 18:06:00
We're looking for more content and are thinking of lists to publish, we've come up with these: 10 top teen-friendly workplaces 10 tips to a better resume 10 things NOT to say in an interview 10 places to go for references 10 highest paid teens 10 high-paying teen jobs 10 ways teens win promotions in the workplaceany other ideas? Any nominees?
More About: Ideas

Facebook Applications
2007-08-06 21:35:00
We're looking into building a facebook application to help get the word out about myfirstpaycheck.com. Have any of you ever built one?  Do you think it's a good idea?Nick O'Neill writes at allfacebook.com, "If you want to create a popular application you must make your application insight laughter, help people date more easily or help people show off. That’s it! While a few thousand tech people will take advantage of applications such as the Google reader application, Digg’s application or others, the most successful apps will cater to basic human desires. You can still gain thousands of users quickly but don’t expect to make a useful application that is going to rapidly gain millions of users. The one thing I wonder though is whether or not this will be what looses the tech people."I like to think that because of who we, and our market, are we should be able to bridge this gap between fun and useful, but who knows. I'm still not positive that in the long ru...
More About: Applications , Facebook

TechCrunch and PayScale
2007-08-03 18:03:00
PayScale is the company that we used for the salary calculator on this blog and on the resources page of myfirstpaycheck.com. TechCrunch just reported another PayScale feature that we're eager to play around with called the GigZig. From PayScale," Every day many thousands of people visit PayScale and take our compensation survey to compare their pay anonymously with their peers and improve their understanding of the job market. As part of this process, users are asked what was their job 5 years ago. GigZig provides an interesting and very useful view on this information. Knowing what everyone who had a job 5 years ago did, along with what they do now, gives unprecedented insight into what career choices people are making. Combine this with PayScale's world class compensation data, and you now know how much of a pay difference each of these career choices can make for you. GigZig™ your job title and find out where your current (or next) gig might take you." Seems pretty coo...
More About: Techcrunch

Job Advice
2007-08-02 20:37:00
Have you checked out myfirstpaycheck.com recently? We are collecting stories and advice from you and posting it on our site. Check here for some great advice and funny stories.   
More About: Advice

Some cool press coverage for myfirstpaycheck.com
2007-08-01 17:37:00
Thank you Citizen Mom! We got a nice little write up on Amy's blog that has been greatly appreciated. She does some great things on her site (beside spreading the word about myfirstpaycheck.com) and you should check it out.
More About: Press , Cool , Coverage , Some

Summer workers of the world, united
2007-07-31 16:01:00
An article in the Inquirer about summer employers hiring foreign workers. No statistics or facts on the popularity of this, but anybody who has walked around the shore or an amusement park knows that there are lots of foreigners working. What I'm wondering is, how hard is it for a young American to go overseas and do the same thing?
More About: World , Workers , Summer , United , The World

Job Posts
2007-07-27 21:36:00
As you can see on myfirstpaycheck.com we've already got a few jobs listed, but we want to start posting many more! If you have a job opening, or you know somebody with a job opening, tell them to post on myfirstpaycheck.com. It's free, easy to use, and the most effective way of reaching young people in the Philadelphia area.
More About: Posts

Walking around
2007-07-26 22:15:00
Everytime I walk down the street I feel like I see another help wanted sign in the window of a local business. Pay attention, especially to places that you might think are fun to work, and be prepared to follow up on that job posting. As the summer starts to wind down (yikes, I know!) more and more kids will leave their jobs leaving vacancies for those who can handle the workload during the school year. Now is a great time to apply!
More About: Walking , Walk , Round

Minimum wage rises 70 cents today
2007-07-24 16:10:00
The nationwide minimum wage increased from $5.15 to $5.85 an hour today, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the state-required minimum wage is already $7.15 an hour, so todays change does not effect employees in those states. From the AP article, "Minimum -wage workers will get an additional 70-cent-an-hour boost each summer for the next two years, ending in 2009 at $7.25 an hour. That comes to just above $15,000 a year before taxes for a 52-week work year.Now, someone in such a job and earning $5.85 an hour would bring home $12,168 a year before taxes. The federal poverty level for singles is $10,210, couples is $13,690, and $17,170 for families of three."Make sure you are getting paid appropriately!
More About: Cents , Today , Minimum Wage

Summer Jobs for Kids
2007-07-23 23:04:00
An article from Kiplinger.com with practical and inspiring advice on job opportunities for kids (and their parents) who are too young to legally work. Janet Bodnar writes, "Of all the financial topics we discuss with our children, I suspect that the job market ranks near the bottom. If anything, kids are likely to hear us complain about work -- which could explain why 79% of teenagers surveyed by Junior Achievement have no interest in taking up their parents' careers. There's a lesson here for parents who want to get their kids off the couch this summer: Prodding alone won't do the trick. Kids need your help to figure out what they can do and how to sell themselves to employers. For example, children younger than 14, who can't work legally yet at traditional summer jobs in stores and restaurants, are perfect for the service economy. You can give them ideas of the services for which adults would be willing to pay."
More About: Summer , Jobs

Investing
2007-07-22 21:18:00
There are a million things to do once you start earning money. You can use your first paycheck to buy gizmos, go out, go on trips, and anything else you can think of, and you should, it's your money! But you should also put some of it away. Even if you just put a small percentage in a savings account each month, it'll add up quickly. The Motley Fool, a pretty good investing education site, suggests investing in the stock market. Not a bad idea either if you know what you are doing. But be careful, and talk to your parents before making any big financial decisions.
More About: Investing

Teens star in efforts to build work force
2007-07-18 22:11:00
Another good teen work program, this one in Worcester, Mass. The program this year has placed about 600 city youths in part-time jobs that match their interests. Participating employers range from hospitals to nonprofit groups to insurance companies to colleges. Highlights from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette article,"Advocates say youth employment programs make sense. Employing teenagers helps them stay busy and pocket some cash during the summer lull. Jobs also keep teens off the streets and make them less likely to get in trouble. The broader goal of training teenagers is to make sure they stay in the work force when they complete their education.""“We’re hoping that it does create a pathway for kids to move upward in their life,” said Jill C. Dagilis, executive director of the Worcester Community Action Council. “We’re hoping they’ll stay here and work here. Those are good outcomes that we are certainly striving for.”" " Many teens in the summer jobs program h...
More About: Teens , Work , Force , Star , Build