Kema Christian-Taylor, Author at Job and Internship Advice, Companies to Work for and More | WayUp Blog

Jobs That Will Make You the Cool Kid on Campus

Spring semester is the time to start fresh. If you want to make some extra cash and be the cool kid on campus, then get your job applications ready: these college student jobs will impress your friends and up your street cred ;).

Budweiser College Brand Ambassador

Are you up for whatever? If so, you’ll love repping one of the largest alcohol brands in the world. Anheuser-Busch is looking for students who are ready to roll up their sleeves and market Budweiser and Bud Light on campus. Not only will candidates help to execute 6 product tastings and organize two large-scale events next semester (all your friends will be clamoring for an invite to one of these!), but also they will play a critical role in connecting with the brand’s customers.

This job pays up to $240/week and is only for our students of drinking age!

WayUp Campus Rep

Do your friends need jobs? Guess what – your new job will help them get jobs. As a WayUp Campus Rep you’ll encourage students on your campus to sign up and apply for the cool opportunities on our site! After all, what’s better than providing your job-seeking friends with a real solution that will make their lives easier and put money in the bank?

This job has unlimited earning potential – so if you hustle to get as many people signed up as possible, you’ll be rewarded big time.

Front of Desk Staff at SoulCycle

Love fitness? Love music? Love cycling in the best combination of a gym and a dance club all in one? As Front of Desk Staff at SoulCycle, located in Boston, you’ll get to meet and greet people who love getting in shape. You’ll help to promote the SoulCycle culture, ensuring that they have a great customer service experience. Plus you’ll be able to inspire and encourage all your friends to get healthy by recruiting them to come to classes.

We have so many more college student jobs like these on our site, so make sure to apply today! Who’s ready to be on their way up next year?

Subway Ads Designed By Two College Students

Subway ads by Molly O’Shea NYU’18 and Claire Wu, Collins College’16.

How to Get Through a Really Tough Time in College

This post is from our good friends at campus.about.me. campus.about.me helps students get discovered and excel on and off campus.

College is a unique time.

It’s the first time most of us become independent. We make the decisions. Mom and Dad aren’t in our ear, telling us what to do. High school cliques? Gone. We have a clean slate.

But there’s a lot more pressure. With independence, comes accountability. Each decision is on us. Pressure to get good grades. Pressure to go to parties. Pressure to take economics instead of creative writing because it looks better to employers during job interviews. Pressure to network, to build new friendships with people who aren’t from your hometown.

Have you ever heard of the phrase “pressure makes diamonds”? General George S. Patton coined that phrase. As commander of the U.S. armies in the Mediterranean and European theatres of World War II, Patton knew about pressure. He led the allied troops through the invasion of Normandy, one of the most important events in the allied victory of World War II.

Patton believed that high stakes created optimal environments, and opportunities, for people to rise to the occasion and perform beyond their perceived abilities. In other words, adversity creates opportunity for those willing to seize it.

Our college experience provides such an opportunity.

Amidst the “coming of age” experience, the fun, the intense studying, and the athletics…being a college student is an optimal environment to create a diamond. That diamond is YOU. You have an opportunity to begin to figure out who you are, and who you want to become.

But how do we take advantage of this opportunity? We need the right skill set to identify these opportunities when they arrive, and leverage this unique environment. Here are 3 ways we can use pressure to make diamonds in college:

1. Develop a Growth Mindset

According to Stanford professor and psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck, there are two core mindsets in human beings a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

People with a fixed mindset believe that “they are who they are”, causing them to take failure personally, and to crumble when faced with challenges. Those with a growth mindset take challenges as learning experiences, and believe that failure is a part of the growth process. People with a growth mindset are more resilient to challenges related to their abilities and performance than those with a fixed mindset.

The pivotal part of Dweck’s research is this: those with a fixed mindset can develop a growth mindset. We control how we respond to the challenges that come our way.

2. Respect the Process

Two-time Olympic medalist, and 5 time world champion figure skater Michelle Kwan was once asked a question prior to the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Four years earlier, she was the favorite to win the 1998 Gold medal, and was narrowly beaten by underdog Tara Lipinski. The reporter asked “Are you returning to win the gold at these Olympic Games?”. Kwan quickly corrected the reporter, “I’m staying in to try to win the Olympics”.

Try. That word is key. The highest performers in multiple fields refuse to focus on the outcome. Success is all about respect for the process. Look at adversity as a part of the journey, as an essential piece of clay that is part of molding you into a beautiful sculpture.

3. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Take a moment to think about your family. Think about one person in your family that you look up to. Do some research to understand how they grew up, their accomplishments (or even lack thereof) and what they went through.

You have an opportunity that many in your family didn’t have. It is your responsibility to make the most of it, out of respect to your family and the people who forged the path for you. Appreciate the sacrifices, the struggle, and the failure they experienced. Learn from those experiences.

The more time you take to be grateful for the opportunity you have, the more perspective you’ll gain. With perspective comes poise, confidence, and improved performance.

Each time you find yourself stressed…refer back to that family member you respect, and what they went through. Believe me, your troubles will seem much less important.

What ‘Love Actually’ Can Teach Us About the Job Search

As everyone who is anyone knows, Love Actually is the perfect movie to watch during the holiday season.

Little do viewers know, there are several important lessons–not just about love, but also about the job search, which, we could all use a little help with…

First of all, when you find the perfect job, you just know it.

But you have to make sure that your application really stands out.

You’ll need to weed out grammatical errors in your cover letter like bad holiday garnish.

Out, damn typo.

You’ll also need several copies of your resume printed out, just in case something like this happens…

Typical.

When an employer reaches out to schedule an interview, it’s the best feeling ever.

You da boss.

In the interview, always display your strengths.

In other words, the opposite of this.

Try and remain calm, cool and collected no matter what question comes your way.

Again, the opposite of this.

And definitely don’t ask the employer how the interview is going in the middle of the interview.Probably.

Most importantly, convince the employer that you really want this job.

Waiting for an employer to follow up after your interview is almost worse than waiting for your crush to text you back.Pretty much.

Especially when you realize that they’re probably interviewing tons of other candidates.

Noooooo!!

But after a week or so of this process, the employer reaches out again, and you realize they haven’t forgotten about you.

And when that offer letter finally appears in your inbox, you’ll feel as giddy as a newlywed.

Because, well, you crushed it.

(Especially if you used WayUp ;)!)

iOS App Approved on the First Try: How to Build an App the Right Way

Building your first app is never an easy thing. Three months ago, we embarked on building a native iOS app (written in Swift 2.0) for WayUp, the largest marketplace for college students to find employment. We started with a clean slate: no process, no code, and a brand new team (1 designer, 2 engineers, and 1 product manager). After defined some guiding principles, we bought into them and went to work. The result: this week, our app was accepted by Apple on the first try.

The following are some of the tips and tricks that we used to make us successful. Hopefully, they will work for you as well!

Identify and perfect the bare necessities.

The app’s features and functionality were deliberately and thoughtfully chosen. We didn’t want to have a bloated MVP, so we built the app to address only the most critical pieces of the job application process. There is no message center yet, there is no career advice (though keep an eye out for those features in the future!). We wanted to keep it simple and give our students what they need – JOBS.

Our app consists of the following major pieces of functionality:

Registration and Login – We learn all about you during sign up so that we can show you only the best and most relevant jobs

Job Application – We have a lot of great jobs in our system, so we had to come up with a process that was intuitive and easy to use

User Profile – Life changes and so does your profile. There needed to be a portion of the app where our students can go to and update their information

Settings – Every good app allows users to modify things like push notifications so that the experience is personalized and tailored to the user

Traceability – We wanted to layer in analytics into our app so that we could always be measuring and improving our app from the get-go

We knew that the first two items above (Registration/Login and Job Application) were crucial to the app. We wanted our users to have a good first impression of the app; that meant we wanted to make it super easy to sign up and create an experience that was delightful to the user. In order to do this, we wanted to make sure that we left time to iterate on the signup and job application process. It was crucial that we nailed that and didn’t leave it until the end.

Establish a process that plays to your strengths

“We are going to be agile!” I always love that phrase: usually it’s muttered by people who haven’t really run development teams before. For us, agile, waterfall, scrum, kanban, extreme programming, none of it really mattered. What was important was that we established a process that allowed us to do the following:

Get feedback from our users early
Iterate on the most important pieces of functionality
Make sure what we are building is extensible
Have a sound testing strategy
Minimize waste

In a team of people with distinct skill sets, it’s easy to get into the “it’s not my job” mentality. We avoided that by being completely transparent with the codebase, Sketch files, and Pivotal Tracker project. Anyone could file a bug and propose changes, anyone could modify and export design assets, and anyone could modify the codebase and make builds. This allowed the team to work faster, teach each other new skills, and (more importantly) build trust in one another. We developed a workflow that roughly looked like this:

Design would prototype and validate functionality
Engineering would build functionality in small, bite-sized chunks so that we were testing the product as it came to life
Engineering would deliver functionality to the team
Product would test
Product would code in the analytics and adjust copy and other functionality as necessary
Design would adjust storyboards, animations and ensure that everything was pixel-perfect

Once these steps were complete we considered functionality “done” and would deliver a canary build to the company. After establishing this workflow, our goal was to deploy to the canary channel at least once a week and flow that feedback right back into the product, which we did. We delivered 8 builds internally to the company before we submitted the final app for review.

Mitigate your risk

Our process helped us inherently be risk averse:

We tested early and often so that we avoided succumbing to technical debt
We cut features that didn’t make sense for an initial launch and iterated on the most important functionality
We used an internal canary channel to get feedback on the product and also surface edge case bugs
We all read the Apple Store Review Guidelines…100 times. There are 196 “rules” that Apple can ding you for. We all wanted to make sure that we understood the risks and always had a plan B
We got creative with our test accounts which got Apple’s attention – you should too! (Our test account was Rocky Clarke from UC Berkeley. Google it if you don’t know the story.)

People all too often fall into the trap of defining too much functionality and allowing apps to become overwhelming, so keep your first version simple and make sure you have a good testing strategy that allows for time to iterate. Most importantly, build a culture around the app. Even if you follow some of the suggestions laid out above, you still need your team to put in the time to build, test, and refine countless times before you get it right.

Good luck!

Interview with YouTube Celebrity, Matthew Tran

A recent graduate of Cal State Long Beach, Matthew Tran made a career change from engineering to media in 2013 that changed his life: he now leverages his YouTube channel of over 61,000 subscribers to give valuable career advice to students. WayUp sat down with him to learn a bit more about what he’s learned through his videos and the hear his insights on preparing for the real world.

Tell us how you first got into social media.

My first job in media was my YouTube channel — at the time, it was a hobby more than a job. I created the channel because I saw that there was some widely accepted career knowledge that was clearly wrong (e.g. ‘Just go to college, and you’ll get a good job’).

P.S. Check out Matthew’s shout out to WayUp at 2:19 below!

What is the hardest part about managing your YouTube while working?

One of the worst parts about being YouTuber is putting tons of hours into a video and then see it barely get any views. The hardest part about managing a YouTube channel while working is balancing these 3 elements when making a video: 1. Make a video that I’m interested in making, 2. Make a video that the audience wants to see, 3. Make a video that’s time & cost effective.

What is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received?

“Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.”

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” — both quotes from Napoleon Hill

These quotes are significant to me because they changed my perspective on negative things that happen to me. I was actually fired from all 3 engineering jobs that I had. The 1st 2 times I was devastated, but the 3rd time I was actually excited. I did fail, but I saw it as an opportunity to pursue a career in media, which I’m much happier with. I try to flip every mistake I make into a lesson and see the silver lining.

In an alternate universe, what career would you be doing?

This answer is going to sound a bit ridiculous but in an alternate universe, I’d be a professional mixed martial arts fighter. I do MMA as a hobby. I’ve had a few rough sparring matches, and that’s when I learned I could never do it as a profession. Getting hit in the face by an athletic individual is an unpleasant experience. The idea of professionally fighting really stresses me out, but a part of me wishes that I could handle it.

If you had to give one piece of advice to college students across the nation, what would it be?

College curriculum updates very slow compared to real life. You’ll likely learn a lot of outdated knowledge in your classes. It’s important to always be learning your specialization outside of class. Also, if you don’t enjoy learning your craft outside of class, you might be pursuing the wrong career.

What advice would you give to students who want to pursue YouTube as a career?

It’s not about what you want to make: it’s about what the audience wants to see. Eventually, YouTube will feel like a job because you learn what your audience wants to see and that supersedes what you want to make because otherwise you have no audience to watch your videos. Hook the audience in the 1st few seconds of the video. Cut out any fluff in the video. Make sure video titles generate curiosity but don’t sound like click bait. Ask yourself why your channel is better/different than other current channels.

If you do a channel where you’re in front of the camera, then you have to watch your videos. If you watch my videos from the beginning of my channel, you’ll notice that my public speaking as increased drastically over the years. It was hard to watch myself, but necessary, very necessary.

What advice would you give to graduating seniors who will be starting their first full-time job next year?

Dating and finding a good job have an uncanny resemblance. I would equate a 1st full-time job to a 1st relationship. You think you know what you want in a partner/job until you actually get that partner/job, and it’s not how you imagined it to be. Then you notice things that you’d want in a job/partner that you didn’t know were important to you. That’s why I think it’s important to not be picky with a first job because sometimes waiting for that perfect job means you’ll be unemployed for too long. Even if your 1st job in unrelated to what you want to do, you may learn skills there that will help you down the road.

Video Intern at the Food Network

WayUp sat down with a recent NYU grad with a degree in film rev to talk about his experience producing and editing videos for The Food Network! Here’s what he had to say.

How long did you work at the Food Network? What was your role and what were your responsibilities? I worked there for about a year. It started as a summer internship but transitioned to a full-time freelancing job! I was working in digital video, so my responsibilities included everything from editing video for social media to pitching new original short video ideas, acting as a Production Assistant on set, and keeping the producers up to date on food culture and media.

What’s the work culture like at the Food Network? What were your hours? Scripps Networks owns the Food Network, Travel Channel, HGTV and a bunch of other channels, so it’s a huge company. The hours were pretty regular except for shoots which can take place anytime day or night. The work environment was really creative and collaborative, getting to talk about (and sometimes eat) food all day is definitely a fun thing to do. With every company, there are pros and cons. One of the pros was that because it’s such a huge company we had every resource at our disposal–like expensive equipment and food stylists. The downside to working at such a huge company is sometimes communication can be complicated and slow things down.

How many videos did you create during your time there? I could not count the number of short videos I edited. Definitely hundreds.

What’s a project or video you worked on that you were most proud of? It’s so satisfying to see something evolve from just an idea to something that gets shared with the whole world. So I would say leading the Snapchat channel. I knew the Food Network was going to have a Snapchat channel before it was ever announced and had to keep it a secret for a while, so when it finally launched I was so excited.

Working on the Snapchat Discovery platform must have been a lot of work! What did you learn from the experience? This was the biggest learning experience of my professional career so far. I learned about organizing my own time, clarity of communication, how to disagree with someone in a professional setting, how to advocate for the content I wanted to see, and how to request what I needed to get things done.

What was the most challenging part about working for the Food Network?

At any company of that size communication is challenging. It is difficult to get everyone in the same room, hash out all of your differing opinions, and arrive at a consensus that everyone accepts.

What are the top 3 skills you need to succeed in this role?

The ability to take criticism.
The ability to come up with new ideas all the time.
The ability to repurpose content, or to give an old piece of content new life.

Did you get to meet any famous foodies?

Yes, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy! I will say that all of the celebrity chefs I interacted with were awesome, not a single diva.

Did you get any free food samples?

Duh. There is literally a group of chefs and their full-time job is to make up recipes for the Food Network brand. They have their own testing kitchen and sometimes they had extra treats for us.

Any advice for students interested in Videography?

Make your own videos, build your reel or resume. Nobody needs to give you permission to materialize your ideas. What we’re seeing now with the internet age is that the rulebook has been thrown out the window. We’re creating the future right now!

Don’t Walk Into a Consulting Interview Without Reading These 2 Things

“How many lightbulbs are there in Manhattan?”

This is a common type of question you’ll have to tackle in a consulting interview (and they get even harder). Consulting interviews — especially those at top firms like Bain, McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group — are known to make candidates wrack their brains to come up with their best-educated guess to off-the-wall questions and cases. As intimidating as these interviews may seem, with enough pre-interview study time, you’ll be firing on all cylinders. So, how can you best prepare for expecting the unexpected? Simple: You religiously read the two items in the list below.

1. Current Events

Staying up to date with current events can be a huge advantage in any consulting interview — especially with regard to the economy. “Business and current events are likely to come up during the behavioral interview, and speaking to employers eloquently will show that you are genuinely interested in business — and hopefully you are,” says Alexa Fishman, a Senior Consultant at IBM. “You never know when a piece of knowledge like the unemployment rate in the US, trends in gas prices or the conversion between the dollar and the Euro — will come in handy, adding color and realism to your response during a case interview.”

Taking a look at articles in The New York Times and The Economist can give you the extra edge you need during your case interviews, and speaking of case interviews, you might want to read…

2. Case in Point by Marc P. Cosentino

Marc Cosentino has dominated the world of case studies for a solid three decades, teaching everyone from MBA candidates (The Wall Street Journal called Case in Point the “MBA Bible”) to graduating college seniors how to think like a consultant. With over 40 practice cases, this book is the perfect way for you and your job-seeking consulting friends to review case studies together and challenge each other to think in new ways that will help you ace your interview. You and your friends can even pitch in to share a book together to save on the cost.

Preparing for your next consulting interview by reading these two things will have you rattling off the answer to “How would you go about advising a hypothetical client on commercializing a teleportation device that they have invented?” in no time. (And yup, that’s a real thing.)

How to Get Employers to Love You (Before They Even Meet You)

One of the hardest parts about the job search is feeling like you’re just one in a pile of applications. How will you get employers to notice you?

You can get employers to notice you – even love you – before you walk into your first interview: It’s all about the way you communicate beforehand. Whether you’re using phone or email, this is how you can woo an employer early on in the hiring process.

Step 1: Respond. Step 2: Respond quickly.

You know that feeling of excitement you get when you submit a great application for the perfect job? You want to hear from the employer immediately because it was just that good.

Employers feel the same way about finding the perfect candidate. The hiring process involves a lot of work, so when they feel like they’ve finally come across the right person and they reach out, they want to get a response as soon as possible.

Make sure that you’re responsive so that you don’t lose that momentum – we recommend getting back to the employer within 24 hours. Even if you’re not interested in the position, be cordial and thank them for considering you. You never know if you’ll want an opportunity with the same company later on down the line!

Be grateful for the opportunity

Staying upbeat and positive throughout your email and phone communications is absolutely key to winning employers over — especially when you show that you’re grateful to be considered. Employers like to feel like you actually want the job that you’re applying for so that when they extend an offer, they know that you will accept.

When scheduling your interview, make sure to add in things like “I’m glad to hear from you!” or “Thanks so much for taking the time to follow up!” When details have been confirmed, make sure to end with a “Thanks for the opportunity – looking forward to meeting you!” Your gratefulness and graciousness will go a long way.

Get to know their products and services

You’d be surprised how many candidates walk into an interview without knowing anything about what the company does or what the company offers. That’s why it’s so important to poke around on the company’s website, read its mission statement, take a look at the About Us page to see who you might be interviewing with and most importantly, sign up or subscribe for its products and services. You will walk into the interview as a knowledgeable candidate because you’ll be aware of what the company wants to accomplish and how your role will fit into the bigger picture.

We want to preface this by saying that when you compliment or comment on what the company offers, it should be genuine. If a company has made a real impact on you or impressed you, say so. If there are things that you think could be improved, mention that in a positive way, “I love this feature, but I think that I would love to also see this…have you ever gotten that feedback from your customers?” Seriously, we’d hire that type of candidate.

Make it easy for them to see your accomplishments

Make it easy for employers to stumble upon your interests and successes. Include a link to your public profile on WayUp in your email signature, or a link to an article or a video about you and your accomplishments. This will show employers that you’re not only proud of your personal brand, but also that you’re actively working to promote yourself professionally. At WayUp, we like to research our candidates thoroughly, so giving us the materials we need that confirm that you’re a great candidate makes the process a lot easier on our end!

We know that you can knock any employer’s socks off – just make sure to show off your great personality when you interact with them. If you convince them that you’re their ideal candidate, it’ll make your in-person interview go a lot more smoothly!

This Is How You Bomb a Video Interview

Wait…why a video interview?

Video interviews are becoming an increasingly more popular way of seeing if a candidate is worth the company’s time. WayUp’s in-house recruiter Julie Olsson says that she can get a lot more from a video interview than a phone interview. “When you’re interviewing someone on the phone, you can’t pick up on their body language, eye contact or the way they carry themselves — which are all very important to understanding whether someone is a cultural fit for your company,” she says. “A video interview is more efficient because you can eliminate a person who isn’t the right cultural fit early on, and you have a lower risk of setting someone up that isn’t right to meet with your team.”

Employers are able to eliminate far more candidates from the pipeline because a video interview reveals if you’re ready and fit for the next hurdle. Because getting to that next round is crucial, there are a couple of ways to make sure you don’t stumble on the track.

You treated it as a chance to chill in loungewear.

As cool as it would be to get a job while wearing a onesie, a video interview is not a video chat. Sweatshirts, PJs and anything that would make you look like a cool person to chill with on a lazy Saturday (as opposed to someone an employer would actually want to hire) are out. Because this is the employer’s first impression of you, start off on the right foot by putting effort into your appearance. Dress like a professional – at least from the waist up. Try to match the dress code of the office as well – if you know that company employees dress in business casual, then wear business casual as well. If you need tips on what exactly that means, we can help.

You didn’t test the program or wifi beforehand.

Imagine if the only thing standing between you and the perfect job was a terrible Skype connection. Had you tested the program and your wifi a day or two beforehand–or even an hour before your interview–you might have been able to prevent any issues by moving to a room with a better connection or installing a new update on your computer.

The last thing that you want to do is miss out on a golden opportunity: so test, test and triple test. We recommend video calling a friend to ensure that audio and visuals are working as they should. Of course, sometimes these issues can’t be helped (we’re looking at you, Skype), which means it’s on you to do what you can to ensure that you still come across professionally…which brings us to our next point…

You constantly interrupted and talked over the employer

Even if there’s a bad connection, never, ever interrupt an employer – no matter what. Even if Adele and Sam Smith stroll into your dorm to perform the greatest duet the world has ever known and the internet is crashing — wait until the employer has finished talking to say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

In all seriousness, wait and listen before you interject: Even through a bad connection, you can sometimes hear what the employer is saying. Try your hardest to do that. When it is clear that they are finished speaking, ask them politely to repeat.

You used your phone instead of your computer.

During an interview, you should be focused on adequately answering questions and making a connection with your interviewer – not seeing which inanimate object will support your upright iPhone for at least 5 minutes at a time.

Use your computer, not your phone, to create a more stable view. This will allow you to move things around – i.e. lighting – and focus on what’s important: the interview. Make sure you put your computer on your desk or a pile of books to make sure that your eyes are square to the camera. If you don’t have a laptop, make sure to book a room in the library and use a computer there!

You didn’t check your background.

How about not having a pile of dirty laundry on your bed as the backdrop while you’re telling the employer that your organizational skills are unmatched? Just an idea.

We recommend a non-distracting background. Booking a room in the library is a big help and relieves the stress of having to rearrange your room!

Video interviews are all about self-awareness: how you’re presenting yourself to the employer and how you’re coming across to the employer. If you successfully pass the test, you’ll be well on your way to your first in-person interview at the company. Lights, camera, hired!

NICE!