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PriveCo Inc. president Tom Nardone tells us what it takes to be Hired by his company.

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Tom Nardone is president of PriveCo Inc., a Troy, Michigan-based company.  Nardone has expanded his team in the past year and offers Michigan Innovators an insider’s look at what it takes to be hired by the “world’s most private company.” 

Our Q & A with Nardone:

Q. Tell us about PriveCo.

A. PriveCo, The World's Most Private Company, offers embarrassing products in professional shopping environments, online. It specializes in answering questions that are embarrassing to ask and delivery products that are embarrassing to buy.  Every order is processed by our team here in metro Detroit.

Q. What types of positions have you filled within last year?

A. We've hired a copywriter (paid intern), a marketing coordinator (paid intern) and two full time people for our warehouse.

Q. What types of skills are required of these positions?
A. Writing, analytical / marketing skills, manual skills, and reading comprehension

Q. What's the top thing you look for in a new hire?
A. Loyalty / Durability. We look for hires that have worked at another company for a long time, especially if that other company doesn’t seem that great to work for.  We know that this type of person will be happy working here.

Q. What's one thing that HR managers look for in a new hire that job seekers should focus on in interviews, resumes, etc.?
A. I feel that the cover letter is important, but nothing is as important as a stable work history.

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Jordan Komoto, HR lead with Ann Arbor-based fuel cell manufacturer Adaptive Materials, kicks off our new "Hired" series.

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Jordan Komoto, HR lead with Ann Arbor-based fuel cell manufacturer Adaptive Materials, kicks off our new "Hired" series.  In his role at Adaptive Materials, Komoto is charged with interviewing candidates for open positions and has some pretty good insider's knowledge on the do's and don'ts of the process. 

Our Q&A with Komoto:

Q. Tell us a little bit about Adaptive Materials

A. Adaptive Materials is the leader in portable fuel cell power. Our systems power a variety of military and commercial applications and run off readily available propane. Our core values of attitude, empowerment, innovation, and growth signify a commitment to cool thinking, organizational and personal advancement, and creative freedom.

Q. What types of positions has your company filled within last year?

A. Mechanical Engineer, Test Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Controls Engineer

Q. What are the types of skills required of these positions?
A. Demonstrated experience as a successful product design, process improvement, or test and validation engineer. We look for individuals who have had proven success as an individual contributor in a collaborative environment. We don’t look for followers; we want people who have demonstrated the ability to provide leadership in their field of expertise, without necessarily having served as a manager. As a small organization, we look for individuals who will fit into the small company culture—people who are always willing to lend a hand outside of their job description and break down or simply go around barriers to get the project done.

Q. What's the top thing you look for in a new hire?
A. Confidence, competence, and a willingness to learn. A person may not be the best interviewer, but as long as they can demonstrate they are competent, willing to learn, and confident they can be successful, it will show through in an interview.

Q. What's one thing that HR managers look for in a new hire that job seekers should focus on in interviews, resumes, etc.?
A. Concise results from your previous employment. Don’t just tell us what was in
your job description; we want to know what you were able to accomplish in your
previous position(s).

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LectureTools allows instructors and students to interact in new ways in and out of classrooms. Developer Perry Samson talks about its potential for learning and for the future of textbooks.

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College instructors are increasingly using "student response systems" to encourage interactive learning in their classrooms. Most existing systems use "clickers," relatively limited standalone devices which students must purchase. Perry Samson, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Michigan, has developed a web-based technology, LectureTools, which allows students to use devices they already have: laptops, tablet PCs, even smartphones. LectureTools lets them interact in and out of a classroom in a wide variety of ways. For example, students can

• take notes and associate them with the instructors' slideware presentation,
• draw on the instructors' slides,
• ask questions of the instructor during the class,
• indicate their level of confidence with the material, and
• respond to a variety of questions. For example, students can answer questions using images; they can establish associations between concepts and ideas, and they can reorder texts, statements and arguments.
• Students can also review their notes and a lecture podcast or video after class.

In this video, Perry Samson talks about the present and the future of LectureTools and how it may save textbook publishing -- by providing an affordable and smart electronic textbook.

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Scate Technologies is a great example of a Southeast Michigan company that has been nimble on its feet in tough economic times. We discuss how the company has moved from on-site training, to e-Learning, to social media learning infrastructure provider. Future conversations will focus on revenue growth associated with their social media initiatives.

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In this interview with Scate Technology's Steve Sadler and Jeff Holth, we learn how Scate moved from a company that did on-site training to e-learning to software development. Scate currently has successful businesses in screencasting, website development, and social media.

After 9/11, the move from onsite trainng to e-learning was natural. There was an economic recession, and the recent terrorist attacks had put an additional, natural brake on travel. One day, an e-Learning customer asked Steve Sadler, CEO of Scate, how his company produced e-Learning materials so quickly. Steve showed him an internal tool, and the customer asked him how much it was. Steve said it was not for sale. The customer retorted it should be.

A light went off, and Steve moved to turn his tool into a product, Ignite, that allowed customers to create their own e-Learning materials. Shortly after, Jeff Holth, currently CTO, joined Scate.

Jeff then picks up the narrative by noting how Scate has continued to expand its offerings, recently moving into social media. Jeff envisions social media as community development around a set of shared ideas and interests.

In future episodes, Steve and Jeff will discuss how they are using social media, particularly a new product, ScreenTweet, to promote their business.

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A chief networking officer helps companies manage existing relationships and create new ones to further their business strategy. As the most used online business networking tool, we'll be focusing on how businesses can use LinkedIn to this end.

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Terry Bean, founder of Networked, Inc., bills himself as a Chief Networking Officer. Essentially, he helps companies:

• Create new relationships
• Manage existing relationships

The point of these relationships is to better enable the company's business strategy execution. Thus, Terry begins each client engagement focusing on the following factors:

• The company goals
• A definition of the ideal client
• A definition of the ideal business partner

In the past few years, Terry has been shifting his focus to online as well as face to face strategies. In the next few segments with Terry, we'll be discussing the most used online business network, LinkedIn.

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Shifting gears is designed to help corporate professionals overcome three challenges they will face as employees in small businesses: (1) The need to play soup-to-nuts roles because there is not much staff depth; (2) The scarcity of resources inside most small businesses; (3) The ambivalent business environment faced by most small businesses.

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Shifting Gears is a program for retooling corporate professionals' skilsets to better meet the needs of small and medium businesses. Diana Wong, Shifting Gears' creator and Professor at Eastern Michigan University, lays out the rationale and benefits of the program:

• Small, growing businesses need the skillsets corporate professionals have to offer, but cultural issues prevent matches being made.
• In this buyers' job market, it's up to corporate professionals to sell themselves if they want to transition into a small business.
• In order to do so, corporate professionals need to retool their skill sets in the following ways:
  • First, they need to get a firm grip on the skills they possess and the value those skils can bring.
  • Second, they need to understand that they are no longer just a role player on a larger team but often a one-person band.
  • Third, they need to adapt to the scarcity of financial and other resources often prevalent in small businesses.
  • Fourth, they need to be able to deal with the less well-defined business environment that most small businesses face.

In future installments, we'll cover how the Shifting Gears program helps corporate professionals meet the challenge of retooling their skills.

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FaceBook is by far the largest social network. Charlie Wollborg offers advice on how to effectively use FaceBook in a business context. A key component of his approach is taking a less formal more human approach to interacting with people you interact with on FaceBook.

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The worlds of work and social life are merging according to Charlie Wollborg, Curve Detroit's founder and chief troublemaker. Devices like the blackberry bring work home, and business meetings often begin with personal chit chat.

Facebook is positioning itself as the network that allows people to achieve a balance between professional and social communication. With over 200 Million active subscribers (those who log in at least weekly), Facebook is the 800 lb. guerilla in this rapidly growing area. To effectively present a social business presence on FaceBook, Charlie recommends:

• Have a photo
• Present the human side, not just the business side, of who you are. Draw the line where you are comfortable.
• Make sure to promote your public corporate events there as FaceBook is very viral.

Some things, Charlie recommends you not do with FaceBook:

• Don't create content solely for Facebook. It's invisible to search engines.
• By the same token, don't store photos and other content there that you want to be publicly accessible. FaceBook prohibits access to outsiders.

Finally, Charlie recommends that you gear any FaceBook advertising to a soft sell wrapped in information. People come to FaceBook to socialize, not hear hard core pitches.

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With Web users spending increasing amounts of time on social networking sites at the expense of other destination sites, it no longer makes sense to think that users will come to your web site as the sole destination for your business. Charlie Wollborg of Curve Detroit outlines the major social networking sites where businesses currently need a presence.

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The original Web business strategy (circa late 1990s) was to draw people to your site as a destination. Now, for most businesses on the Web, that model no longer makes sense. Instead, as Charlie Wollborg of Curve Detroit explains:

• Companies need to go where the audience is and that means social networking sites. As many as one in every three minutes online is spent connected to a social networking site (see Nielsen for estimates as exact figures though significant are elusive).
• Facebook is the 800 lb. gorilla of social media. At the end of March, it had 200 million active users with 100 million users checking it daily.
• In addition to Facebook, there are two other significant networks where businesses should consider their presence:
  • LinkedIn, a business networking site.
  • Twitter, a microblogging site.

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Charlie Wollborg was "kicked out of every small and large, reputable advertising firm in Detroit" before founding Curve. This is the first in a series of discussions with Charlie on Social Media where Curve is a leader in the Detroit Area.

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Charlie Wollborg, Chief Trouble Maker at Curve Detroit and social media guru, often goes by the name Charlie Curve, just to keep the affiliation at the top of people's minds as they interact online. In this conversation, we lay out the philosophy behind curve and how social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn fit into their mix. Highlights from this short initial segment include:

• Curve bills itself as a media, marketing, and design firm.
• A key differentiating factor is that the firm is media agnostic.
  • Charlie tells the old joke of a man who gets shot and wanders into a traditional ad firm where they offer him a tv campaign to cure his ills.
  • Curve examines clients' goals, desired audience, and budget before suggesting any of a number of alternatives which may include traditional media or new media.
• Charlie founded Curve after "getting kicked out of every small and large reputable advertising firm in Detroit".
  • Charlie was always on the hunt for new and better ways to do things, a quality that might not fit with an agenda to sell the firm's main product line.

In future segments Charlie will provide Curve's overall take on social media and Facebook in particular.

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Since age 16, Adrian Pittman, Founder of Module, has tasked himself with learning one new skill per year. We discuss the impact of that strategy on growing his company.

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Adrian Pittman, founder of Module, started working for himself at age 16. In this conversation, Adrian and I discuss the advice he would give to his sixteen year old self wishing to enter his field of endeavor today. He cited two:

• Expect the rules as you know them today to change.
• As a result, you need to constantly consider yourself a student.

When I asked him how he learned himself, the answer was quite revelatory:

• Each year after starting work, he set himself a goal of learning one new skill a year.
• He chose the skills based on demand from his clients, thereby ensuring he stayed in touch with the marketplace.
• As his business grew beyond a one-man show, he began to incorporate course work on managing people.

In conclusion, Adrian states that he was lucky to be put in a situation where he was forced to learn. But, the truth of the matter is that he himself made the decision to be in a situation where learning was essential. This strategy might be described as a blueprint for how to succeed in the knowledge-based economy.

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The social web is a real time stock market of prevailing trends and opinions. Adrian Pittman shares what he has learned while briefing executive suites on social media.

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 Adrian Pittman and his company, Module, recently put on the Module09 conference to provide a business-oriented overview of Social Media. In this segment, Adrian provides a highly condensed summary of his findings on social media:

• Platforms like Twitter and Facebook are channels for social communication over the web. The social web occurs at the intersection of these channels and might be considered a sort of real time stock market of social communication.
• While Twitter and Facebook are the consensus picks for most popular social media platforms, people's allegiance to platforms is very fluid and changeable.
• Twitter now appears the best platform for engaging new audiences, mainly because it has dramatically reduced privacy restrictions.

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The key to success in the cloud is tying it to your company's business drivers.

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In the past year, there's been increasing discussion of cloud computing. In this conversation, Adrian Pittman, founder of Module, a technology company, describes the cloud as decentralizing distribution and access to a company's core data assets. For most companies, the main advantage of moving into the cloud is that it creates connections that allow better information throughput, making operations more efficient and interaction with customers more effective.

With this view, Module takes the following strategic approach to cloud computing:

• Understand the business drivers of potential clients seeking to move into the cloud.
• Determine which, if any, service offerings best meet those needs.
• Create applications that glue those offerings together.

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Per Jenn Cornell: "Twitter is a short way of saying what you're doing."

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 In this brief snippet, Jenn Cornell gets at the essence of Twitter: a short way of saying what you're doing. Part of its beauty is that it is casual. You don't have to be friends with a person to follow their updates, just be interested in what they're doing. Twitter's chief value: speed and reach of responses from your followers.

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How social media sites like twitter and facebook are continuing to be game changers for traditional PR clients.

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 As related by Jenn Cornell, public relations credibly connects a company's messages with target audiences, particularly potential customers. As such, messages cannot be purely self-serving but must fulfill the audience's information needs. Jenn begins her client engagements by first diving deep with them to understand their core strengths and only then turning to near term business objectives.

Social media sites such as twitter and facebook present new ways to connect with the public, and Jenn is currently using these tools with about 40% of her clients. Their main advantage is that they allow direct engagement with potential customers without intermediaries. Her goal is to get all of her clients with either broadly appealing products or a consumer orientation using these tools.  By contrast, all of her clients can use tools like Google blog and news alerts.

In a follow up episode, Jenn will describe the differences she sees between facebook and twitter.

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Bill Wagner is looking for a salesperson, only the second non-software developer his firm has hired.

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In this segment with Bill Wagner, we discuss SRT Solutions' search for a new salesperson. This person will be only the second non-software developer the firm has hired. As we filmed this segment, and as I write this, times are hard in Michigan with unemployment over 11%. Many workers are faced with the prospect of moving from positions they have held for many years with larger companies to smaller companies where job demands are different.

Bill lays out what he thinks the differences are. These dovetail well with remarks by Jeannette Gutierrez, a job seeker we recently interviewed. Here are the differences as Bill sees them:

• The salesperson will be the whole sales department, not just one of many or one overseeing many.
• As a result, SRT is looking for an individual contributor who has experience growing sales and meeting quotas.
• As a firm that serves a number of industries, SRT is looking for a person that has experience selling to a variety of businesses.