Growing Opportunities for Minorities

The opportunities for minorities and women in energy and utility companies are excellent. Many utilities urgently need to replace retiring baby boomers. And that means jobs at all levels–from linemen all the way up to senior management.

Today’s utility companies will be looking for new technologists—experts in renewable energy like solar, wind, geothermal and ocean wave systems. The heaviest demand is for EE and IT degrees. If the US can’t graduate enough talent, it will have to import it. Once viewed not as ‘sexy’ as some other industries, the hope is that utilities will attract a new crop of graduates and young professionals as new technologies like wind farms and alternative energy come into play.

Opportunities for minorities in energy and utilities are going through the roof. For those with tech talent, the sky’s the limit. Utility companies have already started hiring minority candidates. Consolidated Edison (New York, NY) finally appointed the first woman plant manager in the company. In addition, the company offered women jobs in power plants, steam distribution, energy distribution, even accounting.

At Alliant Energy, women have been assigned to managing coal-fired, base-load generating stations. They have also been given roles as managers of procurement and transportation of fossil fuels, as well as such titles as manager of generation engineering. Alliant is looking for people with engineering skills—especially in EE, ChE and ME—but they also need experts in accounting, auditing, IT and environmental resources. The utility is actively recruiting women, attending job fairs and offering career advancement programs at colleges and high schools.

It’s Small Business Day!

It is official. Today is the day. What day is it, you might ask?

It is Small Business Day!!

What does this mean? It means that it’s time to celebrate our small businesses, including us, by supporting us. Spend your dollars at a small business so that the dollars are kept in the local community. It is way past time to start supporting the largest employment sector: the small business.

It is so easy to run to one of the big box retailers, who really can afford to go at least one day without shopping there. Ask yourselves how long a small business can survive without support from the community. Not very long, I’m sure.

It’s not too late to get out there and support a small business. Tell them ‘thank you’ while you are frequenting their business, whether online or in person.

Starting a Business With Bad Credit

Bad credit knows no race, gender, or class. Millionaires can be as foolish with money as poor people can. But the fact still remains that, once someone is within the bad credit range, it’s hard to make any large purchase; buying a house, purchasing a car, financing education to name a few.

Starting A Business to Supplement NOT Replace Your Income
If you see Mr. Stew’s Chipotle Sauces in grocery stores, buy a bottle ok! You’ll be supporting a company that could be the poster child for beginning a business with bad credit. Ralph Hirsch, during his ten months of unemployment, as he watched his bank account dwindle and kept missing his house payments, he started his own business-creating and selling a dipping sauce for chicken wings. While coming up, on the weekends he’d go to Fresh Market in Ohio and sell his sauces. Now his sauces are a success. His credit score was 500 when he started his business….

Now. If you have a credit score that’s in Hirsch’s neighborhood, your going to find that credit lines are tough to get. But you’d find it tough even if you had a credit score of 760. The days of an entrepreneur of a start-up company waltzing over to a venture capitalist and wowing him to the point of receiving a multimillion-dollar check are a hazy memory.

If starting your own business is a dream of yours, you cant let the absence of a credit line kill your business before you’ve started it. Plenty of other people with lousy credit have started their own companies-very successful ones-and you can too. Here are some tips:

1. Find a Well-Heeled Partner

If you’re known as a smart, capable person, and you have an extensive background working in restaurants, then opening a restaurant is a reasonable idea, and one wold think you deep-pocketed uncle or best friend from college might want to become a silent partner. If you’ve never worked at a restaurant, but you think you have a neat concept for a restaraunt, and besides, it would be cool, well, good luck finding someone to invest in that! Why should they?

2. Find a Well-Established Partner

Well-established, in this case, is almost the same thing as a well-heeled partner, but not quite. Instead of looking for someone with money who is willing to invest in your business, you could look for a company that is willing to work with you for a healthy share of the profits.

3. Microloans

Microloans is a buzzword used for loans that have been given to people in impoverished countries, and sometimes women and minority entrepreneurs in America. (sba.gov)

4. Peer-to-Peer Lending Sites

If this is an idea that intrigues you, a good book to buy is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Person-to-Person Lending.

5. Incubators

6. Bartering

(definition: A BARTER is a method of trade by exchange of commodities rather than by the use of money.)
This ca be a clever way to bring in some resources without having to pay for them. Now, if your thinking about the type of bartering you learned in elementary school, where the fur trappers bartered pelts for supplies at the general store, well, thats the basic idea, but ofcourse its gotten alot more high tec and complex. (bizx.com, irta.com)

7. Networking

8. Getting free Help

The Benefit of Adding Apprenticeships and Internships

You’ve mulled it over with management. It’s consistently on the agenda at meetings. And you know that even—actually, especially—small- and medium-sized companies are already reaping huge rewards. In fact, you’ve been contemplating creating a program for months—even years. ITS IMPORTANT. Not only for your company, but for the black community as a whole to encourage students to learn your trade in an apprentice to master style learning environment.

But you’ve yet to actually take the next step and start an internship program at your organization.

Hopefully, that’s about to change. Consider these internship statistics from the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ (NACE) 2009 Experiential Education Survey:

67.7% of 2007-08 interns were offered fulltime positions.
83.6% of these offers were accepted.
35.3% of employers’ fulltime, entry-level college hires came from their internship programs.
If we look at internships from a solution-based perspective, it’s good news as well. Because, essentially, as a small- to medium-sized business, your primary needs are twofold:

Effectively manage your workflow to accomplish immediate objectives.
Find new team members to help grow your business and accomplish your future (i.e. larger, more lucrative) objectives.
Setting up an internship program meets both needs simultaneously. But let’s examine the specific benefits in more detail.

10 Benefits of Starting an Internship Program
Find future employees. An internship program is a year-round recruiting tool. Fall internships, summer internships, semester internships, and quarterly internships, implementing an internship program means you have an ongoing pipeline of future fulltime employees.

For many, the process of recruiting and hiring is a drain on company resources. One solution: Appeal to tomorrow’s staff members when they’re looking for internships, and all you have to do is choose the best of the bunch when it comes time to hire.

Moreover, college campuses are viral societies. This means if your organization impresses one class of interns, word will quickly spread. Soon you’ll find the most sought-after student talent is interested in working with you.

Test-drive the talent. It’s a human resources reality: A new employee makes a solid impression in the interview, but then just doesn’t gel with your current team or your company’s way of doing things.

Because of this, hiring someone as an intern is the most effective way to evaluate their potential as a fulltime employee. When you “try out” candidates via a semester or summer internship, you make fewer mistakes when it comes to fulltime staffing; you avoid the pitfall of training a new hire, only to find out they’re not a fit for your organization…or that the entry-level employee doesn’t like the field. Starting an internship program lets you benefit from added manpower, while more accurately assessing candidates.

Increase productivity. Speaking of additional manpower, setting up an internship program allows you to take advantage of short-term support. The extra sets of hands help your employees be more productive, prevent them from becoming overburdened by side projects, as well as free them up to accomplish more creative tasks or those where higher-level, strategic thinking or expertise is required.

Increase employee-retention rate. The proof for the test-driving theory is in the positive employee-retention figures: According to NACE’s 2009 Experiential Education Survey, almost 40% of employers reported a higher five-year retention rate among employees they’d hired via their internship programs.

Enhance perspective. It’s not just the extra sets of hands that make interns advantageous. Especially in an organization of only 12 or 15 employees, new people bring with them novel perspectives, fresh ideas, and specialized strengths and skill sets. These augment the abilities of your professional workforce.

Take advantage of low-cost labor. Interns are an inexpensive resource. Their salaries are significantly lower than staff employees, and you aren’t obligated to pay unemployment or a severance package should you not hire them on fulltime. Moreover, while their wage requirements are modest, they’re among the most highly motivated members of the workforce.

Find free-of-charge. Internships.com allows you to post your employer profile completely free of charge. This means you get extensive exposure to the top colleges and candidates without putting a dent in your recruiting budget.

Give back to the community. As a small business, you likely rely on community support. Creating an internship program is an excellent way to give back. Hiring interns not only helps students in your community get started; it enhances the local workforce as a whole.

Support students. Internships provide students numerous perks: They gain experience, develop skills, make connections, strengthen their resumes, learn about a field, and assess their interest and abilities.

Offering a paid internship is particularly beneficial, because it enables economically disadvantaged youth to participate. Students who have to help fund their own schooling will need a job, regardless. Providing an internship allows that job to facilitate a positive future.

Benefit your small business. When looking for fulltime work, the top talent often go for big-name businesses. But when seeking internships, learning is the leading draw. Many candidates feel they’ll get more hands-on training, real experience, and mentoring opportunities with smaller organizations.

Employer takeaway: In terms of both today’s workload and tomorrow’s workforce, starting an internship program is an excellent way to facilitate success at your small- or medium-sized business.

Reference: http://www.naceweb.org/products/2009_Experiential_Education/

Personal Finance (for Dummies)

With more than 250 million books in print and more than 1,800 titles, For Dummies is the most widely recognized and highly regarded reference series in the world. Since 1991, For Dummies has helped millions make everything easier.

Today in Minority Business, we are discussing the book on personal finance with regards to our business. Personal Finance for Dummies is a Wall Street Journal bestseller! And it shows it’s readers the latest on how save more, invest wisely, and plan for the future.

The book has some very insightful inserts with regards to small business’s. It urges us to take control of our future and make the leap from employee to entrepreneur. From drafting a business plan to managing cost, you’ll profit from expert advice and real-world examples that cover every aspect of building your own business.

“Money yo’re saving toward your small business can include money under the mattress as well as money in a savings account such as a private savings account or something similar. You may have also earmarked investments in nonsavings accounts for your business such as retirement accounts.”- says Eric Tyson, MBA, the author of this book.

(definition: EQUITY is the difference between the market value less any mortgage balances owed.)

Making the most of equity and pensions can be a huge factor when planning finances. Another tip, of which the author spends an entire chapter on, is how save more and spend less to help with saving. Using tactics such as making larger payments on your credit cards to avoid increased interested payments in the future, avoidance of car loans, peer pressure, and addiction to spending, as well as ignoring your financial goals when buying.

Read and buy this book for yourself. Click here to purchase

About the author.
Eric Tyson, MBA, is a nationally recognized personal finance counselor and the author of numerous For Dummies titles, including Home Buying For Dummies, Investing For Dummies, and Mutual Funds For Dummies, among others

What is a Minority Business?

The rise of minority businesses that appear on the streets around you in the United States rose dramatically in the late 20th century, mostly attributed to newly achieved access to education and capital. Yet, most professionals agree, that minority entrepreneurs – like women entrepreneurs of all races – still face challenges that their white male counterparts are able to avoid. Why?

1. Racism remains a sad reality in some communities, industries, and corporate environments.

That’s it! The government has companies and financial institutions that support the mission of MB’s by providing affirmative action programs and “set-asides”.

                    (definition: AFFIRMATIVE PROGRAMS are programs that seek to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.)

Although there is much doubt and many people against affirmative action and governmental funds directed towards minority owned businesses, there has been thousands maybe millions of businesses across the United States owned by minority business men, yet none of them are older than or than a century years old. Unlike there white-male counterparts. All this to say what. The white man is the devil? Ofcourse not. Yet to be a springboard for equality and diversity in corporate America.

Sources of Assistance

Minority entrepreneurs have several sources of assistance that they can pursue in building and expanding their businesses. The Small Business Administration, for example, has provided billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and loans to minority businesses. In 1993 alone, the SBA guaranteed nearly 27,000 loans totaling more than $6.4 billion to small – and women – owned businesses. The number reached $7 billion in 1994 and $9 billion in 1995. In addition, the agency provides valuable information and assistance through programs like SCORE and its 8(a) contract program.

Several organizations have also been developed to help minorities in the world of business, including the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the National Indian Business Association, the National Association of Minority Contractors, the National Association of Black Women Entrepreneurs, and the National Minority Supplier Development Council.

Up For Discussion

Even though there were plenty of businesses alive and thriving throughout the late 19th century and into the 20th century, why do you think most of them died and have not survived? Is it truly a matter of racism, sexism, or discrimination?