Starting a Design Studio In a Downturn, Part 5: Staying Focused
The last of a five-part series on Fast Company about how Jennifer Bove and her team defied the odds, starting a new design studio in the midst of the credit crisis. “This experience has taught us that even in the toughest financial climate, being passionate about what you do, and focusing on the future really does count for a lot. It’s going to get a lot harder before it gets easier, and for it to work, it will be work. You won’t make a lot of money at first, but there are other rewards. And hey, if you’re going to get laid off, at least you get to give yourself the boot.”

Flex Time: A Recession Triple Win
Sylvia Ann Hewlett presents statistics on different work arrangements and how flexibility can benefit a company on Harvard Business. “Tough times are the right time to formalize flexible work schedules. Remote work options, staggered hours, reduced schedules and mini-sabbaticals are often seen as work perks for the fat years, one of the first targets of corporate belt-tightening. But as research in my forthcoming book Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down (Harvard Business Press; October 2009) shows, companies that treat time as currency have tapped into one of the secrets to surviving in a recession.”

Recruiters on Twitter Forget ‘Social’ Aspect of ‘Social Media’
Despite social media’s rising popularity among recruiters, Danny Cox thinks they still have a lot to learn and shares his criticisms on The Prospective Employee. “One thing I will say regarding the companies chosen: most seem to be missing the point. The operant word in the above paragraph is ‘trying’ to communicate. Upon some further investigation of many of the companies listed (I focused primarily on Chicago and New York postings, as that’s where I’m hoping to end up) several aren’t following a single person.”

The Art of Letting Employees Go
Eli Saslow reports on an “outplacement firm” that teaches companies how to execute mass downsizings and helps guide laid-off employees through the crisis on The Washington Post. “The Five O’Clock Club has nearly doubled in size during the past two years, and Hall has guided more than 200 companies and 1,500 laid-off workers through downsizings in the past six months. The Club, as it is sometimes called, charges each company about $2,000 per fired employee in exchange for providing layoff victims with a year of career coaching.”

Free work vs. internships
Why doing free work as a remote freelancer is better than paying your dues as an intern, according to Seth Godin. “And the benefit to the underemployed? You guessed it: great experience and a resume builder that actually means something. Isn’t it odd that we’re willing to spend $300,000 to buy an accredited but ultimately useless academic line on our resume, but we hesitate to do a month of hard work to create a chunk of experience that’s priceless?”

Lessons from very tiny businesses
Seth Godin lists instructional stories from different small ventures. “Respond. This is the single biggest advantage you have over the big guys. Not only are you in charge, you also answer the phone and read your email and man the desk and set the prices. So, don’t pretend you have a policy. Just be human.”

The Get-Started-Now Guide to Becoming Self-Employed
Leo Babauta on the things he learned when he quit his day job and started his own business. “This is the best time to start. This is a time when job security is low, so risks are actually lower. This is a time to be lean, which is the best idea for starting a business. This is the time when others are quitting — so you’ll have more room to succeed.”

How to Survive Any Economic Downturn
Martha Retallick of Freelance Switch shares how she dealt with a sagging economy in the early 80’s and the enduring life lessons she learned from it. “If you’re young, fresh out of college, and relatively inexperienced in the work world, you may have to start out at the bottom… Even crummy retail jobs provide the opportunity to gain business experience.”