Recent Radford University graduate Chris Pund offers his take on why to start a business in smaller markets. This very insightful aspiring entrepreneur pulled off one of the more impressive student-run entrepreneurship seminars I have attended. He brought to the small campus in southwest Virginia, Oprah’s Big Give star Cameron Johnson and entrepreneur guru Michael Simmons.

Having more emphasis on starting businesses while in college or soon after is very important to our overall regional economic growth. Thank you Chris for being a leader in your age group.

In today’s Roanoke Times, Jenny Boone did a fantastic job telling the story of one job seeker, Alex Ballin, and is proactive approach of doing something different and unique to make himself stand out among everyone else by standing on a street corner in Roanoke with a sign asking people to hire him.

This type of creativity is exactly what is needed, especially since he is a recent graduate with a social science degree who quite frankly does not have billable skill sets that are in demand in the local regional economy. Although, he does have good skill sets as seen in the story, and as a result, he is doing exactly what he must do to get noticed. Ultimately, this act will propel him in a position and his career will eventually take off.

Congratualtions Alex!

If you are interested in a career in human resources for a large firm in the Roanoke Valley, then click this job opening and read the description.

The Roanoke Times website has a fantastic resource you can use to identify companies according to a specfic industry. It appears this is a direct link into their internal database. Thank you Roanoke Times for creating this resource and sharing it to our job seekers in the region.

Buffalo’s Old Home Week is a more elaborate version of Roanoke’s Holiday Career and Lifestyle Fair held in late December in each of the last two years. The purpose of both events are to re-connect native sons and daughters to the region by identifying job opportunities and new lifestyle amenities.

Buffalo had a fantastic spokesperson for their event in the above video - the late Tim Russert. Roanoke needs a similar spokesperson for its modest event. Who shall that celebrity be? NBC news and former New York Giant and Roanoke native Tiki Barber? Oprah Big Give contestant Cameron Johnson? Who is the most famous Roanoker who can be the posterchild of our campaign to attract and retain young adults?

Moseley Real Estate Schools, Inc. has an immediate need for an energetic and highly organized individual to join our rapidly expanding corporate office in Roanoke, Virginia. We provide state-mandated real estate education and career services to current and prospective real estate professionals. Core responsibilities for this entry level position include providing exceptional service to customers in a professional manner; developing customer service policies and procedures to ensure consistent customer satisfaction; troubleshooting and resolving non-routine customer issues; and serving as a liaison between customers and various internal departments related to product development, production and shipping issues. Promotional opportunities exist for the ideal candidate who has: a bachelor’s degree or who is actively pursuing a bachelor’s degree; outstanding written and oral communication skills; and excellent computer skills. Interested applicants should email a resume and a cover letter to Tom Marvin, Director of Programs at tom@moseley.org

While reading one of our favorite blogs, it talked about the importance of taking an online community offline. If you have read our blog in the past, you know we have talked about online Roanoke and offline Roanoke and the two needing to connect. The positive attributes of both communities must be incorporated in each community (i.e. open communication for offline and face-to-face relationships for online). It is our belief that those groups who are able to create a sound offline identity and online identity will create rapid word-of-mouth, buzz or viral presence, which yields greater effectiveness without spending additional time.

Therefore, I would be curious to know if this blog community would like to schedule an offline meetup sometime soon to further discuss social and professional opportunities for young professionals in the Roanoke and New River Valleys of Virginia. If yes, then please comment or email us at stuartmease@gmail.com.

Kudos to the Mix One Six  located on Campbell Avenue in downtown Roanoke for providing a social opportunity for college students home for the summer or in Roanoke for summer internships. These types of outlets are vitally important to our region attracting and retaining young adults.

They recently had an evening dedicated solely for college students, which was part of a segment featured on WDBJ7 that negatively examined their business. We must remember they are providing a much wanted social outlet for the college-aged crowd. College nights occur each Thursday evening at the Mix One Six.

The guru of attracting and retaining young adults in regions, Richard Florida, presents his three Ts to economic development - technology, talent and tolerance.

Yesterday, we mentioned Mailtrust(based in Blacksburg) parent company Rackspace filing for an IPO today indicating our region’s technology focus couple with a great local technology council.

Throughout the history of this blog we have mentioned many expamples of the need to help job seekers, promote hidden jobs, connect you to sites and events with examples such as the Roanoke Connect database.

Tolerance is one that is more difficult to quantify, but is equally important. The region is not perfect, but is making strides and one is with an upcoming Roanoke Valley SHRM program on diversity in November bringing more attention to the tolerance issues as part of the the 3 Ts.  

We must challenge ourselves in examining what programs, events and organizations are actively being done in the framework Dr. Florida presents. A menu of these would be a good start. If you have one, please share…

Mailtrust (a Blacksburg-based division of Rackspace) will be involved in an IPO on Friday. The ticker symbol will be RAX and will be on the NYSE. According to one media outlet, shares will be introduced between $12-$16 a share with the goal of raising $400 million.  This is significant for the region because Mailtrust (formerly Webmail.us) was pruchased by Rackspace within the last year. This demonstrates the quality of technology, people and firms that are being generated from the region