In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have graduated high school and college bound for employment (or unemployment as is the usual case these days).

With so many people between the age of 16 and 24 unemployed (the current unemployment rate for this group is around 18%), how could we not have created a “lost” generation?

Watch the video above for the story from BusinessWeek.

I think that people will be able to overcome this high unemployment rate and the generation is certainly not lost. Everyone who falls into this category just needs to make sure that they are getting into the workforce or doing something to make sure that they aren’t dormant while they’re waiting for their career.

There are a few steps that employees can do to make themselves known to employers to hopefully be promoted one day. Those same tactics are now being implemented by the workforce to not be fired when the next line of lay offs comes their way.

So what’s the secret?

According to BusinessWeek here are a few of the tips from the magazine:

1) Focus on the company’s success rather than your own. Most employers don’t have the time (or money) to deal with any potential problems you may have. When you’re at work, you are there to work and not create drag for you or your team.

2) You have to be more than willing to change. I don’t just mean use blue pens instead of black pens, you have to be ready and willing to change direction at the drop of a dime and be ready for it. If the company is looking to mix up the product lines or create a new mission statement for the company, its time to be the “yes man” and learn how to cooperate with the change.

3) Be great at your job and be useful in every aspect of the company. While this is a lot of work, it shows your employer that you have a commitment to the company by going above and beyond your own responsibilities.

4) Social hour should be after work, not during. The last thing a company needs is for its employees to be negative and do a lot of gossiping while on the clock. “No complaining, no blaming!”

5) You have to follow the rules, even the ones that may not have been written down. An example is to be at work early and be at least willing to stay late. When looking at this tip, now would be a good time to quit smoking and start bringing your lunch to work with you to avoid smoke breaks and long lunches.

6) You need to solve problems before they happen. If there’s a way to make the company more efficient (or make it more money), tell your supervisor. Of course, this means there will be some time away from the workplace and in your home where you may have to do some research about competitors and what they’re doing. Doing this ensures that you are seen as an asset to the company

7) Get to know people outside your department, especially those in human resources.

8 ) Social networking is important, if not crucial in today’s workplace. On the BusinessWeek article this tip is titled “Start Tweeting or Start Packing.” I think that this tip is more important to those in the marketing field than those in, say, the accounting department. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are easy to set up and use. Here’s a warning: Don’t “Facebook” too much at work.

The list, like all BusinessWeek (it seems) lists, was compiled by surveys. The magazine even states “our restults may differ from J.D. Power’s satisfaction rankings, which also considers quality, presentation, and price.”

They also award on a strange point system based on industry. For example, Starbucks didn’t make the list simply because none of its peers did well on surveys.

This just goes back to my point about the college rankings I wrote about the other day. I just think the way that BusinessWeek compiles its lists is flawed.

Anyway, topping the list is Amazon.com, followed by (in order) USAA insurance, Jaguar, Lexus, and the Ritz Carlton.

Other companies that were in the list were odd choices to me because I thought that customers would feel differently, or misplace their anger toward a company. T. Rowe Price made the list…

I think that not enough notoriety is given to schools that do well but aren’t exactly the “name” they’re looking for.

Also, the rankings are put out according to how students rank their school based on surveys. I will say that if BusinessWeek came up to me and asked about my school, I would have nothing but good things to say about it, even though I feel differently at times.

Academic quality only represents 30% of the survey also. So perhaps this list should just be left alone while other lists are compiled that actually count things like academics to count for a little bit more than 30%

Together, they have 78 million subscribers.

Verizon is putting up $5.9 billion to buy out Alltel and will be assuming $22.2 billion in debt from the company.

The bad news is that Alltel’s Little Rock headquarters will likely lose most of it’s 3,000 jobs. Verizon says that it will keep a call center there, but the higher paying jobs will likely be lost.

Source

“Clearly it was inspired in part by the One Laptop Per Child organization and its XO computer for children in poor countries.”

The article from BusinessWeek says that the market was “just right” for the netbook wave.

Small, ultraportable laptops were not in an “affordable” price range. Some people need a laptop they can throw in their bag and go. A 15.4″ Dell Inspiron 6400 with an almost 8 lb. weight and 1 GB memory is not the most practical for the “person on the go.”Now the netbook has taken the market by storm and is only getting cheaper and more available by the minute.

So, a question posed by BusinessWeek is, will netbooks decrease demand for laptops? I believe they will. After all, with consumers buying netbooks instead of laptops, demand for laptops will drop. I’ll give myself as an example. When I graduated college, I was going to get myself a new laptop as a gift…Then I realized all I really needed to do was surf the internet and perform word processing tasks, so a netbook was the better idea. The fact I have an “ok” 15.4″ Dell is good enough so I can have a full size laptop at home (I can’t move it a lot because when I put it down it turns off), and toss the netbook in my purse and take it to class. I can take it to class because it’s so inexpensive we can afford one for Christmas.

I’m on the netbook train right now and hopefully soon I’ll be writing my blog entries from one.

Number two on the list, Bill and Melinda Gates, donated just over $2.6 billion.

You can see the whole list at the BusinessWeek site.

Change was needed at Sony. There were both external and internal forces leading the force for change. Externally, the marketplace created a need for change in Sony. Consumers began to see Sony as the past and Apple, as well as other brands, as the future. Internally, Sony had divisions in the company that would not collaborate to create new and innovative products. Also, when Stringer hired Schaaff, there was opposition to the decision. In an attempt to combat the opposition, at a 2006 management meeting, Stringer instructed all the young software engineers to the front of the room and all the older, senior executives to the back.

There are organizational changes going on currently at Sony. Starting with structure, while it is still departmentalized, many of the departments are beginning to work together to accomplish a single goal for the company. When Sony wanted to begin the PlayStation Network, a network where users could download movies to their PlayStation 3 system, Schaaff’s group, the PlayStation, and Sony’s film division all worked together to get the network online on July 15, 2008.

People are also changing at Sony. The attitudes that attributed to the division of its departments are being eliminated. When PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi was critical of sharing power at the company, Stringer moved him into a different role in the company; Kutaragi later resigned altogether. Stringer brought in new executives whom he worked with over the years to oversee divisions such as mobile phones, PlayStation, and the Sony Reader (Sony’s attempt to break into the digital book market). These new executives were more accepting of change, and have been working well with Schaaff. However, one of Schaaff’s friends and also a former Apple executive, Ty Roberts said that “Tim [still] has to do things very gently.” Things must be done gently because if a large change happens very abruptly, some divisions could see sales drop further, or worse.

Over the past three years, a noticeable difference has come over Sony. The changes can be seen in its newest VIAO laptops (they are now sleeker, rounded, and have Apple styled keyboards), in its PlayStation 3 (with the integration of other divisions of the company), and in its mobile phones (breaking down barriers and opening up to Microsoft software). All that is left now is for Sony to accept the change as ongoing, and to manage and plan accordingly.

NOTE: This is about organizational change based on a November 10, 2008 BusinessWeek article titled : Sony Chases Apple’s Magic

The problem is, if banks can’t lend, the economy will stay in poor condition. Hopefully, sometime before 2010 the markets will recover and before then some kind of regulation can be set so that a mortgage crisis like this will never happen again. Or… at least be very unlikely to happen again.