Friday, May 4, 2012

Business Thinking!!!

Small Business Owners versus Entrepreneurs

 

MANILA, Philippines — Given a primary role in driving economic growth, entrepreneurs often share poster child status for success with showbiz celebrities and powerful politicians. These economic icons, however, are not singularly emblematic of a professional specie that owns well over 90 percent of the world’s businesses. On the other hand, saying that an entrepreneur is one who works for himself is like saying all birds are the same. By using a handle we can get a grip on, we lose the variety in flavor.

Akin to the Genome Project, numerous researches have tried to splice the profile of the highly successful entrepreneur by looking at various internal and external factors in order to arrive at a workable framework that can ideally pave the way for replication. After all, if you can replicate the titans that drive the economy, wouldn’t it be good for the whole society eventually?
Boosting the small business owner to become a highly successful entrepreneur, however, is not as easy as turbo-charging growth in a petri dish with chemical juice. Even as both shark and catfish swim but in profiles are worlds apart, the motivation and mindset between entrepreneurs and small business owners are just as distinct. Luanne Teoh, senior correspondent of BizTechDay, used her vast international work experience of working with thousands of entrepreneurs to isolate these interesting differences in her BizTechDay article, “Difference between an Entrepreneur and a Small Business Owner.”


Distinctions In Goals And Viewpoints


In terms of primary motivation, an entrepreneur is one who wants to make a change and achieve impact by creating a distinct value. To achieve this, the entrepreneur is willing to pay for top and right talent. The entrepreneur, in addition, takes a collaborative approach of using employees, customers and other investors’ experience and resources in order to define that value in the market place. Although the entrepreneur is egged on by the goal of financial freedom, he or she is not afraid of failure. Being full of ideas and excited by change, the entrepreneur merely moves on with a new innovation, failure or not, and ends up getting involved in different businesses.
A small business owner, on the other hand, primarily gets into business to make a living, either by choice or not. As such, the foremost intent is to make a regular income by being the day-to-day manager through self-employment. Assets are measured in terms of inventory, properties and other hard assets with its known economic value. The key business strategies are to create sales and to keep costs low with employee compensation at market rate or below in order to generate long-term stability. This stability ensures that the small business owner will remain the principal company owner and keep the business for the long haul through essentially repetitive tasks.
The differences do not make small business owners inferior. After all, ninety-two percent of the economy is made up of small businesses. At different levels and scale, both types of businessmen create goods and value, generate jobs and provide the lifeblood that keeps governments working. The entrepreneur opens the way to new innovations and to new worlds, while the small business owner works hard to sustain whatever he or she built.

Evangeline, a.k.a. Girlie, Navarro is a serial entrepreneur and investor, a finance teacher, and a student at heart on how money and resources affect people. She can be contacted at evangeline.navarro@gmail.com.

source: http://mb.com.ph/articles/358415/small-business-owners-versus-entrepreneurs

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My Opinion:

We can equate entrepreneurs as big business or companies, while merchant or traders as the small business. The difference between the two of them are ocean apart. While an entrepreneur works for big business that create value in the market, the small businessman is in the market to earn a living. The entrepreneur in order to achieve a sales and succeed in its chosen field will invest in human resources, customer services, advertisements, research, new technologies and all other innovative tools. While a small businessman will try to increase sales and profits by cutting overhead cost and other business related expenses. But in the world of business, each one needs each other to survived. Its just the way of doing it that they differ.  

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Employmentally Challenge!!!

Why many fresh college grads don't get hired, according to survey of managers

  
Four of ten fresh graduates and young jobseekers are not hired because they lack three key qualities—critical thinking, initiative, and effective communication skills—according to the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) at a job fair in Makati on Friday.
 
“Each industry would have some sort of minimum standard. Not having met that is proof that the students don’t meet that standard.  The study showed that 40 percent of fresh graduates do not immediately get hired because of the deficiencies in these soft competencies,” PMAP director for academe-industry linkages Gigi Alcasid shared with GMA News Online in an exclusive interview.

The study she cites was by PMAP done two years ago and the findings have since been shared with universities and colleges and uploaded to YouTube.
 
Alcasid said firms across various industries consider critical thinking, initiative and effective communication skills as “soft competencies” jobseekers must possess to get hired.
 
“Kasi ’yung 40 percent, kasama na rin doon ‘yung hindi fresh graduates, nasa probationary status at nag-fail,” Alcasid said.
 
She described critical thinking as the ability to solve actual workplace problems usually in multi-tasking situations and priority challenges. She added that initiative is being able to not wait to be told what to do, while effective communication as competence in the language of business.

Read more: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/250239/economy/business/why-many-fresh-college-grads-don-t-get-hired-according-to-survey-of-managers

SWS: Unemployment rises to 24%, 9.7M Pinoys jobless


Unemployment among adult Filipinos has increased to 24 percent, with some 9.7 million Filipinos without jobs as of December 2011, according to pollster Social Weather Stations, citing its non-commissioned survey.
“The December 2011 Social Weather Survey was conducted from December 3-7, 2011 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults,” SWS said in the survey results published on its website.
The December survey is a slight deterioration from the unemployment rate of 22.9 percent in June 2011. On the basis of 9.7 million as the number of unemployed, the total labor force would be 40.42 million Filipinos when the survey was administered last December. 33.3% did not renew their contract
Based on an SWS chart, 33.3 percent of the 9.7 million unemployed Filipinos either did not renew their contract or were laid off.
The chart also showed that 37.5 percent of the unemployed resigned or voluntarily left their jobs, 20.9 percent never worked, and 8.3 percent lost their jobs because their places of employment closed down.
A breakdown of the job history of the SWS unemployment survey respondents breaks down how many of the 9.7 million unemployed were laid off, contract not renewed, voluntarily left and never worked before. Below-20% unemployment rate
The SWS said unemployment fell below 20 percent only thrice between May 2005 and December 2011. Unemployment hit a record high of 34.2 percent in February 2009, it added.
Unemployment was relatively high among women and among the younger members of the labor force, following the pattern in previous surveys, according to the SWS.
Among men, the ratio dipped to 15.2 percent from 17 percent previously, while it increased to 35.6 percent from 25.6 percent among women.
Unemployment was highest in the 18-24 age group — at 49.1 percent. Among those aged 25-34 years, unemployment was at 29.9 percent.
The jobless rate was at its lowest among the 35-44 and 44-and-up age brackets at 18.7 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively.

Read more: http://ph.news.yahoo.com/sws-unemployment-rises-24-9-7m-pinoys-jobless-071158377.html


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My opinion:


Every time I ride my car or even take a jeep to go from or to school, I see many people wandering in the streets selling whatever kinds of goods because no company would want to hire them. Then I wonder why they can’t get a job, what would a company want from you in order to get a job. 

As I’ve been reading and listening to the news, I found out that the Philippine’s problem of unemployment is getting worse, the unemployment rises from time to time. More and more people are experiencing poverty. There are also times that we are happy because prices have fallen but did we ever think of the probability that because of this there will be people get laid off by their company.

I wonder if all people who don’t have a job are under the category of unemployed. So As I take a deeper understanding to it, I found out that if you don’t have a job and if you haven’t done anything or you didn’t even try to find a job you are categorized as not in the labor force. But if you have exerted an effort to find a job and yet you didn’t have a job you are categorized as unemployed.

So I’ve been thinking of why do people don’t have a job?  Hmm. . . . Well I have given a thought that maybe it’s because of the rapid corruption of the people of the government. If the country has this kind of reputation of being a corrupt and its laws are not that well enacted, not many businessman would want to open a business. We all know that business needs people for its operations. So if there are fewer businesses, unemployment will rise.

Last summer I tried to apply for a job. As I apply for there are so many questions regarding your educational background, your experience with this job and etc. There are many requirements and standards that the company wants to see in you in order for you to be accepted. Due to that many Filipinos cannot afford to go to well known school or even to finish a four year degree because of poverty, so many of them can’t meet these requirements of the companies thus risen the unemployment rate.

Finding a job is that easy, there are times that you can found vacancy but the job does not match with what you have finish in college. Thinking that this job will not suite to your taste and deciding to not apply for it causing unemployment.

I also notice that there are many Filipinos that are picky with their jobs for an instance, he/she has a job but he/she is satisfied with the salary, with the benefits he/ she gets with that company so he/she decided to quit. As she quits her job, he/she is having a hard time to find another resulting to unemployment.

The more probable cause of unemployment in the Philippines is the unavailability of jobs provided. With a growing population of about 9 million, millions needed jobs and only few can sure provide one. The lack of investors and businesses that could provide good jobs for the Filipino people is one key factor in the growing unemployment in the Philippines.