Netflix Competitors Learn the Power of Teamwork

A contest set up by Netflix, which offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could significantly improve its movie recommendation system, ended on Sunday with two teams in a virtual dead heat, and no winner to be declared until September.

But the contest, which began in October 2006, has already produced an impressive legacy. It has shaped careers, spawned at least one start-up company and inspired research papers. It has also changed conventional wisdom about the best way to build the automated systems that increasingly help people make online choices about movies, books, clothing, restaurants, news and other goods and services.

When Career Switching . . .

Career changers hoping for admission to a competitive alternative teacher-training program should worry less about academic and job accomplishments and more about the personal traits that helped them succeed. Problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence, a belief in the power to create change: these are a few of the elements that generate success in underprivileged classrooms.

Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, which helps career changers get teaching positions across the country and runs the New York City Teaching Fellows program, says he is looking for candidates who are “in it for the right reasons” and not, say, waiting for the current economic wave to pass.

He suggests career changers visit a classroom, observe good teaching and ask, “Is this something I really see myself doing?”

School helps curb student dropout rate

In the statewide fight to lower school dropout rates, success stories are relatively rare, but we’ve got one in St. Clair County.

In 2002-03, the St. Clair County Regional Educational Service Agency opened its Academic Transitional Academy in the former Ruth Bacon Elementary School in Port Huron Township. Today, seven years later, the hard numbers show it is making a real difference in keeping kids in school.

Each year, the academy serves 200 ninth- and 10th-grade students throughout St. Clair County who struggled in middle school. More students fail the ninth grade than any other grade in high school.

The Academic Transitional Academy’s curriculum is specifically designed to address the needs of its students — in ways far more difficult to implement in a traditional school setting.

Teachers do not use textbooks. Instead, they use real-world issues to help students focus on the Michigan Merit Curriculum grade-level expectations in mathematics, science and English.

Teachers develop project ideas relevant to students. They also work cooperatively on larger-scale projects that cut across the different classes. After two years in the academy, these students move back to their home high schools for the 11th and 12th grades.

The results speak for themselves:

The dropout rate for academy students who would have been seniors in 2007-08 was nearly half that of a control group of similar students who did not attend the academy. In that year, the control group’s dropout rate was 21.9%, vs. 11.3% from those who attended the academy.

The average grade points of high school students rose between 37% and 62% from eighth to 12th grade, significantly higher than the grade point change of comparable students who did not attend the academy.

Demonstrate Your Problem-Solving Skills in the Interview

Problem Solving Skills are necessary in every aspect of our life…especially in successfully completing job interviews.

Succeeding at an interview is often more of an art than a science. While your experience, education, and other qualifications play a significant role in the hiring decision, the hire is still very much based on the personal opinion of the interviewer. He or she will make a decision about whether to hire you based not only on your qualifications, but also on whether your personality will fit in at their company. Often the interviewer’s instinct decides who will get the job offer.

I don’t suggest you try to obtain a personality transplant to succeed in an interview. If you really won’t fit in at a particular company, you don’t want to work there. But what you can do is be personable and professional. Smile, look the interviewer in the eye, and engage in a two-way conversation. Listen carefully, respond thoughtfully, and don’t digress into personal details.

Interviewers need to be convinced that you will be able to fix their problems and help their company achieve its goals. One of the best ways to answer interview questions is to use your career success stories. Career success stories are tales of the defining moments in your career when you overcame significant challenges to succeed. These stories create a memorable impression and give the listener anecdotes about you that identify your ability to handle the tasks at hand, solve complex problems and provide a solution.