What Do Women Want? Ask 'Em
IN TODAY'S RED-HOT LABOR MARKET, companies are looking for any edge
they can get to recruit students. For businesses whose workforces are traditionally
male, such as investment banking or information technology, attracting talented
women can be especially difficult.
So, knowing what women value can be crucial. A new survey of graduate and
undergraduate students by San Francisco-based WetFeet.com, a company that provides
corporate information to job hunters, has some answers. In general, women are a lot
more conservative than men in choosing a workplace, says co-founder and chief
operating officer Steve Pollock. For instance, only 49% of men insist on working for
a profitable company, while 79% of women do, meaning they might easily bypass
startup companies that could later hit it big. Women also don't like offices full of
lone-wolf types: 85% prefer a team-oriented corporate culture, vs. 71% of men.
Because women worry more about meshing family and work, 65% want reasonable
hours, while only 53% of the male students care about that. It also seems that women
prefer midsize companies, with 100 to 500 employees.
So recruiters, now you know what women want. Can you deliver?
By Nadav Enbar
Eco Trends
A Yurt of One's Own
HERE'S ONE FOR THE SENDING COALS-TO-NEWCASTLE FILE. A golf course
in Tianjin, China, near Mongolia, is putting up yurts, those round huts traditionally
found on the Mongolian steppe. They will house facilities for an upcoming Asian
Professional Golfers Assn. tournament. A touch of local color? Nope. Those yurts are
made by Nesting Bird Yurt, a Seattle company that snared the job after the Chinese put
it out for bid over the Internet.
Yurts are hot. They're lightweight, as easy to set up as a tent, yet more durable. U.S.
yurts can be found in eco-tourism resorts in Central American rain forests and in Girl
Scout camps. Five-year-old Nesting Bird was co-founded by Jennifer Pell, a former
helicopter pilot. She thinks sales of U.S. yurts, which average $10,000 for a
470-square-footer, will grow 50% this year, to $3 million. Standard yurts even have
skylights and mahogany-framed windows. They're big with survivalists, who see
disaster in 2000. If it hits, says Pell, they'll head for the hills, to carry on in a clean,
well-lighted yurt.
By Carol Matlack
Eco Trends
PHOTO: Nesting Bird's Yurt
Mad Ave
Know Ye Sinners by Their Brands
SO WHEN DID YOU STOP CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE? When you switched
from Pepsi to Coke? If that seems like an odd link, it isn't to Mark DiMassimo. His
DiMassimo Brand Advertising, a New York agency, surveyed 1,500 people about their
brand loyalty--and their marital faithfulness --on the hunch that there is a link between
them. He hopes the results will, in some yet-to-be-determined way, yield more
effective advertising.
DiMassimo doesn't claim the scientific rigor of, say, Masters & Johnson. But it's
interesting to see which of the seven products he asked about were most associated
with infidelity. Of respondents who preferred Chase Manhattan, for instance, 70% said
they had broken their vows. And Pepsi drinkers might as well wear a scarlet A, since
59% of them admitted infidelity. (Pepsi and Chase declined to comment.) On the other
hand, those who buy Gap jeans were true-blue, with only 19% straying, while fans of
chocolate maker Hershey were even more loyal: Only 12% cheated.
Colgate-Palmolive, American Airlines, and Skippy peanut butter took the middle
ground. None of the companies is a DiMassimo client.
By Dennis Blank
Footnotes
Managers who fear for their jobs because of poor corporate results: in 1997, 7%; in
1998, 24%
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