Tag: business brokerages

The principal value of a business broker is to act as a buffer between the buyer and the seller

This ideal résumé template to use if you’re looking for a job in tech

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Technology companies are booming despite the pandemic, and technology professionals have never been in higher demand. So now’s the time for software engineers to update their résumés to take advantage of this extraordinary hiring environment. At Leet Resumes , we’ve assessed the résumés of tech professionals from thousands of companies. Here are a few quick tips for making a more effective résumé for the New Year. Purpose : Remember that the purpose of your résumé is to generate interview requests. It’s not your bio, your academic CV, an exhaustive list of everything you’ve done, or even a good representation of the complete you. The purpose of a résumé is to get interviews, and everything that isn’t essential to that goal should be jettisoned. Scannable: Your résumé needs to be scannable. When it comes to your professional summary—the top ⅓ of the page of your résumé—it needs to be easy for the reader to digest in only a few seconds. As a first pass, they’re scanning it as quickly as possible to determine whether or not you belong in the “read more carefully” pile. That means they’re skimming through your résumé at top speed to decide whether to send you along to the next stage, whether that’s a quick Zoom screen or a full interview with the engineering manager. Paragraphs won’t cut it. When résumé readers lose their train of thought in your paragraph or are distracted by complex sentences, they move on. It’s essential that you keep their attention with short words and phrases that attract their interest. Headline: You’ll need a professional headline that sums up your role and level for easy comprehension. This concise statement encapsulates your professional standing in a few words. Great professional headlines include: Passionate Open Source Engineer Top-performing BI Analyst Innovative Machine Learning Expert Successful Front-end Engineer Dedicated DevOps Professional For the HR professional or engineering manager reviewing résumés, this clear professional headline grabs attention and serves as a ready shorthand summation of your career to date. After your professional headline, you’ll share four job titles you’d actually accept for your next role. Read More …

Spotify just unveiled “lossless” CD-quality music. Your move, Apple

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Given Apple’s long history in high-quality music technology, it’s strange to see the company get left behind in the sound quality of streaming music. On Monday, Spotify followed Amazon, Tidal, and Deezer in announcing a new, higher-fidelity streaming music service level, which it says will become available later this year. The new service, called Spotify HiFi , promises to stream content to smartphones and connected speakers in CD quality, with a wider dynamic frequency range (higher highs, lower lows) as well as more definition, sound placement, and clarity. The format is “lossless,” meaning that the music is not compressed but sounds exactly the way it does after mixing and mastering. Spotify says it’s now working with several manufacturers to design HiFi-ready speakers. There’s reason to believe that Apple will add lossless sound quality to Apple Music sooner or later. The company announced a whole line of 5G iPhones last fall ; 5G wireless service supports larger streams with higher reliability, which would come in handy for lossless audio. As 5G service becomes more widespread, a lossless version of Apple Music might be a natural upgrade. Apple continues to focus on audio hardware of high quality and high price. The company’s HomePod smart speakers are one example–the original HomePod costs $299, while even the new $99 HomePod Mini emphasizes sound quality more than rival entry-level smart speakers that cost less. Apple recently released a new pair of high-quality over-ear headphones called AirPods Max , which sell for $549. Spotify said both listeners and artists have said that higher music quality is a highly desired feature. “Adding a HiFi tier of streaming service to their platform . . . will enable more consumers, and a younger generation of listeners, to experience their music with more detail, dynamics, and realism,” says Jeff Poggi, Co-CEO of McIntosh Group, which makes audiophile-grade components and speakers. Spotify enlisted Billie Eilish to explain (in the video below) why it’s important to artists. “We want our music to be heard the way it was recorded,” she said. Spotify said earlier this month that its paid subscriber count had increased 24% to 155 million from the same time last year. Read More …

With a wearable reportedly in the works, Facebook continues a quiet push into health

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Every big tech company these days seems to have a health tracker, and now that includes Facebook. Last week, The Information reported that the social networking company is working on a wearable health tracker it’s planning to launch next year. At first glance, it’s unclear why Facebook would invest in a piece of hardware that seems unrelated to its core business. But the company has actually been creeping into the health category for years through a series of projects that haven’t garnered a ton of attention. There are a few reasons why Facebook might want to get into the wearable business. Health aside, Facebook may be keen to put its apps even closer to consumers, and The Information article indicates the watch will have an emphasis on messaging. A tracker could help boost engagement among Facebook’s billions of users by sending them notifications for messages or other health reminders. It could also jump-start Facebook’s purported ambitions to impact public health. But Facebook’s data-mining practices make a foray into healthcare controversial Read More …

These 2 Black founders aim to offer a fairer alternative to payday loans

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Travis Holoway, the CEO and cofounder of SoLo Funds, says his startup isn’t just a quick way to take out a small, short-term loan. It’s the start of something bigger. The startup, which raised $10 million in a Series A funding round last week, offers an app in which users can loan money to one another. Borrowers usually grant a small “tip” to their lenders when paying the money back, and in turn build up a “SoLo Score” that helps them take out larger loans in the future. While Holoway says SoLo’s immediate purpose is to provide quick access to emergency capital, he adds that the startup’s true goal is to create a virtuous cycle, in which borrowers work their way up the financial ladder and become lenders on the platform. Along the way, he hopes to introduce those users to new banking and investment opportunities that they otherwise might have missed. “If we can have individuals come here, take loans when they need them, pay them back on time, get access to more traditional financial tools and resources, and ultimately come back as a lender and pay that forward, that is the best life cycle of a user on our platform,” he says. But while the startup may deliver on its promises of upward financial mobility, the reality is nuanced. Apps such as SoLo Funds aren’t as predatory as high-priced payday loans, but they carry some of the same financial traps. And with SoLo in particular, its use of use of social data to score users’ trustworthiness raises concerns about bias. [Photo: courtesy of SoLo Funds] How SoLo Funds works Compared to other small-dollar loan apps such as Earnin and Dave , SoLo Funds is unique in that it isn’t tied to employee paydays and doesn’t loan any money itself. Read More …

Silicon Valley companies took $380 million in COVID-19 bailout money

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Silicon Valley tech companies took many millions in government bailout money this year via a program intended to allow employers to retain their employees during the pandemic. According to newly released Small Business Administration data, 885 Silicon Valley tech companies borrowed a total of $381.3 million via the Paycheck Protection Program . That figure excludes telecommunications companies and does not account for businesses based in San Francisco. Read More …