Level 3 - Managing in Turbulent Times

Broomfield, Colorado based Level 3 Communications is profiled in today's Wall Street Journal. The article talks about how the company managed to survive not one but two financial storms. As the playing field in telecommunications and credit market shifted and became too uneven for many of the telecom players, Level 3 managed to fund its operations and save jobs.
How did they do it? The management convinced the original investors to do more and bought back some of their old debts for cents on the dollar.

"These guys pull rabbits out of the hat," says Jefferies & Co. Inc. credit analyst Romeo Reyes. "They've been shrewd about taking advantage of what the market offers."

The company did not report positive earnings since 1999 and saw its market capitalization shrink to $1.6 billion, almost half of its value in from the highs of June 2008. What is the prognosis?

At this point in the crisis, however, survival is victory. And that should offer some inspiration for managers rebuffed by the banks: If Level 3 can stay in the game, there just may be hope yet.

Saving jobs in this economy is indeed truly inspirational act.

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When 50% in Boulder say they are looking for new job

In the recently conducted poll of Boulder professionals, more than 50% were reported to be searching for new jobs and 25% reported unemployed. For one thing it indicates that even those with a job are not sitting safely and believe a change is needed. This makes the job search more difficult for those who are unemployed. Not only do they have to compete among themselves but also with those who are trying to switch jobs. Macroeconomics says that those who are already employed stand a better chance of getting jobs because of many reasons including the networking opportunities. This competition is not different from any other time but what makes it difficult is the high numbers of both groups.
What is your take?

Boulder Metro Employment Status Poll Results

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The Next Milestone 400 Members

The Boulder Net LinkedIn group has now reached 400 members milestone. Join the group to collaborate with professionals who are local to you. If you are thinking of relocating to Boulder, network now with local professionals to ease your move.

Google Trends For Searches on Colorado

If you should do a Google search for either "Boulder Network" or "Boulder Networking", the links related to the Boulder Professionals Network group will show up in the first two pages of the search results. But does that really matter? How often do people search for these terms?
To do a comparitive analysis I used Google Trends to see the relative search volume of "Boulder Network" and compare it to other relevant searches.  To get some perspective I use "Denver Broncos" as the reference (as I expect this search to be more prevalent and more popular).  Here is the Google trend:

As you can see from the results, "Colorado Jobs" is the highest ranked search term after the most popular "Denver Broncos", with "Boulder Jobs" ranked distant third with one sixteenth of the search volume of "Denver Broncos".  Search volume for "Colorado Network" registered same volume as "Boulder Jobs".

I can safely state that search for Jobs is ranked higher than just "networking" or "social networking" specific to Colorado or Boulder. So coming up first in the Google search results mean very little if the search volume is negligible.  If I want to have a bigger impact with the pages, they should come up top for search phrase, "Colorado Jobs".

Interestingly, the search volume for "colorado relocating" is negligible, however, "Colorado Real estate" comes up comparable to "Colorado Jobs" and "Denver Broncos". If I were to use "Paris Hilton" as reference, the previously popular "Denver Broncos" is now just 1/13th of  Paris.