The Seattle Times Company representing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
NWjobs | NWautos | NWhomes | NWapartments | NWsource | Classifieds | seattlepi.com | seattletimes.com
The Seattle Times Company representing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
NWjobs | NWautos | NWhomes | NWapartments | NWsource | Classifieds | seattlepi.com | seattletimes.com
For more than 20 years, the trailblazing Professional Automotive Training Center has offered programs developed together with dealers and manufacturers. The center will soon begin an expansion project to keep up with growing enrollment demand.
Now: Teen, Tween and Parenting Coach Then: Bar/Bat Mitzvah Tutor Current Position: I am the founder of TheGiftedTeenCoach.com. I help families with gifted teens (often diagnosed with ADD/ADHD) release anxiety, frustration and confusion so they can enjoy better communication,...
Game design has helped rekindle interest in computer science and become a hot new major. Now, game companies recruit armies from an array of disciplines to work in studios all over the world.
Now: Company founder and CEO Then: Hop Picker Current position: Founder and CEO of Caron Architecture, a firm in Seattle and San Louis Obispo, Calif. First job: While attending high school, I worked as a hop picker on a...
Now: Business owner Then: Cashier at Nordstrom Current position: As owner of Champion Assistants in Kirkland, I help business owners implement sales and marketing strategies. We manage online shopping carts, Web design, and localization for internationally minded businesses. First...
Now: Job recruiter Then: Pharmacy helper Current position: Recruiter and retention specialist with Peterson Sullivan, a certified public accounting firm in downtown Seattle. First job: My first job was working in a pharmacy in New Orleans, my hometown. I...
Now: Director of global relocation, Microsoft Then: Mail bagger Current position: I'm responsible for the design and implementation of Microsoft's global program strategy, so I work in the U.S. and other countries in which we do business to keep...
Now: Owner, Go Go Green Garden Then: Bakery worker Current position: I plant edible gardens for people in their back or front yard, and teach them to grow and cook their own food using organic and heirloom seeds. First...
Now: Co-owner, personal training studio Then: Clerk for dad's pharmacy Current position: Co-owner of Elite Fitness Training in downtown Bellevue, specializing in helping customers lose weight and tone up through one-on-one, circuit-style training. First job: At the beginning of...
The mousy pencil-pusher image is no more. Accountants speak the language of business, and they are much in demand. Students are flocking to enroll in programs.
Now: company president Then: budwood harvester Current position: President and co-founder, Sound Financial Partners, which creates sustainable investment strategies for women in transition due to divorce or the death of their husband or partner. First job: At 13, I...
Now: Company president Then: Staff writer Current position: Founder and president of Cypress Consulting, a business consulting, technology and creative-services firm. First job: A staff writer at Downtown Source, a free weekly tabloid publication featuring happenings, food, music and...
Now: company co-founder Then: assistant awning installer Current position: Principal and co-founder, 2130 Partners, an executive leadership development and education firm First job: helped the lead installers with building new awnings, assembling frames, installing awnings, taking them down, washing...
Now: company president Then: sales clerk Current position: President of www.betsytalbot.com, a coaching and training firm for women who own businesses. I work with "solo-preneurs." First job: At 16 I landed my first job as a sales clerk in...
As the City of Seattle’s lead light rail engineer, Katherine Claeys has seen the project through three years of environmental impact planning and four years of construction.
With energy prices soaring and oil-company ranks graying, petroleum-engineering graduates have become a hot commodity. As a result, students...
Bryan LaComa, a designer at the sustainable landscaping company In Harmony, creates dozens of residential landscape plans each year.
Southwest Washington Medical Center is growing its own qualified nurses. Instead of struggling to find qualified applicants to fill nursing...
"I never thought my silly Internet addictions would actually be useful," says freelance writer and author Ariel Meadow Stallings. As a marketing manager on the software giant's staffing team, the Seattleite spends much of her time publishing "Microspotting" , a blog profiling some of Microsoft's most notable employees
The line of towering wind turbines stands motionless on the ridgeline above Interstate 70 in central Kansas, Y-shaped silhouettes amid the swirling snow. Despite the weather, dozens of technicians are working to get the 10-mile-long Smoky Hills Wind Farm ready to produce electricity.
Between 1994 and 2005, Laura Michalek owned and operated four vintage furniture shops in Seattle. A self-professed "junker," she'd put 60,000 miles on her car every year just trolling for antique treasure at estate sales and auctions. Somewhere along the way, she became sold on the idea of grabbing a microphone and working as a full-time auctioneer herself.
When 1,800 workers lost their jobs after a Maytag appliance factory and headquarters closed last year in the small town of Newton, Iowa, a wind-turbine-blade company saw opportunity – an available, skilled work force in the middle of one of America's hardiest wind-energy-production regions.
If you commute to work, chances are you know Adam Gehrke. During the past decade, his morning and afternoon traffic reports have dominated the airwaves on multiple radio stations around the Puget Sound.
Roughly a quarter of the nation's 637,000 aerospace workers could be eligible for retirement this year, raising fears that America could face a serious skills shortage in the factories that churn out commercial and military aircraft.
For chocoholic Jean Thompson, life is sweet. As co-owner and CEO of Seattle Chocolates, the 15-year-old company she and her husband first invested in eight years ago and became sole owners of in 2005, she has the delectable task of developing, marketing and packaging wholesale lines of truffles and premium chocolates.
Brian Herr is the ultimate temp. He's on the job before dawn, knows his way around complex machinery, large dogs and big animals, and works weekends and holidays. He'll even hire out for weddings but warns clients to "book the church, book the hall and book me ... not necessarily in that order."
Volcanoes, shipwrecks, seismic faults – for Joanna O'Neill, it's all in a day's work. As a marine geologist for Fugro Seafloor Surveys in downtown Seattle, she spends part of the year on land and part of the year at sea, creating topographic maps of the ocean floor.
Certified Financial Planner Geleg Kyarsip has spent the past two decades helping people from all walks of life work toward their financial and retirement goals. In March of 2000, he founded Kyarsip Financial Advisors in downtown Seattle, a financial planning firm that charges clients by the hour rather than getting paid through commissions.
Life is not so jolly for the 21st-century Santa Claus. He keeps his white gloved hands where parents can see them and buys liability insurance, just in case. He doesn't ask for names or where children live – that might arouse suspicion. He's given up the pipe, and the jelly belly might be next.
When Patrick Angus studied art history at Western Washington University, he never imagined he'd wind up flexing his creative muscle in upscale retail. Today, as creative director of Mario's in downtown Seattle, he wears many hats. He manages the visual display of merchandise. He orchestrates marketing campaigns. He works with architects on remodeling plans. And he dreams up and helps his staff construct the whimsical window displays in the company's Seattle and Portland stores.
Jana Scopis fell in love with event planning while she was in college. As a hotel management major at Central Washington University, she scooped up an internship in the catering department of a historic hotel in Texas, where she helped plan swanky weddings and plush parties. She spent the next decade working her way up the hotel-catering food chain, and in March of 2007, she became the director of catering and convention services at the W Seattle>, a position that involves selling, schmoozing, keeping dozens of balls in the air and planning some of Seattle's most lavish parties.
Like many English majors, Laura Vanderpool found gainful employment working in corporate communications. During her six-year tenure in the marketing division of a Big Five accounting firm, the University of Washington alum cut her teeth writing "dry proposals and reports." When a corporate restructuring prompted her to jump ship in 2000, she landed in public relations, first at a doomed dot-com, then at socially progressive Parsons Public Relations in Seattle. In 2004 she became senior account manager of the nine-person, three-canine PR team, a job that entails acting as the agency's lead writer and helping environmentally conscious clients spread the word about their products and services.
Roberta Browne grew up on what she refers to as "a steady diet of Looney Tunes cartoons and 'The Wonderful World of Disney.'" All her spare time in high school was spent drawing cartoon characters, and all her notebooks were covered with doodles. After getting a commercial illustration degree at Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, she tried her hand at freelance illustration for two years – and wound up earning the bulk of her income by waitressing and bartending. Feeling off her game, she returned to school for animation and, upon graduating, landed her first job as an animator. A decade later, in May of 2007, Browne joined Bungie Studios in Kirkland, where she works as a lead animator, a job that involves everything from 3-D software to brainstorming sessions to pratfalls.
Eric Quint stumbled into his career as a childproofer six years ago when a cousin showed him all the precautions he'd installed to keep his baby safe. Quint was impressed with the work – until his cousin mentioned how much it cost. "I could do the job way better and for less money," Quint said he thought at the time. "I knew I had the ability."
LaVonne "Bonnie" McAdams' first visit with a geriatric specialist lasted an hour. It was time well spent. Her doctor changed several prescriptions...
As demand for assistants soars, dentists hope potential employees will love their job as much as Cynthia Gaetz does.
When it comes to finding enough qualified recruits to fill its rank-and-file, the long arm of local law enforcement is working harder than ever before.
Carpenter ants, leaky roofs and dry rot are Don McFeron's bread and butter. Scouring houses for such hazards and preparing inspection reports...
Kelly Cline's photographs pop up all over the place — in grocery stores, on Web sites, even splashed on the wall of a supermarket in Serbia.
Job hunters who are in the market for a sales position may want to put down their personal electronic devices and start polishing up their...
Caring, compassion and teamwork are a must, but in these units it's also essential that you act swiftly and decisively in situations that can change rapidly.
With the cruise craze in Seattle about to launch its busy summer season, there's a groundswell of employment on the open waters aimed at...
When it comes to dollars and cents, nearly 2 million insurance customers count on Margaret Meister's know-how when they buy an insurance policy or make a claim involving Bellevue-based Symetra Financial.
The strong job market and Iraq war are making things tough for police recruiters in our region. Some departments are raising pay and offering bonuses, but it is still a high-risk job with relatively low pay.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is looking for a few good rocketeers and has broken a long silence to get their attention.
Autumn Martin, looking younger than her 25 years in a purple sweater, slippers and a hairnet, insists that melting chunks of chocolate into her chili is not disgusting. Neither is sprinkling it on a salad, she says, or spicing baked cauliflower with little chocolate nibs. Right.
Stephanie Brown would rather sell pressure cookers than work in one. But during the holidays, things heat up at her Kitchen N Things shop in Ballard as hundreds of beginning bakers and seasoned foodies arrive looking for everything from cooking coaching to the latest gourmet gadgets.
If you were the richest person in the world out to solve some of the hardest problems on the planet, who would you put on your team? The newest members of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation include a World Bank vice president, a genetic engineer from seed giant Monsanto, the founder of an Internet company in Africa, and the former chief executive of a $100 million cattle-breeding company.
Bethany Richards' customers come to her for bars, rings that sing and the occasional bling. And some just want a little help trying to figure out their voice mail.
Contrary to what many might think, customer-service representatives don't get yelled at by frustrated customers all day long. Most calls that representatives in Bellevue's Verizon Wireless call center deal with concern less-emotional issues such as changing price plans, finding out how many minutes are used, asking about new products and how to add or remove functions.
After 26 years of driving school buses, Rebecca Lopes, 52, is a pro. The Laidlaw employee trains new drivers and has even gotten to know the families of the children on her routes.
In an age when almost every label on every product seems to proclaim, "Made in China," it would be an entirely different story if buildings had labels.
You won't find their feat in the record books, but Seattle brothers Sig and Gunars Rauda have "scaled" Mount Everest. They've also scaled Mount Rainier, Swedish Medical Center and the West Seattle Bridge — all under the bright lights of their Lake City architectural model-building shop. Armed with beefy band saws and precise laser-cutters, these two run Rauda Scale Models.
Jennifer Peterson, 31, has closed seven residential real-estate deals since April 2005, the month she got her real-estate license and joined ReMax Metro Associates in Seattle. As new-agent stories go, she's had unusual success in the first year. The average real-estate agent in the U.S. completes about six deals a year, the National Association of Realtors says.
With summer's busy travel season just days away from takeoff, shops and eateries at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are revving their hiring engines with jobs for on-the-go salespeople who want to keep their feet on the ground. This spring "is the most robust hiring season since pre-9/11," says Airport Jobs Program manager Ruth Westerbeck.
Over her 20-year career at The Westin in downtown Seattle, Kim Williams has puffed more pillows than she can count — but her job is anything but cushy. As one of the 14,157 housecleaners serving hotel and motel guests in the greater King/Snohomish counties area, Williams is part of the team that has the often grueling task of tidying rooms for many of the nearly 8.73 million overnight guests King County sees each year. In downtown Seattle alone, this covers 9,797 nightly guest rooms.
For many older Americans, finding a doctor who specializes in caring for their myriad of chronic later-life aches is as much a pain as the ailments themselves. And from the looks of it, there's no cure in sight for the anemic number of physicians who specialize in geriatrics. But that means good career opportunities for such doctors, making it another area of demand in the field of health care, which has been best-known to job seekers in recent years as a place to find work as a nurse.
The first time Paul Rossman worked as a ski instructor, he was a ninth-grader teaching people how get through icy moguls on a hill with a 200-foot vertical drop and four rope tows in Michigan.
n a clear day, Sean O'Connor can sometimes see all of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier from his office. "I love the flying, and up in this area a lot of the flying is really beautiful," says O'Connor, a captain for Horizon Air, the Seattle-based regional carrier that flies throughout the Northwest and California.
The demand is strong and the money may be good, but it doesn't come easy. Construction project management is not a casual 9-to-5 job; it's not the kind of work you leave behind at the end of the day.
Decking halls and trimming trees has been adding more jingle to workers' pockets this holiday season — and those in the Puget Sound area's Christmas-decoration business expect a sleigh-full of similar jobs again next season.
Mike Uppinghouse wasn't born with skin any thicker than most kids. But over the past two seasons working youth soccer matches — sometimes with irate coaches in his face and cutthroat parents behind his back — the 14-year-old Shoreline youth has built up his resistance to heckling, beefed up his self-confidence, and added some ink on his early résumé while earning about 20 bucks a game to boot.
Lara McCluskey was 700 feet up a 1,000-foot climb up a rock wall, leading two students on their first such excursion. The clouds began to build, and then it started hailing. There was a flash of lightning and six seconds later, a clap of thunder.
People's eyes usually glaze over when Microsoft software test engineer Alex MacLeod, 32, talks about what he does for a living. And when he visits his mother, he rarely brings up the topic.
Flecks of paint speckled Melvin Bradford's face as he looked up at the spire towering over historic Immanuel Lutheran Church in the South Lake Union area. Bradford says that painting the spire's cross as he stood in the cage of a boom crane stretched 110 feet above the parking lot was the most difficult part of the seven-week-long project.
During the day, they work such jobs as forklift operator, part-time cashier, drum instructor and running a recording studio. At night and on weekends, they become Rumbeggae, a popular four-piece Mexican band that moved to the Seattle area from Veracruz a few years ago.
When presidents visit other nations — besides being escorted by an entourage of bodyguards and officials— they often are accompanied by interpreters. So in 1978 when then-President Carter was to give a speech in West Berlin, he asked his interpreter to write a line in German that would stir up the crowd like President Kennedy did in 1963 with his historic "Ich bin ein Berliner."
There's only a couple of workers among the several dozen on the 2200 Westlake construction site, near Westlake Avenue and Denny Way, who can get away with not wearing a hard hat. One of them is Willie Steinberg, who operates one of the site's two tower cranes, which perch like giant one-legged birds above building sites all over the area.
Used to be, job titles didn't get much less hip than "insurance agent." Often it was a guy who worked long hours in a small office and had to make "cold calls" or go door-to-door, clutching a briefcase like a secret agent and trying to ignore all the "No thanks" he heard and doors being closed in his face.
Bill Montgomery believes that if the Boy Scouts of America can keep a kid through his first year of Scouting, he'll stick with the program till he's 18. Or maybe a teensy bit longer. Montgomery has been registered with the Scouts since he was 8. This summer, he turns 66.
"It's a pretty laid-back job, but sometimes it hits the fan," says David Leask, whose "office" is the tower perched just south of midspan on the east side of the Ballard Bridge.
It's prom season and Kristi Forcier has more dates booked than Paris Hilton. (In fact, given the nature of her job, one of Forcier's bookings could be Paris Hilton.) Forcier is a limousine chauffeur.
"Lake Union used to be surrounded with boatyards," laments Dave Mullens, a shipwright and instructor for Seattle Central Community College's boat-building program.
By Sandy Dunham Special to The Seattle Times KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES In Rhonda Simmons' ideal world, the unemployment rate would be 0.0 percent, teachers would be valued above movie stars, schools would connect better with the...
When Shakespeare penned "Hamlet" he tried to warn us: "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be." Lucky thing for bill collectors that many folks ignore that advice.
On a beautiful blue-sky day, the job of a road-construction worker can look mighty appealing — fresh air, hands-on labor, burly tools ... and cool orange vests. But those crew members aren't just working the sunny side of the street.
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