I want to credit Rich Madeira, vice president of sales and advertising at Enginuity Energy in Mechanicsburg, for this segment idea.  Rich recently sent me an email suggesting that Smart Talk delve into the business climate for young professionals in Central PA.  We had done a similar roundtable with college students a few years ago.  At that time, the students had remarked that they fully expected to switch jobs every few years, and perhaps even their careers every decade, as a matter of course.  Constancy was not part of their vocabulary.  When I read Thomas Friedman's July column about the need for today's workers to constantly adapt and reinvent their skills, this week's segment really began to take shape.

Friedman wrote, "... what is most striking when you talk to employers today is how many of them have used the pressure of the recession to become even more productive by deploying more automation technologies, software, outsourcing, robotics — anything they can use to make better products with reduced head count and health care and pension liabilities. That is not going to change. And while many of them are hiring, they are increasingly picky. They are all looking for the same kind of people — people who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can't, but also people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever."

So how do young Americans "invent their jobs" to survive and thrive in the global economy?  You can find some answers at the Murata Business Center in Carlisle, an incubator for small businesses and start-up companies.  Back in 2006, one local couple with a tremendous aptitude for math, web design and sales took the seed of an idea, planted it at Murata and then nurtured it to life.  Today, Bill Craig and his wife Karie Shearer, are the owners of WebPage FX, an Internet search optimization juggernaut with gross sales over $1 million.  They won the 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Harrisburg Regional Chamber and the Capital Region Economic Development Corporation.  Even in a down economy, Craig expects to grow the firm's revenue by 50 percent this year.

So, what's the secret to their success?  "I call it measured marketing.  The dollar they spend with us I can directly relate back to did that dollar earn you a $1.20 in profit or did it earn you 90 cents.  And I can give them a definitive number.  It's the level of tracking we offer.  We can track visitors.  We can track who filled out contact forms, how they got to the website.  What we even do -- it's our own product at WebPageFX--  is track the phone calls.  In a snapshot, we can give the customer their return on investment for what they put into the web," Craig explains.

WebPageFX recruits top talent from regional colleges and the earning potential in his industry is impressive.  "It's possible for someone to come out of school, being 21 or 22, and they can be a senior person in three years," Craig notes.  "The people who are able to do that are working a standard 40-hour week here and then they're putting in another 20-25 hours on their own time keeping up with the industry.  It's completely merit-based.  It's results-based.  And, for the top-level jobs, they can have pretty substantial financial rewards for being out of school just a few years."

Ninety percent of WebPageFX's clientele is U.S.-based but they have their sights fixed on growing the international market, too.  "The quote I always liked was the 10-year-old kid in Africa with a cellphone has more information at his fingertips than the president of the United States had 10 years ago," Craig recounts.  "And you have to take that and apply that.  Where should the U.S. become stronger?  Basically, produce more engineers, produce more scientists to compete with China, Japan, Brazil, India because as we're seeing, it's a world market.  Our positions here at WebPageFX are merit-based.  So is business growth in the world market.  It's going to occur in Southeast Asia or here in the United States."

Also joining us is Matt Crocker, assistant vice president at Crossgates, Inc., a real estate development company.  Matt also co-chairs the Harrisburg Young Professionals' membership committee.   HYP helps recruit educated workers and companies to southcentral PA.  I ask him if the notion that workers now must constantly adapt their skills and justify their employment scares him.  "Not a bit," he replies.  "While everybody can't be an entrepreneur in the very essence of the term, in many ways you are your own business.  Your value to the company is going to be derived by critical thinking which is becoming more and more important.  Jobs today require intellectual curiosity and professional development.  My value comes from consistently bettering myself."

Join the conversation Thursday night at 8 on Smart Talk.