My belief is the small, niche businesses almost always serve their businesses better than larger competitors. We are finding this to be true at JobDig, our main competitors are either the near-monopolistic daily newspaper help wanted section or the larger job boards.

If you are a twentysomething starting out in your career, here is one way you can get recognized no matter what size your company. Every company has customer irritants…these are small, mundane things that customers hate…but no one ever seems to fix them. At smaller companies, we are so intensely focused on the customer and this experience, that we tend to root out each little irritant…the goal being obvious: the easier it is do business with us, the better. No little ‘nit’ is too small to avoid our scrutity.

I remembered this on Saturday night as we returned from vacation in the main terminal at Minneapolis. Due to delays and connections, we arrived at nearly midnight after hours and hours of travel. The carrier was Northworstest Airlines. As many of you know, NWA dominates air travel in and out of the Twin Cities and have had more than their share of financial difficulties. But the small irritants are alive and well at Northwest. This is a perfect example of a small irritant that can be simply fixed if someone simply cared.

So, again,…put yourself in the shoes of the passengers on this flight…the flight was completely full, cramped seats, no food, etc…but that is not the ‘nit.’

When we arrrive at the terminal, we park at the furthermost gate…I am talking almost to Iowa, the gate was so far. During the near mile walk to baggage claim, each time we passed an empty gate, passengers could be heard saying…”what was wrong with THAT gate?” Gate after gate after gate we passed…and we had to be the only plane arriving at this late hour. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Then to make matters worse, once we got to the main terminal the closest stairway and escalator down to baggage claim was closed off. So we had to continue walking to the far end of the main terminal before we were allowed to go downstairs to the baggage claim area. Well, you say, I am sure the baggage claim was right at the bottom of those escalators…noooooooo. The baggage claim they used was waaaaaaaaaaay back under the first escalator.

I felt like I was on an episode of “Punked.” About 200 passengers are totally pissed off now at Northwest Airlines. Not me…luckily I was able to “let it go.”