biography of andrew harrison barnes

Founder and CEO of EmploymentCrossing, Andrew Harrison Barnes was born on February 7, 1970 in Detroit, Michigan. Well known for his contribution to the employment industry, Harrison has provided the world a platform from which you can take your career to new heights.
Harrison studied at the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's in political studies, and graduated from the University of Virginia Law School.
At the University of Chicago, he was one of the top students in his graduating class and even co-taught a college-level class during his undergraduate tenure. At Virginia, Harrison was an editor of the Virginia Law Review and was the managing editor of the Journal of Law and Politics. Harrison has also taught Professional Responsibility at Whittier Law School.
An ardent believer in community service, Harrison is responsible for the career transition of tens of thousands of students and professionals. The launch of EmploymentCrossing in 2007 provided Harrison a hub from which he could reach out to the remotest employment opportunity in any industry and link it to the best possible employee for that job.
EmploymentCrossing today has more than 100 companies under its banner covering almost every industry and every possible job opportunity in the market from legal to sales and from manufacturing to the IT sector, EmploymentCrossing has launched specialized companies for almost every possible sector that can provide employment.
EmploymentCrossing's parent company, Employment Research Institute, today has several hundred employees in 14 offices throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe, much owing to the clear vision, sharp foresight, and extensive experience of Harrison Barnes. Employment Research Institute encompasses more than 100 job-search websites, employment services, and student loan companies.
A mentor, counselor, motivator, trainer, and writer, Harrison has been featured in the bestselling book by Chet Holmes, The Ultimate Machine. Aspatore, Inc., the leading publisher on C-level executives, has also featured him in a chapter of the book The Art and Science of Legal Recruiting.

Harrison's Harrowing Early Days

It is likely largely due to Harrison's challenges in the early days of his career that he turned to develop the business he did in helping other people. Harrison's college days were spent like many students' time in that period of their lives—not knowing where to go.
With little or no money in his pocket and a couple of unsatisfying attempts at other ventures, Harrison finally decided to start a business of his own building and repairing peoples' parking lots and driveways by spreading asphalt sealant over cracks and holes.
With assistance from two employees Harrison would fill up five-gallon pails from barrels on his trailers and then walked the sealant over to an area of the asphalt he wanted to seal. With a squeegee or a large brush he would then spread it around on the asphalt. This was excruciatingly difficult work. The sealant would often get onto his skin and burn him. When removing the sealant from his skin it would take off layers because Harrison had to use gasoline and steel wool-like material to remove the sealant.
Undeterred by this painful process, Harrison continued this venture and helped people (even some who could not pay) in building their driveways. At the end of the day he was satisfied, was appreciated by his clients, and was motivated to move to the next job.

Work Is Harrison's Passion

Harrison worked seven days a week and expected so much of his employees that some of them would quit the job from exhaustion after only a few days. There were people who lasted at this business with Harrison, however, and some of them are still with him today. Harrison did everything within his power to get work and was always able to find the next job.
Harrison respected the people he was working for. He was incredibly serious about work and loved what he did. Soon his efforts paid off and his business started to prosper. As this business grew, he started getting better and better equipment for it.
Harrison believes that having work is a privilege and that it is the most important thing one can have. It was this belief that fuelled his success at EmploymentCrossing. He says that work deserves to be cherished and held in the highest possible esteem. According to Harrison, work is lifeblood; without work, everything stops.
It was his passion for work that created EmploymentCrossing, a classic job board for every job seeker in almost any industry.

Harrison Barnes: Attorney at Law

After earning a law degree, Harrison clerked for United States District Judge Robert H. Cleland, was then an associate in the New York City-based law firm of Dewey Ballantine, and after that became an associate at the Los Angeles-based law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver and Hedges.
During his career as an attorney Harrison worked for a broad range of clients including the US government and several South American governments in a number of cases involving a variety of issues including breach of contract, trademark infringement, personal injury, Internet law, intellectual property, tax, and employment matters.
Harrison's career as a lawyer gave him insight into the legal career of attorneys and proved a great help later in his career when he created EmploymentCrossing.

Harrison's Dictum for Success: Increase Efficiency Continuously

Every business targets at lowering costs and increasing profits in a process of continuous improvement. According to Harrison this means that an employer is always looking for ways to eliminate an employee who is stagnant and is not increasing efficiency.
All jobs are threats to the company and its profits, and companies are always looking for ways to do away with the them. Harrison says that the best way to survive is to increase your efficiency continuously.
According to Harrison, "You always need to be on the side of efficiency and increasing the output of the company at the lowest cost possible. If you are against efficiency, you will be seen as an enemy of the company and its growth." This theory has been applied to Harrison's companies, including EmploymentCrossing, which continuously keeps increasing its efficiency by increasing the number of websites under its banner, increasing the number of jobs in every site, and improving the quality of service.

A Great Idea That Led to the Creation of EmploymentCrossing

Harrison initiated an Internet business in 1999. In those days computer programmers were like gods to companies. They took home hefty six-figure salaries and jumped between companies every now and then. Everyone believed that the next great frontier was software and the Internet and programmers were essential to this frontier. Thus they often felt like they could do whatever they wanted.
For Harrison's small company, he almost had to beg programmers to work. He at times had to pay them as much as $100 an hour to do the work. To his amazement, the programmers would stop working after four or five hours because they thought the work was boring. Searching for a solution, Harrison started building an office in India.
In India Harrison's employees were enthusiastic about doing work and gave their work 100 percent of their effort; this was working for Harrison. Soon the dot-com bubble burst and there was simply no work for US programmers. It had all dried up. Then programmers were desperately looking for jobs and applications for any open positions flooded Harrison's office. By that time, though, Harrison had already found a large team of programmers for his company in India.
Harrison says, "If your employers can do your job more cheaply elsewhere, then they will. The more cheaply they can produce a product or service, the more they will sell the same. The more the product or service is sold, the more the company will grow and expand."
At that time Harrison noticed that an increasing number of people were spending their time and money searching for jobs in every possible way. He soon hit upon a billion-dollar idea. The best thing his company could do at that time was to help these people find their jobs. He did just that.

The Launch of Employment Research Institute and Its Companies

In the year 2000, Harrison Barnes founded Juriscape (today known as Employment Research Institute), and under its banner he started a collection of legal industry-specific job-search websites. Being a lawyer himself Harrison knew exactly what attorneys wanted at every stage of their carrier.
These sites soon became popular and revolutionized the way job seekers accessed employment postings from around the world.
BCG Attorney Search was started in 2000, and Employment Research Institute began its operations. The move catapulted the company to the forefront of the US legal recruitment industry.
Motivated by the success of BCG Attorney Search, Harrison launched another affiliate, Legal Authority. This company, which was started in September 2002, utilizes innovative and targeted direct-mailing strategies to assist attorneys and law students apply for and find jobs across the United States.
Soon Harrison realized that there was a need for comprehensive information about national and international legal job openings. In July 2003, LawCrossing was launched. The site soon started attracting thousands of law students, lawyers, and legal staff who would visit the website every day to browse for jobs and exciting law-related career news and articles.

What Is Unique about Harrison's Companies?

It was Harrison's unique idea which made more people get jobs quickly and effectively. Harrison's companies, including EmploymentCrossing, do not charge employers to post their job openings (like most other job sites do); they aggressively contact and investigate thousands of employers each day to learn of new positions. Job seekers become members of the sites and gain access to the huge number of open positions that are constantly updated at research facilities across its many offices.

Employment Research Institute Expands to Touch Even More Lives

The superb response that LawCrossing garnered made Harrison want to move ahead and help those students who could not afford the hefty fees imposed by law schools get loans or other aid. Harrison wanted to assist law students with consolidating their law school debt and launched Law School Loans in January 2005.
The next five months witnessed the creation of JD2B, which was launched on May 2005. This site was started by Harrison in response to the growing demand for legal information online. A fun-filled and interactive website, JD2B presents news, resources, blogs, and several other features for law school applicants, law students, and recent law school graduates.
In November 2005 Harrison inaugurated Attorney Resume. A highly specialized company, Attorney Resume specializes on writing professional resumes and cover letters for attorneys and law students.
January 2006 saw the launch of Law Firm Staff; a recruiting company tailored to meet the growing job-search needs of the staff working at law firms, from attorney associates and paralegals to law clerks and summer associates.
Harrison started two more affiliates in March 2006: EdFed and Judged. An educational financing company, EdFed offers a variety of loan consolidation services to all types of students. This was one of his first ventures to cater to people outside of the legal community, and it has been a major success.
When Judged was launched in 2006, it became a must-see website for those who wished to venture behind the scenes of top law firms and law schools across the United States to see what is really taking place.
During this time, Harrison and the management of Employment Research Institute saw how much they were able to financially help law students, and their thoughts turned towards helping all students, not just future attorneys, in other ways.

A New Chapter: Harrison Ventures outside the Legal Sector

Having made a mark in the legal sector, Harrison now wanted to help those outside the legal industry. He started exploring the market segment and launched two more services: SellingCrossing and Graduate School Loans.
SellingCrossing, a sales job board, contains the most diverse collection of active sales jobs in the sales world. The website is a unique, searchable, and regularly updated platform offering great sales information to job seekers in the United States.
Harrison launched Graduate School Loans with the idea to reach out to graduates and offer them loans and consolidation options featuring extremely competitive rates.
Now trusted by millions, Harrison's companies saw a huge expansion in the year 2007.
In the first quarter of 2007, Harrison launched Hound.com. Using technology that took two years to develop, Hound is today able to pull job listings from company sites throughout the world, giving its members the best opportunities to find and apply to jobs before they are advertised to the full market.
During the same period, Medical School Loans was started; this site provides customized financial services to medical students and doctors needing student loans for medical education, consolidation, etc.
Getting a positive response from every venture he started, Harrison expanded his resume- and cover letter-writing services to all professionals in all career industries with the launch of ResumeApple.
By this time Harrison was looking to consolidate his job boards under one single banner. He soon struck upon another idea.

The Red Carpet Launch of EmploymentCrossing

In 2007 Harrison started EmploymentCrossing, a single platform for a groundbreaking and expansive group of industry-specific job boards. Within a few months, Employment Research Institute launched more than thirty individual job boards under EmploymentCrossing:

If you are a job seeker with a specific industry experience, EmploymentCrossing provides instant access to a comprehensive pool of listings based on your particular area of interest. EmploymentCrossing's comprehensive collection of job openings totals over 2 million and includes listings from every Fortune 500 and Fortune 1,000 business. By the end of 2007, EmploymentCrossing had reached over 500 researchers and other employees with offices throughout the United States and abroad.
Harrison has constructed EmploymentCrossing in such a way that it can monitor and analyze the recruiting and hiring needs for any person in almost any industry. This website soon became the world's most comprehensive legal job board.
During the past six years, Harrison Barnes has altered the course of lives for millions of employees. Employers too, he has helped, by giving them the best recruits possible. Harrison's extremely focused vision of finding each and every job and listing it on the sites has always provided job seekers a platform to look for their dream job. EmploymentCrossing has come a long way and has created a new benchmark in the world of niche job boards.
Today EmploymentCrossing has more than 100 companies under its banner covering almost every area and every possible job opportunity in the market. Its parent company, Employment Research Institute, has several hundred employees in 14 offices throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe.
An Ardent Trainer, Motivator, and Orator
Although he is CEO of the largest career company in America, Harrison Barnes finds time for doing a limited number of speaking, coaching, and workshop engagements. Here, Harrison works on rapidly transforming people into proactive job seekers who know exactly what it takes to get a job and reach their full potential.
Harrison's career coaching includes resume revision, a life assessment, and testing to determine an individual's natural strengths. He caters to individuals, corporate, and organizational engagements.
Harrison, who is also a superb orator and motivator, shares his career experiences and his thoughts through his extremely interesting blog.
Kundalini Yoga: Harrison's Secret to Keeping Fit
One of Harrison's favorite disciplines is Kundalini yoga. Harrison says that the practice is not just about relaxing; Kundalini yoga forces one's mind and body to their absolute limits and beyond. According to him, when you push your mind, you also push your body and when you go through the various exercises you become a completely different person.
Harrison says that Kundalini yoga helps you go past what you thought you were capable of. A Kundalini exercise, for example, might involve holding your arms outstretched straight, flapping them up and down six inches. An exercise like this can easily be done for a minute or so, but when you keep doing it for say, seven minutes, it becomes next to impossible. Your arms and shoulders start hurting tremendously. At some point, however, the pain stops. Harrison says that you need to condition your mind to give it your all.
According to Harrison, "Trying your hardest is about coming up against your limits and pushing through and doing this time and again."
When you break through the pain you are able to live your life on the other side. Kundalini yoga is very effective because it can teach people how to give life their all.
Harrison Barnes, who resides in Malibu, California is a sought-after motivational speaker and writes articles relating to the legal community. Harrison is Area Chair for the University of Chicago Admissions Office, and also publishes an annual book on the top 50 law schools in the country.

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