When we started One Day, One Job, we were only counting on writing about 365 entry-level jobs this year. Ah, what’s one more? Still, it’s a little disappointing that every 4th year the man manages to squeeze an extra day of productivity out of us. You never hear about a “leap day effect” on businesses, but one would presume that leap years are a little more productive than other years – assuming that we all don’t slack off a little more over the course of an entire Leap Year to make up for it. We wish Leap Day was a worldwide day off that would allow everyone to find time to do those things that you never get around to doing. Instead, it’s just another day, unless, of course, you’re a college senior with no Friday classes. Staying with the theme of Leap Day, we’re going to take a look at LeapFrog and their entry-level jobs.

At first glance LeapFrog looks like a toy manufacturer; however, they consider themselves “a leading designer, developer and marketer of innovative, technology-based educational products and related proprietary content.” You might be most familiar (especially if you are around children often) with their Leapster and LeapPad products. The former is a educational tool disguised as a handheld gaming system, while the latter is an interactive reading and writing system that is built into a book. We’ve never had the pleasure of using any of LeapFrog’s products, but judging by the fact that Leapster has sold over 4 million units (as of May 2007 according to Wikipedia), kids must enjoy them.

LeapFrog is a publicly traded company, which makes them a lot easier to research. A great job search tip is to use a company’s Investor Relations page to dig for dirt. We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep on repeating it: a company’s health is extremely important in your decision about whether or not to work for them. If a company’s situation scares you, it may not be worth applying for a job with them; however, companies that are going through hard times – LeapFrog falls into this category – sometimes offer unique experiences (as in: learning how not to run a company, getting an enormous amount of responsibility early on because your boss quit, or being part of the change that ends up saving the company) for a new college grad. We can’t be sure that this will be the case with LeapFrog, but it’s a lot easier to take the risk of working for a company that is struggling before you have a family and a mortgage. Still, don’t let your youthful exuberance keep you from doing your due diligence and doing some serious research.

As for jobs, LeapFrog has two openings that don’t list required experience, which we take to mean entry-level. They’re hiring a Curriculum Specialist and a Payroll Manager. Both of these positions are in their Emeryville, CA office. LeapFrog also has an RSS feed of new job openings, which we love, so stay tuned to that if neither of these positions are for you.

With LeapFrog’s struggles, we can’t vouch for whether these jobs will be a good fit for a new college graduate, but we wanted to run with the Leap Day theme. If you’re looking to work in the educational products industry, LeapFrog might be a great place to start. Just make sure you do your homework.

Note: On April 25th we revisited entry-level jobs at LeapFrog.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• LeapFrog’s Home Page
• Jobs at LeapFrog
• About LeapFrog
• LeapFrog in the Press

You guessed it! We also wrote about LeapFrog’s internships at One Day, One Internship.

We've identified LeapFrog as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• California
• education
• toys

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