Employment Background Checks Send Job Seekers to Court

Wall Street Journal: U.S. job seekers are crashing into the worst employment market in years and background checks that reach deeper than ever into their pasts. The result: a surge of people seeking to legally clear their criminal records.
(Image by dbking via Flickr, CC3.0)
For more on employment background checks:

Checklist: Clean Up Your Web Trail
What Can [...]

Guess Which Resume Got Ignored

Secrets of the Job Search shared the tale today of a hiring manager at a small company with no human resources department to rely on who managed to screen through 77 resumes and discard most in just a few days.
How she did it offers a lesson in how to submit your resume, right down to [...]

Turn the Table on the Job Interviewer at Your Own Peril

What’s your pet peeve in an employee?
The blog Clue Wagon recommends a job seeker ask a potential manager this question during a job interview. “This is a great question to ask your potential boss. You may save each other a lot of grief.” (8 Questions to Ask in a Job Interview)
It might also cause [...]

LinkedIn Anoints Twitter “Professional”

LinkedIn announced today that it would sync it’s status updates with Twitter and, in a way, anointed Twitter as a professional social network.
According to the New York Times: “The partnership with LinkedIn affirms Twitter’s role as a network for professional conversation. More than social sites like Facebook, people use Twitter to keep abreast of professional [...]

Too Old to Tweet

Are you tool old for Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn? No, and it’s one of the worst reasons to eschew social media in your job search, according to Josh Waldman, a social media career consultant and author of the Careerealism blog.
The three excuses that most often keep job seekers from using social networks in their [...]

Edelmen PR Tries Mentoring in Reverse

At the public relations firm Edelman, veteran employees are paired with younger employees, who mentor the seasoned staffers on things like technology and cultural and generational differences. The program called “Rotnem” (mentor spelled in reverse) is part of a new management trend is taking on at organizations, said Ramon Greenwood on the “Secrets of the [...]

Can We Meet for Coffee or Lunch?

An informational interview is usually a waste of an executive recruiter’s time, said the anonymous manager and author of the “Ask a Manager” blog.
Most people who ask for an informational interview are usually trying to sneak an actual job interview, or they’re randomly trying to meet with anyone and everyone who might have a job [...]

Phone Interview That Went Too Far

Thinking of letting someone else fill out a job application for you? Here’s a tale of a travel agent who went too far, courtesy of Media Jobs Daily and Clue Wagon.
Once I did a phone interview with a candidate for a travel agent position. This candidate had a flat Midwestern accent, which is pretty common [...]

You Catch More Jobs with Honey than Vinegar

Being passed up for a promotion can be a hard pill to swallow and lead to career-crushing behavior on the job.
Your bad attitude at work can lead to a destructive cycle that harms your chances for a future promotion or even endanger your job, said Shawn Achor, a Harvard psychology professor and CEO of Aspirant [...]

Your Boss Is a Jerk Because He Needs a Hug

Researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Berkeley reportedly found a link between aggressive managers and the managers’ feelings of inadequacy.
Researchers believe the pressure to perform at a higher level can lead to feelings of incompetence. Those emotions ultimately put some managers in defensive mode, a negative psychological state [...]