Archive for category Careers
States may ban credit checks on job applicants
Mar. 1st, 2010 01:29 PM mt
MSNBC.com
ANNAPOLIS, Md. - It’s hard enough to find a job in this economy, and now some people are facing another hurdle: Potential employers are holding their credit histories against them.
Sixty percent of employers recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resources Management said they run credit checks on at least some job applicants, compared with 42 percent in a somewhat similar survey in 2006.
Employers say such checks give them valuable information about an applicant’s honesty and sense of responsibility. But lawmakers in at least 16 states from South Carolina to Oregon have proposed outlawing most checks, saying the practice traps people in debt because their past financial problems prevent them from finding work.
Wisconsin state Rep. Kim Hixson drafted a bill in his state shortly after hearing from Terry Becker, an auto mechanic who struggled to find work.
Becker said it all started with medical bills that piled up when his now 10-year-old son began having seizures as a toddler. In the first year alone, Becker ran up $25,000 in medical debt.
Over 4½ months, he was turned down for at least eight positions for which he had authorized the employer to conduct a credit check, Becker said. He said one potential employer told him, “If your credit is bad, then you’ll steal from me.”
“I was in a deep depression. I had lost a business, I was behind on my bills and I was unable to get a job,” he said.
Hixson calls what happened to Becker discrimination based on credit history and said his bill would ban it.
“If somebody is trying to get a job as a truck driver or a trainer in a gym, what does your credit history have to do with your ability to do that job?” Hixson said. He said he knows of no research that shows a person with a bad credit history is going to perform poorly.
Under federal law, prospective employers must get written permission from applicants to run a credit check on them. But consumer advocates say most job applicants do not feel they are in a position to say no.
Most of the bills being proposed this year resemble laws in Hawaii and Washington that prevent employers from using credit reports when hiring for most positions. The laws contain exceptions in cases where such information could be relevant to the job — for example, if the person is applying to work in a bank or an accounts-payable office.
On a national level, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced a similar bill last summer in Congress, where it is still bottled up in committee.
Even though more companies are using credit checks, only 13 percent perform them on all potential hires, according to the Society for Human Resources Management’s most recent survey. Mike Aitken, the group’s director of government affairs, said a blanket ban could remove a tool employers can use to help them make good hiring decisions.
Aitken pointed to a 2008 survey by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners that found the two most common red flags for employees who commit workplace fraud are living beyond their means and having difficulty meeting financial obligations. The same survey estimated American companies lost $994 billion to workplace fraud in 2008.
Aitken said someone who cannot pay his or her bills on time may not be more likely to steal, but might not have the maturity or sense of responsibility to handle a job like processing payroll checks.
In Maryland, where the state Chamber of Commerce opposes a bill banning most credit checks, employers at a recent legislative hearing said they are not interested in applicants’ credit scores.
Instead, they said, they are concerned about things like debt collections and legal judgments rather than poor credit because of medical bills or school loans. They also said companies give job applicants a chance to explain their credit problems.
Last year California lawmakers voted to curb the use of such checks, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill under pressure from Chamber of Commerce leaders who called it a “job-killer.”
But Maryland Delegate Kirill Reznik, who drafted the bill being considered in his state, said people struggling to get jobs need help.
“We are in the great recession and this creates a vicious cycle,” Reznik said. “People lose their jobs, that naturally precipitates them getting behind on bills, their credit scores go down, they are trying to find a job to pay off the bills, and employers won’t hire them because of their credit score.”
Maryland public school employee Jen Harwood said running credit checks on job applicants “perpetuates the divide between the haves and the have-nots.”
“If you continue digging into people’s past and not looking into what people have to give today, you are making a bigger divide,” Harwood said.
Consumer advocacy groups are also lining up behind the legislation, pointing out that credit reports can contain inaccurate information.
Becker, the Milton, Wis., resident with bad credit, has found work dismantling cars at an auto recycling company that did not ask to run a credit check. He worries, though, about friends in the auto industry are looking for work and coming up empty-handed because of credit problems.
“It just seems like once you fall behind, you’re behind,” he said. “It’s really hard to get back on the right financial track.”
- The Associate Press
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11 Skills You’ll Need for a Career
by Lynn F. Jacobs & Jeremy S. Hyman - Nov. 25, 2009
USNews.com
With today’s economy, college students are more worried than ever about what kind of career awaits them. The best way to increase the odds that the job you’ll get won’t involve waiting tables or flipping burgers is to get the skills you need while you’re still in college. Here are our 11 critical job skills that every college student should master, regardless of his or her ultimate career path:
1. Writing clearly and forcefully. Students often don’t recognize how important writing skills are in many professions: Many students, without a trace of shame, proclaim “I can’t write” and consistently avoid courses that require them to write papers. But the “I can’t write” excuse won’t stand you in good stead later when you have to write a strategic plan for your business, create clinic notes in your medical practice, write briefs for your legal case, or pitch your advertising plan in a report to the client. Actively seek out college courses that give you lots of opportunities to write. And use the feedback you get on one writing assignment to improve on the next.
2. Systematizing and organizing data. Many jobs require employees to do quite a bit of number-crunching and to create numerous spreadsheets and tables. Be sure you take courses that teach you the skills to do this kind of work—math, statistics and the like. Even students in liberal arts majors should come out of college being able to handle a reasonable range of quantitative tasks in the real world.
3. Doing research. In this Internet age, no one seems to be reading books in a library much. But there’s more information out there, so being able to conduct research is even more important than before. Courses that include research assignments—usually upper-level classes in the humanities and social sciences—will give you experience with a number of research tools, many of them electronic, that you can utilize when given research assignments at work.
4. Presenting material orally. In many jobs, you will spend more time than you can possibly imagine attending meetings or giving presentations—or giving presentations at meetings. Needless to say, when your boss asks you to comment at a meeting or give a presentation, it’s not wise to plead shyness or fear of public speaking (as many college students do when asked to present material in class). College offers you many possibilities for training in public speaking. Yes, there’s the speech class or the debate team, but smaller classes and seminars often require presentations, too. And, hey, you could always just answer a question a professor poses in a big class. It happens.
Extra Pointer. Make sure you get proficient in a presentation software, such as PowerPoint, and learn to use all its features, including video and multimedia.
5. Taking notes. Maybe you like to sit back in lecture and enjoy the passing show without bothering to write a single note. Or maybe you write from time to time, as you focus in on what the prof is saying. This isn’t a good idea for college, and it’s even less of a good idea when your boss asks you to remind him or her in detail of what plans for the big campaign were developed at last week’s three-day retreat. Every college class gives you an opportunity to become an ace note taker, so don’t blow the chance.
The Jobs Imperative
by Paul Krugman - Nov. 29, 2009
The New York Times
If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s.
You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.
This is wrong and unacceptable.
Yes, the recession is probably over in a technical sense, but that doesn’t mean that full employment is just around the corner. Historically, financial crises have typically been followed not just by severe recessions but by anemic recoveries; it’s usually years before unemployment declines to anything like normal levels. And all indications are that the aftermath of the latest financial crisis is following the usual script. The Federal Reserve, for example, expects unemployment, currently 10.2 percent, to stay above 8 percent — a number that would have been considered disastrous not long ago — until sometime in 2012.
And the damage from sustained high unemployment will last much longer. The long-term unemployed can lose their skills, and even when the economy recovers they tend to have difficulty finding a job, because they’re regarded as poor risks by potential employers. Meanwhile, students who graduate into a poor labor market start their careers at a huge disadvantage — and pay a price in lower earnings for their whole working lives. Failure to act on unemployment isn’t just cruel, it’s short-sighted.
So it’s time for an emergency jobs program.
How is a jobs program different from a second stimulus? It’s a matter of priorities. The 2009 Obama stimulus bill was focused on restoring economic growth. It was, in effect, based on the belief that if you build G.D.P., the jobs will come. That strategy might have worked if the stimulus had been big enough — but it wasn’t. And as a matter of political reality, it’s hard to see how the administration could pass a second stimulus big enough to make up for the original shortfall.
Canada, Australia ranked best places for expats
Posted by admin in Careers, Mix Up News on December 1st, 2009
Nov. 26, 2009 7:33 AM est
Reuters.com
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Looking to work overseas? Head to Canada, Australia or Thailand, according to an annual global survey which found recession-hit Britain was one of the worst locations to live for expatriates.
The second annual Expat Experience survey, commissioned by HSBC Bank International, revealed that expats in Canada have the best quality of life and found it among the easiest places in the world to integrate with the local population.
Australia and Thailand also came in the top three in the survey of 3,146 people working in 30 different industries and 50 countries, even though Thailand was one of the countries worst-hit by the recession for expats.
“We have seen that there is a distinct trade-off between income and overall quality of life, as many of the top performers … scored toward the bottom of this report’s league table (of the best places to make and save money),” said Betony Taylor, spokeswoman for HSBC Bank International.
“What is clear is that the locations where salaries may not be as high, such as Canada and Australia, are where expats are really enjoying not only an increased quality of life but are also finding it easy to fit in to their new communities.”
Last year Germany, Canada and Spain were the top three countries deemed to have the best lifestyle for expats.
This year Britain was one of the lowest ranked locations when it came to lifestyle after being named as one of the most expensive places for expats with the recession taking its toll.
About 44 percent of expats in Britain are considering returning home, compared with only 15 percent of expats overall.
About 41 percent of expats in Britain find it difficult to find somewhere to live, most find the quality of their accommodation drops after moving to Britain, and a third claim their health has deteriorated since moving there.
“Despite this, the UK does hold the crown for being expat entertainment capital of the world, with over half (58 percent) of expats in the UK saying that the quality of entertainment had increased,” said Taylor.
She added that 62 percent of expats also said that employment prospects were the main reason keeping them in the region.
Results from a different section of the survey, which was conducted by research company FreshMinds, released earlier found Russia was home to the highest proportion of expats earning more than $250,000 with 30 percent of international workers there banking that amount, followed by Hong Kong and Japan.
The lowest-paid expats live in Australia and Belgium with the majority — 63 percent and 61 percent respectively — earning less than $100,000.
What Facebook Can’t Give You
by Katherine Rosman - Nov. 26, 2009
The Wall Street Journal
Over 52 Years, These Men Have Evolved Into Movers and Shakers—Together
Before there was Facebook, there was the Wednesday 10.
In 1957, as men in their late 20s, they began meeting—initially over breakfast, then over dinners held at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel or at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan. Few were born to means. Many were sons of immigrants. Most went on to become luminaries in their fields—presidents of television networks, partners at banks, editors of magazines.
On occasion, they shared their influence with one another. When member Mort Janklow made a career switch from corporate attorney to literary agent, a fellow member, columnist William Safire, offered himself as a famous first client. When Robert Menschel, a senior director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., was considering deals involving large consumer companies such as Procter & Gamble, he would pick the brain of fellow club member Ed Meyer, the former chief executive of Grey Advertising.
In a day when “social network” is a buzz term from colleges to board rooms, the members of Wednesday 10 show the benefits of old-fashioned networking. “We were all young kids starting out, and it is easy when you are so involved in building your career to lose touch with other people who are outside your field,” says Mr. Menschel, who has been at Goldman Sachs for 55 years. “It helped me to understand why other people do what they do—which is important in life and in business. You don’t learn anything from talking to sameness.”
The Wednesday 10 comprised, at various points, more than 20 men; the goal was a number small enough to maintain intimacy yet large enough to ensure that at least 10 members would show up for each of the monthly Wednesday-night meetings. No more than two representatives of any one industry were permitted. The idea was to combat insularity, to keep the men connected to people and events outside their own professions.
Last Wednesday, in a prewar Manhattan duplex, the membership met for the first time since the death of the group’s founder, Mr. Safire. At a sit-down dinner of lobster pot pie, short-ribs stroganoff and fall-vegetable slaw, 16 of the group’s members engaged in spirited discussion about the economy, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the friendship they have cultivated during the past 52 years.
The members bantered like brothers as they greeted one another over cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, handshakes and a few hugs. “How old are you Larry?” Lawrence Grossman, the former president of NBC News and PBS, was asked as he walked into the reception.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Mr. Grossman replied. Turns out he was born in 1931, making him the youngest member.
“I am the oldest,” said Charles Sigety, 87, a former nursing-home owner whose family has significant real estate holdings. Later, he pointed out another distinction. “I’m probably the only gentile here tonight,” he said.
“We’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” replied Mr. Menschel. (The group is about 75% Jewish.)
Graduate Degrees With the Best Futures
by Sarah Morgan - Nov. 19, 2009
Smart Money
In a tough job market, it makes sense to look for ways to set yourself apart from the competition. But is extra school the best – or most cost-effective – way to advance?
This year, 26% of graduating seniors headed for a graduate or professional degree, up from 24% last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a professional association. Add to those ranks people who are working but want to go back to school — or who are simply not working and are applying to school as a back up — and enrollment swells even more.
But if these students are looking at grad school as a refuge from a tough economy, it’s the wrong approach, says Kathy Sims, the director of the University of California, Los Angeles Career Center. Prospective students should be even more careful about investing in further education in the current environment, because the long-term impact of the recession on particular fields isn’t yet clear, she says.
Career counselors say that for individuals who have been out of the work force for a while, or who are switching fields, a fresh degree can help a resume look more attractive. Yet in a tough job market, pursuing an advanced degree could narrow your options by making it more difficult to pursue opportunities outside of your chosen field.
Keep in mind that you’re making a substantial financial investment. “Consider not just the cost of that degree, but the opportunity cost in lost wages” when deciding if grad school makes sense for you, says Marcia Harris, a career counselor and the former director of the University of North Carolina’s Career Services office. In some cases, volunteer work, internships or even travel could enhance your resume for far less than the cost of a degree, she adds.
Prospective students should do careful research before heading back to school. The Bureau of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook projects future demand for workers in different fields and gives a sense of how much people typically earn. Professional associations can also be a good source of information on current trends and opportunities. One good exercise: Go through a mock job search as if you have the degree you’re considering, including contacting organizations you might want to work for, Harris suggests.
Here are some examples of fields where an advanced degree might help you advance or increase your earning power – and some where a degree might just increase your debt:
Recession Rich Companies That Are Hiring
by Katie Adams - Nov. 19, 2009
Investopedia.com
Since the onset of the recession, firms nationwide have shed more than seven million jobs, causing the unemployment rate to double to 10.2%. We set out to find the silver lining behind this dark employment cloud and found several firms which are actually thriving and looking to hire. (Learn more about the impact of this recession.
Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT)
Between its brick and mortar stores (Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club) and their online shopping websites (walmart.com, samsclub.com) the Walton family empire already employs more than two million people worldwide and that number is poised to soar higher.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that during the global economic slump, Wal-Mart is winning over customers from higher-priced competitors. Pair that trend with a near-obsessive corporate culture of cost containment and you’ve got the recipe for long-term employment success. There are approximately 4,200 stores in the U.S. and the company has affirmed its medium-term growth goals including opening new supercenters in Canada, Mexico and the U.K.
PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP)
After beating analysts’ third-quarter earnings predictions the soft drink titan is on track for record earnings this year and projects double-digit growth (between 11-13%) into 2010. With strong sales and cash in hand the company recently announced it would continue making “targeted investments across (its) entire portfolio” and that it would “expect to ramp up next year.”
That’s good news for job seekers, as “ramping up” is often corporate code for hiring. Learn more about their opportunities for professionals, jobs for new grads, and hourly or commission-based jobs.
Perrigo Company (Nasdaq: PRGO)
