A few days ago I posted on what I figured was a fairly obvious topic – being very careful when it comes to companies who ask you for money during a job search especially when it comes to online jobs – but it seems that many people have come across this issue and wonder what to do.

A related but different question often comes up when it comes to companies paying interview expenses when it comes to flying you in for an interview for example and you wonder what you should do? I’ve seen cases where someone is promised to be reimbursed for interview expenses but fears having to outlay potentially hundreds of dollars or more for a flight, hotel, food, etc when perhaps they are low on cash or just don’t want to outlay this money up front especially if the company suggests that it could take weeks or months to pay them back.

In my experience when it comes to a company paying back interview expenses, you should trust your gut. You certainly hope and expect that a major corporation won’t rip you off when it comes to the issue of repaying interview expenses. If you are asked to pay for these expenses up front and are promised to be repaid for them the company, try to confirm it in writing including the extent to which the expenses will repaid. You also want to know up front exactly what expenses will be covered and what is considered reasonable when it comes to paying for food, taxis, etc while you are traveling. Make sure you keep all your receipts too.

Last week I saw a job posting that had some really interesting advice that I don’t remember seeing before, at least not in a job posting. It said:

For your privacy and protection, when applying to a job online: Never provide credit card or bank account information, or perform any sort of monetary transaction.

What great advice.

It would probably help solve the issue that I’ve been seeing recently, namely the numerous emails I get from people regarding a certain (fake) oil company that emails people expressing interest in the person even though the recipient of the email never applied to the job or company in the first place. It’s obviously a scam but people keep emailing me asking if it’s a real job and real company and what they should do.

Notwithstanding the fact that this email has all the hallmarks of a fake, phony company and a scam i.e. spelling and grammatical errors in the email, a free email address is used (like an oil company can’t afford a real email address with their company name in it?!), and the fact that in the email they tend to ask for a job visa processing charge or something like that.

Also notwithstanding the fact that the people who have received the email never applied to the company in the first place! Like legitimate companies just happen to come across your email address and offer you a job sight unseen with no interview! Yet people fall for this scam and I see lots of people emailing me honestly wondering if it’s a real company.

Bottom line: when you see anyone asking you online for money or any sort of fee during a job interview process, be very careful. Legitimate companies don’t do this in my experience.

How many times have you heard this phrase recently when talking about job losses in a particular industry or sector? I’ve heard it too many times to remember but it’s true. In many cases, jobs that are being lost will most likely never come back.

In some cases, companies downsize and eliminate jobs and then the remaining staff are simply expected to pick up the slack and do the work that used to be done by the person(s) whose jobs were eliminated.

As more and more jobs – particularly service-related jobs – are sent overseas by major employers, it’s difficult to say if many will ever return. As technology changes, many jobs also become obsolete and they are lost as a result, too.

Customer service jobs are interesting in that some companies such as telcos have faced a backlash and have started to bring their support function back inhouse after sending the jobs offshore years ago.

The general trend though has been for these companies to send middle-skill positions to countries that pay lower wages and most likely these jobs are not returning any time soon.

This situation has been exacerbated by the global recession so if you’re in the market for a new job you might find yourself competing with more people for a fewer number of jobs as many people have already discovered. The difference is that the jobs that were lost aren’t necessarily coming back once the economy picks up.

I have worked on a number of open jobs where the hiring manager or hiring authority has suggested that they’d prefer to hire someone who is already employed. In other words, they suggest that they’d prefer not to hire someone who is currently unemployed. In some rare cases, I’ve had hiring managers tell me to not even bother sending them the resume of anyone who isn’t currently working. It would seem that this sort of practice is increasing.

A recent news story I read discussed a recruitment firm in South Carolina searching for managers for a grocery store who specifically stated in the ad that they were only looking for people who currently held a job.

Mind you, I’ve also seen cases where the opposite has happened: I recall working on jobs where the position needed to be filled ASAP and the hiring manager told me that they’d prefer to hire someone who was currently out of work and who could start immediately!

When a company states that they want to hire someone currently employed, it’s interesting to note the reason why. Depending on your local labor laws it might not be illegal to state that you want to only consider job applicants who are currently employed but I guess my question would be what are you trying to accomplish?

In the case of the grocery store looking for managers, does that mean an unemployed grocery store manager who was recently downsized is less desirable than a person with no direct experience as a grocery store manager but who is currently employed in another job? Apparently they are since their current out-of-work job status will automatically rule them out of consideration for the job.

If you’re applying to jobs and are currently unemployed, you do need to be cognizant that this sort of treatment exists not only from hiring managers but recruiters too. Recruiters can also discriminate against those who are currently out of work thinking that it will be an uphill battle to help them get back into the workforce compared to a similar candidate who is currently working.

Having a job can give you extra leverage in your job search that you might have not otherwise considered. The longer you’re out of work, the more questions arise as to why you haven’t been able to find a new job, too.

I read a good article on Marketwatch today that talks about how there seems to be increasing evidence of employers lowballing new hires when it comes to entry level positions. Specifically, the article talked about how jobs that in the recent past would have started at the $40K-$50K range are now paying in the $28K-$38K range which I think you’ll see is quite a dramatic drop if true.

As a recruiter I recall many instances where people would avoid taking a (perceived) low-paying job and would prefer to wait for something else (ie. better-paying) to come along.

Mind you if you’re unemployed, taking a low-paying job can be better than having no job especially if you’ve been out of work for awhile. Bills need to be paid so you often have to do what you have to do. Plus, it’s usually better to be employed and looking for a new job than being unemployed and looking.

Companies that lowball staff often find themselves looking to fill that position again in the near future when the person they hired ends up quitting and finding a better paying job elsewhere so in some cases the company ends up saving themselves nothing when they have to go through the whole hiring process again because they underpaid the person.

Having said that, how many people out there have simply overvalued themselves? Sometimes it’s a fine line between being underpaid and being fairly paid especially once you start adding in perks that the company might have beyond just the salary.

With the Internet changing the way we search for jobs – and the way recruiters and hiring manager search for potential employees – comes the ability to search for a new job using some of the existing technologies you’re already using.

Twitter is a great example of a technology that can be used to find a new job and at a minimum to network and meet people (virtually meet them anyways) who might be able to positively influence your job search and ultimately your career.

I recently read a newspaper article that gave examples of people who had found new jobs using Twitter. In one case, the person had followed a Twitter feed that advertised local jobs and saw a tweet that referenced a job that interested him. He applied for it and got the job.

In another instance, it was a case of someone who had been followed by another person on Twitter who ended up interviewing them for a job after following them for awhile, learning about them, and being impressed enough by what they saw to ask if they’d be interested to interview for a new job.

It goes to show you that technology like this can be used for your advantage in a career setting. It also goes to show you the importance of keeping your profile – in this case your tweets – professional.

As an aside, I also know of recruiters who in some cases either use LinkedIn exclusively or almost exclusively to search for job candidates to fill their jobs which is another great way to get noticed online by people you don’t currently know. The same might be said for actual hiring managers who use LinkedIn to find staff for their company.

What sorts of things bother you at work?

Specifically, what do other people do that bothers you?

Most of the people who email me do so with regards to one issue that bothers them and that’s favoritism directed towards other staff to the detriment of them (i.e. the person emailing me). In your work environment there are probably many things that could potentially bother you beyond favoritism.

I’m a pretty agreeable person I think and I suspect most people who know me would say the say but there are a few things that other people do at work that bothers me. Here are the big ones:

1. They show up to work when they’re sick. And they think that the rest of us will be impressed that they took one for the team and came in even when they were under the weather, sneezing and coughing away and most likely making the rest of us ill too. I used to work with a woman who routinely came in sick and made it a point of telling everyone loudly how sick she was and clearly thought the rest of the us would be talking amongst ourselves about what a trooper she was. There was talking behind her back alright but it wasn’t positive.

2. They take credit for other people’s work. You’ve probably worked with someone like this, too. The person who either blatantly takes credit for something they didn’t do – some managers are good at this as you may have found out – or who takes part in a group project by contributing virtually nothing but who is always available to ensure everyone else directs the credit in their direction.

3. The talker who gossips even when you’re busy and can’t take a hint that you don’t have time to talk. This person is the reason they need to build office doors with locks. This is the person who doesn’t have enough to do or who is simply lazy and keeps themselves busy by wasting your time.

These are the ones that bother me although truthfully #2 and #3 are ones I’ve experienced recently.

What bothers you about your workmates? What do you think bothers them about you?

Has your old job – the one you held and then got downsized from – been lost for good?

I recently read a career article in the New York Times that referred to how many job that were eliminated in the past 2 year or so during the global economic slowdown are jobs that have simply disappeared for good.

Many positions were eliminated and the work was picked up by other staff members who remained on board. Now it’s like the old staff members never existed in the first place and the remaining staff were doing the extra work all along.

Sometimes job get eliminated due to new technology or when jobs simply become redundant and no longer necessary but in tough times companies also cut head count and ask the remaining staff to pick up the slack.

I remember back in university when I worked at a milk processing plant part time, the company decided to eliminate jobs by essentially eliminating a particular job in the production department and having each machine operator do the job themselves for their own machines rather than having a dedicated person to look after that part of the process for all machines as they were currently doing. They ended up eliminating 2 jobs X 2 shifts so 4 jobs were lost in total and the remaining machine operators simply picked up the tasks for their own machines and had that added to their job.

I remember some managers at the plant thinking that it was going to be difficult to get the operators to do the extra jobs since they weren’t used to doing them and they worked in a unionized environment and this would undoubtedly cause some trouble since jobs were being lost.

I remember thinking that I didn’t think it would be a problem long term because pretty quickly people would forget that there used to be a dedicated person doing the job and they’d forget that it didn’t use to be part of their role. Plus, since it was a union environment, people switched jobs and eventually they’d have different machine operators who didn’t know the difference since the change would have happened before their time.

And that’s pretty much what happened. A few weeks after making the change, everyone had gotten used to the changes and the company probably saved themselves over $120K per year in wages for the 4 people whose jobs had been eliminated. The company got by with doing more with fewer staff.

About 1 year after that, they then replaced all their filling machines with new models that ran 33% faster and which enabled them to wring even more efficiency out of the staff.

Are you expecting a raise this year?

I recently read a story that polled people and asked them if they expect to get a raise this year and here are the results:

Yes 23%
Yes, they were frozen but now I should get one. 9%
Don’t know, my pay rises are not regular. 15%
Don’t know. 18%
No, I’ve already been advised by my employer that I won’t. 34%

The numbers that stand out are obviously both they “yes” and “no” responses although the “no” responses clearly outweigh the yeses.

You wonder how many of those people who answered yes didn’t get a raise last year too. Mind you, how many of those people who answered no didn’t get one last year either?

A few years ago when the economy was better, I recall getting resumes from people who among reasons, listed not getting a raise (or simply that they weren’t getting paid enough) as a major – or the major – reason for looking for a new job.

These days many of those same people might be happy just to have a paying job with or without a raise.

I just finished reading a book by Robert Shemin called How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not?

I had not heard of the author before but found that he’s a best-selling writer and a sort of rags to riches story who writes that he was one of those people who earlier in life would easily have been considered the least likely to succeed. He refers to himself as a Rich Idiot and uses this theme throughout the book to distinguish between rich people who aren’t as smart as many intelligent people who aren’t as rich.

In a nutshell, he talks about becoming your own boss and working for yourself and not others. He discusses how to focus your efforts on investing in stocks, real estate and businesses which is how he made his fortune. Personally I was most interested in his thoughts on real estate since it’s an interest of mine too (not the other subjects aren’t) and like others I’ve read, he advocates a system of buying property, renting them out, and developing positive cash flows in this way.

He discusses how to use debt properly (ie. use other people’s money to make your money), how to think and live like a millionaire and he advocates focusing on one goal not numerous ones. The ultimate goal is to become rich or more specifically a Rich Idiot, just like him.

Personally I thought that the book started out very strongly but ended up discussing a number of things I’ve read in other books. Like other self-help books I’ve read, he talks about writing things down and documenting them. Write down the material things you desire, write down people who can help you achieve your goal(s), make a list of your assets/liabilities, etc. Putting things into writing tends to mean that you’ll remember it plus you can refer to on a regular basis to remain committed to achieving everything you desire.

Given his self-described status as someone who finished near the bottom of his class it was interesting to read his thoughts on how many smart people often over think things and get bogged down on details while someone like him is more likely to just go and do it without over analyzing the situation. This is something I often do myself so I appreciated the comments.

If you’re looking for some ideas that perhaps you haven’t considered and getting the perspective of a successful person who has done it already, this book might be for you. It’s an easy read and has summaries of tasks for you to do at the end of each chapter and throughout the book in general.