July 29, 2008

Office e-mail no-nos
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 3:53 PM

ABC News has a pretty entertaining story on office e-mail etiquette. The piece talked about e-mail faux pas that many of us has have witnessed – or even contributed to. The "Netiquette no-no's" in the story included marking every email as Urgent!, "cc-ing" a co-worker's boss with criticism of that employee, and TYPING IN ALL CAPS.

Another "no-no" dealt with that pesky "reply all" button:

"My favorite was once seeing a group e-mail with about 60 e-mails talking about how the group needs to have less replies, less 'thanks' and 'great,'" says Anna Post, an author and etiquette expert at the Emily Post Institute.

The e-mail continued "with tons of replies of 'thanks' and 'great.' 'You're right.' I was laughing so hard," she says.

This is especially irksome to Peter Martin, an associate editor at Esquire magazine.

"I hate when people reply all, especially when they don't know everyone on the e-mail list," he says. "You're not that funny. This is the more aggressive version of writing 'hilarious' RSVPs for E-vites."

Post advises to never reply all — unless of course it's really needed.

"If you're adding something substantial to the conversation, then a reply all is worth it or if you need to confirm the information to everyone. Cool, neat-o, thanks — those are not necessary," Post says. "Invariably, it's someone who writes something they shouldn't who hits reply all and that's a whole other mess."

That "mess" happened in one Maryland office when a co-worker hit reply all and made a racial slur and sexual comments. She was moved to another position.

Ouch.

Well, at least that Maryland office worker is not alone in placing her digital foot in her digital mouth. Everyone seems to have a story of accidentally "cc-ing" the wrong person in an office e-mail, or sending a "reply all" message that was intended solely for the person who sent the original message.

Do you have any office e-mail pet peeves or horror stories?

Share your favorite office e-mail mishaps in our forum.

Also vote in our survey on the most annoying e-mail behavior.

Finally, check out our past gallery on Boston.com readers sharing their office place pet peeves.

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July 22, 2008

Cheating on tests – it's not just for high school anymore
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 4:30 PM

Does your next raise depend on passing a certification exam? Are you worried you won't get the job you covet if you are unable to pass a skills test? Do you get the jitters when quizzed?

Well, apparently there's an underground industry out there that is thriving on people like you. "Proxy test-takers" are a worldwide problem, the Globe reports, especially in countries with a high population of technology workers.

Cisco Systems Inc., the Silicon Valley firm behind some of the world's biggest computer networks, and Pearson VUE, one of the world's largest test administrators, recently conducted a trial run of an anticheating system intended to identify and crack down on "proxy test takers," people who impersonate others to take exams for them.

Officials at Cisco and Pearson VUE told The Boston Globe this week that during an eight-month span ended in June 2008, they monitored hundreds of thousands of exams given in eight countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Cisco said it had confirmed that one in 200 of those exams was taken by a proxy, and not the actual enrollee.

Randall T. Trask, a vice president at Pearson VUE which administers some of Cisco's tests, said he suspected the numbers were "the tip of the iceberg" because they only measured a limited number of one company's tests. Cisco's exams are given in 4,400 test centers in more than 160 countries, according to Pearson VUE's website.

In many white-collar fields, certification tests have taken on growing significance as a prerequisite for many well-paying jobs and proof that employees are maintaining their skills. In the highly competitive technology industry, surveys have shown that technicians with enough certifications can add up to $35,000 to their annual salary.

However, the story notes that Cisco is launching a new test-security system that includes software to help catch test abnormalities, as well as procedures for having each test-taker's photograph taken and stored with their test scores in a database.

Cheating on job certification exams is nothing new. The Globe reported in December that a growing number of websites were offering "cheat sheets" that essentially held the questions and answers to a variety of tests. From the article:

Pirated answers to hundreds of professional qualifying exams, in fields ranging from school-bus driving to medical technicians, are openly available, sometimes for as little as $4 each, from a thriving network of cheating websites, The Boston Globe has found.

As many industries move to require certification by examination, the trade in crib sheets has emerged as a lucrative and well-organized global black market. One operator in Oregon made $700,000 in about nine months before his arrest; the owner of the Ohio website pocketed more than $300,000. A Pakistani who sells stolen answers for computer technician exams proudly displays photos of a stable of luxury cars on his website.

Recently, the dangers of Internet-based cheating have become more apparent. The Globe reported earlier this month that tens of thousands of soldiers obtained answers to tests in a range of military skills from websites. The Army case was especially egregious, testing specialists said, because even modest measures that are widely used to prevent cheating weren't in place. The sheer number of Army cheaters also surprised some testing specialists.

So, what do you think about the proliferation of ways to cheat on exams? Are you confident that new anti-cheating measures will help curb the problem? Or do companies place too much emphasis on these tests that are administered by third parties? Share your thoughts in our forums.

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NYTimes admits that women don't just opt out for children
Posted by Diane Danielson at 10:06 AM

The NYTimes ran an article today, "Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy".  Despite the misleading title (women are usually affected worse than men in poor economies), the article discusses a new study that shows that women are leaving the workforce in a poor economy due to the same reasons the men do:  jobs are eliminated; can't afford to do same job for half the wage; or can't find equivalent work.

The women, in sum, are for the first time withdrawing from work with the same uniformity as men in their prime working years. Ninety-six percent of the men held jobs in 1953, their peak year. That is down to 86.4 percent today. But while men are rarely thought of as dropping out to run the household, that is often the assumption when women pull out.

“A woman gets laid off and she stays home for six months with her kids,” Ms. Boushey said. “She doesn’t admit that she is staying home because she could not get another acceptable job.”

The biggest retreat has been in manufacturing, where more than one million women have disappeared from payrolls since 2001. Like men, many have not returned to jobs in other sectors.

Wage stagnation often discourages them from pursuing new jobs, says Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “While pay was rising solidly in the 1990s, you had women continuing to move into the work force,” Mr. Katz said.

Pay is no longer rising smartly for women in the key 25-to-54 age group. Just the opposite, the median pay — the point where half make more and half less — has fallen in recent years, to $14.84 an hour in 2007 from $15.04 in 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (The similar wage for men today is two dollars more.)

Not since the 1970s has that happened to women for so long a stretch — and because this is a new experience for them, “women may be even more reluctant than men to accept declining wages,” said Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts.

Click here for full story.

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July 15, 2008

Job hunting with bad credit
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 12:42 PM

Don't think your bad credit can affect your ability to get a job?

Think again.

As more and more Americans struggle with the faltering economy, rising gas prices, and inflation, there are many opportunities for someone living on the edge of credit health to take a dive into dept.

Add that to the continuing trend of companies cutting jobs and benefits (GM is the latest large US company to announce a paring of workers), and is seems the conditions are ripe for having a lot of unemployed workers struggling to pay the bills, all while looking for new employment. And it can create a sort of catch-22.

That's because some employers check a candidate's credit history before hiring them.

In a recent Bankrate article, Steve Bucci, "The Debt Advisor" columnist, took a question from a reader who lost a job offer because of bad credit. Besides working hard to improve your credit score and pay off debts (which can be difficult if you have no job to begin with), Bucci tells the reader that the only other recourse is to be as up-front as possible with the company you're applying to about your credit problems. Bucci writes:

You are on the right track to mention your past credit troubles when you are interviewing. As luck would have it, my brother Jim Bucci -- the HR guru from Availity (a medical software company) -- is currently visiting me. So, as I was grilling some burgers, I was able to grill him for some insight.

"By volunteering information about a difficult situation or period in your past, you may improve your chances of getting hired," he says. "Companies always look for as many indicators of success as they can when making a hiring decision. Your ability to admit to a past problem and show a positive plan to correct it can count as points in your favor."

A proactive approach may give you a better chance of remaining in the "potential candidate" stack rather than being filed in the trash can.

For my readers who see a layoff coming or plan to look for a higher-paying job in the future, remember to start the credit review and dispute process as far as six months in advance to allow time for corrections to show up.

Bad credit can not only impair your ability to get a job, but it can also affect your chances at moving up the ladder at your existing job because some companies run credit checks when considering candidates for promotions, writes Monster.com finance career expert Dona DeZube. In addition to checking your credit report for problems before it lands on the desk of a career decision-maker, DeZube offers tips for addressing your bad credit with your potential employer. Here are a few:

Get Your Story Straight

What can you say when you're asked about poor credit? Your best bet is to keep your answer short, sweet and sincere. Acknowledge the error of your ways. Assure the employer that there was a one-time problem and you've changed. For instance, you might say: "I came from humble beginnings, and when I went away to college, I'd never had any experience with credit. I got overextended, and that was wrong, but I learned a lesson and worked hard to pay off all my debts. Since then, I've had clean credit and I hope this won't hold me back, because I really want to work for your company."

If you are turned down for a job because of credit problems, the employer has to give you a copy of the report and explain your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Don't Trip Up

There is one other way a credit report can trip you up. When you apply for a new credit card or loan, you provide information about your current employer. That information is passed along to the credit reporting service. If you leave a job off your resume and it appears on your credit report, someone may notice the discrepancy. That's another good reason to pull your own report from all three companies before you start interviewing.

Is It Fair?

If you have poor credit, you're unlikely to agree with employers who think good credit is important. Instead of beating your head against the wall, try applying for work with smaller companies where the hiring process isn't standardized and there are no professional human resources folks to suggest credit checks.

So, are you worried about your credit score affecting your ability to get a job? Has it already? How do you plan on overcoming bad credit when going through the job search process?

Share your thoughts on our forums.

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July 9, 2008

Take off and give nothing back
Posted by Clifford Atiyeh at 10:30 AM

Americans work too hard. That the average American worker gets far fewer vacation days than European workers isn't a new fact, but this article by Barbara Whelehan of Bankrate.com reports that Americans, on average, give back 460 million days of vacation a year. And to top it off, surveys have shown that a significant portion of people feel guilty for taking vacations. All while employers pocket more than $65 billion each year in unused days.

The European Union has a mandate that all workers receive at least four weeks vacation, and many countries go above that. Government workers in the United States, as well as many in the education field, get at least five weeks. The rest of us are usually offered two weeks, with the hope that one day, after 10 years at the company, we'll be graciously rewarded with another week or two.

Should Congress vote to enact a minimum vacation standard? Absolutely. Anyone who says more vacation would make business suffer and companies less productive has no argument today. The economy and the dollar are sagging horrendously, mostly due to lousy fiscal decisions by the government. Taking a few extra days isn't going to make Q1 results drop or cause another 1987 market crash. It will, however, keep employees sane and in greater mental health.

It's also true some folks don't enjoy their lives outside work. Perhaps it's because they're not allowed to have them in the first place.

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July 1, 2008

No relief for commuters
Posted by Clifford Atiyeh at 5:33 PM

(George Rizer/Globe Staff)


Anyone who has rode the T for the past several months knows getting a seat is now almost as nonexistent as a cheap ticket to a Red Sox Game. But aside from all the Boston baseball fanatics that pile on the Green Line - who help the situation by delaying commutes 15 minutes, thank you - there's simply a bigger crowd these days.

The MBTA just reported its fifth consecutive month of year-over-year increases in ridership, which for May was 5.3 percent higher. Try not to wrinkle your suit.

Perhaps commuting on the Pike was a bit better last month, as there was 3.5 percent fewer drivers - about 600,000 cars - in May versus last year. Of course turnpike officials saw that coming, and increased tolls.

So where's the relief? About a week ago the IRS increased the business mileage rate by eight cents to 58.5, but that won't help workers commuting back and forth from home. Add to that double-digit declines in the US market indexes and rising food prices and you've got a truly grim picture.

All the better to make friends with the guy you're squished against on the train.

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