5 work-from-home companies you need to know about

Young woman on the phone working from home. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Working from home is a popular pursuit, according to research by the Telework Research Network. The research group reports that one in five employed Americans work from home at least one day a week, and about 3 million workers never set foot into an office outside home. That number is expected to increase 63 percent in the next five years, thanks in part to greenhouse gas reduction and company savings. Continue Reading

Queen of the Random Job

Most adults of a certain age believe they’ve had some colorful jobs. Chances are likely, however, that Bethany Mooradian has them beat.

Bethany Mooradian

“I began finding random jobs after receiving my degree in puppetry because I realized that most puppeteers don’t make that much money,” says Mooradian, author of I Got Scammed So You Don’t Have To, a how-to book for finding legit work in an economy of scammers. “At one point, I was even Ronald McDonald’s bodyguard.”

Beginning in 1999, in order to make ends meet while pursuing her artistic passions, she looked for odd jobs. It wasn’t long before the search for and execution of odd jobs became a lifestyle. She gave so much advice to her friends on how not to be scammed, that she decided to write a book about it. Continue Reading

How Do Online Job Scammers Sleep at Night?

CollegeRecruiter.com uses the corporate version of Gmail — Google Apps for Business — for email in large part because it does an incredible job of filtering out virtually all spam without incorrectly identifying legitimate emails as spam. It is quite rare when we have false negatives or positives, but one snuck through today. Continue Reading

Expansion of .jobs Charter Walks and Talks Like a Duck Even While Claiming It Isn’t a Duck

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m opposed to the proposed expansion of the .jobs charter from what is currently allowed to what would be allowed. What is currently allowed is for Employ Media, the registrar, to help an employer such as Toyota funnel job seeker traffic to its career web site by registering and promoting Toyota.jobs. What Employ Media wants to do is expand that so that it may use secret criteria which may or may not change and may or many not be applied uniformly to create tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even a million new geographic, occupational field, and other such domains such as NewYork.jobs, engineer.jobs, and diversity.jobs. In essence, Employ Media would be given the right to create the sandbox and decide who gets to play in it, for how long, and at what price. Those who are friends may get to play for longer and at a lower cost. Those who aren’t friends may be treated quite differently. And Employ Media may retain whichever domains it wishes for itself. In effect, Employ Media becomes both the registrar and the competitor.

One of the key complaints against the proposed expansion of the .jobs charter is that Employ Media would create perhaps a million new job boards. A White Paper on Dot Jobs just published by Direct Employers Association executive director Bill Warren — one of the key driving forces behind the proposed expansion — addresses this concern in what I can only describe as double speak:

[T]his is not a million job boards but rather one dynamic jobs platform, it will provide a single interface for posting jobs to niche, targeted locations. Automated job feeds and single postings will only be accepted from vetted employers and, when the .jobs TLD build‐out is complete, all jobs will automatically appear in the appropriate city, state, country, and occupational .jobs URLs. Job seekers will be able to enter a desired city, state, geographic region, country, or occupation plus .jobs (Atlanta.jobs, Georgia.jobs, etc.) in their browser for immediate access to relevant jobs.

So if I understand Bill properly, they’re not creating a million job boards but one and that one job board will be accessible by perhaps a million different domain names such as NewYork.jobs, engineer.jobs, and diversity.jobs and each of those domain names will have different content which is targeted to its users so NewYork.jobs will contain only information about jobs in New York, engineer.jobs will contain information only about engineering jobs, and diversity.jobs will contain information only about jobs for diverse candidates. I’m sorry, but how is that not a million job boards? Oh, because underlying each of them is a common platform. In other words, one database and common software will drive all of them. Does anyone really think that 99 percent of the visitors to these sites will understand that? If there are a million domains with different content, that’s a million job boards regardless of any double speak to the contrary.

Whether the underlying software is shared or unique to each board, they’ll function to the individual users as separate boards. And if they function as separate boards, then they are separate boards. Ever hear the expression that if something walks like a duck and talks like a duck then it must be a duck? Well folks, Employ Media and Direct Employers Association can call it what they wish, but this is a duck.

Scams Targeting Job Seekers

When looking for your next great job, unfortunately you need to be aware that there are people who are looking to take advantage of you. Although the story they tell will change, a scam falls into one of two basic categories: 1. An attempt to get you to pay money; 2. An attempt to steal your identity.
How do they attempt to get you to pay money? Someone may pose as a recruiter stating he/she has a great employer with a high paying job, and all you need to do is pay a placement fee. Another variation of this tactic is to offer you “exclusive” job leads – leads that you can’t find elsewhere, and you can’t see until you pay a fee. Or there are “Work at Home” jobs where you are required to pay a fee for the initial packet of materials.
A good rule of thumb: NEVER pay for a job, or a lead to a job. Read the last sentence again, and let the word “never” sink into your head. No matter what the story is, or how convincing the person is, NEVER pay money. If you follow this rule of thumb, you will never get taken by this type of scam.
How do they attempt to steal your identity? You could receive a job offer, without ever meeting anyone face to face. Does this sound ridiculous? It should, but it won’t when they tell you their story – because they’ll make it sound real. The story changes every time, but usually is something like this: a major company outside of the US needs to transfer money into the US, or needs to deposit money from US sales, and will pay you a (a specified amount, or a percentage of the transaction) to put the money into your bank account. They will tell you this is a great job that pays great money, and you only have to work a few hours each week.
A good rule of thumb: NEVER give your credit card number(s), social security number, bank account number(s), or date of birth to any prospective employer without first meeting with the employer face to face. Resist the pressure to “act now” for a great opportunity that will have to go to someone else – let someone else get their identity stolen. If the employer does not have a local representative to meet with you in a face to face interview, you’ll only need to do a little research to find this great opportunity is nothing more than a scam.
Protect Yourself: When something sounds too good to be true you can research companies through the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission. You can find more detailed information on crimes committed via the internet and how to avoid them, from the US Government’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
This is a guest post by GadBall. It is a free service to job seekers brought to you by Data Frenzy – the world’s largest job distribution company. This site utilizes the advanced technologies, job board partnerships and employer relationships to provide a comprehensive free resume distribution site.
Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.