How I Spent My Night

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document. PT1

Twitter's prehistoric document, circa 2000. An early temporary name was "Stat.us."
Credit: Jack Dorsey.

Sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of years ago by its author, Jack Dorsey (@jack), who started Twitter in 2006 along with co-founders Evan Williams (@ev) and Biz Stone (@biz).

The legal-pad sketch of the idea that would become Twitter has been noticed before, but given all the recent hype, we thought we'd track down Dorsey and ask him about it in a little more detail. In the following interview, Dorsey uses the document to touch on aspects of the micromessaging service's history, including the inspirations and constraints that came to define one of the Web's most rapidly growing information channels.

Twitter didn't just fly out of thin air and land on a branch. As Dorsey explains, it has conceptual roots in the world of vehicle dispatch -- where cars and bikes zooming around town must constantly squawk to each other about where they are and what they're up to.

It was when Dorsey saw these systems through the eyes of the social, mobile Web, where anyone can squawk from anywhere, that Twitter's Big Idea was born.

Is this the founding Twitter document?

It has very special significance -- it's hanging in the office somewhere with one other page. Whenever I'm thinking about something, I really like to take out the yellow notepad and get it down.

Twitter has been my life's work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now. That led me to the only thing that was tractable in discovering that, which was bicycle messengers and truck couriers roaming about, delivering packages.

That allowed me to create this visualization -- to create software that allowed me to see how this was all moving in a city. Then we started adding in the next element, which are taxi cabs. Now we have another entity roaming about the metropolis, reporting where it is and what work it has, going over GPS and CB radio or cellphone. And then you get to the emergency services: ambulances, firetrucks and police -- and suddenly you have have this very rich sense of what’s happening right now in the city.

But it’s missing the public. It's missing normal people.

And that’s where Twitter came in. What really brought me to that conclusion ...

... was instant messenger. This aspect where you can just locate your buddy list and at a glance locate what your friends are up to, or what they say they’re up to. I found the same parallels in dispatch -- here’s a bunch of ambulances and couriers reporting where they are, and here’s my friends. Now, the problem with IM is that you’re bound to the computer, so it really limited the interestingness of the messages.

So that document was around 2000-2001 when I really got into IM and a service called LiveJournal. And it was crystallizing the thought: What if you have LiveJournal, but you just make it more live? You have these people watching your journal, but it all happens in real time, and you can update it from anywhere. That document was an exploration of that concept.

When did you first try to build out the idea?

I tried it back in 2000 with the first device that RIM made -- the RIM 850, which was the predecessor to the BlackBerry. A very simple squat little e-mail device. It had four lines of text and a typical BlackBerry keyboard. They were like $400, and it would just do e-mail. I wrote a very simple program to listen to an e-mail address and take any updates from me and send them out to a list of my friends. And my friends could reply to that e-mail and tell me what they’re doing.

But the problem was that no one else had those devices –- so again, it limited the experience of that. We were limited until 2005-2006 when SMS took off in this country and I could finally send a message from Cingular to Verizon. And that just crystallized -- well, now’s the time for this idea. And we started working on it.

It was really SMS that inspired the further direction -- the particular constraint of 140 characters was kind of borrowed. You have a natural constraint with the couriers when you update your location or with IM when you update your status. But SMS allowed this other constraint, where most basic phones are limited to 160 characters before they split the messages. So in order to minimize the hassle and thinking around receiving a message, we wanted to make sure that we were not splitting any messages. So we took 20 characters for the user name, and left 140 for the content. That’s where it all came from.

For any potential Twitter historians out there, can you offer a few more details about the drawing -- the little googly eyes, for example?

The little eyeballs were "watching." The concept was watching before we kind of switched it and developed it into "following." So you could watch or unwatch someone -- but we found a better word -- follow or unfollow. The important consideration there was that on Twitter, you’re not watching the person, you’re watching what they produce. It’s not a social network, so there’s no real social pressure inherent in having to call them a "friend" or having to call them a relative, because you’re not dealing with them personally, you’re dealing with what they’ve put out there.

The document's user interface metaphor is very similar [to how Twitter turned out]. You have a little box to "set" your update, and past updates would go down into the timeline below.

Immediately the idea was device-agnostic. You could deliver over e-mail or deliver over Jabber, because IM was a real-time mechanism -- and eventually you could deliver over SMS as well. And the only other aspect on that page was how to find other people. If you know someone, you type in their name or e-mail address, and you can immediately start following their updates.

What are the "authentication triples" on the upper left there?

I was trying to be a little bit too smart, and was trying to figure out ways to do everything without a password. But that’s very difficult and requires way too much thought. So we punted on that. But someone will figure it out. [laughs]

Then when did the service's name morph from “Status/Stat.us” to “twittr” to Twitter?

The working name was just "Status" for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on ... We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere.

We wanted to capture that in the name -- we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word "twitch," because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But "twitch" is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was.

The whole bird thing: bird chirps sound meaningless to us, but meaning is applied by other birds. The same is true of Twitter: a lot of messages can be seen as completely useless and meaningless, but it’s entirely dependent on the recipient. So we just fell in love with the word. It was like, "Oh, this is it." We can use it as a verb, as a noun, it fits with so many other words. If you get too many messages you’re "twitterpated" -- the name was just perfect.

But you needed that short code -– in order to operate SMS you need the short code to operate with this cellular administration. So we were trying to get "twttr" -- because we could just take out the vowels and get the 5-digit code. But unfortunately Teen People had that code -– it was ‘txttp’ [Text TP]. So we just decided to get an easy-to-remember short code [40404], and put the vowels back in.

So Twitter was it, and it’s been a big part of our success. Naming something and getting the branding right is really important.

Original Article - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator.html

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document. Pt2

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. (Credit: Joi Ito via Flickr)

On Wednesday we posted the first half of an interview with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack), in which he talked about the conceptual roots of the site. This is the second half of that talk. Here Dorsey speaks more about Twitter's contours as a communications medium, its evolution and how its strong suit -- so far, at least -- is in exposing the present moment, rather than the past.

In the first part of the interview you talked a lot about how both the inspiration and architecture of Twitter came largely from the mobile world. But it seems like more and more people are using it from static locations -- laptops and desktops -- where all the Web's info and tool sets are much more accessible.

The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what's going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn't allow for that.

A lot of different [geographic] markets are using SMS [text messaging] more than here in the U.S. I think what we're seeing here with SMS is that people are still getting more comfortable with it. It's relatively new in the grand scheme of things. Europe has had it and been comfortable with it for over 10 years, and we just got comfortable in 2006. There's still some maturity in terms of using mobile technology in the American culture and what that means.

But the mobile aspect of the service is really engaging, and you see that a lot in these "massively shared experiences" that we've done well at: natural disasters, man-made disasters, events, conferences, presidential elections. A lot of these people are not sitting in front of a laptop screen -- they're typing from their phone. We feel that even though we started with that, and it lessened a bit in relative proportion, it'll continue to increase.

Do people use the service differently depending on whether they're mobile or fixed?

Yes, that's one of the things about Twitter, is that the experience degrades gracefully. When you're out mobilely and you're probably at a party or you're traveling, etc., you're sharing that experience. When you're in front of a computer, you have a little more time to compose yourself. You may have more thoughtfulness in your message, you may have more reflection. It's a little bit less off-the-cuff. And maybe a little bit slower as well, but at the same time, in terms of consumption of the information, you can just take in huge amounts of information in a very rich way in a short time.

So I think it really depends on what you're asking -- if it's production of the content or the consumption. But I absolutely feel that Twitter scales to every end of that spectrum.

How do you think of Twitter? Is it a service, a medium, a piece of software, what?

I feel that it's something new. I think it's a new way to communicate. It has a new take on the address book. It's a new way to interact with people. And at the same time, it does a very good job of exposing what's happening in the world right now: You can see what's ...

... trending globally, you can limit that locally and figure out what's trending within a five-mile radius of you, or you can use it socially and figure out what's trending within your own social network. That's where the newness is. I just haven't seen anything like that before.

When I think of Twitter, I think of -- it's really hard to define because we're still coming up with the vocabulary -- but I think it's defined a new behavior that's very different than what we've seen before. So yeah: new medium.

What's been one of the most surprising steps in Twitter's evolution for you?

Well, we really haven't changed the application or feature set in over two years. It's pretty much maintained the original vision since Day One. And that really adds a lot of weight to the concept and how much desire there is for communication of this sort.

Back in the day we thought, well, if we get to this many users or this level of relevancy in the mainstream, we're going to have to add a bunch of features, and make this or that group of people happy... but that really hasn't come to pass. The only substantial thing we've added to the service is search. Which is huge, but it doesn't change the fundamental aspect of what Twitter is. Search does a great job of exposing what's going on, but it's not changing the interaction dramatically, it's just making it much, much easier.

So the ability to have a service that really hasn't changed and is still growing by leaps and bounds is astonishing to me because it's like, wow, a simple concept like that -- the essence of some communication pulled out from other mediums -- really has wings on its own.

But even if the service itself isn't evolving, the community and ecosystem around it is growing.

And that's the trick. The concept is so simple and so open-ended that people can make of it whatever they wish. They seek value and they add value. I've always said that Twitter is whatever you make of it. Because the first complaint we hear from everyone is: Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother's eating for lunch? But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled -- you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share. So if you decide to hook your plants up to Twitter and have it report when it needs to be watered, then that's a valid usage, or if you just decide to report what you're eating for lunch, that's a valid usage too.

How do you feel about the role Twitter is playing in news gathering and news creating?

Suddenly you have all these people on the street roaming about, and they're able to report on everything they see. So a certain mass of them can report on the earthquake they just felt, and another mass reports on what they felt about the Obama inauguration, and another group on the homeless issues in San Francisco. You've got a further richness to add to a typical journalistic process.

And when you have a mass of people updating about a particular thing, you're exposing a trend: This is happening right now in this location or on this topic. It gives you an immediacy and relevancy for what people are talking about right now.

Some people follow thousands or tens of thousands of people. What's the use of that? Doesn't it undercut half of the point of the service, which is to get a coherent stream of incoming information?

I don't know how people do it. I personally can't do it. I don't follow people in the traditional way. There are a few people whose messages I get delivered in real time via SMS. So those people are very close to me, or I'm around them. Like when I'm visiting New York, I turn on my New York friends just because I'm more interested in their particular interruptions. And then I follow like 300 people on the Web.

But I don't go back in time. You're kind of as good as your last update. That's what you're currently thinking or doing, or your current approach towards life. If that really interests me, I go to that person's profile page and read back a little bit. But in terms of my timeline, I'm just not obsessive about going all the way back in time and catching every single message that people have updated about. It's only relevant in the now, unless I'm fascinated by it.

I imagine that people follow a lot of people just to get a sense of, like, I've got a full room here, and I've got a lot of people that are giving wildly different opinions and updates -- I'll try them out for a time and if I don't like what they say next, I can very easily leave them. But like any other technology, we figure out what our relationship is to it. Some people want to go big right away and filter out, some people want to stay small and add people as they find them. And some people are constantly editing the balance between both. It's just important that the technology allows for all of those approaches.

Is there any idea of splitting or filtering the stream so you won't get so much '@reply traffic' -- where you can see the people you're following replying individually to their followers?

There's actually a setting. If you go to your settings page and you say, show me @replies ["at replies"] only from those I'm following. So if my co-founder Biz [Stone] replies to his friend Joe, if I set that setting I won't see that reply, I'll just see Biz's reply to anyone I'm following.

So it's kind of an unknown feature but we do have it in there, and I definitely keep it on because it's just way too much information. I don't need to see all these diverse conversations happening all over the Internet. I only care about those people that are conversing together that I know. So when Biz is replying to @ev[an Williams], then I'll see Biz's @reply.

Original Article - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/jack-dorsey-on.html

Hired! Going to church to get a job

Confronted with a tough job market, Michael Butler reached out to his community and received multiple job offers.

By Jessica Dickler, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: February 26, 2009: 3:45 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In today's tough economy, many people are praying for a job offer. When Michel Butler headed to church, he ended up with multiple offers.

One year ago, Butler, 42, was a consultant in the home-building industry in Texas with aspirations of building his own spec homes in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. But six months later, he was an unemployed husband and father of three with no job prospects to speak of.

"The market here really hit the skids in late June, early July, and I knew it was time to consider something outside the industry," Butler said.

First, Butler joined a free career workshop at a local church, which was open to the public. They met every Saturday evening and covered everything from networking to resume writing and interview skills.

"I think that church organization was really a feather in my cap," he said. "It helped me focus on my next steps and also gave me refreshers in interviewing and resume writing," he said.

Then, Butler plugged back into some old networks, including college friends and former employers.

One friend introduced Butler to a local business coach who put him in touch with a few hiring managers and by October he had two interviews in two different industries.

Prudential offered him a job as a financial service agent. They would pay for the training but Butler's income would be largely based on commission. Although that wasn't ideal, he accepted right away.

Then came another offer, this time for a marketing position with a six figure salary. "I couldn't pass it up," Butler said, so he quit Prudential shortly after starting and went to work as relationship manager at Spear One in Dallas.

Aside from the bigger salary and better job security, "the best part about my new position is that it is fun," Butler said, which is the last thing he imagined he'd be having after his last career crumbled.

Getting off the couch

Our panel of career coaches agree that Butler was wise to tap into local organizations that could help him brush up on his job search skills and expose him to other job seekers sharing their experiences.

"Church groups are a good way to use existing community connections to expand your network of people," according to Career and Business Consultant Kathy Robinson. But the danger is that "you could be getting 20-year-old resume advice," she warned. "As long as the members are keeping themselves current on job search techniques it's actually a fabulous resource."

He was also smart to dig into his networks, said Ford Myers author of the upcoming book, "Get the Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring."

"The wrong thing to do is sit at home in your pajamas and apply to jobs online," he said, "it's isolating and depressing."

Reconnecting with college friends, former coworkers and even other unemployed workers in the community can pay off big time. "That's called networking and that's the single most important activity anyone can do when they are in transition," Myers said.

For Butler, those connections led to not one, but two job offers and the experts agree that while not encouraged, quitting one new job to accept a better offer is acceptable in today's market.

"It's every man for himself in this economy," Myers said.

Butler's first responsibility is to himself and his family, according to Gerry Crispin, co-owner of Careerxroads, a consulting firm based in New Jersey.

Even after finding full-time employment, Crispin recommends that workers stay in touch with recruiters and keep up with their other resources. Keeping yourself in the game is essential to getting job offers.

"Are you ever 100% out of the market? Yeah when you're dead," Crispin said, "or retired," he added.

Original Article - http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/26/news/economy/hired_butler/index.htm

Tim Esse

Employers Hit Salaried Staff With Furloughs

By DANA MATTIOLI and SARA MURRAY

Temporary layoffs, once confined to blue-collar workers, are hitting white-collar culture as employers dig deep to cut costs.

More companies are instituting these short-term hiatuses, called furloughs, as a humane alternative to permanent job cuts. But the spread of furloughs to new sectors and a new class of workers has created a host of issues.

"The places that are now exploring this or discussing this are not industries where it's traditional," says Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, dean of the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "I think a lot of [human-resources] offices are sort of having to figure this out. There isn't a rule book that they were given."

Furloughs have long been a way of life for workers in up-and-down industries such as construction and auto assembly. For instance, auto workers can have weekslong periods of time off due to slowing orders or retooling of factories. Now furloughs are happening in state governments and universities, publishing, technology companies and even the arts and entertainment industry.

In the past few months alone, the states of California and Maryland, Clemson University, Texas semiconductor firm Spansion, Gulfstream Aerospace, and publishing firms like Media General and Gannett have announced furloughs of professional workers.

These required unpaid periods let companies keep talented workers by reducing hours instead of cutting jobs. "The biggest issue our clients face right now is regaining momentum when business picks up, while having to hire the fewest number of new people," says Fred Crandall, a senior consultant for Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. in Chicago. Mr. Crandall says that's the main reason more employers are inquiring about furloughs -- especially those in the financial-services and retail sectors.

A Watson Wyatt survey of 245 large U.S. companies to be released this week found that 6% of respondents plan mandatory furloughs over the next 12 months in reaction to the economy, with 11% having already implemented one. Many are taking these actions for the first time.

That's the case for Arizona State University. Never before in its 114-year history has the school used furloughs, says Matt McElrath, chief human-resources officer for the 67,000-student college. The state-funded university's budget was cut by $88 million this fiscal year, forcing the school to furlough staff between nine and 15 days by the end of June. Mr. McElrath says the measure will save about $25 million. "Had we not done this, we would have had to lay off about 1,000 administrative personnel," he says.

However, furloughs are no guarantee against eventual layoffs or other cuts, especially in extreme budget situations.

Winnebago Industries Inc., for example, required all salaried employees to take a weeklong furlough during its second quarter, which ends this month. The move will save the company between $800,000 and $850,000, according to Chief Executive Officer Bob Olson, who will take a week off. But the Forest City, Iowa, recreational-vehicle maker hasn't ruled out repeat furloughs or even layoffs. "There are no guarantees in this recession," says Mr. Olson.

Joel Albertson, a systems analyst for Winnebago, says he has cut back on spending in response. But, he says, he isn't rattled by his company's furlough policy. "All you have to do is look at your evening news," he says. "Other companies are doing the same thing."

In some cases furloughs can feel as if they go too far, especially when they seem to be punishing the highest-paid workers. The University System of Maryland took a scaled approach, by forcing more than 20,000 employees to take up to six days off based on their salary -- a move that protects the lowest on the pay scale, but one administrators say could disenfranchise high performers.

"You've got very talented, dedicated people who work long hours and here you're asking them to basically give up several days worth of salary," says System Chancellor William Kirwan. "To ask a Nobel Prize winner to take a furlough day is not a very comfortable feeling."

While for manufacturing employees the job ends when they walk off the line, Mr. Kirwan says many professors are coming in anyway. Experts say other white-collar professionals may be inclined to do work on their furlough days to keep up with client demands or important projects.

A companywide furlough that doesn't distinguish between pay levels, though, raises the question of whether cutting from the lowest earners is fair. For this group, it "could mean the difference between eating or paying rent," Illinois professor Mr. Cutcher-Gershenfeld says.

The Port of Seattle is hoping to save $2.9 million by furloughing all of its 800 nonunion workers for two weeks. Most of them are professionals -- administrators and staff who do everything from financial analysis to executive duties. The CEO "wanted it to be fair and equitable and across the board," says spokeswoman Charla Skaggs. Further cuts will be more complicated for the port because it will have to negotiate with the union to save another $2.9 million.

For her part Ms. Skaggs, who will take her first furlough week in the beginning of March, says it's an unsettling situation, but she's relieved she still has a job. "Of all the cost-cutting measures I'm hearing other companies have to take, this one feels like it's the best of all possible difficult choices," she says.

Workers at Ashland Inc., will experience another downside to employee furlough: decreased contributions to their 401(k)s. For the first time in its history, the Covington, Ky., chemical company implemented a two-week furlough for nearly all of its salaried employees in the U.S. and Canada. While the time off won't affect employee benefits like health care, the company will contribute less to investment accounts since employees' overall salary will be lower.

Some furloughed white-collar workers say that while losing pay hurts, they are more concerned about their low-wage counterparts and are taking matters into their own hands. Clemson University is furloughing all employees for five days after its budget was cut by $38 million. In January, after faculty expressed concern for lower-wage workers, Clemson set up a relief fund that professors, alums and others could donate to. They raised $71,000 benefiting 158 employees in need of assistance, says Michelle Piekutowski, associate chief human-resources officer at the South Carolina school.

To ease the financial blow, some companies are reaching out to workers whose furloughs will qualify them for unemployment. Arizona State brought state unemployment staff to campus to help register qualified employees. Often those who take their time all at once can qualify for the benefits. At Pella, Iowa-based Pella Corp., where 2,400 employees will have one scheduled furlough week every four to six weeks, state unemployment staff were also brought in to help, said spokeswoman Kathy Krafka Harkema.

Still, in cases where furloughs amount to only a few days over a period of months, workers typically cannot apply for unemployment benefits because state benefit systems aren't set up to handle these sorts of temporary unemployment scenarios.

John Casper, 51, an order and project scheduler at Pella, got a job at a farm and home store to supplement the pay he'll lose. His wife, who also works at Pella's headquarters, took a part-time job at the local Subway. Mr. Casper, a 26-year company veteran, said he doesn't mind the furlough if it helps prevent layoffs. "I feel good about being able to help [other] people at the company," he says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123542559566852689.html

Darn Good Reasons Why You Should Or Should Not Hire

Well, if you live in Michigan, or anywhere else in our country, let’s face it. The economy stinks. People are getting laid off and companies are closing down or outsourcing to other countries practically on a daily basis. So, what good would hiring a professional resume service do for you? EVERYTHING.

It’s understandable to be cautious about hiring a resume writer, especially online where you can’t visually shake a hand or see an office full of certificates, awards, books, or anything else that might prove credibility. Here are a few reasons you SHOULD hire a professional resume writer:

1- PROFESSIONALISM - A professional resume writer knows what he/she is doing. I’ve had clients tell me over and over that having it professionally written got them the job. They had sent in the old one previously and at my urging, resent the new one and got the job!

Make sure whomever you hire is CERTIFIED. If you are unsure whether or not your writer is certified, go to parw.com and type in their name. If they are certified, it will come up as such. A certified writer has gone through extensive training and was tested on it, ensuring their work meets the standards of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. If you are going to spend the money, you want the best.

2- BRANDING/PR - A professional resume writer acts as your personal cheerleader, your brander, your public relations firm. You want someone who knows how to present your qualifications in your best light. They will gather the relevant information (career goals, experience, training, etc.) to create a professional image for you. Something you will be proud to hand out to a hiring manager.

3-GHOSTWRITERS- A professional resume writer knows how to craft content that gets people interested. They create a resume that sounds and feels like YOU. A professional resume writer constantly updates their skills and abilities by keeping up with the latest in career news, and attending webinars, teleseminars and conferences.

4- FORMAT - How bored are you when you see a resume that is bullet after bullet of a position description? Would you call that person back? Neither will the hiring person. Professional resume writers are TRAINED in creating unique documents with appealing fonts, borders and styling that is all YOU.

5- RESOURCE CENTER - Your professional resume writer is a career one-stop-shop! Chances are they have a wide range of resources to offer during your job search. Many are also Certified Career Coaches and remain well informed of career events and other services helpful to their clients. Many times employers will contact resume writers for suitable candidates.

Reasons NOT TO HIRE a professional resume writer:

1- They offer you a resume package for $19.95. Most likely this company is a printing or secretarial service that will rewrite everything you gave them, or dump your info into a pre-written template.

2- They tell you they are certified, but you check on the PARW site and they are not. WRONG. Turn around and go back. They are misrepresenting the truth and God knows what they will do with your money.

3- They offer a 30-day guarantee if you don’t get an interview. I know this is a touchy one, because many of my colleagues do it, but here is my beef with that: with each client, I put my heart and soul into the resume. I am already writing a resume that I think will knock the socks off any reader. So how can I possibly offer a rewrite on that? I already wrote a killer resume and I stand behind it. I would rather sit down with the client and go over what they have been doing for job search because I guarantee that is where the problems lie.

So, to sum it up, it’s important to find a solid and reputable resume service. Check for memberships to professional career organizations with writers that are certified.

A professionally written resume is a good investment and is worth it’s weight in gold, not to mention it will get you noticed immediately.

Erin Kennedy is a Certified Professional & Executive Resume Writer & Career Consultant, and President of Professional Resume Services. She is a Nationally Published Writer & Contributor in 8 best selling career books. Erin has achieved the prestigious T.O.R.I. (Toast of the Resume Industry) Award nomination in 2007 and 2008.

To get more career-related information and resume writing tips, visit Professional Resume Services at http://www.proreswriters.com or check out her blog at: proreswriters.blogspot.

Creative. Powerful. Proven.

Erin is a member of: Professional Association of Resume Writers (PARW), Career Directors International (CDI), Association of Online Resume and Career Professionals (AORCP), Career Professionals Group, and Women for Hire. Want to know more about Erin Kennedy, CPRW? Read her LinkedIn profile at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/erinkennedycprw

Original Article - http://www.employmentdigest.net/2009/02/darn-good-reasons-why-you-should-or-should-not-hire-a-professional-resume-service/

How to Get Your Resume Noticed

Tory Johnson of Women for Hire is one of the country's foremost career experts. She recently wrote an article for Yahoo! in which she listed 12 great ways to get your resume noticed by prospective employers:

1. Find job postings on job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com and corporate employment web sites and print out the postings of interest to you.
2. Highlight the keywords and industry language used to describe the requirements and responsibilities.
3. Compare those words and phrases to the language that appears in your current resume.
4. Add the most relevant keywords to your resume. Remember that applicant tracking systems -- the software employers use to house and search for resumes which have been submitted to them -- will search for keyword matches so the more matches, the more likely a recruiter will actually look at your resume.
5. Once your resume reflects a strong match, submit it online.
6. If the system requests a cover letter, write a short one that expresses why you're a strong match and why you'd like to join the organization. Make sure it is customized to the organization and the opportunity to which you're applying.
7. Never submit a generic, one-size-fits-all resume or cover letter.
8. Find an internal referral to make a personal introduction using sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Note that when you apply to jobs on CollegeRecruiter.com we automatically show you the people that you may know within the organization through our partnership with LinkedIn. Also get active in industry associations to establish those connections and re-connect with your friends from school and people you know through your family and "regular" friends.
9. Follow-up with a call or email to the recruiter responsible for filling the position. Make sure they received your resume but, more importantly, give them your pre-rehearsed 30 second elevator pitch.
10. Get your resume into the hands of a decisionmaker. If you don't know who that is, find out by calling the company and asking the operator to put you through. If that doesn't work, do a Web search on the term "recruiter" or "HR director" along with the name of your employer of choice. The results may reveal the name you're trying to find. LinkedIn is another resource to find the correct name.
11. Stay top of mind. Every recruiter is different so be prepared to work with each differently.
12. If the employer doesn't tell you when to follow-up then ask, "what's the best way to keep in touch?"

Better Living Through Twitter?

Posted by Mary Pilon

So the world appears completely besotted with Twitter, the Web service that lets users send short, 140-character messages, called tweets, to followers. Users can also follow friends, favorite Web sites, famous people – even personal finance blogs (such as the Wallet).

Banks, retailers and other large companies have also signed on to the service, and savvy Twitter users are finding ways to save money and get responses to consumer complaints. Here’s a brief rundown:

Following your favorite retailers or deal sites on Twitter can alert you to limited-time or exclusive sales. Airlines, including Southwest and jetBlue, have a strong presence on Twitter, where they point followers to fare sales or passenger trends. For electronics fiends, Amazon and Dell have both offered special deals to their Twitter followers.

Even better than discounts for people weary of automated customer-service lines, Twitter is rapidly becoming a place where consumers can share complaints and receive personal responses form companies.

Dell, which has long required its customer service representatives to monitor blogs and respond to bad press. Dell now sifts through tweets, as do customer service representatives from UPS, Comcast and Bank of America. Someone even contacted Bank of America through Twitter and got a fee waived.

“Our customers were out there,” says Holly Hastings, national customer experience executive for Bank of America. “We had to start responding to our customers on Twitter.”

David Knapp oversees Bank of America’s Twitter account, searching tweets that mention the company and contacting users to offer help. Twitter users can directly message Knapp, who then refers the customer to a phone number or appropriate channel.

Hastings estimates more than 300 customers have resolved issues through Twitter since the bank signed on in early January, and Knapp’s Twitter feed has over 1,200 followers. BoA may expand the program in the future to meet customer demand, but, says Ms. Hastings, wants to “keep it personalized.”

Twitter can also keep you on top of financial news. Most news outlets and blogs have twitter feeds that will churn out a headline and URL to a story in 140 characters or less. (You can follow The Wallet, The Wall Street Journal’s personal finance and investing blog at twitter.com/WSJWallet.)

There are budgeting benefits, too. With the added download TweetWhatYouSpend for Twitter, you can import your expenses on Twitter from your mobile phone, establish spending limits, categorize your spending and download that information as a spreadsheet. We particularly like this for tracking business expense accounts.

The added layer of “do I really need this” questioning that comes with knowing that you must commit purchases to Twitter is another added benefit. You can add privacy settings so that only people you approve as followers can track your spending patterns, or keep the feed public and see what role shame has.

If you have a Twitter account and the urge to follow stocks and buzz in the investing community, join StockTwits. StockTwits is a social networking tool for investors. You can hear what people are trading and why, or follow specific ticker symbols for companies you’re interested in. It’s also a great medium for those short outbursts that the market may induce.

Then again, if you prefer to not have minute-by-minute updates on your portfolio these days, it’s completely understandable.

Permalink | Trackback URL: http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2009/02/23/better-living-through-twitter/trackback/

5 Tips To Protect Your Online Reputation

Post by Kim Komando with USA Today's CyberSpeak:

As millions seek new jobs to replace positions lost in the recession, keep in mind that the Internet gives employers unprecedented access to information about you.

Employers aren't content with facts gleaned from public records. They're also using the Internet to assess your character. That means they're searching your name on Google.

They're visiting social-networking sites and reading blog posts. Unflattering comments and photos can put you out of the running for a job. So, you will want to clean up your online reputation before job hunting. For direct links to the sites mentioned, go to www.komando.com/news.

Search for yourself

Your first step is to assess your online reputation. Start by doing a Google search of your name and its variations.

Do other searches that include your profession, previous employers and locations. You may be surprised what turns up.

You should also search networking sites. Pipl, Wink and PeekYou will allow you to search multiple sites quickly.

You will want to make two lists from your searches. On one list, place links to sites with unflattering information. On the other list, place links to flattering information.

Remove the negative

Maybe you posted some of the unflattering images or comments. In that case, remove them immediately. Err on the side of caution and remove anything that is potentially offensive.

Next, contact the owners of sites that cast you in a negative light. Send a polite e-mail message requesting that negative information be removed.

State your case clearly. If a post is erroneous, provide proof of its inaccuracy. It doesn't hurt to mention that you're job searching.

Things are more complicated with unflattering photos and truthful information. You will need to appeal to the writer's sense of decency. Keep your requests pleasant and polite, and you may be successful.

Promote the positive

Some sites will honor your requests. Other sites may not. So, you may need to mitigate negative posts with positive ones.

I recommend that you start a blog highlighting your professional skills. Write posts on your field to show off your professional knowledge. List your full name at the bottom of your posts. Include links to the positive comments you found. And be sure to list your accomplishments in your bio.

These postings should push the negative postings from Google's top search results. You can also use your blog to speak indirectly to potential employers.

For example, say you share a name with a porn star. You don't want potential employers to confuse the two of you. So, create a post listing people who share your name. It's a good way to eliminate confusion.

Don't forget networking sites

Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are the biggest threat to your job search. Clean up any networking profiles you have.

If you don't have networking profiles, create them. Then link to them on your blog. Employers will be able to find your profiles easily. Make sure these profiles are squeaky clean.

Why create the profiles? They can eliminate confusion. An employer won't confuse you with that other Mary Johnson with a raunchy profile.

Create a profile on LinkedIn. Use it to showcase your professional accomplishments. You can also network with others who can help with your job search.

Professionals can help

Companies like ReputationDefender and Reputation Hawk specialize in improving online reputations. These services can be costly. In some cases, you'll pay thousands of dollars. Others charge $30 or so for each post they remove.

These services are handy if you have money but no time. You can do most of this yourself, though.

Cleaning up your reputation can take months. So, start now - whether you're job hunting or not.

USAToday

Tim Esse

Stress management - 11 tips to help you sail through your job search

Money woes. A sense of rejection. Questions and pressure from family and friends. An uncertain future. If you've recently lost your job, you know this dismal laundry list all too well. And while being forced into unemployment is never easy, the fact that it's happened in the middle of a terrible recession rife with lay-offs really amps up the stress. That's why it's crucial to take care of your mental health—and if you do the right stress-busting exercises, you'll also improve your odds of finding a job.

There are few experiences in modern life more stressful than losing a job, even if the job wasn't a very good one. It's all too easy to convince yourself that you'll never find another one. And besides being a terribly depressing mindset, it can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I've seen it all before: People who stay upbeat, approach their search with a sense of balance, and work diligently and consistently every day will find a job when they are using the right job-search techniques. Attitude counts for a lot more than you might think.

Here are a few suggestions from The Five O'Clock Club that will help you push through your job hunt stress and hear "You're hired!" in no time.

Realize it's okay to be "between jobs." When you have a job it's easy to tell the world what you do: "I'm a divisional controller at Roland Chemicals," "I'm an administrator at St. Matthew's Hospital," or "I'm a marketing manager at Southworth Paper." But when you don't have a job, "So what do you do?" becomes a dreaded question. We resort to a euphemism, "I'm between jobs." Ironically, many folks don't really believe they're between jobs—even though it is absolutely the truth.

You must learn to ignore the inner voice that in your darkest moments says, "I'll never get a good job again." When you tell people, "I'm between jobs," you assume they believe you. Believe it yourself. Even if you've just been turned down for three jobs, remind yourself that you got three interviews and you can get three more.

Stay in touch with colleagues and friends from your former workplace. Of course people don't stop being friends with people they used to work with. But when you're unemployed, that daily camaraderie is gone. "Let's get together for drinks one of these days" is now the reality instead of seeing Mark or Helen at the next desk every day—and sharing news of daily life as well as of the work to be done. One of the most painful aspects of not getting up and going to work every day is missing people who were fun to be around.

That's why it's so important that you stay in touch with your work friends. Number one, if you lost your job as the result of a layoff, they are probably stressed and worried about keeping their own job; or if they got laid off too, they're as worried about finding a new one as you are. In either case they may need a friend like you to talk to. Also, having worked with you, they'll be able to provide you with some positive reinforcement on your down days and remind you of your past achievements.

Treat your job search like a job. After many years of catching the 7:35 train or driving the morning commute and putting in eight- or ten-hour days, the lack of that routine can be disorienting. As much as we wish we could sleep late more often, as much as we welcome three- or four-day holiday weekends, our lives are structured around work schedules, whether it's nine-to-five or some other shift. When people are robbed of such routines, they can feel that they've been cut loose.

The best way to overcome the shell shock of losing your daily routine is to create a new one. If you've been laid off, treat your job search as your new job. After all, between the résumé updating, scanning want ads, and networking, there's plenty to be done. Providing yourself with the day-to-day structure you're so familiar with will help you keep your sanity and get going in your job search more quickly.

Exercise regularly and keep a healthy lifestyle. Regular physical exercise and a healthy diet help to reduce tension and stress. If your former routine involved going to the gym and you can still afford it, keep going. Or if you've given up your gym membership, a half-hour walk every day will do the trick on a budget. Keep an eye on what you're eating as well. If you're depressed, it's probably easier to order takeout or go for fast food instead of cooking, but this is not the time to neglect good nutrition.

Healthy foods give you energy and keep you well. And you'll need both to be successful in the job market. And of course, if you consistently eat the wrong things, you'll gain weight—which is not only depressing but also prevents you from looking your best in your interview suit.

Despite the worries, take time to enjoy the change of pace. Being freed from the nine-to-five grind means you finally have time to slow down and take stock of what you really want to achieve in your life. Many people have been charging ahead so intensely, so relentlessly, for so many years and putting up with demands and environments that drag them down that they haven't noticed they've strayed off course. Unemployment can be a time to think about your life and plot course corrections. Some of the questions you'll want to consider as you plan your job search are as follows:

• What matters to me the most?
• What do I want to do differently?
• What hasn't worked for me in the past?
• What was my own role (if any) in my job loss? What can I do better the next time?
• How am I taking care of myself?

Serious deliberation of these questions can be liberating and energizing. And they can help you focus your job search so that you don't waste any time looking in industries or at companies where you know you won't be happy or appreciated. Who knows? You may even come to see losing your job as a gift—one that spurs you on to change your life for the better.

Stay away from negative news and naysayers. Even in good economic times, you don't have to go far to find negative news about the world situation. During a recession, it's in your face 24/7. If you're in the job market and are having trouble keeping up your own morale, stay away from the news, especially headlines about massive layoffs and the high unemployment rate.

In the same vein, stay away from the naysayers, whether they be friends, family, or otherwise, who only reinforce the negative news available to you in your paper and on TV. Their negativity will only get you down. You know you're facing an uphill battle. You don't need the news or those around you constantly reminding you of it. Your ability to stay positive will be a huge factor in maintaining your mental well-being during your job hunt.

If you need to vent, vent! If you're angry, frustrated, feeling betrayed—whatever—find people to talk to about what has happened. But remember, there's only so much your family wants to hear, so it's best you find a support group where you can discuss your problems with people who are feeling the same pains you are.

"Getting it all out" does have healing power, and there is nothing especially heroic or brave about trying to go it alone. It will take only a little snooping on the Internet or in your local newspapers to find support groups at churches and synagogues, libraries and community centers. You'll find people who will listen, and whose stories will help you feel less isolated.

Look at your unemployment as a business problem. When you had bad days at work, you analyzed whatever problem was plaguing you, marshaled resources and people, and came up with solutions. In the wake of job loss, your emotions—your hurt or anger—may be blocking this kind of response. But a great way to overcome that is to think of getting hired again as a business problem—you've rarely been stumped before, why now? Set your objective: To find a satisfying job that pays the bills. And develop your business strategy for achieving it. Track down the people who are in a position to hire you, position yourself appropriately, offer proposals to meet their needs, and turn interviews into offers. Remember, attitude alone won't get you there, but if you make sure you are using the right job-search techniques, after a while your unemployment business problem will be solved.

Celebrate short-term successes. When you get up in the morning, don't grumble to yourself, "I'm looking for a job again today." Rather, set up some achievable goals for the day so that you end it with a sense of accomplishment. Write five more targeted letters. Identify ten more companies to contact. Make ten follow-up phone calls. Set up one or two networking meetings. Just being able to cross these goals off your list at the end of the day is a good feeling. And, of course, they often lead to something even better.

Some of the activities will pay off—you land a meeting, you get suggestions on good companies and people to contact. These are the short-term successes that feed good morale. And after you've had a few of them, you'll quickly find that you wake up one morning saying, "I start my new job today!"

Keep on top of your game. So you don't go to the office from nine to five like you used to. That's no excuse to let your skills and knowledge slip. There's no better time than a job search to make sure you stay current and sharp. Use some of your time to catch up on reading journals and attending meetings of your professional associations. This might also be a good time to volunteer for an association committee in your industry or to help a friend in his/her business.

You might consider using the time to take a continuing ed. course, one that you could never find the time for when you were employed. That can be a great selling point when you're interviewing. Temping or consulting may also help you stay current, and of course, the cash it brings in can help you stay calm and focused. It's also a great networking opportunity, and if you are successful wherever you end up, you may be offered a permanent paying position.

Have fun. You might be laughing at that suggestion. But in the same way that you get burnt out on your job after working non-stop for a month or two, you can get burnt out on your job search—so make yourself walk away from it from time to time.
You need to stay fresh, so take a break from your job hunt to have three hours of fun a week. Laughter is good therapy. When you're unemployed you have more flexibility in booking your fun time. So don't hesitate to go to your favorite museum on a Wednesday morning or watch an afternoon ball game.

If you stay positive and make "I will persevere!" your motto, you will land a great job, sooner or later. You are employable and this time of transition is exactly that—a transition. Besides, living in a place of hope just feels better than living in a place of despair. Always choose hope. You'll get to where you want to go just as fast, and the journey will be far more rewarding.

About the Book:

The Good Person Guidebook: Transforming Your Personal Life (Five O'Clock Books, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-944054-16-1, $14.95) is available at Amazon

http://www.itworld.com/career/63012/eleven-stress-busters-help-you-sail-through-your-job-search

Top 10 Online Job Search Tips

CareerBuilder.com

While the popularity of online job boards puts millions of jobs at one's fingertips, it has also made the job applicant pool that much bigger. For this reason, national job search sites and the Internet as a whole have gotten a bad rap from some industry professionals as an ineffective job seeker tool; on the contrary, the Internet actually can be a great resource for job seekers -- they just need to know how to use it.

When it comes to a fruitful online job search, successful job seekers follow these 10 guidelines.

1. If you build it, they can come.
Instead of simply posting your résumé on a Web site, take it one step further and design an easily-navigable Web site or online portfolio where recruiters can view your body of work, read about your goals and obtain contact information.

2. Check yourself to make sure you haven't wrecked yourself.
Google yourself to see what comes up -- and what potential employers will see if they do the same. If you don't like what you find, it's time to do damage control.

3. Narrow your options.
Many job boards offer filters to help users refine their search results more quickly. You should have the option to narrow your job search by region, industry and duration, and, oftentimes, you can narrow it even more by keywords, company names, experience needed and salary.

4. Go directly to the source.
Instead of just applying for the posted job opening, one of the best strategies to finding a job is to first figure out where you want to work, target that company or industry and then contact the hiring manager. Also, many employers' career pages invite visitors to fill out candidate profiles, describing their background, jobs of interest, salary requirements and other preferences.

5. Find your niche with industry Web sites.
Refine your search even more by visiting your industry's national or regional Web site, where you can find jobs in your field that might not appear on a national job board. More and more employers are advertising jobs on these sites in hopes of getting a bigger pool of qualified applicants.

6. Try online recruiters.
Recruiters will help match you with jobs that meet your specific skills and needs. Not sure where to start? Sites such as recruiterlink.com, onlinerecruitersdirectory.com, searchfirm.com and i-recruit.com provide links to online headhunters for job seekers.

7. Utilize video résumés.
Video résumés are just one more way to stand out to employers. Intended as supplements to -- not replacements for -- traditional résumés, video résumés allow job seekers to showcase a little bit of their personalities and highlight one or two points of interest on their résumés.

8. Run queries.
You run searches on everything else, from your high school sweetheart to low-fat recipes, so why not jobs? Enter a query that describes the exact kind of job you're seeking and you may find more resources you wouldn't find otherwise (but be prepared to do some sorting).

9. Utilize job alerts.
Most job boards have features that allow you to sign up to receive e-mail alerts about newly available jobs that match your chosen criteria. Or go a step further and arrange an RSS (really simple syndication) feed from one of these job sites to appear on your customized Internet homepage or your PC's news-reader software.

10. Get connected.
How many times have you been told that it's not what you know, but who you know? Thanks to the emergence of professional networking sites like LinkedIn.com, job seekers no longer have to rely on the old standby of exchanging business cards with strangers. These sites are composed of millions of industry professionals and allow you to connect with people you know and the people they know and so forth. (A word of caution: When you sign up for online social networking sites, you are in a public domain. Unless you are able to put a filter on some of your information, nothing is private, and it can be difficult to erase once it is posted.)

Original Article - http://www.careerbuilder.com/Article/CB-703-Job-Search-Top-10-Online-Job-Search-Tips

J.C. Penney Earnings Drop 51%

By KAREN TALLEY

J.C. Penney & Co. reported a 51% drop in fourth-quarter profit on weak margins and sales, and the department-store chain indicated its woes will continue in a tough retail environment.

For the current quarter, the company said it expects a loss of 20 cents to 30 cents a share, with revenue falling 10% to 13%. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a loss of 19 cents on a 9% drop in revenue.

Bloomberg News

Shoppers enter a J.C. Penney store in Queens, New York. Penney, whose profit fell on weaker margins and sales in the fourth quarter, expects tough retail conditions to continue this year.

Traffic in shopping malls remains in a deep slump, and while Penney is doing better than other mall retailers, getting shoppers to make purchases hasn't been easy, J.C. Penney Chief Executive Officer Myron Ullman III said.

"The customer is very tentative, they are buying what they need and they are being smart about how they spend their money," he told analysts on a conference call to discuss the company's quarterly results.

For the period ended Jan. 31, J.C. Penney posted net income of $211 million, or 95 cents a share, down from $430 million, or $1.93 a share, a year earlier. Gross margin fell to 34.6% from 36.2% as the company increased promotions during the holidays.

J.C. Penney said three weeks ago that the quarter's revenue fell 9.8% to $5.76 billion. Women's apparel and family shoes were the best-performing segments, while fine jewelry was the worst. The Plano, Texas, company said it performed best in the Southwest and worst in the Southeast. Sales at stores open at least a year slid 11%. In the current quarter, it expects same-store sales to fall by 12% to 15%.

The company's gross margin fell to 34.6% from 36.2% in the fourth quarter as it increased promotions during the holidays. However, management has been taking steps to blunt the impact of the consumer-spending downturn, analysts said.

Uta Werner, retail analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said J.C. Penney has been "tightly managing expenses over the past year, including a heightened focus on store productivity, balancing the need for ongoing customer service and traffic-driving advertising spending with expense reductions in other areas."

Coming into its new fiscal year, which began on Feb. 1, the chain is also in a much better position in terms of excess merchandise, with inventory down 13.5% on a comparable-store basis, executives said.

J.C. Penney is also trying to pick up customers from doomed competitors, like Mervyn's, Goody's Family Clothing and Linens N' Things. The company said it is working with vendors to make sure that popular items at those retailers are in stock at its own stores.

"We've seen success in recruiting those customers to our format when we were [competing] head-to-head with those stores," Mr. Ullman said.

In the year ahead, J.C. Penney faces not only lower sales volume, but also higher noncash pension expenses. And last month, J.P. Morgan said the retailer was in danger of violating covenants on its revolving credit line.

But the company says its cash position is solid. So, while J.C. Penney is in the process of negotiating a new revolver, "if banks extract unfair terms we don't need one," Mr. Ullman said during the call.

—Kerry E. Grace contributed to this article.

Write to Karen Talley at karen.talley@dowjones.com

Original Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123513149861032521.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing

Companies Hiring in 2009

Through InovaHire.com, job seekers can apply to jobs posted by companies such as Microsoft, Mintera, Cobalt Group, Cabelas, QRC, Escendent and ReadyTalk.

Though 2008 was wrought with economic struggles and layoffs, 2009 brings with it new hope and more opportunities for job seekers.

"Dozens of jobs are being added to our site daily," says InovaHire.com Co-Founder, Tanya Willette. "Jobs are scattered throughout the United States and are being offered in various sectors."

InovaHire.com is the first, and only, free job board and live interview site offering dozens of unique features to employers and job seekers. While the company is still in Beta, they are proving to be a popular, and preferred solution.

"We have jobs in accounting, marketing, management, construction, technology and several other sectors," says Tanya of the jobs posted on InovaHire.com. "We are working hard to fill our site with jobs."

Through InovaHire.com, job seekers can apply to jobs posted by companies such as Microsoft, Mintera, Cobalt Group, Cabelas, QRC, Escendent, Global Technology Staffing Professionals, Aurstaff, ReadyTalk, Sure Jobs Network and Spin Systems.

"We have some great opportunities available throughout the United States," says Tom Dimmick of DK Search, Inc. "We are constantly seeking qualified individuals interested in advancing their careers."

"By offering our job board for free we are able to provide more opportunities to employers and job seekers," says Tanya. "We don't charge any membership costs and there aren't any hidden fees. We simply want to provide a website that effectively connects employers and job seekers."

InovaHire.com offers Job Seekers the ability to better "sell" themselves to an employer. "In addition to adding your resume, you can upload up to five work examples," says Tanya. "These are meant to help a job seeker better demonstrate their experiences, abilities and accomplishments."

The best thing a job seeker can do in this economy is become an active job seeker. This entails posting their information, applying for jobs and never giving up on their search. "Just because there isn't an opportunity available today, doesn't mean it won't be there tomorrow," says Tanya.

About InovaHire

InovaHire is a privately held, New Hampshire based company owned and operated by Eric Schifone and Tanya Willette. They offer the first and only free job board and live interview website.

Tim Esse
Virtual Recruiter
Tech Recruiter

101 Best Twitter Feeds for Job Hunters

Loyal Green Gigs readers know I have been on a mission to get them tweeting and to use it to their job hunting advantage. Well here you go folks, if my encouragement wasn't enough to get you to grab a Twitter account, then here are 101 other reasons to tweet (well maybe 100, I added Green Gigs as #101!). I have compiled a list of my favorite job tweeters - some tweet job listings, some are industry specific, some offer career advice, a few are recruiters, some are direct company listings, and others re-tweet or link to relevant articles for job hunters. There are hundreds (if not more!) of other great job tweeters out there, but I looked at the quality of the tweets over the blog or website they represent. The list is numbered, but not in any order of preference (after #1!).

Feel free to add your favorite job tweeters in the comments and see you in Twitterland!

1) jobshouts

2) JobAngels

3) alisondoyle

4) sweetcareers

5) employeefactor

6) coolworks

7) chrisrussell

8) SimplyHired

9) DailyCareerTips

10) smartbriefjobs

11) onlineresume

12) WorkForceFifty

13) GreatPlaceJobs

14) Joblighted

15) USDOL

16) RecruitingTruth

17) career_search

18) thehiringsite

19) jobhuntorg

20) CareerHelp

21) indeed

22) ejobfairs

23) JobsBoston

24) mediabistro

25) careerdiva

26) AndreaSantiago

27) GLHoffman

28) brandyourself

29) JobSnob

30) peterclayton

31) linkup

32) KeppieCareers

33) jobnob

34) RedWire

35) danschawbel

36) dreamjob

37) heathermundell

38) acareerathca

39) JobsatIntel

40) AmandaGaspard

41) roxanneravenel

42) TalentSynch

43) greenforall

44) Careerguide_com

45) ECOrecruiters

46) greenerjobs

47) PRjobs

48) GreenEconomyNet

49) Job_Security

50) idealist_org

51) AimeeLena

52) TiffanyPR

53) HRSearchPros

54) Barry_at_Impact

55) 1984Jobs

56) wFreelanceJobs

57) ACTORSandCREW

58) designquote

59) narmsjobs

60) visualcv

61) alistsolutions

62) job_searching

63) Glassdoordotcom

64) smartsavvy

65) YouIntern

66) Jobs_at_Volt

67) expressjobs

68) smjobwire

69) sfmobilejobs

70) GetResortJobs

71) wahm_job_leads

72) Web_Design_Jobs

73) employerbrander

74) GetChefJobs

75) GetJanitoriJobs

76) Bizymoms

77) GetFreWritiJobs

78) JobSrchDailyTip

79) JobSeekersEdge

80) carolinajobs

81) Yaaze

82) MrJobsinHubs

83) StevenRothberg

84) CandidatesChair

85) GayleHoward

86) kristid

87) resumeservice

88) Jiibe

89) RickDeare

90) noodleplace

91) Reactionsearch

92) jacobshare

93) careertips

94) careerhero

95) JonathanDuarte

96) CareerTherapist

97) Young_Recruiter

98) workhomexpert

99) GetGeologyJobs

100) DonnaWard

101) greengigs

Original Article - http://greengigs.blogspot.com/2009/02/101-best-twitter-feeds-for-job-hunters.html

Tim Esse
Virtual Recruiter
Tech Recruiter

Stimulus Makes Cobra Coverage a Better Bet

By M.P. MCQUEEN

Congress has just given a big assist to millions of jobless Americans facing a tough decision: Do they reach into their wallet to continue health insurance coverage with their old employer or not?

As part of the economic-stimulus package signed into law this week, the federal government will provide a nine-month subsidy covering 65% of the Cobra premium for people who qualify. Eligible workers who originally opted not to take Cobra but who now want the subsidized version have 60 days after they receive notice from their employers to sign up, says Richard G. Schwartz, a benefits lawyer in New York.

Fewer than one in 10 eligible workers recently opted for continuing insurance coverage in 2007 under Cobra, the federal law that allows many workers to continue group health insurance when they leave a job. The big reason: Cobra is expensive. Under the law, workers must pay the entire premium -- plus a 2% administrative fee -- even though employers typically picked up the lion's share of the cost. The average cost of Cobra coverage for a family is $13,000 a year -- big money for someone who is unemployed.
Uncoiling Cobra

The stimulus package makes it easier to afford extended health coverage after losing a job:

* The law provides a federal subsidy for 65% of the premium for nine months for workers who qualify.
* subsidy applies to workers who lose their jobs between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009.
* Workers who may have pre-existing conditions must maintain coverage to protect insurability.

The new legislation might help people like Chuck Fleming, 41 years old, of Aurora, Colo. His job in the legal department of Janus Capital Group Inc., a Denver-based financial-services company, was eliminated in October. He decided not to take Cobra because of the $450 monthly expense.

"My beef with Cobra is that it is the same gold-plated plan that my employer offered, when I would settle for copper or tin," he says. Instead, he bought a catastrophic health plan, which covers only major hospitalizations, for $100 a month.

"I am single with no health issues or anything like that, so for me it just wasn't cost-effective," he says, adding that he expects eventually to get employer-paid coverage when he finds another job.

The new subsidy applies to workers involuntarily terminated between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, and phases out for individuals with an adjusted gross income of $125,000, and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. It should make it easier for people to protect themselves not only from ruinous medical bills, but also from the inability to get new insurance due to a pre-existing medical condition.

That's because an often-overlooked federal law -- the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 -- generally limits the ability of group health plans to exclude someone because of a pre-existing medical condition. But it only applies if you have been continuously covered by a health insurer with a break of no more than 63 days.
Portability Rights

That's where Cobra comes in. "People often unknowingly invalidate their federal portability rights by not taking Cobra or inadvertently exceeding the 63 days," says Janet Trautwein, chief executive of the National Association of Health Underwriters, a trade group of health-insurance brokers and agents in Arlington, Va.

As part of the stimulus law, lawmakers also enacted a provision allowing laid-off workers to switch to cheaper health-care plans in Cobra, if their employers offer them, without having to wait for an open-enrollment period. That might also help some people who chose the more-expensive health-care plans offered by their employers when they had their jobs.

The unemployment rate jumped to 7.6% in January, up 2.7 percentage points from a year earlier. Cobra, however, generally doesn't help workers in companies with fewer than 20 workers, or those who have lost their insurance because their companies were liquidated or whose jobs never offered it, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Many states extend state Cobra benefits to groups of fewer than 20 workers.

Employers may not be happy with the expansion of the Cobra program, as some fear it will raise administrative and other costs. "The new law will impose very large costs on employers," says John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, an independent think tank in Dallas. "It will make it more expensive for employers to provide health insurance. And, for those who do, it will make it more expensive to hire new workers."

For some people, especially the young and healthy, another option is to take out an individual health policy. Insurers such as Aetna Inc. have been promoting individual plans as Cobra alternatives in many states. Health-insurance experts advise people who lose their jobs to apply immediately for individual health insurance, because it can take weeks to have an application approved or denied when medical underwriting is involved. They can then choose whether to use Cobra or opt for individual insurance or a public program within the allowed time limit.

Yet for employees who already have been diagnosed or treated for a serious or chronic illness, or who are pregnant, Cobra may be the only reasonable option. They may find it impossible to get an individual health-insurance policy, unless they live in a handful of states such as New York or New Jersey that require insurers to issue policies regardless of health or risk status, or in the more than 30 states with high-risk pools. Even then, individual policies may be prohibitively expensive.

Phyllis Miller, 61 years old, a resident of Johnstown, Pa., who had been employed as a billing-office manager for a chiropractor, was diagnosed with colon cancer just before losing her employer health coverage in 2007. She said her insurer tried to cancel her coverage, until she reminded them of her legal right to continue under a state program, similar to Cobra, for small employers. The insurer then offered her a so-called conversion plan, though at a much higher cost than she had been paying under her employer-subsidized plan -- and with no prescription drug coverage.

"It's better than nothing," says Ms. Miller, who notes that one full chemotherapy treatment costs more than $13,000.

A Web site that lays out many private and public insurance programs is available at www.coverageforall.org, a project of the Foundation for Health Coverage Education, a nonprofit group funded by health insurers and foundations, and at the industry-funded www.nahu.org. Individual health-plans can be compared at sites like www.ehealthinsurance.com, an online insurance broker licensed in 50 states.
Desperate Measures

Some workers have resorted to desperate measures to keep their Cobra coverage. Clare Tobin, 64, of Chicago, left a stressful job with health benefits to take a less-demanding one at a property manager that didn't offer health insurance. Her husband couldn't obtain individual insurance because of his diabetes, she says. At first, they maintained Cobra under her former employer, a nonprofit community organization, paying $850 per month. But Cobra normally lasts only 18 months, and as expiration approached, the Tobins were stuck.

Ms. Tobin read through the Cobra language and realized if she experienced a life-changing event, such as an adoption, divorce, disability or the death of a spouse, her husband would be eligible to continue Cobra coverage for another 18 months. "So I felt if that is what it takes, we should get divorced," she says. She and her husband obtained a quickie divorce and narrowly made the deadline. She says they felt having health insurance was more important than staying married.

Brian Tobin stayed on Cobra until he was three months shy of his 65th birthday. After that, he went on Medicare. Ms. Tobin says she has since obtained individual health insurance for herself, under a high-deductible Blue Cross plan with a $2,500 deductible for which she pays $360 monthly.

"Realistically, you have to do what is in your best interest, and your health is basic," she says.

Write to M.P. McQueen at mp.mcqueen@wsj.com

Original Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123500263888517825.html

Tim Esse

Your Personal Brand is Equal to Your Google Results

People you know or have never met yet are googl’ing you. Let’s face it, you’re even google’ing yourself! At the end of 2007, the Pew Internet Research Team found that 47% of people search for information about themselves online (Self-Googling), which was more than double 5 years ago. It’s a pretty safe bet that percentage has climbed to over 50 or 60% by this year.

Some people might can it ego-surfing, but it’s actually a good practice to see what results come up for your name. Your teachers, friends, family, boyfriends and girlfriends and coworkers are Google’ing you either for fun or because they want to learn more about you. Hiring managers want to see if you have a clean record in Google, which is your permanent record because every move you make (yes even a blog comment) is stored there forever. Before I went on a second date once, the girl Google’ed me. If she hadn’t liked what she saw, the second date wouldn’t have happened. Try doing it right now and see what you get.

There is no hiding from Google!

Google keeps track of just about everything you do on the internet. It patrols and captures your online behavior, such as when you post on your blog, tweet using Twitter, join social networks, comment on other blogs, write articles for online news

sources and more. Aside from the content you create and distribute over the internet, other people are talking about you, which means that Google has a complete picture (almost like an autobiography) of your life. In the digital age, Google is your resume, your permanent record and a journal of your life. Your children and children’s children will be able to find out everything about you when they grow older. “Mom, look what I just found out about Dad in Google.” Your personal brand can’t hide from Google. There is one major exception to this though.

Common names

If your name is common, such as Mike Smith, then it will be very hard to own your Google results. There are over 54 million results for “Mike Smith” in Google. You won’t be able to compete with the athletes and musicians on the first few pages. If your life goal is to rank in the top ten results, that may be achievable, if you either become very famous or work extremely hard at building content each and every day for your entire life. At the age of sixty you might find out that Google changed their algorithm and you’ll lose all that hard work. The point being is that you’ll have to differentiate your name in order to rank high. I typically recommend you use your middle name or a nickname in this case. The worst case scenario is that you change your name completely ;).

Celebrity names

Celebrities are very fortunate because they get mass media attention, which means traditional media sources (NY Times, ABC News) write articles about them. These sources rank extremely high in Google. We’re talking Google PageRank’s of eight and higher! Your blog posts about these celebrities will never end up on the top twenty results for their name unless you are Perez Hilton. If your name is the same as a celebrities, you are in big trouble. Try searching for Christina Aquilera (21 million results), Britney Spears (88 million), Lil Wayne (40 million) and other major celebrities. Personally, I don’t have any friends with these names, but even with C-level celebrities, you don’t stand a chance. If you are stuck with a celebrity name, I suggest that you build your brand around an area of your expertise or interest and connect it to your brand name.

Unique names

While growing up, you might have been made fun of people of your unique name because it was “different.” Although you were ostracized and made fun of, right now you get to laugh at everyone else! With a distinct name, you are able to easily manipulate the results for your name on search engines. When you go to your high school reunion and see your friends, you’ll get the last laugh because you can be visible and control perceptions, while they simply cannot. When you Google your name, whether you have results that reflect your brand, you’ll see how hard it will be to rank high for it or not. Depending on the competition, it may take you a few days or a few months. Over time, if you work very hard, you’ll own the top ten results for your name.

In my next post, I’ll talk about what you can do to gain control over your Google results and let your personal brand shine through.

Original Article -

** A good example of owning your brand, and not in the best way, is this blog. There is another Tim Esse out there and he grabbed the timesse.blogger domain name. I've tried to go into most social networking sites and signed up for some version of my name.

Tim Esse