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Unemployment rates are at a record highs, leaving people more vulnerable to scams. Scammers use legitimate job sites and use names of legitimate companies in an attempt to fraud job seekers. Watch the above video and beware from scammers.

Sings the job might be a scam (any one of these should trigger you to research the position in depth):

• The job is a “work from home” type of jobs. Many times involves processing checks.
• The job requires you to pay an up front membership fee or any other fee. NEVER pay for a job or a lead to a job.
• Many times, the job description will have spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
• You never met the person who interviewed you.
• You are requested to send your resume with your social security number, mother’s maiden name, credit card number, bank account information, or date of birth before meeting with the employer.
• No company will ask you for your passwords
• You are requested to purchase equipment or send payment for equipment (e.g. computer, scanner, etc)
• Scammers create email accounts with free email providers such as Yahoo and Gmail. The email addresses might look legit but remember that most legit employers will use their company email accounts for hiring purposes.
• Beware of any job that sounds too good to be true.

How to avoid scams:

• If you’re not sure about the company/job in question – call directly to the company (not the number on the emails you receiving) and inquire if the job is real. Do some research to protect yourself before disclosing any personal information.
• If you’re not sure – better question the job BEFORE sending any information to the prospective employer
• If you are tech savvy and know how to get the IP addresses of the person who’s sending you emails (here’s how), you could use a website such as IP2Location to track where the email came from. If the company is based in the United States, usually there’s no reason why an email will be sent to you on their behalf from Nigeria.
• Use common sense.

Microwave. Check!
Towels. Check!
Iron. Check!

This is pretty much the kind of checklist that students and parents are use this time of year as students head back to their college campuses!

College juniors and seniors going back this fall, should consider another type of checklist if they want to land great entry level jobs or get accepted into competitive college internship programs next year.

As college students prepare to participate in on campus recruiting programs this fall, here are 3 things to put on a different kind of checklist.

1. Understand personal traits. Make a list of what you think are your personal strengths and weaknesses. Once you have this list of strengths and weaknesses, commit to working on them this year. For example if you have identified a trait as a strength, you need to identify a great example of how you actually use this strength. If you don’t have such an example then saying it is a strength might not be believable. Use this year to work on weaknesses. Career tests and career assessments are available in your college career center if you need help.

2. Know what you value. Make a list of things that are important to you in a college internship program or in an entry level career beyond graduation. Nothing is unimportant if it means something to you. Include things like working conditions, benefits and training. Use these values as a fundamental guideline when you research companies.

3. Take stock of your job skills. Make a checklist of job skills that employers seek and will be important to succeed in the summer internship program or entry level career of your dreams. Check off the ones you have and work on the ones you don’t.

Your college career center has career counselors and resources to help college students achieve career planning success.

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 searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Article by, Marcia Robinson and courtesy of BullsEyeResumes. The BullsEye Career Blogs helps jobseekers, working professionals and students stay focused on their career success!
Author Website: http://bullseyeresumes-college.blogspot.com

Among New Year’s resolutions, finding a new job is right up there in popularity with losing weight, reducing debt, and spending more time with loved ones.

If you’ve resolved to find a new and better job, you can do it faster by using your time more effectively. Here are three suggestions …

#1: Find Extra Time
If you’re not working now, treat your search as a full-time job, requiring at least 40 hours a week. If you are working, devote at least 20 hours a week to your search — the equivalent of a part-time job.

Here’s how to find some of those extra hours you’ll need:

1) Get up one hour earlier each morning (that gives you 5 extra hours per week).

2) Give up all TV, including news, reality shows, etc. If you can’t quit the boob tube completely, limit yourself to one hour per day (10-15 extra hours per week).

3) Take 30 minutes of lunch hour to eat and spend the rest of the time on your search (2-3 extra hours per week).

4) Work on your search for one hour after dinner (5 extra hours per week).

Total per week, not counting weekends: 24-28 extra hours. And if you put in 4-8 hours on Saturday, you can boost that total to 28-36, to get even more done in your job search.

Now, before you start griping about your life getting out of whack with all this extra time devoted to your job search, remember two things:

1) This regimen is TEMPORARY, until you find a new job

2) The faster you find a job, the faster you can go back to watching TV every night and pigging out during lunch hour (although you may not want to!)

#2: Take Time to Reflect
The new year is a great time to look back on what you’ve done and plan to achieve more in the days ahead.

When you analyze your job-search efforts, from networking with old friends and polishing up your resume, to answering Internet job postings and everything in between, ask yourself three questions:

1) What’s producing results?
What have you done that has led directly to job leads, interviews or callbacks from employers? Resolve to do more of that.

2) What’s not producing results?
What has failed to produce job leads? Example: If you’ve emailed 101 copies of your resume to postings from MegaJobSite.com and no employers have called, that tactic is not working. Resolve to change — revamp your resume or apply for different jobs, for example — or stop doing it — like visiting other Web sites.

3) What’s next?
After you decide what to do and what not to do, take 10 minutes to plan today, tomorrow and the rest of this week. You’ll save at least 2-3 hours of wasted time this way. Then, at the end of the week, ask yourself these same three questions again. Keep correcting course and soon you’ll zero in on the job of your dreams.

#3: Take Time to Improve Your Resume
Your resume is often the first impression you make on potential employers. And the better your resume is, the shorter your job search will be.

So it pays to make sure your resume is as powerful and as targeted as possible.

While there isn’t space here to cover the essentials of resume writing (Google “kevin donlin resumes” to find my past articles), you can improve your resume in just a few days by asking your friends for help.

Specifically, try emailing your resume to at least five friends whose judgment you trust. Ask for their input. What do they like? Dislike? Is anything missing or unclear in your resume? Revise and improve your resume accordingly, based on what they tell you.

Bonus: You are networking with and flattering potential references at the same time as you’re getting free editorial help from them. Pretty nifty, huh?

Just be darn sure you return the favor and take the five friends on your “editorial board” out for a celebratory dinner after you get hired.

Here’s hoping these tips will help you use your time wisely and find a new job in the new year!

Kevin Donlin is President of Guaranteed Resumes and the creator of GetHiredNow.TV. Since 1996, he has provided job search assistance to nearly 10,000 people. Author of “51 Ways to Find a Job Fast — Guaranteed,” Kevin has been interviewed by USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, CBS Radio and others. His latest product, The Instant Job Search System, is available at http://www.collegerecruiter.com/guaranteed-resumes.php
copyright (c) 2007 by Kevin Donlin

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 searching entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

If you’ve ever asked yourself this question, ask yourself a different question – how hard is it to ride a bike? The answer is simple: If you know what you’re doing, it’s easy.

So, how do I ride into the right job for me? You’re on the internet, and this information superhighway has many paths to the right job. All you need to know is what direction to go.

Before you set off on your journey, you should know something about where you’re headed. The individuals who do the hiring (let’s call them “Hiring Managers”) are people just like you and me. In most cases Hiring Managers have this hiring responsibility only for as long as it takes to fill a position, then they go back to their other work. Yet, once they’ve made a hiring decision their superiors will continue to evaluate them based on the performance of the new employee.

And so they want to find someone who will make them look good, and they want to do it quickly and efficiently so they can get back to their own jobs.

Hiring Managers have many candidate searching tools available to them; the efficiency of the internet pretty much assures it will be used in virtually every search to fill a job. If you want to get to the point where you can make an impression (the interview) you need to understand how Hiring Managers find people to interview.

There are 3 common ways Hiring Managers use the internet:
1. Post Jobs
2. Search for Resumes
3. Network (with people they know)

Of course every Hiring Manager is different, but each will use some combination of these resources. Let’s look at how each is used.

Hiring Managers who Post Jobs.
This means the Hiring Manager reviews resumes as they come to him/her. To handle the volume of resumes received most companies use technology to “rank” resumes based on the skill sets required for the position. As a result, Hiring Managers only need to review the first 30 – 50 resumes.

To give your resume a better chance of review by a person, your resume should highlight your skills. And don’t just list your skills (aka “keyword padding”) – because many of the “ranking engines” evaluate the words around the skills keywords to weight the importance of each. Highlighting your skills means you describe how each enhances your ability to perform the duties of the position. Do this by describing how you have used each of your skill sets in previous positions, or how you expect to apply each in the position for which you are applying. You should also list your proficiency with each.

Hiring Managers who Search for Resumes.
This is the same as addressing Hiring Managers who post jobs, except the specific words used by Hiring Managers when they type in their search may have synonyms. When highlighting your skills you should also include some of the more common variations of the word(s).

For example, if you are a “web developer”, you should also describe yourself in your resume as a “web site programmer” even a “website programmer” (notice the omitted space); or if you are a “truck driver”, you should also describe yourself as a “Class C Driver” or “Certified Driver”. You know your abilities best, and you know how they’ve been described by others – make sure your resume has EVERY variation of each important skill you possess.

Hiring Managers who Network.
The simple truth is this: A Hiring Manager is a person (just like you and I) who needs to fill a position, AND will be evaluated in the future based on this hiring decision.

EVERY Hiring Manager is concerned about your ability to make them look good. This is worth repeating: The individual who hires you WILL be judged by how well you do your job. As humans we make decisions based on our comfort levels. And we’re more comfortable making a decision when others approve of what we are doing.

This means – you need to let everyone you know that you are looking for a job and encourage them to tell their friends. When there are 2 or 3 potential people to hire, and one who is recommended by a friend (or a friend of a friend), the person with the recommendation is given more thought. This is basic human psychology.

Contact all of your friends, get them a copy of your resume, and ask them to let their friends know what you are looking for. And be proactive – ask your friends who they know who is doing a job similar to what you seek, and expand your network by getting in contact with those people. Your friends have friends who have friends (and so on…) who have friends who need to rid themselves of their “Hiring Helmet” and find someone they can trust to do the job right.

In another article we’ll discuss other methods of circulating your resume. With a resume highlighting your accomplishments and skills, you are on the path towards finding the right job for you.

A good job is one that you love. Loving a job means that you like what you are doing, and you like the people you work with on a daily basis. We are all the happiest we can be when we enjoy what we are doing so much that it is no longer “work.”

Interview preparation begins today, right now.
Evaluate yourself by learning what it is that YOU like. Take a few minutes to ask yourself these questions:

• What do I like doing?
• What do I enjoy doing when I’m not working?
• When was the last time I was really having fun? What was I doing then?
• What do I like about my friends; what types of people are my friends, and what qualities do they have that I like?
• In previous jobs, or even when working on previous projects, what stood out about the people I liked?

As we all know, the world is not always about what we like. Now ask yourself the same questions from above, but ask yourself what you do NOT like.

These questions (what I like and what I dislike) are the foundation of finding a good job. Your answers to these questions will change from day to day, and over time. Continue to ask yourself these questions, on a daily basis; as you grow older and experience more things, your answers to these questions will change, and so should your career.

What the interviewers know.
It is a natural human instinct to migrate towards other people who enjoy whatever they are doing. When you sit down for an interview, you must recognize that the people who hire you will not only evaluate you, but your job performance will also reflect upon them. If you are a good, contributing employee, it reflects positively on them; if you are not a good employee, it reflects negatively on them.

What you, the job seeker, needs to know is that no one is 100% qualified for any job; the interviewers know this. An interviewers definition of the “best person for the job” obviously takes into account your skills, but more importantly, they are looking at your past performance, and how well you will fit in with their company.

Make every day a GREAT day.
It’s a lot easier than it sounds. An interviewer will see through a fake smile; every job seeker has one. What will set you apart is what you have accomplished (or in interviewer terms “past performance”). A job seeker who is able to speak about things that he/she has accomplished radiates excitement, fun and competence.

And it is also a natural human instinct to feel pride in our accomplishments – it shows that we enjoy what we do, and we’re not just “collecting a paycheck.” Interviewers are looking for a new employee who will contribute to the company and will work well with others.

Creating Accomplishments
Ask yourself this question:
Over the past 3 months, what is one thing that I have done that I feel was an accomplishment – something that made me proud of myself?

Your answer is either business related, or something in your personal life (non-work related). Both answers are acceptable.

Now, preparing for an interview, think of what this job will require of you, and find at least one business and one personal accomplishment that you can relate to this job. How might your accomplishments help you to do this job better than any other candidate for the job?

You may find it necessary to create an accomplishment, and this is easy. Whether you are a fork lift driver, painter, accountant, or doctor, every day there are things that you can do that will help your company, or help others. You do and see things that no one else does. When you wake up in the morning, think about making a difference.

As a fork lift driver you are told where to pick up pallets, and where to put them. You may find that you can travel less distance (saving the company money) if the pallets are first unloaded in a different area of the warehouse. As a painter you may notice that a newspaper advertisement from a competing paint store (to your supplier) is offering your supplies at a lower cost. You can point this out to your manager, who can either purchase from the lower cost supplier, or negotiate lower costs with your current supplier.

Everything your company does, it does for a reason – the reason for doing things may have changed, but the old processes are still being used. Change brings opportunity for you to make a difference.

Desire to make a difference is a sign of success.
Interviewers want to hire people who want to succeed. Demonstrate with your accomplishments that you are someone who wants to exceed. The truth is, the majority of people just want a job, and these are the people who, when hired, reflect negatively on the interviewer.

Desiring to make a difference changes your day for the better.
When we “want” to do something, we are much happier, and ultimately better employees. Complaining about our jobs is the most common topic of conversation with our friends and family, and it’s negative conversation. But discussing ways to improve things is intriguing, and will lead to even newer and better ideas for change.

The first few weeks of a new job are usually our happiest times. After the job becomes “normal” we revert back to “collecting a paycheck.” It doesn’t have to be this way.

If you were, or are, just “collecting a paycheck” – who do you think will want to hire you?

Accomplished people “choose” their jobs.
It’s true. If you desire to make a change, and you continue to create accomplishments for yourself, you are different from the majority of people, and there are HUNDREDS of new and better jobs for you.

Focus on making a difference, and having fun, even if the job you are doing isn’t what you really want to do. As you become more and more accomplished in making a difference, continue to ask yourself what you like to do. This attitude of making a difference will open your eyes to many new possibilities for yourself, and your career. And when jobs in your chosen field are available, YOU will be the one who is hired.

Preparation is when “luck” meets “opportunity.”
Make every day a GREAT DAY by focusing on making a difference.