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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.

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.