Never Paid On Time...

So why is it that it's perfectly acceptable for your employer to not pay on time, but you rack up absurd penalties for turning around and paying your bills late?

As I've mentioned before, I do a lot of freelancing, so I have had quite a few experiences with employers paying me from anywhere to a day to eight weeks late. My frustration increases when these paychecks arrive late...but I still have to pay my rent, insurance, and utilities on time.

I've talked to several experts in the financial realm - accountants, lawyers, etc., and unfortunately there's not an easy answer. If an employer hasn't paid you, you can indeed file a complaint in small claims court, but that can take weeks or months to go through - way past when your bills are due. Or, if a contractor doesn't pay you at all, you can write off you missing check as a tax deduction...but again, that's not really helping with the here and now.

Oh, and the best part is the whole direct deposit thing. I have NEVER been employed by any company who gets this right the first time. I usually go through one to three pay periods before someone gets off their lazy ass and actually types in my information. In the meantime...I'm just waiting for another late check.

Eating My Words

So you know how I said in my post a few days ago about the Craigslist scams that I hadn't heard of anyone ever having to submit to a credit report in order for a job? Well, I have to retract that statement.

One of my friends just recently had a job offer REVOKED after the company did a credit check and found two outstanding accounts.

My friend, like many others, has some overdue bills. The economy is tough. People made stupid decisions when they were younger. Hell, some people just forget to write the checks every month. (In my case, thank God for automatic bill pay!) What I don't understand is...how does having an eight year old hospital bill affect your ability to do your job? I mean, I guess I could understand if you were working with money, giving financial advice, etc. But for a help desk technician? Really?!

Let me get this straight - you didn't hire him because he has bad credit. He has bad credit because he didn't pay all of his bills. He can continue to not pay his bills by not having a job...

...and then who breaks the cycle? The government? He can try to pay off his bills on unemployment, I guess, but I have a feeling most people would like to see their tax dollars better spent.

Bad Advertising is Like No Advertising...

I went to an open call for a job interview today for some part time work, and boy what a waste of time that was! After Google-mapping the directions, I found myself in a residential neighborhood a half an hour later - definitely not at the corporate office I was supposed to be looking for. After returning home and verifying the address, I attempted to call the number that had been listed with the job ad, and though it's well within office hours - it went straight to voice mail!

So hey, all you employers - the next time you spend all that time (and money!) on advertising for new employees - make sure you enable them to actually apply for the job. Thanks.

Et tu, Craigslist?

As someone who is self-employed, I've always been a huge fan of Craigslist. But if you've visited the site recently, you've been bombarded with warnings about the recent scams plaguing the site. And if you're looking for work, you've been bombarded with the resulting spam.

I've spent a good deal of time over the holidays planning for upcoming work, and no matter how good I think I've become at spotting a phony posting, I'm still receiving about five spam replies a week, asking for me to buy my credit report in order to 'proceed with the hiring process.'

First of all, in case anyone is wondering, I have heard that occasionally some employers want to check your credit report, but I have yet to meet anyone where that's actually happened. Secondly, any company who is going to do that is going to do it themselves, and would probably have a business account with their preferred agency to do that very thing.

But moving back to the original problem - how to eliminate applying for bogus jobs? Unless Craigslist starts to implement paying for posting for all of it's cities, the spammers are going to continue to undermine the site. But there are a few things you can do:

1. If there is an actual email address posted, do a Google search for that email. Most of the spammer emails are showing up on a site called flakelist.org which maintains a database of confirmed spammers. If the spammer is relatively new, you can still spot a fake by pulling up multiple posts in different regions by the same email. Also, just a hint: firstnamelastnamerandomnumber@gmail.com is probably not real.

2. If the posting is using the Craigslist default emailing system, try grabbing a section of text and doing a similar Google search. But, by nature, these might be harder to weed out.

3. Help a brotha' out. If you determine a posting is illegitimate, then flag the posting as spam. If everyone helps monitor the site, maybe at some point these spammers will get tired and move on.

In the meantime, good luck in that job hunt.

Unemployed? Scrape by with Online Surveys...

In 'real life' I run a business and do quite a bit of freelancing, but over the last year finding work has becoming more and more difficult. Over the holidays, I finally played around a bit with paid online surveys. Like most people, I figured all of them were scams until a friend of mine mentioned she was actually making a little bit of cash in her free time with them. So, as usual, with a little bit of internet research under my belt, I gave it a shot.

Tip #1: The first thing you should know is, don't quit your day job. I read several good websites and blogs, and the 'full-time online paid survey professionals' generally agree that the most anyone can reasonably expect to make is about $200 a month. While that definitely won't pay your bills, that's still a nice dent. Hell, that would cover my health insurance each month. So instead of playing MindJolt games in the evening before heading to bed, I've been trying my hand at spending an hour or so each day, filling out surveys.

Tip #2: You gotta put in a LOT for a little reward. At least to start. First, you need to sign up for around 15 - 20 legitimate sites. (Legitimate = rated well by others AND not charging you for joining.) Second, each site may require anywhere from six to sixty pages of interest forms for you to fill out so that surveys can be best matched to you. Thirdly, you must establish a good history with many of the companies. Most companies will send you few surveys to start with, and once you have successfully and diligently responded to surveys with little to no reward - then you start receiving invites for the paying / points surveys!

Tip #3: Create a separate email account. While I've yet to receive any type of spam from any company, there are A LOT of surveys to sort out, and having a new email account is very helpful.

After a month, I've earned a bit of spare change, and would recommend the following sites currently based on my own experiences:

Global Test Market - surveys emailed weekly
InboxDollars - get paid $0.02 for each email you read
Lightspeed Panel - surveys emailed weekly
MyPoints - get paid to read emails, give reviews, and points on purchases (comment for an invite)
Toluna - surveys emailed weekly (comment for an invite)

(Why an invite? Help me stay employed, people.)

Anyways, so far so good - I'll post a new update every month or so and tell you if I'm, ahem, slamming my head into my keyboard yet.

Not getting any job applicants? Blame your IT guy.

As much as I love my job, like most everyone else, I do scrounge around on occasion to see what other opportunities might be present in my area. Today I found a very promising job with a local branch of a well-known company, and sat down to apply.

There's one thing I've noticed about applying for jobs these days: it's almost pointless to have a resume. Seriously. Just a year or two ago it was perfectly acceptable to just email, fax, mail, or drop off a copy of your resume and move on. But now, pretty much 80% of the jobs I see require you to fill out pages and pages of forms and applications. It's all the same information - just formatted to their taste. However, for a serious job seeker, it's really time consuming. Hell, it was frustrating for me spending forty minutes applying for this one job this one day - imagine doing ten or so applications like this every day!

So imagine how even more frustrating it was when I went to click 'submit' and got an error message! "Please fill out all of the Online Questionnaire before submitting." Ok, I thought, I missed something, and went back. Nope. I looked at every section, analyzed every asterisk-denoted required field, and the thing was full. But I still couldn't submit the application. In desperation, I scoured the website for an email address or contact form - but nothing was offered.

So...if you're running a business and are baffled at the total lack of applications in spite of having 20+ job openings - you might wanna check your website.