In just over a week, Americans get to choose a new president and vice president. That makes us hiring managers. Those who have been nominated for president and vice president are applying for jobs. Very important jobs. So whether you've never been a manager before, or you're a manager by profession already, please remember:

You must not discriminate against a candidate based on:
    - age
    - disability
    - gender
    - ethnicity

You should evaluate a candidate based on:
    - work history
        - skills
        - experience
        - responsibilities
        - performance
    - accomplishments/awards
    - professional associations
    - military record
    - volunteerism
    - education
        - accreditations/degrees
        - licenses
    - references/endorsements

Our candidates have serious decisions to make on our behalf. They must be excellent communicators, both at home and abroad; they must be able to manage a dauntingly large budget. They must be able to work well both independently and in team environments; there should be a natural progression of relevant jobs leading up to their application for this position. Candidates for this position should probably have at least 5 to 10 years of previous management experience or a masters degree in business administration, and the ability to obtain the required security clearance since this is a federal government job.

Do your homework carefully - get to know your candidates and their intentions, and then make your decision count by voting on November 4.   

--TM

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Job boards run a pretty straightforward system: employers, recruiters and sponsors pay them to list open positions, seek qualified candidates and advertise, keeping the services to job seekers free - a sensible thing to do considering they’re out of work.

This being the case, and considering the amount of personal user identification stored in their systems, you’d think the job boards would make it their first priority to ensure that the protection of this data is uncompromised. Instead of putting revenue in its pocket, the company should be investing in making its products and services the absolute best in class. Security should be at the top of their list.

Job board phishers always join posed as employers or recruiters. Some post jobs, some don’t. What usually happens is the phishers search the broadest range of candidates he/she can find for a given job title and then do a couple of things:

1. Send emails through the job board system to candidates who’ve elected to make their contact info private but match the search.
2. Collect candidate contact information from the job board (from users who’ve elected to leave their contact info visible to employers) and then send external email via a “bulk mail” system.

A variety of options are then available to the wily phisherman, for example:

1. The email offers a position or asks about contacting them for an interview, redirecting the job seeker to an online application form. Often this is done to collect data to rent and/or sell. A look at the privacy policies of these sites usually confirms exactly that. This is phishing, and can lead to identity theft.
2. The position offered may say that money transfers are involved and have job seekers fill out numerous contractual forms, in most cases providing their personal/business bank account or PayPal account information. This is a money scam.
3. I’ve received other “job offers” where the responsibilities are said to entail parcel shipping. I am just starting to look into these, but I strongly suspect these too are money scams merely masquerading as jobs.

All of the emails offer positions with common job titles; many of them appear “canned” - that is, like form letters. But some of them appear to have been machine-translated or were written by individuals whose native language is clearly not English. Some of the “contracts” read like the candidate is making a pact with terrorists.

Using publicly available online resources, such as the Better Business Bureau and WHOIS, we usually find a trail of changing company names and addresses for these phishing companies. More often than not, they can be sourced to individuals in countries outside of the United States.

If the job boards do have risk management solutions in place, it’s clear that they are not effectively managing the abuse of their system. Despite their efforts to offer a layer of privacy by allowing users to make their contact info private, the job boards are still almost exclusively responsible for all the companies investigated on this website who were proven, by public record, to be scams.

Six months of research in “Sneaky Things” proves that CareerBuilder leads the pack, with about 80% of the job scams originating from their site; Monster falls into second place, responsible for about 15%; it’s hard to say where the remaining 5% of job scams come from, but it’s highly likely that the sources are job boards.

I only have profiles set up with CareerBuilder and Monster, but that doesn’t mean the other job boards are safe from phishers. Other sources like Craig’s list have been cited as also being perpetuators of the problem.

So what does all this mean? Our current climate is one filled with identity theft, scams and outright illegal activity. According to the FBI and Secret Service, the US has no jurisdiction to stop scammers operating from other countries, and there seems to be no organized body with enough jurisdiction to prevent the other countries from shutting them down. The US government believes that “poorer” countries look the other way and welcome the positive effect to their own economies.

We’re really only left with a couple of options: we can go after the companies hosting the scammer websites and have them shut down, but the sites are often hosted outside the US as well, and let’s face it, they could easily keep on going. The other option is to hold the job boards liable, regardless of whether or not they agree.

I maintain that they are liable. What do you think?

–TM

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I was going to make my first post here on Tabatha’s site an introduction of myself but I’ve just come across an unbelievable post about death threats against Kathy Sierra. While I do not know Kathy, she is an outstanding advocate for “making users passionate about their lives and tools”. She is a driving force behind the “Head First” series of books about web technology. She is clearly an expert and is normally and widely recognized as such in the technology world meritocracy. Instead I’m saddened to see her threatened, sexually objectified, and her considerable abilities disrespected. These threats have hurt not only her but the entire web community because they are preventing her from getting her message across.

Beyond Kathy, such incidents hurt our ability to get women to join the technology field. I haven’t exactly been on the ramparts recruiting women to the cause but I do respect the women in the industry that I know. Women like Pia Waugh, Tille Garrels, and yes Tabatha, are all top notch technically and damn fine people. It would be a shame to lose people like them through ignorance and hatred. Even worse would be losing the next generations that we are trying to bring on board with efforts like LinuxChix, Debian Women, and others. Please, go to Kathy’s site and show your support. Read her articles and see what we all will be missing if we let bad actors drive her away.

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I’ve been scouring the Web looking for anything about the job scams we’ve been coming across (*cough* since December *cough*).

Surprisingly little is being said about this, apart from savvy bloggers such as ourselves. How sad is that? I guess this latest challenge, faced by thousands of people in the US searching the job boards for employment, just isn’t really news.

• Following up on her own article of 2007-02-10, entitled, “Taking the Bait On a Phish Scam“:
• Looking for a Job? Phishers Are Looking for You.
• By Annys Shin |  February 12, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Privacy

• From PC Magazine:
• Security Watch: Drive-By Pharming is a Phisherman’s Delight
• Top Phish of the Week for Tuesday, February 20, 2007

• Criminal precedent set in the UK against job scammers:
• Web-based recruitment scammer convicted
• Adrian Michael Farmer fined £20,000
• Ian Williams, vnunet.com, 26 Feb 2007

• From Courier Post Online:
• Scam artists target job boards
• Monday, February 19, 2007
• By DAVID P. WILLIS

• What the Jamaican government is doing about fake employment agencies:
• Senate approves tough tactics for unscrupulous job agencies
• Friday, March 2, 2007
• (Source: radiojamaica.com)

If I proposed a solution, it would have to be as simple as: pay attention! If the reporters on the news weren’t so busy regurgitating the same 5 stories every day and stepped out of their little bubbles, maybe they’d notice there are other things going on in this country.

–TM

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Like the Wonderbra, computer repair technicians should be able to support you reliably, be composed of quality components (people) and be priced reasonably.

Today, computer support professionals aren’t any of those things, and I should know - I am one.  (a computer repair technician, not a Wonderbra).  Reliable help is more of a inside joke than a reality, the quality of technician ranges anywhere from uber-guru to Mr. Breakit and the prices are not only high, but there are no standards - customers don’t even know how much tech support SHOULD cost.

I know at least one of you readers has been through the technical support nightmare, and not just the kind of low-level frustration you get at work, but the high-end panic that sets in when it’s YOUR stuff that’s in jeapordy.

You don’t know any computer-Nerds (thanks for the loser nickname, BTW) so you whip out Ye Olde YellowPages and let your fingers do the walking.  You stop at, let’s say GeekSquad (I have no personal bad feelings towards BestBuy or the losers in the white shirts - except that they perpetuate the loser persona in the High Technology field) and so you make your appointment.

So the loser-mobile sits outside your house declaring to your neighbors that you can’t run your own computer while you pay the equivelant of $160/hr. for him or her to fix problems that most likely should never have occurred in the first place.  You see, “you’ve been hit by, you’ve been struck by - a smooth criminal.”

The Nerd’s a criminal?  Nope.  BestBuy?  Nope.  The entire technology industry is collaborating to maximize their profits at your demise.  You are kept in a constant loop of ‘dis-satisfaction’.  That’s you the home user.  You the business owner.  You the cube-farm-worker and even You the trash-collector.  If you use a computer in your life, you are a victim.

Here’s a nutshell version of what happens…  I’ll use brand names to make it easy to follow, just remember that this is an example - ALL brands are doing the same thing.  I’ll start with the hardware and software industries.

Let’s say IBM has a new PC (we’ll call it IBM1).  The hardware in that PC needs software (like Windows) in order to perform it’s work (which we’ll call OS1) and you run out and buy one. 

You get about 3 months use out of it when you are notified of an update for McAffee (pronounced MC-AFFY, not MACAFEE even when their President says it wrong).  If you don’t perform the update, you will be at risk of infection or hacking or identity theft or dirty content or some other bad thing and it’s true.  You will be at risk if you don’t keep your OS and Anti-Virus updated with patches and fixes on a daily basis.  This is the equivelant of a drug dealer getting someone hooked through free introduction, except it’s more like your doctor getting you hooked on vaccines.  So you fork out the $60-300 for your anti-virus software.

Of course, that’s not enough, you’ll need some anti-spyware and personal education in safe use practices - the list goes on.  I start to imagine those poor folk who put tinfoil on their heads so the aliens can’t read their thoughts.  Are the aliens even really there?

Yes, there are viruses and yes, you should protect yourself, but why is it this way in the first place?  Because it’s designed that way.  There is NO other expaination.  There are holes in software code because they are put there on purpose, they are NOT mistakes.  Programmers are INTIMATELY familiar with their own creations and they don’t miss much if anything. 

So now, you live in a techno-world of fear and stress.  Computers just aren’t perfect and we rely so much on them now.  What should we do?

Back to our original scenario, now that you have your IBM1 and OS1 with all your additional and expensive add-ons and you’ve made through two years without any major losses or problems.  Just little connectivity problems, or some weird error that only appears on start-up.  No big deal a commercial on T.V. says it’s time to upgrade.

Yep, you upgrade when your told to.  OS1 is releasing their newest version, more secure, less errors, more ‘intuitive’ and even has extra features for the handicapped.  So you run out and buy it and slam that CD/DVD into the drive and start upgrading only to find that you need an additional 128mb of RAM in order to install it.  So you run out and buy the RAM, slap it into your PC and continue the install.  Now it requires a better graphics card so you go grab one of them and install it.  Finally it’s upgraded and it works worse now than ever, everything familiar has been moved and/or renamed and you can’t install your accounting software because it’s not compatible. 

What now?  You just screwed everything up by following all the instructions exactly.  Now you call me.  The Computer Repair Techician.

Most PC repair costs at least $80/hr. and I have seen as high as $300/hr. in California.  PC repair takes time.  It’s not magic like on T.V.  You don’t just show up and hold out a fancy device and then mash the keyboard for 5 seconds and announce ‘Fixed!’  Data recovery alone can take hours if possible at all and it is very likely that the service will cost you more for one visit than your PC cost when you bought it.

In this situation, and it happens alot, I am basically forced to make you spend even more money on upgrades to your accounting software in order to get your data re-imported and your work flowing again and perhaps even upgrading your PC to address the performance issues.  But I know that this is just a temporary solution.

Now that’s me.  I am not associated with any hardware or software manufacturers and have no interest in selling upgrades.  My mission is to walk in and fix the problems fast, like the cable-guy or the plumber. 1-2 hours should do the trick in almost any situation.  Add to this scenario that I have to deliver bad news almost every time.  Even if I walk in and fix the problem in 5 minutes there’s the high price to be paid for my one hour minimum.

It’s all so unfair to start with.  You wouldn’t put up with this kind of treatment if it was your furnace, would you?

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If you purchase a major appliance, let’s say a stove, or fridge or dishwasher, it usually comes with a warranty of at least 10 years.  Little secret - those appliances are ALL computers.  Oh yes they are!  Digital display, programmable cooking times and temperatures, auto-clean and other features are the evidence. 

Even my microwave knows when daylight savings kicks in and out.  Your car is a mobile computer also, and if you sign up with On-Star, they can unlock your car for you via wireless radio signals and even send a tow-truck to your GPS location.  For the most part, as far as I know, all that stuff works just great.

My Blackberry kicks ass too.  The OS never crashes and unless I crush it in a car door, the phone hardware itself (PDA) is durable and reliable - and the battery lasts forever.  Are we supposed to believe that they can’t take the same approach to laptops?  I mean really, the battery in my phone is the size of 3 Jolly Ranchers and lasts for 4-5 days under light usage.  My laptop will whine and shutdown angrily if I leave it on and unplugged for 20 minutes.  It’s battery is the size of 6 jumbo chocolate bars (you know those extra big Snickers bars…) it’s gotta weigh at least 2lbs. vs. maybe an ounce in my phone.

My point is, finally, that they are perfectly capable of building a better, more reliable computer, they just don’t because if they worked right, you wouldn’t buy a new one in 2 years or less, you’d wait 15-20 years like with your furnace.  So accept the fact that the manufacturers of PC’s and software are not keeping your best interests at heart.  An example of this is when you get a new PC from the store and it comes loaded with software titles (which is supposed to be an incentive to buy..geez), these software titles are Bloatware. 

They are mostly useless if not damaging to your system.  Remember how your PC came with McAffee (remember how to say it) and SpyDoctor or SpyGoof or Spy-B-Gone and their super-awesome (sic) HP/Compaq/Dell/IBM System Manager software that supposedly helps to keep your PC protected.  I have even seen new systems that come with TWO anti-virus packages. *** YOU CANNOT HAVE TWO ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAMS INSTALLED ON THE SAME MACHINE THEY WILL FIGHT EACH OTHER *** That’s so basic that it HAS to be on purpose.

Okay, enough bitching.  Here’s the solution.

You’re screwed.  Deal with it.  Okay - there’s a couple of things you can do to make your system last as long as possible and to avoid pitfalls like infection.

Keep it simple and be dedicated.  I’ll explain.

The machines that last forever and hardly crash and never need updates…  You’ve seen those super-dusty machines still running Windows 98 and printing to a dot-matrix paper slammer.  Why is it that some machines can perform like that?  Because they’re dedicated, both the PC AND the user (singular).

The machine that lasts for years and years is the one that has a dedicated job.  One user, one purpose, a minimal amount of software installed and backups sent somewhere, ANYWHERE outside of the PC itself.  Like backing up your work to CD or even floppy.  If you have a PC that is for work, keep it that way. 

Your work computer should have ONLY the software needed to perform work, that means no downloading music and cute video clips of kittens falling off the couch.  That means no instant messaging (unless it’s used in your work duties only), no fun at all on this machine.  It’s for work and your data has great value to you.  A cargo-van is not a sports car and the same goes for PC’s.   Keep your system as naked as possible regarding software installs, just the OS, office applications, anti-virus and firewall.  If you are on a network, get it encrypted.  Now.  Less parts means less probobility of failures.

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Think public transportation is a joke and know a better way?

Frustrated by healthcare, childcare, elderly care, and have some great ideas on how to fix the system?

Tired of being garnished for income tax and wish they’d just send us all a nice itemized bill?

Wish the legal system wasn’t such a travesty of justice and have a thing or two to say about how to re-balance the scales?  (Two words: Anna Nicole.)

I’ve lived in a lot of different places and noticed some people do things way better than others, while some seem to have no clue at all. We see a lot of things that could be done better, don’t we?

“Cheeky Things” is where you get to exercise your editorial voice. Just remember two things:

1. My kids read this blog, and yours should be able to as well. Be language-considerate, please. We can have opinions without butchering the language, right?
2. You aren’t allowed to complain about something without offering a solution.

Why do this? Is it an exercise in futility?

I once went to a boss and asked for a promotion at work, and got it. Shortly after, when I noticed all the other girls huddled together one day whispering about how unfair it was that a newbie like me got the promotion, I walked right up to them and asked them one question: “Did any of you tell the manager you wanted the job?”

Not one of them had.

Complaining about how things are without suggesting potential solutions is just as bad as not speaking up when you want something or if you have an idea about how something should be fixed. Think your ideas are crazy? Was Thomas Edison crazy? Was Abraham Lincoln crazy? Was Martin Luther King crazy? I think not!

So while I go off to ponder how to make job boards scam-free (like enforcing a rule that work-from-home and recruiter listings must be separate from corporate listings), why don’t you ponder the things you think you could fix and then drop me a line! Someone with enough guts and power to do something about your issue might read what you have to say and actually take action!

Happy keystrokes…!

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You may have already heard about the latest trend in telephony — caller ID spoofing. As a geek living in a geek’s world, I feel somewhat responsible to spread the word about this nasty little wrinkle in technology. Maybe there are a few people still hiding under their rock, and if you’re one of them, I’m here for you.

You actually have your phone company to thank for starting it all with the handy call display feature. Remember the first time you could see who was calling? Many of us do, and we were glad, because it made it easier for us to screen our calls. But pretty soon we all realized that we didn’t necessarily want to pass our phone numbers on to certain other people, so the phone company gave us call blocking. Great! Now we could hide behind the status of “unknown caller” and try our luck, but at least the other party wouldn’t know where we were calling from.

It didn’t take long to get wise to our ways. The telemarketers couldn’t do their jobs anymore, nor could the collection agencies, the credit card companies or the many others I’m sure I’m forgetting. All because we didn’t want to pick up an unknown call or answer the 800-number trying to sell us something we didn’t want.

Thus, caller ID spoofing was born.

It’s probably a coincidence, but I’ve noticed that ever since I listed myself on the National Do Not Call Registry (which is really just a new and improved way for people to find us), I’ve received some interesting numbers on my call display. That’s not to say the Registry folks are to blame, however I do find it interesting that I never got calls from 1-800-000-0000 or 206-123-4567 before I signed up.

For the uninitiated, caller ID spoofing is usually done by calling into a service that asks which number you want to call and then asks the number you want to appear to be calling from. But there isn’t any point in trying to name any of these services: an online search for “spoofing phone numbers” yielded nearly 5 million hits at Google, about 92,000 hits on Windows Live Search, 436,000 hits at Yahoo and about 60,000 at Ask.com. Out of just these four, Windows Live Search was the only one that didn’t further facilitate caller ID spoofing by allowing these companies to advertise. So far. I sincerely hope they keep the garbage out. Use of these services really shouldn’t be encouraged.

Now, unless I already recognize the caller ID information of my friends, family and frequent callers, it’s otherwise impossible to be sure I can safely pick up the phone. It’s Officially Risky to do so these days, because spoofing isn’t just done by collectors and telemarketers anymore. Now there are people trying to pretend they’re your bank or credit card company (or worse) and trying to coax information from you so they can steal your identity.

There is a strict policy in this household not to answer ANY unknown calls. Even if we think it really might be the bank, we don’t pick up, but call them directly if we believe they have a valid reason for calling. If you think it might really be the cable company calling to discuss your bill,  call them back using the number printed on it. 

Do not — I repeat, DO NOT — give out your personal information over the telephone unless you are absolutely certain of the person on the other end of the line.

And having said that, now I will be able to sleep.

–TM

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The other day I was watching the news, something I really prefer not to do for obvious reasons: it’s mostly BAD.

I could go on a rather long rant about what I think of the news alone. It’s interesting, having lived in both the US and Canada, how different the reporting is between countries. In Canada the news is relatively boring and we like it that way; most of the bad news is about everyone else, and is delivered quickly and with detachment. In the US, it’s a blitz - a competition to see who can bring you the worst news first and rile you up the fastest.

This particular day, the reporter/journalist proceeded to tell me and the rest of America that our children are watching too much TV. As a matter of fact, they are watching so much television that it’s causing them to have behavioral issues.

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out, now does it?

What amazes me though is why no one is asking what the media is doing to us, the parents of these over-stimulated children. If you really want to know why I don’t watch the news, turn on CNN or Fox News and tell me how you’re feeling about life after a couple hours. Are you happier?

Granted, if we don’t hear about the atrocities of our world people might not get passionate enough to stand up and do anything about them. And we obviously can’t ignore the world around us or we’re living with our head buried in the sand. True, I can choose to simply turn off the TV and that will solve my problem. But the bottom line is that American news has the same behavioral influence on adults as the other crap on TV has on all of us. And unfortunately I can’t tell you to turn off the TV, even though I think you should.

Take a tip from my seven-year-old: when he’s had a rough day getting along with kids at school and loses TV for two days, he turns into a caring, sharing human being. He writes, he draws, he reads and he communicates. As parents, the least we can do is set the example, and we all might get along a little better for having tried.

As for the media, I think they could learn a thing or two about what effect they’re having on us, and take a little responsibility for the way they keep us informed.

–TM

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