Making-Money-Month Is Now!

A modern job hunting campaign is by nature often complex. While the web has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, highly aimed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of contacts is your source for job information.

So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on a popular job board and got hundreds and hundreds responses in a week. For one opening. That’s increased job hunting competition.

Had a great candidiate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have secured the position prior to getting all that competition. How? By knowing an employee at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 12 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your application matierials carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily taken out with a swift triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to engage them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating candidates whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by rejecting candidates who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job boards give you a feel of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well thought out resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another thing to be aware of is how easily you can be investigated on the net. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to rock our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a comprehensive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

The internet has quickly become a dangerous place to take your computer without first having sufficient security equipment installed and running. Intruders using viruses were the first threat and spyware has become the most prevalent threat against user’s privacy and computer functioning. Having only anti-virus and firewall protection will no longer fully protected your computer from the many internet threats.

Signing online without first having good anti-spyware protection will now invite in privacy intruders you would not normally allow in. With spyware in you computer there is seemingly no end to the personal information that can be extracted. The information the intruder desires is easily logged by spyware programs and sent back to the originator.

Spyware can steal information about your computer’s operating system, the computer’s address and system specific information such as what type of processor and the type internet browsers you have. It will also record what web sites you visit and other internet usage information. All this information collected by spyware intruders is used to create a profile for you that the intruders use for advertising purposes by bombarding you with annoying pop ups and email ads.

A spyware program with a keylogger can be potentially the most dangerous for of spyware because it works by logging each key stroked into your computer. You user names, passwords, instant message chats, email messages, credit information and more can all be caught and sold or used by third party intruders. Other forms of spyware take snapshots of your screen as you work online at different times. Any type of spyware infection should be taken seriously and measures to minimize the privacy invasion should be taken.

Users will most likely know they have been infested with adware because it almost always come with numerous annoying pop ups that signal an infection. Spyware is usually more difficult to detect because it is programmed to work silently. As it build on your system the computer’s functions will become noticeable slower and browser pages will take longer to load.

Spyware can also take control of a computer causing browser crashes among other annoying and potentially dangerous malfunctions. If you internet browser page has been abruptly changed or you printer and CD players begin acting odd they your computer is usually infected with spyware.

You can begin avoiding spyware by knowing what types of programs come with spyware or adware packages when downloaded. Many of the popular freeware and file sharing applications come with adware. Kazaa is widely known for having several adware applications piggy backing their way into your computer as does the free download of Weatherbug and DivX. The newer version of DivX has rid itself of adware so users can feel safer.

Even anti-spyware tools can trick users into installing more spyware because some of the scan and removal tools are produced by the spyware distributors. Spyware Nuker is one such programs which tells users it will eliminate spyware when it actually skips over some infections during the scan and can install or let in additional infections. The best spyware tools immunize your system and then block spyware packages from getting in the system.

Any spyware removal tool you choose to use should be updated before each scan and the scans should be run at least on a weekly basis. Many anti-spyware protective tools can be programmed to run automatically at whatever schedule you choose. Some of the top rated anti-spyware tools include AdAware, Hijack This, PestPatrol, Spybot Search and Destroy and SpySweeper and each is a free download. Once you have found a free product that suits you consider paying for a more advanced version to get greater protection.

To continue surfing the internet safely while keeping your privacy it is vital that all users arm themselves with some sort of spyware protection tool. Many computer malfunctions and technical support calls stem from spyware infections.

Outsourcing your e-mail server and junk mail protection to a hosted service reveals several positive side effects

The amount of spam continues to go up and this means that a large share of an organisation’s capital resources and bandwidth are “stolen” from them. Outsourcing their e-mail to a hosted service will help them get their resources back and re-spend them on productivity.

You need the Internet for your daily activities both privately and professionally, but when a major part of it contains unwanted e-mails and malware, is suddenly is a factor that creates stress and frustration for the entire organisation from IT administrators to end users.

Web spreads out widely and is now available for everybody in all age groups, which has a huge impact on the amount of spam mails and following that, an increased cost using time and resources to clear junk and ilegitimate mail from the mail boxes. It is very common to underestimate the cost of getting rid of spam - the reason is that is just takes a couple of seconds to remove one single spam e-mail. But when spam mails suddenly appear in hundres or thousands on a daily basis it becomes a serious problem - consuming time and users’ focus.

Spam e-mails are not only annoying in nature, but they also have significant impact on the operation cycle of a company since they drain network resources and use bandwidth. Every single spam message increases bandwidth cost - worst case spam consumes more than 48% of your entire network.

Companies ranging from big names that have dedicated department of IT security to small enterprises, which spend a very small proportion of their annual budget on web security, are plagued by unproductive bandwidth. Moreover, governments at both national and regional levels have taken strict action against spamming by implementing legislations but their efforts have proved insufficient as cyber criminals continue to thrive on their successful experiments with new technologies.

Those who submit spam mails have build their community consisting of several networkds of hosted servers and advanced attack techniques. A number of studies have shown that spam are draining financial resources and posting security threats to organizations by exposing their networks to malware, spyware and other malicious codes.

These online threats highlight the need of installing effective hosted malware message protection on e-mail servers to reduce operation costs and to protect networks from collapsing. Businesses can better guard themselves against online threats by hiring services of outsourced hosted servers.

A strong argument for using outsourced hosted services for mail is the amount of time companies save becayse the no longer have to worry about handling hardware, software, integration and maintenance of the spam filter. Qualified and skilled professionals keep round the clock watch on their systems and ensure complete elimination of spam before sending e-mails to their networks.

The trouble filtering the users’ inboxes on a daily basis is now handled by the outsourced hosted service, and it adds valuable and understandable information about the entire process for non-technical users.

Author:Julia Sue-Beck