One in three IT staff snoops on colleagues: survey

Reuters: "One in three information technology professionals abuses administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues' salary details, personal emails or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey.

U.S. information security company Cyber-Ark surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, and found that one-third admitted to secretly snooping, while 47 percent said they had accessed information that was not relevant to their role...

(the report) added that seven out of 10 companies rely on outdated and insecure methods to exchange sensitive data, with 35 percent choosing email and 35 percent using couriers, while 4 percent still relied on the postal system."

Read the article
or
Try a legitimate search instead ;-)

Background Checks: What You Need to Know

businessweek.com: "With background screening now the norm, employers and employees should be aware of how checks are done and how to protect themselves..."

This article offers practical advice on some things applicants AND employers need to know:

JOB APPLICANTS

• Check prior background reports
• Know who's checking your past
• Act fast if something is wrong

EMPLOYERS

• Know what you're getting from a background check
• There's no national database of all criminal records
• Know how reference checks are done

Read the full article...

Tech's top 10 workspaces

"What makes for an appealing workspace? The envelopes they leave in your mailbox every two weeks. But after that, it comes down to design and amenities..."

Valleywag presents the ten best-looking offices

I got an email that said 'You've been reviewed', but...

We recently sent out a batch of emails to people notifying them that they had been reviewed on Coworkers.com. However, in some cases, after registering, people did not see any reviews. This is due to a bug that did not properly account for reviews that were only partially submitted, or were deleted after submission.

If this happened to you, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. We are working on a fix for this.

UPDATE:

• If you would like to know whether you have any active reviews, without registering, click here do a search by your email address. If no reviews have been posted, or if they have been deleted, it will say 'No reviews have yet been entered for [email]'.
• For information about opting out, please see this forum entry.
• For other questions, please see our FAQ.
• Thank you for your understanding.
  

Online networks may help job-hunting: surveys

"Job seekers should tap into online networking sites to help hunt down potential employers, new surveys suggest.

The polls, conducted in Canada and the United States on behalf of California-based recruitment firm Robert Half International (RHI.N), showed that most executives believe that professional networking sites will prove useful over the next three years for job seekers...

RHI provided five suggestions for benefiting from online networking:

• Craft your profile carefully
• Ask for recommendations
• Build your list of contacts
• Don't post anything you wouldn't want an employer to see
• Don't stop networking once you have a job"

Don't Forget Your 4/1 Zinger!

A Zinger private message is useful on any day. The question is, who are you going to send one to on April Fools' Day?

How to Deal With Bully Bosses

"Do you have a bad manager? Someone who makes your life miserable all week by criticizing your every move? Experts offer their tips on handling bully and toxic bosses...

According to a study by the Employment Law Alliance, almost half of all employees have been targeted by a bully boss.

The study also revealed the following:

• 81 percent of bullies are managers.
• 50 percent of bullies are women and 50 percent are men.
• 84 percent of targets are women.
• 82 percent of targets ultimately lost their job.
• 95 percent of bullying is witnessed."

Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation

via mashable.com: "Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online and CEO of online reputation monitoring tool Trackur...outlines ten tactics that could prevent your company suffering its own online reputation meltdown..."

Summary:

1. Know your achilles heel
2. Assume everything will make it’s way to the web
3. Create a great online impression; dress to impress!
4. Choose your blog voice carefully
5. Hangout at the right social network
6. Send blogger’s love letters, not PR pitches
7. Build your Google reputation now, not later
8. Monitor your online reputation as often as your email
9. Ostriches are not great role-models
10. Three words to remember

While definitely a promo for his book, this is an insightful article nonetheless.

How to Wake Up with Energy Each Morning

We dedicate this post to Daylight Saving Time. On to the article...

Apply the 80/20 Principle with The FreelanceSwitch Client Analyser

Freelance switch has just added a cool new online tool called the "Client Analyser". It is based on the 80/20 or Pareto Principle:

"The way it works is that you put in your clients, answer some questions about them and then it lines up the data into tables, showing you where the results are coming from so you can compare and contrast them. The more clients you add, the better it works.

You should note, it’s not meant to be a very serious tool, more just a lightweight look at some of your client list. If you put in the minimum 8 clients and just guess values you can go through in about 10 minutes or so, and longer for more clients and more precision..."

Freelancers can also use Coworkers.com Reviews to rate and compare their various client contacts. The more data that can be gathered about a client portfolio, the more meaningful the insight.