Hiring managers were asked what recruiting tool they found most effective. Echoing the job hunters of the previous year, managers said that "word of mouth referrals" were the best source of hires (62%). Meanwhile, the HR folks -- the people who buy online job ads -- said such personal contacts were the worst recruiting tool. So, who's right?
One of the job hints that one frequently sees is "try to bypass HR and go directly to who is in charge of the department where the position you want is" It seems that HR frequently is seen by managers and employees as a roadblock for hiring the best employees.
It seems true - and in my experience, interviews by people who are in the department where you would work are generally more comfortable, and more likely to ask you questions that seem relevant rather than "if you were an animal what type would you be" questions.
I work at a college where I used to be a student. I know that when another student was hired, his manager had to argue for his hiring, and was accused by HR of "trying to create a position for him" - despite the fact that he was filling a position for someone who had retired - and been working as a contractor in the postion for several months.
Dave Barry once parodied the old "avoid HR" job hunting quote by saying HR never wants to hire anyone because they just know they will be employees who never fill out their healthcare forms right
This all does make me wonder about the disconnect between how HR percieves itself compared to the negative light it seems to be seen in by employees, potential employees, and managers of other departments.
So if I lived in the US and I say I decided I didn't want to work because I had saved enough money to live on and I wanted to travel/write the american novel/sit at home and play video games/whatever, exactly why should an employer care
Put yourself in an employer's position. Do you want to spend a ton of money recruiting for a job, hours interviewing candidates, hire someone, train them, and have them leave a few months later? Hiring and training an employee costs a company money, so they want one who will stay around and give them a return on that money.
If I buy something in another state with a lower tax, in theory I have to pay taxes to my state to make up the difference. But it doesn't work the other way around. I don't get a refund for buying something in a higher tax state when I live in a lower tax state. If the government(s) don't seem to play fair, but rather to maximize profit, can you expect citizens to do any differently?
Case in point. I moved from a state with 6% sales tax to one with 5%. I had to retitle my car, and if I had bought it in a state with a lower tax, I would have to pay the government of my state the sales tax difference between my state and theirs - but there is no refund for a higher to lower. And this isn't just for people who just bought their cars in another state - I bought the car 2 years earlier.
the buddylinks spyware that the OP refers to actually pops up a box, complete with a link to a EULA, to accept or stop the install.
The text of the EULA lists all the stuff that it does - send ads out to other people on your buddy list with no action on your part. And yet people agreed to it. And in general, shrink wrap/click wrap licenses have been held as legal.
The problem is once again human nature - people are used to clicking yes on those boxes because they were originally for stuff you actually needed to view a webpage (Windows Update, shockwave and flash plugins, ect). People don't bother reading them, just click yes, and wind up installing toolbars, gator, weatherbug, bonzibuddy, and the rest of that crap.
I noticed that the current alienware laptops look different - I don't know if they are from a new supplier now or just redesigned - but the earlier Alienware laptops were just rebadged clevos. Identical laptops were available under the Sager brand for considerably less - but without the hype or bright colors.
I need appliction or document portability, I own a 256mb USB key. Much lighter, and cheaper, than a laptop.
Which is nice in theory, but not always practical. You can't always find a computer you can plug into - many public terminals are so locked down that you can't plug a USB key in because it will look for a driver. Or maybe the only computer available is one that is too slow, lacks an application you need, ect.
I have a Powerbook as well as a desktop PC. While I use the desktop more, it's nice being able to take the Powerbook with me when I go on trips, visit the parents, ect and have a computer I like with everything I need on it.
Why would the government give a $683M break to AMD to get 1000 jobs? That's two thirds of a million bucks per job.
Well, first of all it's in grants and allowances, so the governemnt probably doesn't look at it as "real money" - and I'm guessing it's probably spread out over a long period of time, ie tax breaks for the next x years.
Secondly, they are probably figuring that the plant will make suppliers and customers of AMD move nearby, thus providing more jobs and taxes. It's debateable if this actually works, but that's probably their thought process.
From the article: Another challenge: Most people can't identify a counterfeit bill. Sang says federal officials showed him one-sided bills and even black and white bills that had been passed.
Do you really think the 16 year old cashier at Wal-Mart or the local grocery store can tell the difference between a real and fake bill- or cares? My guess is that more counterfied currency gets passed than people realized. Heck, there was a story a while ago about someone successfully using a fake TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL.
The fact is that I doubt it cost HP too much money, or they wouldn't have bothered - and it sounded like a lot of the efforts were more advice to the government on how to design the current crop of new peach $20's to not copy on their printers than modifications on their printer to not copy them.
I work at a college, and see the same thing. We recently started giving all students Novell Netstorage accounts in the hopes they will save on there, but no, they still love their floppies. I've seen people come in with floppies broken in half that they have sat on wanting to know if we can recover it.
We do use a program called badcopy that has been pretty good about recovering damaged floppies.
My point is less about the sender knowing they have a virus, and more about the sender knowing their document wasn't recieved. Even once they find out they have a virus, the average user won't know that their document wasn't recieved. And there are a lot of people out there who don't have up to date virus software or don't bother updating it - think home users whose computer came with a 3 month subscription that expired two years ago.
I work at a helpdesk, so I've spent the last couple days repeating how from headers can be forged, ect, ect to users... so I agree with the frustration and do want it to stop.
At the same time, if I unknowingly sent an important document that had a virus and was not recieved, I would want to know. Years ago I remember sending a resume that was infected with a word macro virus - I was glad that I got a bounceback message, since a)I knew I had a virus and b)I knew the place didn't get my resume.
There is one lesson Apple seems not to learn: people want much and they want it cheaply. Nobody cares about quality.
If that were true, every computer would be an eMachine, every car would be a Kia, and every DVD player would be an Apex.
But no, people buy Alienware computes, cars from BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Audi, ect, and hi end DVD players from Denon, ect.
Apple is not the only company that concentrates on selling a smaller number of items to people who want quality, and they are not the only company that is good at it.
Windows XP handles zip files nativly, unlike earlier versions that required using a third-party application like winzip. This virus and the many incantations of mimail prey on this. If you are running an older version of window you might pause when winzip comes up when you click on the attachment, but if you are running XP and don't look at it, a simple click will open it.
My guess is that a decent number of these will be bought by companies, schools, or other organizations that already have some sort of Microsoft site license. They will still pay microsoft, but won't have to pay for a machine with an OS, then pay more to install something over it.
The college I work at has an MS site license through a college consortium. We would buy PC's with one version of Windows then overwrite them with images of another, usually because we weren't ready to deploy whatever the latest and greatest OS yet. I'm sure a lot of businesses have site licenses for NT or 2k and aren't ready yet to deploy XP, and don't want to have to pay for XP licenses when XP would be wiped off 5 minutes after opening the box.
I always laugh when I get fake Windows windows while surfing on my Mac using Safari, or when I'm on a Windows machine with a different skin than the fake window.
Many of those misdirect/mistype sites do a lot more than deliver popups. They also use IE flaws to reset the home page, install spyware, install additional popups, ect.
Plus then you have fun viruses like Trojan.sinkin that spread through AIM using IE holes and deliver popups.
Why would they admit doing something illegal if they don't have to? Why would a company risk getting sued or fined for doing something if they don't have to?
This is the way the legal system, plea bargins, ect work. Both sides end up getting something that's better than the alternative if the other side wins - the DOJ gets what they want, and MS doesn't lose a bunch of money. Both sides would rather have the certainty of that outcome than a partial chance of total victory.
The 50xx (I have a 5060) still have commercial skip and internet transfer. The 55xx (the current models) don't have it, and probably never will. The lawsuit of the Hollywood studios was dismissed partly because Replay/dnna agreed to drop these features. This lawsuit affects RePlay users who were suing the studios.
I think the OP meant that SonicBlue, which made replay when they had commerical skip and internet program sharing, no longer exists. They were the company being sued originally. RePlay was bought by Digital Networks North America (owned by the owners of Denon and Marantz) who now provide the RePlay service. While I guess DNNA would still be liable since they bought RePlay, the fact that they dropped commercial skip and internet sharing probably in the new models makes the issue matter less.
Which brings me to my question: isn't TiVo just a niche product that really should only be used by folks with an antenna feed or analog cable feed who don't have the savvy to set up a PC next to their TV?
I would agree that the "less tech savy" part is probably what DVR's appeal to, as well as digital customers who want more features than on-demand. But that is a huge market. Most people don't want to take the time to build a PC, configure it, ect - they would rather just plug in the device and go. They don't want tho have to fool around with TV capture card drivers and worry about their machine crashing and not recording the show.
I have a RePlay, and I like it. I consider myself pretty tech-savy, but I like the fact that I can just plug it in and it works. It also has a bunch of features not on On-Demand (commercial skip, network sharing, and I would imagine better scheduling, although I've never used on-demand.
The article talked a bunch about getting additional regulations to discourage jobs from moving offshore. The article only mentions two things. It has a typical quote from Dean that he would fix this if he was president, but doesn't say how. This is followed by a comment that Kerry wants to make call centers identify where they are located. I'm not sure what this would do - it seems widely known that call centers are generally run offshore, and you can usually figure this out by the fact that almost everyone you talk to has a foriegn accent. Besides, am I going to hand up on HP support (assuming I owned an HP) because their call center is in India?
Ending HB1 visas seems like an obvious thing (considering the glut of unemployed tech workers) but it's not mentioned in the article. I wouldn't be surprised if terrorism concerns had more to do with getting fewer H1's than the industry.
I don't think the government could make it illegal for companies to move call centers, and I'm not sure what else they could do to keep them in the US besides the usual tax incentives.
The guy who said it works for an IT professional trade group. He is pro tech worker, not pro- tech company. The quote in the article comes after a line about how the tech industry wants the government to spend more education. The guy says that the problem isn't lack of education, it's that businesses are moving overseas not because of lack of education, but because they can pay workers less.
that the documents are in.PDF instead of.doc. Of all the document formats to put it in, they put it in one that they don't support in their OS or office suite.
He listed Windows Update, 1 hour as one of the things. I'm guessing that includes download and install time, where he didn't actually have to do anything.
Aside from not being able to use the machine, it's hard to think of spending five minutes navigating to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, a few minutes for it to scan and for you to select the patch, then reading a book or watching TV for an hour until it's done downloading/installing, as wasting an hour.
On the other hand, why would someone sending spam care too much about the integrity of the data?
True, but he also said the data included specific-use email accounts. I don't know if sending your spam to abuse@domain or webmaster@domain is a very good idea, since chances are the person who checks an abuse or webmaster account is probably unlikely to buy your crap, and probably tech savy enough to make your life difficult if he or she desires.
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One quote I found really interesting:
Hiring managers were asked what recruiting tool they found most effective. Echoing the job hunters of the previous year, managers said that "word of mouth referrals" were the best source of hires (62%). Meanwhile, the HR folks -- the people who buy online job ads -- said such personal contacts were the worst recruiting tool. So, who's right?
One of the job hints that one frequently sees is "try to bypass HR and go directly to who is in charge of the department where the position you want is" It seems that HR frequently is seen by managers and employees as a roadblock for hiring the best employees.
It seems true - and in my experience, interviews by people who are in the department where you would work are generally more comfortable, and more likely to ask you questions that seem relevant rather than "if you were an animal what type would you be" questions.
I work at a college where I used to be a student. I know that when another student was hired, his manager had to argue for his hiring, and was accused by HR of "trying to create a position for him" - despite the fact that he was filling a position for someone who had retired - and been working as a contractor in the postion for several months.
Dave Barry once parodied the old "avoid HR" job hunting quote by saying HR never wants to hire anyone because they just know they will be employees who never fill out their healthcare forms right
This all does make me wonder about the disconnect between how HR percieves itself compared to the negative light it seems to be seen in by employees, potential employees, and managers of other departments.
So if I lived in the US and I say I decided I didn't want to work because I had saved enough money to live on and I wanted to travel/write the american novel/sit at home and play video games/whatever, exactly why should an employer care
Put yourself in an employer's position. Do you want to spend a ton of money recruiting for a job, hours interviewing candidates, hire someone, train them, and have them leave a few months later? Hiring and training an employee costs a company money, so they want one who will stay around and give them a return on that money.
If I buy something in another state with a lower tax, in theory I have to pay taxes to my state to make up the difference. But it doesn't work the other way around. I don't get a refund for buying something in a higher tax state when I live in a lower tax state. If the government(s) don't seem to play fair, but rather to maximize profit, can you expect citizens to do any differently?
Case in point. I moved from a state with 6% sales tax to one with 5%. I had to retitle my car, and if I had bought it in a state with a lower tax, I would have to pay the government of my state the sales tax difference between my state and theirs - but there is no refund for a higher to lower. And this isn't just for people who just bought their cars in another state - I bought the car 2 years earlier.
the buddylinks spyware that the OP refers to actually pops up a box, complete with a link to a EULA, to accept or stop the install.
The text of the EULA lists all the stuff that it does - send ads out to other people on your buddy list with no action on your part. And yet people agreed to it. And in general, shrink wrap/click wrap licenses have been held as legal.
The problem is once again human nature - people are used to clicking yes on those boxes because they were originally for stuff you actually needed to view a webpage (Windows Update, shockwave and flash plugins, ect). People don't bother reading them, just click yes, and wind up installing toolbars, gator, weatherbug, bonzibuddy, and the rest of that crap.
I noticed that the current alienware laptops look different - I don't know if they are from a new supplier now or just redesigned - but the earlier Alienware laptops were just rebadged clevos. Identical laptops were available under the Sager brand for considerably less - but without the hype or bright colors.
I need appliction or document portability, I own a 256mb USB key. Much lighter, and cheaper, than a laptop.
Which is nice in theory, but not always practical. You can't always find a computer you can plug into - many public terminals are so locked down that you can't plug a USB key in because it will look for a driver. Or maybe the only computer available is one that is too slow, lacks an application you need, ect.
I have a Powerbook as well as a desktop PC. While I use the desktop more, it's nice being able to take the Powerbook with me when I go on trips, visit the parents, ect and have a computer I like with everything I need on it.
Why would the government give a $683M break to AMD to get 1000 jobs? That's two thirds of a million bucks per job.
Well, first of all it's in grants and allowances, so the governemnt probably doesn't look at it as "real money" - and I'm guessing it's probably spread out over a long period of time, ie tax breaks for the next x years.
Secondly, they are probably figuring that the plant will make suppliers and customers of AMD move nearby, thus providing more jobs and taxes. It's debateable if this actually works, but that's probably their thought process.
From the article: Another challenge: Most people can't identify a counterfeit bill. Sang says federal officials showed him one-sided bills and even black and white bills that had been passed.
Do you really think the 16 year old cashier at Wal-Mart or the local grocery store can tell the difference between a real and fake bill- or cares? My guess is that more counterfied currency gets passed than people realized. Heck, there was a story a while ago about someone successfully using a fake TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL.
The fact is that I doubt it cost HP too much money, or they wouldn't have bothered - and it sounded like a lot of the efforts were more advice to the government on how to design the current crop of new peach $20's to not copy on their printers than modifications on their printer to not copy them.
I work at a college, and see the same thing. We recently started giving all students Novell Netstorage accounts in the hopes they will save on there, but no, they still love their floppies. I've seen people come in with floppies broken in half that they have sat on wanting to know if we can recover it.
We do use a program called badcopy that has been pretty good about recovering damaged floppies.
My point is less about the sender knowing they have a virus, and more about the sender knowing their document wasn't recieved. Even once they find out they have a virus, the average user won't know that their document wasn't recieved. And there are a lot of people out there who don't have up to date virus software or don't bother updating it - think home users whose computer came with a 3 month subscription that expired two years ago.
I work at a helpdesk, so I've spent the last couple days repeating how from headers can be forged, ect, ect to users... so I agree with the frustration and do want it to stop.
At the same time, if I unknowingly sent an important document that had a virus and was not recieved, I would want to know. Years ago I remember sending a resume that was infected with a word macro virus - I was glad that I got a bounceback message, since a)I knew I had a virus and b)I knew the place didn't get my resume.
There is one lesson Apple seems not to learn: people want much and they want it cheaply. Nobody cares about quality.
If that were true, every computer would be an eMachine, every car would be a Kia, and every DVD player would be an Apex.
But no, people buy Alienware computes, cars from BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Audi, ect, and hi end DVD players from Denon, ect.
Apple is not the only company that concentrates on selling a smaller number of items to people who want quality, and they are not the only company that is good at it.
Windows XP handles zip files nativly, unlike earlier versions that required using a third-party application like winzip. This virus and the many incantations of mimail prey on this. If you are running an older version of window you might pause when winzip comes up when you click on the attachment, but if you are running XP and don't look at it, a simple click will open it.
My guess is that a decent number of these will be bought by companies, schools, or other organizations that already have some sort of Microsoft site license. They will still pay microsoft, but won't have to pay for a machine with an OS, then pay more to install something over it.
The college I work at has an MS site license through a college consortium. We would buy PC's with one version of Windows then overwrite them with images of another, usually because we weren't ready to deploy whatever the latest and greatest OS yet. I'm sure a lot of businesses have site licenses for NT or 2k and aren't ready yet to deploy XP, and don't want to have to pay for XP licenses when XP would be wiped off 5 minutes after opening the box.
I always laugh when I get fake Windows windows while surfing on my Mac using Safari, or when I'm on a Windows machine with a different skin than the fake window.
Many of those misdirect/mistype sites do a lot more than deliver popups. They also use IE flaws to reset the home page, install spyware, install additional popups, ect.
Plus then you have fun viruses like Trojan.sinkin that spread through AIM using IE holes and deliver popups.
Why would they admit doing something illegal if they don't have to? Why would a company risk getting sued or fined for doing something if they don't have to?
This is the way the legal system, plea bargins, ect work. Both sides end up getting something that's better than the alternative if the other side wins - the DOJ gets what they want, and MS doesn't lose a bunch of money. Both sides would rather have the certainty of that outcome than a partial chance of total victory.
The 50xx (I have a 5060) still have commercial skip and internet transfer. The 55xx (the current models) don't have it, and probably never will. The lawsuit of the Hollywood studios was dismissed partly because Replay/dnna agreed to drop these features. This lawsuit affects RePlay users who were suing the studios.
I think the OP meant that SonicBlue, which made replay when they had commerical skip and internet program sharing, no longer exists. They were the company being sued originally. RePlay was bought by Digital Networks North America (owned by the owners of Denon and Marantz) who now provide the RePlay service. While I guess DNNA would still be liable since they bought RePlay, the fact that they dropped commercial skip and internet sharing probably in the new models makes the issue matter less.
Which brings me to my question: isn't TiVo just a niche product that really should only be used by folks with an antenna feed or analog cable feed who don't have the savvy to set up a PC next to their TV?
I would agree that the "less tech savy" part is probably what DVR's appeal to, as well as digital customers who want more features than on-demand. But that is a huge market. Most people don't want to take the time to build a PC, configure it, ect - they would rather just plug in the device and go. They don't want tho have to fool around with TV capture card drivers and worry about their machine crashing and not recording the show.
I have a RePlay, and I like it. I consider myself pretty tech-savy, but I like the fact that I can just plug it in and it works. It also has a bunch of features not on On-Demand (commercial skip, network sharing, and I would imagine better scheduling, although I've never used on-demand.
The article talked a bunch about getting additional regulations to discourage jobs from moving offshore. The article only mentions two things. It has a typical quote from Dean that he would fix this if he was president, but doesn't say how. This is followed by a comment that Kerry wants to make call centers identify where they are located. I'm not sure what this would do - it seems widely known that call centers are generally run offshore, and you can usually figure this out by the fact that almost everyone you talk to has a foriegn accent. Besides, am I going to hand up on HP support (assuming I owned an HP) because their call center is in India?
Ending HB1 visas seems like an obvious thing (considering the glut of unemployed tech workers) but it's not mentioned in the article. I wouldn't be surprised if terrorism concerns had more to do with getting fewer H1's than the industry.
I don't think the government could make it illegal for companies to move call centers, and I'm not sure what else they could do to keep them in the US besides the usual tax incentives.
The guy who said it works for an IT professional trade group. He is pro tech worker, not pro- tech company. The quote in the article comes after a line about how the tech industry wants the government to spend more education. The guy says that the problem isn't lack of education, it's that businesses are moving overseas not because of lack of education, but because they can pay workers less.
that the documents are in .PDF instead of .doc. Of all the document formats to put it in, they put it in one that they don't support in their OS or office suite.
He listed Windows Update, 1 hour as one of the things. I'm guessing that includes download and install time, where he didn't actually have to do anything.
Aside from not being able to use the machine, it's hard to think of spending five minutes navigating to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, a few minutes for it to scan and for you to select the patch, then reading a book or watching TV for an hour until it's done downloading/installing, as wasting an hour.
On the other hand, why would someone sending spam care too much about the integrity of the data?
True, but he also said the data included specific-use email accounts. I don't know if sending your spam to abuse@domain or webmaster@domain is a very good idea, since chances are the person who checks an abuse or webmaster account is probably unlikely to buy your crap, and probably tech savy enough to make your life difficult if he or she desires.