Is it a good thing or a bad thing if your boss comes across your resume when she or he is perusing the job boards?

The answer, unfortunately, is not that clear cut.

If your boss knows you are out there looking she or he may think, “I better do what I can to keep this employee.”

Or, they may think, “This person is a short timer so I won’t invest my time or money in them.”

If you’re unemployed, go for it, advises executive search expert Brian Drum:

But, be careful if you already have a gig you’re not quite ready to give up without a new gig securely under your belt.

“It is extremely risky to post your resume on any online job boards or networking sites if you are presently employed,” Drum explains. “Not only could your boss see your resume and know that you are looking for a new position, but someone from HR could see it, co-workers could see it, business contacts, clients, and vendors could all see it. If any of these contacts sees your resume this could lead to you not only being let go, but it could also lead to the start of rumors across your industry and could cause you to lose any pending business deals with clients or vendors.”

“The bottom line,” he adds, “is that if someone sees you as ‘temporarily’ in that position, they may choose not to deal with you and waste their time dealing with you.”

“We recommend using the ‘Confidential’ option when posting your resume if you feel that you must post, but if you don’t want to chance it we recommend just using the internet to browse current openings and apply directly to positions that you feel are a fit.”

The confidential option, who knew.

I figured I’d contact Monster.com, one of the biggest job boards out there, and find out if that’s possible.

It is!

“Monster users can choose to hide their name/contact information as a privacy option. In addition, job seekers can also choose up to five employers to cloak their resume from,” according to the company.

There are other issues to keep in mind when posting your resume as well.

Security is a big concern for Jason Alba, founder of career-management site JibberJobber.com. “Granted, when you have your resume out at all this issue is there, but who knows who is accessing the resume I post on a job board?”

It could be someone just trying to sell you crap. “I found that having a resume posted on at least one big job board produced a number of calls, after 6 pm, that were either insurance sales or MLM (multi-level marketing). I definitely wasn’t looking for either of those, but the calls kept coming,” Alba adds. “It was fruitless.”

“Disgruntled.” That’s the label supporters of President Bush have put on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose new book exposes alleged dirty deeds by Bush and top White House officials.

The woman who holds McClellan’s position now, Dana Perino, was quoted saying the dreaded word, “disgruntled.”

One thing you learn early on when you enter the workforce is to be careful when dogging your former employer. This has been a piece of career advice that has been handed down from generation to generation.

McClellan probably isn’t worried about his future employability given his book is number one on Amazon today, but for the rest of us who can’t make a killing by writing a tell-all book, we need to think twice before we bitch about a past boss.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t expose illegal behavior, especially if someone can get hurt. But in this case, waiting until years after you leave a company to expose such behavior is unethical on your part as well. I’ve written before how employee themselves have to stand up for injustices they see, even if it means sacrificing your job. (If McClellan’s allegations are true, that Bush used propaganda to prop up an unjust war, then it seems he had a hand in the tragedy. No?)

But complaining about a former employer, especially to hiring managers that are interviewing you leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

I know, we’re human, and want to get things off our our chests, but restrain the urge to purge.

I love happy endings, especially when they involve workers.

If I were a betting gal, I would have bet that this conservative Supreme Court would have sided with employers in rulings announced yesterday involving workers who were allegedly retaliated against by employers. But thankfully, I would have lost that bet.

In February, I wrote about an employee of restaurant chain Cracker Barrel who was fired for reporting to managers that another worker was being racially discriminated against. It seemed like a clear case of retaliation, which is thought to be a legal no no. Alas, the law is fuzzy in this regard, which is where the Supreme Court came in.

The high court was to decide whether Hendrick Humphries, the Cracker Barrel employee’s, claims of retaliation were indeed covered by existing labor laws, specifically an anti-discrimination statute that has no limits on filing time limits or damages.

And in another case, Myrna Gomez-Perez, a former postal worker in Puerto Rico, filed an age discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and then, she claims, her managers reduced her hours as a result. She to claimed she was retaliated against.

This case would have an ultimate impact on federal employees because the law was unclear on federal employers retaliating based on age discrimination.

In both cases, the Supreme Court decided Tuesday in the employees’ favor, giving them the green light to pursue their lawsuits.

Everyone seemed surprised by the rulings.

From the Associated Press:

An unexpected blend of liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices gave workers more leeway Tuesday to sue when they face retaliation after complaining about discrimination in the workplace.

I was also a bit dumbfounded.

In February, I wrote a blog post for The Huffington Post on how workers should be keeping an eye on the Supreme Courts agenda because the cases they were examining and their ultimate rulings would impact employees for years to come.

Maybe they knew you were all watching.

I get verbally attacked a lot by readers of my MSNBC.com column. I get some jabs here as well, but not anything like my column.

This week’s column on green-collar jobs got some intense criticism but there was one post on a MSNBC message board that made some interesting points. The column looks at the increasing number of so-called green-collar jobs in industries like solar and wind power.

But many readers thought this was a bunch of hype.

“Farming is the only TRUE green job out there.” wrote “Damn Tired of This”. (That’s the reader’s handle on the message board.)

“Wind turbines are not GREEN they’re huge pieces of equipment and they take a lot of energy to produce. Turns out those Green light bulbs they’re producing are worse than the old candesant light bulbs. Low flow toilets and faucets actually use more water than the old fashion toilets and if you really want to be green and save water……….build an outhouse…..then you can recycle the sh$t for sale to a farmer. Created 1,160 jobs………that’s a whole lot of people driving to work, through mountains, so you can double the greenhouse gases emitted from their cars! Going GREEN is a big farce.”

And he took a swipe at me: “The author of this article is killing trees by writing and selling a book…….which I’m sure was written on one of those nasty energy hog computers.”

Ouch! That one hurt.

He, or she, does make a good point though. A job is a job is a job. If you look real deep almost any job is probably anti environment in some way.

The point I was trying to make is that a whole new world of jobs is starting to open up because people are seeing the importance of trying to save the earth. It would be great if we could all be farmers. I was actually talking about becoming a farmer with my husband over the long weekend.

But the reality is, we won’t all become farmers. So we’ll have to try and find some gig, and hopefully it does a tiny bit to mitigate the damage we’ve already done and keep on doing.

I should convince my next publisher to release my next book in digital format only. Save the trees!

I get letters like this all the time from individuals who devoted a big chunk of their lives to serving our country, but end up in a job abyss when they try to get work once they leave the military behind:

“I am a retired veteran with twenty two years military experience. I have two Bachelors degrees, however I cannot find a decent job. I send in my resume, but I do not get many call backs. If and when I do they are to say thanks for your interest in our company.”

This letter was from John, who left the military in 2005. He sounds like a hard-working, smart guy, but he can’t get a break when it comes to finding a job. It’s probably even gotten worse for ex-military folks with the tough economy, but too often employers don’t give enough weight to a job seeker’s military background.

I addressed this topic in a column a year ago, and I offered advice to veterans on how they could revamp their resumes and their approaches to interviews to help them out.

But, the bottom line is all of us should start to realize how much great experience veterans have. If we’re hiring managers, employees, CEOs, we all need to think, “hey, this guy or gal was in the military. They probably have the kind of training most job prospects will never have.”

Many have incredible leadership skills, and talk about pressure under fire. Many soldiers also have to be on top of the latest technology, as all the armed services use systems that would make most techies heads spin.

Military folks also have to do a bit of repackaging of themselves. One of the reasons employers are worried about hiring former soldiers is they believe they just can’t leave the Army, Navy, or Air Force behind. They want to know you can easily assimilate into the corporate culture. So, leave the “Yes, Sir!”, “Yes, Ma’ma!” at the interview door. And leave the military jargon off your resume. Make it as simplistic as possible so HR will not just toss your resume in the bin.

And I promise, I mean no disrespect by this. When I wrote similar things in my MSNBC.com column I got a lot of angry emails for people in the military that thought I was putting what they do and who they are down.

I’m not. I respect with all my heart what soldiers do. All I’m doing is trying to help you all with some reality-check career advice because there are people out there who will brush aside your military background, or even use it against you. Don’t let this happen. Be proud of your service and let them know you can adapt to any battlefield, even the corporate one.

“They think I’m going to grad school,” my intern says about her parents.

“Are you?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she replies.

This is the conversation I had with my intern Katherine this morning. She just finished finals and, if she passes all her tests, will be a college senior next year.

Turns out, once every few weeks her parents ask her about what she plans for her future. They ask her about going to graduate school, about the steps she’s taking now to get her on the right career road, etc., etc.

Her common response is something like, “I’ll figure it out later.”

I’m listening to this closely because I have two young kids. Even though they’re 5 and 8, I’m wondering already how I will be when they’re at that critical crossroads, just a few steps from the real work world.

Obviously, Katherine doesn’t like her parents haranguing. She talks about them, when it comes to this issue, as if they were a two-headed monkey on her back constantly saying, “What’s your plan? What’s your plan?”

I had her call her mother Liz this morning to ask why they feel compelled to do this.

On why she pesters Katherine: “Hoping that you’ll take the ball and run with it.”

Liz feels compelled to keep on top of her daughter, “Because the stakes are much higher and you need to look at things much earlier in your life now.” As early as high school, she believes. “There are lots of opportunities you can take advantage of but you have to plan for them and get to them earlier. You have to involve them otherwise they won’t know how to make decisions.”

This all seems to make sense for us parents today. We are so much more involved in our kids lives than previous generations.

But as college kids take their finals, or prepare for graduation, it might be a good time to ask ourselves if parental badgering is helpful, or do we need to climb down from our kids’ backs already?

I asked Nicholas Aretakis, author of “No More Ramen: The 20-Something’s Real World Survival Guide”, what his take was and he shared this personal story from when he was in his first semester of college more than 25 years ago:

“I had my weekly call home, advising my parents of my struggles. They weren’t the most sophisticated or well educated (my Dad quit high school to join his 5 elder brothers in WWII, and saw serious combat action in Iwo Jima), but they said something that would have a resounding impact on my life. ‘Do the best that you can, we are proud of you regardless.’ After that conversation, I realized that the only pressures that I had to worry about were the pressures that I placed upon myself. The next semester I made the Dean’s List, and I graduated from Hobart College Cum Laude a year early, which enabled me to get into Columbia University, which opened many doors that contributed to my success over the years.”

That said, he doesn’t think parents should just cut the cord on college kids.

Here’s some advice he offers on helping, but not monkey-on-your-back type helping. It’s long but I thought parents would appreciate me taking up as much cyber space as possible for this:

1. Establish strong and honest communications with your children. Don’t be dictatorial, be supportive. Share pertinent stories of others and experience. If they find you helpful, they will come to you for help and accept some of the tutelage you can provide
o Ask your child, “What do you want to do?” This is much better than saying, “You need to find a job”.
o Help them find their way, but don’t be pushy, and don’t pressure them
o Determine if the option of them moving back home is open, and agree on some timelines and guidelines (if they move back into the nest)
o Be an open minded “sound-board” for you child, even if some of the initial ideas may not be either practical or wise
2. Become a “mentor” for your children, and encourage them to find others that will be qualified- professors, counselors, relatives, friends of the family, bosses or colleagues, etc.
o Mentorship can help you uncover a career direction or accelerate pursuits
3. Gain an understanding of what special talents or skills your children possess, and whether there is any potential career path that could be pursued
o Do they have any idea on what products or services they would like to design, develop, market or sell?
4. Encourage children to utilize the Career Services provided at their college
o Employers come to schools looking for particular skills, education or experience
o As a student or alumni, you can gain free access to postings made available by national services (e.g. MonsterTRAK, NACElink)
5. Get an idea on whether they have any career aspirations. Encourage spending time with individuals in similar fields, research prospective employers (management, direct supervisor, peers, culture)
o Spend few hours or a day “on the job”, getting an idea of the nuances of the job, gaining a flavor of whether you are cut out for this path
o www.CareerTours.com now offers short videos on prospective employers and specific positions, encourage your child to navigate and get a glimpse of some potential job options
o Encourage internships (paid or unpaid)- accomplishing several key factors:
§ gaining valuable work experience, positioning young adults when they graduate;
§ getting a better sense of a particular job or career path;
§ expanding their professional network – leading to strong references or other potential employ
o Visiting prospective employers’ websites, Google related companies and the particular industry (is it growing, in decline, exciting?)
o Interview with as many employers as practical- compare jobs, pay, benefits, culture, etc. (we provide free downloadable templates at www.NoMoreRamenOnline.com)
6. Ensure that your children understand the commitments of the job, particularly early on when they may need to “pay their dues”
o The path to more glamorous assignments starts with logging in time performing some of the less desirable tasks exceptionally well (the old cliché of “starting in the mail room)
7. Teach fiscal responsibilities
o Everything in the “real world” has an associated cost (we provide downloadable “budget templates”, visit www.NoMoreRamenOnline.com)
o Make sure that they compare the entire compensation packages from employer to employer- base pay, bonus, stock options/purchase plans, 401(k) plans- matching contributions, vacation, work hours, perks (e.g., travel or meal), culture, and some of the intangibles
8 Determine if graduate school is requisite?
o If so, can parents help their children financially to continue education, or would the child be saddled with excessive debt upon completion?

Great words for all you monkeys out there.

Hillary Clinton brought up a great point this week on the campaign trail. She believes the media has ignored sexism against her campaign but have played up racism against Barack Obama.

It got me thinking about attitudes in the workplace. I’ve been writing about discrimination at work for many years, and it does seem sexist remarks don’t seem to carry the same weight as racist remarks among some individuals.

People seem to get more outraged when someone attacks a coworker for the color of their skin than their gender. I’m not basing this on scientific evidence, it is just what I’ve seen as an employee and in the stories workers have shared with me.

Here’s what Clinton had to say in a Washington Post article this week:

“There should be equal treatment of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head. It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists.”

Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter, recently made an interesting point. She was referring to the “Iron My Shirt” t-shirt that an idiot displayed at a Clinton rally:

“Suppose somebody at that Barack Obama rally said ‘Shine my shoes,’” Ferraro said. “The person would have been swamped by the media saying, ‘what, are you a racist?’ Hillary barely saw press on this. It is not only the Obama campaign. It is how the press has handled this.”

I have to take issue with Ferraro on one part of this. The press did indeed pick up the story, but I can’t help but think there would have been more outrage if a “shine my shoes” shirt was making the rounds.

What I have found is there still is a lot of racism in the workplace but that tends to be more discreet, where sexism is often overt.

Many of the high level executive women I’ve interviewed for my book “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office” told me about public displays of sexism.

One CEO had a guy put his hand on her knee in a restaurant as he talked about how she probably slept her way to the top. And so many women in power have told me how they were asked if they were secretaries during meetings. If they had been black males, I’m assuming that would never have happened.

Why? We don’t think of women in authority roles.

My husband has an even more interesting theory. He says it’s all about the fear of getting beat up that’s ingrained in boys from a young age. They take that fear into their adults lives. Basically, they’re not afraid women will beat them up. They most fear other men so they’re not as inclined to get in the face of another male no matter what race.

That doesn’t mean they won’t discriminate behind the scenes, keeping other men down by not advancing them or paying them less. But with women, they not only hit a glass ceiling because of forces behind the scene, they are also being deriding face-to-face.

Now I think I’m pretty strong and can take on many men at Fight Club, aka, the workplace. But alas it’s not just about getting gals to lift weights.

Women still make up a small minority of top executives in Corporate America, and the numbers have actually been declining. We have to start seeing women, and I’m talking to women here as well, as leaders.

“All through my career I underestimated what I could do, until the last few years,” a high level, female executive from Wal-Mart told me. “You build a perception of your potential based on what you see, the people who break out of a mold. I grew up in a blue-collar town in the 1960s where the most successful women I saw were beauticians and administrative assistants.”

How did the women CEOs I got to know handle the blatant sexism?

They confronted the sexist individuals head on, and they also often let stupid comments slide. And they had to get to a point where they believed in themselves.

Clinton’s battle for the White House has been eye opening. Whether you support her or not, it has sparked an important national conversation.

I think she has moved us all closer to visualizing a woman as a leader. We just need to translate some of that to our offices and factories.

I admit it. It’s hard for me to say “no” to a friend or connection request on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Even if I don’t know the person, I feel compelled to say “yes” when they ask.

I know I’m probably opening up the flood gates on more requests to link up, but I needed to get this off my chest.

How do you say “no” to someone who just wants to be your networking buddy, your cyber pal, your Internet friendly?

And the bigger questions — Is it a smart career move to nix certain folks from your list of contacts? Or, can you end up diluting your network if you have too many people in your circle?

It blows my mind when I see people with 400 connections/friends. How can one person know so many people well enough to have them on their networking list? It’s like weddings with 400 guests. I never got that. How on earth do two people know so many people well enough to want them there for such an intimate event?

These social networking sites have become like a scene from the movie “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding.” Endless, faceless Greek relatives no one knows that well and don’t really want to know…unless you’ve had a few too many glasses of Ouzo that is. (FYI, my hubby and I had small, skinny Greek wedding with 50 wedding guests. Our backyard really couldn’t handle more, much to the chagrin of many of my big, fat Greek relatives.)

One colleague of mine, who writes for a major newspaper, accepts pretty much anyone that asks her on her Facebook account but it pickier with her LinkedIn account, surmising that’s her serious group of contacts.

I also see my LinkedIn account as a bit more serious, but I still accept every Tom, Nick and Harry that asks me to link in.

The bigger the network, the better my networking potential, no?

I figured I’d get some input from a cyber networking expert, so last night I emailed Alison Doyle, author of “Internet Your Way to a New Job: How to Really Find a Job Online” and the About.com guide for the site’s job searching section.

“I don’t think that more is necessarily better. I think having good, strong connections that you know and who can help you build your career or connect with people who can, is better than having too many connections who aren’t relevant,” she explains.

As for her own friend-accepting habits: “From my perspective, and this is because of what I do, I don’t accept every connection that asks. If I did, I’d be inundated with friends who are job seekers who want personal help, etc. etc. I’m sure you know what that’s like…”

Oh yeah, you know it sista.

But how the heck do you let people down? I have a policy not to recommend anyone who asks me on LinkedIn because I’m a journalist and feel it’s inappropriate. But conveying this to the people that have asked me for a recommendation has been tough. I feel so bad when I have to say no.

That’s probably why I never reject a friend or connection request.

Doyle has an interesting approach for this. “I tend to ignore those that I don’t accept rather than declining them or saying I don’t know them, because I don’t want them to feel bad.”

I read this late last night and decided to take her advice starting this morning.

And believe it or not I had a LinkedIn connection request and a Facebook friend invitation in my email box first thing this morning so I was ready to test out my new found backbone.

But guess who the requests were from? Doyle.

I’m not kidding.

Ok, I’m sure you know what happened. I accepted her invitations ASAP.

Bring on the wedding guests. Opa!

The tech titans in Silicon Valley don’t seem to care that the people cleaning their lavish offices make insanely low wages in one of the most expensive places on earth.

The average pay for Silicon Valley tech workers is the highest in the country, but the janitors there make way less than their counterparts in places like New York and Chicago. Case in point, New York’s janitors make $25.25 an hour compared to $11.04 in Silicon Valley.

This is outrageous. In a place like Silicon Valley such wages are near poverty.

And, you’re probably not going to believe this, it takes two and a half years before they are eligible for health insurance. Can you imagine starting a new job and being told you have to wait two plus years?

Not surprisingly the janitors overwhelmingly authorized a strike over the weekend.

From the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday:

Janitors who clean offices in Silicon Valley and Alameda and Contra Costa counties voted Saturday to authorize a strike after contract talks with management representatives broke down over wages and health benefits.

As many as 6,000 janitorial workers, members of Service Employees International Union Local 1877, could go out on strike at any time after Saturday’s nearly unanimous vote in San Jose, Gina Bowers, a spokeswoman for the union, said.

From the employer side:

Jim Beard, chief negotiator for the cleaning contractors, said workers were offered wages and benefits that added up to an additional $3 over four years.

“We think this is a pretty good deal,” Beard said. “It covers the increasing costs of health and welfare.”

It’s a disgrace how we divvy up wealth in this country. The disparity in pay among the top and bottom half of our society has been widening more and more each year.

From CBS News earlier this month:

There have always been “haves” and “have-nots” in the United States, but over the past three decades, the gap between them has gotten a lot wider, statistics from congressional numbers crunchers show.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, income for the bottom half of American households rose six percent since 1979 but, through 2005, the income of the top one percent skyrocketed - by 228 percent.

No where is this chasm more pronounced that among the elite, so-called enlightened on the West Coast in this more than golden tech hub we all know as Silicon Valley.

Maybe Google’s founders and all those other tech executives who have more money than they know what do with need to start putting pressure on the contractors they hire to treat workers fairly.

Google’s founders are now worth about $18 billion each. It may be a good time for them to remember when they were broke and working out of a garage.

While the nation marvels at California’s Supreme Court’s decision to allow gay marriage, I thought it was a good time to bring up a past ground-breaking achievement by the Golden State — paid family leave.

In 2002, California was the first state to approve paid family leave, and since Washington State and New Jersey have followed suit. No other states have mandated paid family leave.

There are so many workers in this country that can’t take off, or suffer economic hardship, when they need to be away from work to care for a new born, or an ailing parent. And we’re not talking about employees who decide they want to take months off, but those that just need a few weeks to deal with a family situation.

Most of the laws now on the books in these progressive states call for up to six weeks of paid time off, and in most cases, these programs are funded by the employees themselves that pay into a pot to cover the leave, just like they chip in for unemployment insurance.

Many people I talk to think paid family leave will end up benefitting only women who take time off right after they give birth or who typically end up having to care for sick family members. But I’m here to tell you that many of the individuals I’ve interviewed recently, which I’ll be profiling in my column on MSNBC.com in the coming weeks, have been men.

One journalist in California told me he needed to take time off to help care for his father with Alzheimer’s. Another worker there decided he needed a few weeks to attend to his fatherly duties when his daughter was born.

Oregon and New York will be considering the passage of their own paid family leave laws next year. Every state needs to follow California’s lead.

Folks, this is about all of us. It’s about being an enlightened society that understands the importance of family and the curve balls that life too often throws at us.