Online universities have been upping the ante on tempting you to sign up for courses, but you need to be cautious.

Lately I’ve noticed an addition to the qualifications section in help wanted ads:

Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university.

An accredited college or university means the educational institution has an official thumbs up. Typically that translates into a state or national body deeming the school worthy of some sort of recognized certification, basically a stamp of approval. One organization most recruiters look to is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. If your school is recognized by this group, you’re probably OK.

Many of the fly-by-night online degree schools don’t make the cut, and you need to know that before you sign up.

Unscrupulous recruiters at these schools do any thing, even lie, in order to get new students, so if someone at one of these organizations tells you the school’s accredited please do your own research.

I’m particularly angry this morning because the marketing tactics of some online universities are down right sinister. (more…)

There’s been a lot written lately on how employers and recruiters are doing all they can to dig up dirt on employees and job seekers, but in reality not every manager is putting on their Sherlock Holmes hat.

Yes, it’s disturbing to hear that some hiring managers are asking for Facebook passwords from job candidates; and there’s nothing worse than employers who dig into the credit histories of job applicants. Criminal background checks are also a thorn in the side of many workers, especially those who get nixed for a job even though they may have never been convicted of a crime.

But in reality, Big Brother has not taken over the workplace.

A recent study by EmployeeScreenIQ, a worker screening provider, found that many companies are not rushing to the web or any place else to look you up. (more…)

How cool would it be to find the oldest living human being, or the shortest woman on the planet?

About two years ago, Kimberly Partrick, a recent college grad working as paralegal, saw a job posted online at Guinness World Records and thought it sounded too good to be true.

Thank goodness she decided to apply anyway.

The job, said Partrick, 26, “seemed like a perfect fit for my interests and love for travel.”

She is now the record manager for the company and has been able to officiate at records broken in everything from TV watching marathons to parrot births.

The photo to the left is of Kim judging the most macaws born at a single facility in one year. The facility, located at Xcaret Park in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, set the record by birthing 105 macaws in 2009.

With this post, I’m bringing back a popular CareerDiva series called “Quirky Jobs” where I interview individuals with interesting gigs and ask them about their jobs. (If you have any suggestions for a Quirky Jobs profiles just email me: careerdiva@verizon.net)

Here are links to some past Quirky installments:
Quirky Jobs: A Matisse of car interiors.
Quirky Jobs” Sex and the City tour guide.

And here’s a Q&A with Partrick: (more…)

The unemployment numbers for February came out today and many were happy to see we added 227,000 jobs last month and the jobless rate didn’t go up, staying at 8.3 percent.

Well, realistically the economy only created 182,000 real jobs. Why do I say “real”? Because 45,000 of those 227,000 jobs came from temp jobs.

There may be some people out there would don’t mind holding temporary positions, but most folks are looking for permanent gigs.

Many of you have long been searching for a permanent gig with good pay, benefits and a little job security but companies are loathed to offer that.

“It’s cheaper to hire contingent workers, but also more flexible for employers,” Bill Kahnweiler, associate professor and human resource expert at Georgia State University’s Department of Public Management and Policy, told me a while back about the growing practice.

It may be easier for employers, but not on the average working stiffs who want to be permanent working stiffs. Also, some employers may be thwarting the law by keeping on temps and freelancers that are actually full-time employees under the law. (more…)

A group of servers at Hooters are claiming they weren’t given proper breaks and were swindled out of their tips, among other labor law violations. But when they tried to sue as part of a class action their employer pulled the rug out from under them.

The servers, it turns out, had signed an employment contract and in the fine print — which so few employees read — it said they were obligated to go to arbitration, a process to resolve disputes outside of court.

In the end, this story worked out for the servers because Hooters didn’t ask to go to arbitration in a timely manner, according to a district court ruling last month. But most employee-employer disputes like this don’t work out this way.

A case involving a chef at a fancy steak chain, Morton’s, wanted to sue his employer for sexual harassment, and he claimed that “one Morton’s chef would remove asparagus from his genitals and serve it to the restaurant’s paying customers,” according to an MSNBC.com story. The chains owners are now trying to force him into arbitration saying he signed an employment agreement that clearly stated he had to go through arbitration.

More and more workers are unwittingly signing employment agreement that requires them to waive their right to a lawsuit and agree to arbitration. The process, according to some legal experts, is skewed in favor of employers who typically hire the arbitrators who handle the disputes.

For many it’s an unfair David-and-Goliath match up, and it can be expensive for workers. (more…)

I’ve written endless stories about how tough hiring managers and HR folks have become when it comes to job applicants. They don’t want smokers, fatsos, people with bad credit, excons, and too old or too young workers. And forget about landing a job if you’re unemployed.

I know all this makes you grumpy, but you’ve got to get happy, and fast.

A job requirement that seems to be showing up in more help wanted ads lately is — NICE. Yes, employers are now looking for nice people to fill their ranks.

The TED conference company is seeking a production editor for its offices in New York and in addition to needing “Comfort with HTML” and “an ability to listen deeply and critically”, you better not be a jerk. (more…)

Among the quirky and sexy Superbowl commercials yesterday, were two ads hawking an unusual commodity — American workers.

The ads didn’t get as much attention among my chili-gorging guests as the commercial with David Beckham in his underwear; but hey, can you blame them?

But we should all sit up and take notice that the idea of bringing jobs back to the United States is going mainstream.

Here’s one by Chrysler with Clint Eastwood: (Sorry folks, the NFL forced Chrysler to pull this YouTube video. I’ll post a link the second I find it.)

And here’s another from GE:

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “insourcing” jobs, as the Obama administration puts it, but bringing back jobs to the U.S. is going to be a hell of an uphill battle. (more…)

Snap out of it!

The employment report this morning showed a slight dip in the jobless rate to 8.3 percent, and a solid number of new jobs, 243,000 created in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s great news for people who are out there pounding the pavement trying to find work. But the jobs’ data showed there’s a big group of jobless folks who may not even care.

The number of discouraged workers topped 1 million in January from 993,000 in the same month last year. Those figures are worse than what supposedly was the job-market bottom in 2009 when only 778,000 of your were discouraged. And it’s way more than ten years ago, right after Sept. 11, when 369,000 of you were job disheartened.

The BLS definition of a discouraged is: “persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.” And the numbers paint a sad picture of how the Great Recession has beaten many of you down. (more…)

The jobless figures from the Department of Labor this morning offered some hope. The overall unemployment rate dipped to 8.5 percent, the lowest level since 2009.

What wasn’t hopeful was growth in the number of people holding multiple jobs.

It’s one of the stark realities of today’s job market. Good-paying jobs are being lost, and many aren’t being replaced. As a result, some workers are finding they need more than one job to make ends meet — or at least keep up their standard of living, said Ellen Ernst Kossek, a human resource professor at Michigan State University’s School of Labor & Industrial Relations.

More than 7 million Americans are working two or more jobs today, up from 6.8 million in 2010, and 6 million in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (more…)

Reading business books, listening to leadership gurus, and even perusing the help wanted ads lately is like a hellish trip down jargon lane.

One of my least favorites is “critical thinker.” Everyone wants one of those it seems, even if you’re applying for a job in customer service, or as a registered nurse. And job postings including everyone from accounting clerks to Aflac Insurance sales people have to “think outside the box” these days.

There’s so much of this corporate lingo going around employees would like to annihilate them all. Which are most hated? (more…)