The Career Diva posts that got the most people reading in 2012 were all about the stupid things employers do.

Here are the top ten posts of the year:

Turns out many of you are upset about performance reviews, and you have good reason to be. The experts say such reviews are arbitrary and utterly useless.

And quite a few of you agreed some human resource departments can be clueless, especially when it comes to employee benefits such as family and medical leave.

Another workplace problem that gets under everyone’s skin is the rise in employers trying to get under your skin and find out how healthy, or unhealthy workers are.

A disturbing trend during 2012 was the growing number of employees holding multiple jobs.

It turns out if you’re a tough white woman or tough black man you can’t get a break.

What got job seekers angry this past year was the endless amount of interviews hiring managers think they need to decide on a candidate.

And women are still facing the perpetual problem of not supporting each other. Who cares how much Kelly Clarkson weighs? Quite a few of us, it turns out.

Employers are still asking job candidates how old they are, and they’re not always breaking the law when they do it.

My standing desk is still my back’s savoir, and a popular topic for many of you.

And finally, the Diva post that got the most readers reading was actually about a story I didn’t write. Lesson for 2013, don’t believe everything you read, especially work-at-home success stories.

Happy New Years everyone!! Looking forward to hearing from you all in the new year with your job/career questions. (careerdiva@verizon.net)

(Below is a guest post by Emmanuel Conde, a respected IT recruiter and writer. It is part of a series of guest posts I will be publishing on CareerDiva offering a different perspective and expertise on jobs and careers.)

By Emmanuel Conde

I became a recruiter out of necessity.

I was an IT manager and a technical assistant center manger and then a consultant manager, and through these last few roles I was always called upon to do my own recruiting. It was easier for me to search on Monster myself for candidates than explaining what I needed to human resources. So, after so many years of doing this on my own it changed my career.

Now I essentially run a geek dating service.

Recruiting is often like herding cats. If you have never had more than three cats in your responsibility at one time, then you don’t know. I mean cats are great for stuff like ignoring you, allowing burglars to take stuff they don’t use, urinating in places you cannot locate, and running in different directions.

Geeks are like that if you are scheduling interviews for more than one in a day. So, you get them lined up and they can’t find the cell phone charger, or the server room has no signal, or they forgot, or they found a new place to urinate.

And they’re slow to make decisions, even critical career decisions. The problem can be even worse for geeks who are married. (more…)

When I covered the auto industry for a local newspaper many years ago, some of the autoworkers took to calling me Lois Lane. I’d show up in my fitted suits — notepad in hand — at the plants, at local bars they hung out at, and in parking lots where some of them drank beer to deal with the horrific summer heat in non air-conditioned facilities.

Even though I knew some of workers were mocking me a bit, I secretly was proud of the title. All I ever wanted to be was a reporter since I was probably around 11 or 12. Lois Lane happened to be my idol early on when I’d watch reruns of the original Superman series.

So, what’s weirder than a career writer writing about her new career?

Yes, I’m leaving the world of full-time journalism and heading into the nonprofit world. But I won’t be leaving the workplace and labor world my friends.

As of mid August, I’ll be joining a New York-based think tank called Families & Work Institute, or FWI.

I’ll still be blogging about workplace issues here on CareerDiva and writing occasionally for NBCNews.com, but my full-time gig will be getting the message out about the great research and advocacy FWI does.

This moment is bittersweet. I leave behind a profession I’ve loved for more than 20 years, and I leave behind a great crew of journalists at MSNBC.com, now NBCNews.com.

Change can be scary. I’ll admit that. But change is what makes our lives exciting and enriching. (more…)

UPDATE BELOW

Some job seekers who thought they had their criminal records sealed or believe arrest records won’t show up in a background check are often in for a rude awakening.

Turns out FBI data bases, and other public and private sources of information, can still turn up past missteps you thought weren’t in the public sphere, said Samuel Miller, a labor law attorney.

“A quarter of U.S. population has some record in FBI data base, and a large number may be situations where someone got fingerprinted or held in jail for a few hours but never got prosecuted,” he said.

Today, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is holding a meeting in Washington where it will announce new guidelines for the use of using criminal background checks in employment, and what they propose could help some workers. But the issue of bogus information, or information that was supposed to be out of the public’s eye for ever, may be hard to resolve. (more…)

Those of you who have read this blog over the years, might be familiar with a constant commentator and part time sage, HikingStick.

Well, HikingStick is actually Andrew James Riemer and he lost his job last month because the company decided to outsource the IT department where he worked.

I was devastated when I heard the news, but HikingStick was a rock.

Here’s the email he sent after he joined the ranks of the jobless titled: “Well, I got the axe…”: (more…)

Many job seekers tell me they’re sick of sending resumes and getting no responses, and you all get even madder when you spend time on a well-crafted cover letter and rarely get a peep.

This may be one reason I’ve been hearing from hiring managers that some of you are opting not to send cover letters, even when a job posting specifies that you “send a cover letter.” Also, a Mashable reporter called me a while back asking if cover letters were even necessary today, especially for people in information technology and social media.

My answer to that reporter was a resounding (more…)

Remember that song from the 80s, “99 Luftballons”, also called “99 Red Balloons”?

I thought about the song after I heard about a desperate job seeker from North Carolina who sent up helium-filled balloons with her resume inside in hopes one would land near a hiring manager who had a position open. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

Sherell Elangway, 36, has sent out hundreds of resumes with little response, so she figured why not try something crazy. Balloons up in the air? Her chances were just as good as sending out resumes into the abyss. (more…)

I was watching CBS’ Sunday Morning’s story on unemployed Baby Boomers this weekend and at the end of the piece a jobless salesman named Gary Boxhall, 65, talks about his frustration looking for work since 2009, but ends on a I’m-not-giving-up note:

“I’ll still send out resumes just in case. I think that’s kind of like going fishing. But I think if you really want to catch the fish, you’re going to have to get in your boat, and you’re going to have to row over to the business and knock on the door.”

I thought to myself, what a quaint, old-fashioned notion. Does anyone actually knock on company doors anymore? And if you’re trying to get into a multi-national conglomerate, which door would you knock on anyway? (more…)

It’s great that the economy created nearly 200,000 jobs in February and the jobless rate dipped down below 9 percent, but for a whole class of workers the job market is still crummy.

The number of part-timers who really want a full-time job is still hovering above 8 million, according to the unemployment report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.3 million in February. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

And there are still millions more working temp or contract jobs but really want full-time, good-paying, benefits-covering jobs, with a bit more job security.

Demand for temps is expected to jump 20.3 percent this year, according to a recent study a California staffing firm, G. Palmer & Associates. “Following recent trends, our 2011 first-quarter forecast shows continued steady growth and indicates another increase in demand for temporary workers, marking the fifth-consecutive quarter of year-over-year increases,” said Greg Palmer, founder of Palmer.

The BLS hasn’t really tracked temps and contract workers in any real way, but recently added a new “self-employed” category to its data tracking, and that showed about 14 million in January.

It’s the emerging freelance and part-time nation.

It’s bad news for those of us who just want a regular gig; and lately, I’ve been getting more and more questions from readers about how to break out of this employment purgatory and get your temp boss to become your permanent boss. There are ways to try and do that, but I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s an uphill battle. (more…)

I sent out a cover letter and resume for a job I was interested in, but I did something in the cover letter that I typically don’t do. I was critical of the company. I pretty much said they should hire me because their website sucked.

OK, I didn’t say sucked, but I did include some choice words about how boring the content and design were, and I also wrote that their social media initiatives were lacking.

Hey, I’m all about honesty, so I figured they needed to hear these things. And speaking about hearing things, I haven’t heard back from that employer. Did I offend? We talk so much about not trashing your former employer in a cover letter or an interview, but what about trashing the people you want to work with?

I emailed one of my favorite career coaches to ask her about my in-your-face tactic. (more…)