Madison

CNN - The legal traps of e-mail - July 6, 1999
             

              
      (IDG) -- The public display of corporate e-mail in Microsoft's antitrust 
      trial may have made employees across corporate America realize that 
      private e-mail messages don't always remain that way. But this publicity 
      is not enough to educate employees about the proper use of e-mail. 
      To protect themselves against a host of legal problems, experts say, 
      companies need clear policies on e-mail use. The policies should cover 
      everything from how long to keep old messages to who can read other 
      people's messages -- and IT managers need to be part of the team that 
      creates and enforces them. 
      The legal issues raised by e-mail are not new ones. What is new is 
      determining how old laws apply to e-mail -- and educating employees about 
      the subject. 
      "People say the most incredible things on e-mail," says Jim Bruce, a 
      partner at the law firm of Wiley Rein & Fielding, in Washington. "The 
      power of e-mail is in a sense its own downfall, because it's so easy to 
      transmit and collect." 
      According to a study commissioned by Cambridge, Mass.-based Elron 
      Software, which makes network and e-mail monitoring software, more than 85 
      percent of adults say they send or receive personal e-mail messages at 
      work. Seventy percent of those say they send or receive adult-oriented 
      personal e-mail messages at work; 64 percent of those who use their 
      employers' systems for personal use say they have received or sent sexist 
      or racist e-mail messages. 
                 How large a problem is it that employees send jokes to each other via 
      e-mail? In some cases, it isn't a problem at all; in other cases, the 
      jokes could become evidence in a sexual harassment lawsuit. Unfortunately, 
      the legal lines are still being drawn that specify exactly what employers 
      need to do to protect themselves. 
      "There is very little law regarding e-mail right now," says Michael 
      Overly, a Los Angeles-based attorney who is special counsel to the 
      information technology group at the Milwaukee-based law firm of Foley & 
      Lardner. "The law that exists is state-based, which means that [laws in] 
      each state vary, and even the courts within a particular state may have 
      different ways of handling this issue." 
      The safest step companies can take for the moment is to establish a 
      reasonable policy on what constitutes appropriate e-mail use and to 
      enforce it. 
      The best policies are created by representatives of all the groups 
      involved, including IT. 
      "You need the lawyers to understand what's dangerous and what's not; you 
      need the IT people to know what's feasible and what's not; and you need a 
      smattering of people from the rest of the company to know what the culture 
      is," Bruce says. 
      Once a policy is established, IT managers can end up having a hand in 
      enforcing it. This can make some IT people feel uncomfortable. 
      "IT was involved in establishing the policy, but being the whip-holder is 
      not our job," says an IT manager at a manufacturing company in the South 
      whose rarely-enforced policy says that e-mail is not to be used for 
      personal use. "I'm a service function. I don't want to be a jerk. I'd 
      rather give people the benefit of the doubt." 
      This example illustrates how important it is to make sure a policy is 
      realistic and has the support of those affected by it. 
      Legal pitfalls
      When representatives from IT, human resources, and other groups in the 
      company get together to formulate an e-mail policy -- or to make sure an 
      existing policy is working -- they should make sure it addresses several 
      legal issues. 
      * Liability. An employer without a solid e-mail policy is at risk of being 
      sued, both by its own employees and by outsiders, Overly says. E-mail can 
      be used as evidence in cases claiming sexual harassment, discrimination of 
      all sorts, or hostile work environments. But if an employer goes too far 
      in the direction of reading employees' e-mail, in an effort to prevent 
      this kind of liability, it could also be sued by employees for invasion of 
      privacy. Furthermore, third parties can sue a company for what its 
      employees do using e-mail, including e-mailing copyrighted documents 
      without permission, libeling another company, or violating anti-spam laws. 

      "Any kind of liability that an employee can create through communication, 
      they can do through e-mail," Bruce says. 
      One IT professional who has been through the process of creating a policy 
      with his company says that a team approach helps to ensure that the policy 
      is balanced. 
      "The idea is to have enough legal and technical savvy to think through 
      what you really want to do," says this IT professional, an electronic 
      commerce project manager at a Fortune 50 company. "The reason I say 'think 
      through' is that in the early days of this work, some companies were 
      monitoring e-mail. Other companies were aghast. They came out with 
      statements like, 'We will guarantee that these e-mails will be private.' 
      If you happen to compromise that privacy, you may be in a precarious legal 
      situation. Think through the consequences of the privacy policy you want, 
      implement it, and communicate it." 
      Overly says that many problems can be prevented by a solid policy that 
      spells out the company's right to read employees' e-mail when necessary. 
      "Employers must have the ability to review everything on their computer 
      systems to make sure that there's no illegal activity being conducted," 
      Overly says. "If someone conducts criminal activity using an e-mail 
      system, unknown to the company, the company's e-mail system can be subject 
      to seizure. Or an employer may be sued in a breach of contract case. As 
      part of that they're going to have to go through a lot of employee 
      e-mail." 
      Even if no one has done anything illegal, it is sometimes necessary to go 
      through an employee's e-mail for other reasons, such as to retrieve 
      crucial documents if they are unexpectedly absent. 
      "Can employees sue for invasion of privacy?" Overly says. "The general 
      rule is that if an employer has a clearly written e-mail policy that says 
      the employee has no expectation of privacy, the employer will probably be 
      safe." 
      * Protection of the information and reputation of the business. "It's so 
      easy to send information with e-mail," Overly says. This includes, of 
      course, information that a company may not want sent anywhere, such as the 
      strategic plan for the next product release. The ease of forwarding 
      messages and using mailing lists means that employees may inadvertently 
      send sensitive information outside of the company. 
      A good e-mail policy will caution employees to be careful about what they 
      send outside the company -- both to make sure there's no confidential 
      information and to be sure they know that whenever they send an e-mail 
      message outside of the company, they are in effect representing the 
      company. 
      "Employees need to understand that when they are using e-mail they are a 
      de facto [representative] for the company," Overly says. 
      * Protection of the company's resources. One large, innocuous graphics 
      file forwarded to the whole company can bring down an e-mail system. 
      Experts say e-mail policies need to explain to employees how to handle 
      attachments and other documents that might cause problems. 
      "I've had major companies tell me they're more concerned about this issue 
      than they are about [all the other] issues combined," Overly says. 
      * Encryption. Sometimes it's useful for companies to encrypt e-mail, Bruce 
      says. 
      But what if employees decide to encrypt their own e-mail so that the 
      employer can't read it? Overly says most policies should include a 
      provision saying that employers must have the key to decrypt any messages 
      that an employee encrypts on an employer's system. 
      * Document retention. Many companies routinely destroy paper documents 
      that they aren't legally required to keep -- but many do not extend this 
      policy to e-mail, experts say. 
      "If a company is sued, it is routine for the other party to ask the 
      company to produce all their records [on the subject], including e-mail," 
      Bruce says. "E-mail is a really juicy target because it can be searched by 
      keyword." 
      Bruce says that there's no reason not to routinely delete e-mail. However, 
      an e-mail-deletion system must preserve any documents that the company is 
      legally required to keep. And if the company becomes involved in 
      litigation, it must stop deleting e-mail that might be relevant. 
      Some companies' policies say that e-mail can be stored only for a limited 
      time, and that e-mail messages that need to be preserved should be 
      converted into another form. 
      The Fortune 50 project manager says that his company's policy makes it 
      clear that its e-mail system is not a document-retention system."If it is 
      a record that needs to be preserved, then it needs to be moved into 
      something where we can retrieve it," he says. "There is an enormous amount 
      of stuff built into a records retention system to make sure that 50 years 
      from now you'll be able to recover it." 
      Promoting the policy
      In addition to creating a realistic policy about e-mail use, companies 
      need to educate employees about that policy and enforce it. 
      The policy that makes the most sense for most companies, Bruce says, is to 
      allow a limited amount of personal use of e-mail, but to make sure 
      employees understand that any documents they create with the company's 
      system will be treated like other company documents. 
      The policy should deal with enforcement, as well. Some employers enforce 
      their policy with monitoring software that flags messages containing 
      suspicious words. You can set monitoring software, for example, to not let 
      documents with code words for secret projects be e-mailed to anyone 
      outside the company. It can also catch words that might be discriminatory 
      or offensive. 
      In some cases, using monitoring software may help a company defend itself 
      against sexual harassment lawsuits, for example -- it can help show that 
      the company was really trying to prevent harassment, Bruce says. However, 
      if a company is monitoring e-mail, it's vital to make sure the employees 
      know about it, Bruce warns. 
      Jeff LePage, director of MIS at American Fast Freight, in Kent, Wash., has 
      been using Content Technologies' MIMEsweeper to monitor e-mail at his 
      company for about one year. He says the employees' knowledge that the 
      filter was there has cut down on the number of adult-oriented jokes and 
      other inappropriate messages. He says that once the policy and software 
      were explained to employees, few complained. 
      "I would have thought people would take it differently, but most people 
      don't seem to mind," LePage says. "There were a few individuals who were 
      detractors of the policy. But how do you fight something like this -- 
      demand that you should be able to send dirty jokes to everyone in the 
      organization?" 
      However, not all companies have found e-mail monitoring to be practical. 
      "It's a lot of administrative work," says the Fortune 50 project manager 
      of the work required to check out the messages that are caught by the 
      software, some of which turn out to be harmless. "If someone wants to 
      communicate something externally that's proprietary information, they're 
      going to do that anyway -- they'll put it on a diskette or a CD." 
      Once the policy has been written and communicated, employee education and 
      communication must be ongoing. 
      "From a morale standpoint it makes sense for employees to know where they 
      stand," Bruce says. "Usually rumors of what companies are doing with 
      e-mail systems are a lot worse than the truth." 
      "The place where you end up in trouble is if different people in the 
      company think there are different policies, because where that typically 
      gets sorted out is in the courts," says the project manager. 
      Employees need to realize that despite e-mail's casual feel, it is 
      nonetheless an official company document. 
      "E-mail doesn't look like the traditional business communication -- it has 
      the feel of sticking a Post-It on somebody's desk," Overly says. "E-mail 
      can be sent without a lot of reflection. Most employees don't really think 
      of the fact that when you send an e-mail there will be a copy on your 
      computer, the network backup tape, etc. It's frequently harder to get rid 
      of an e-mail than a written document." 
      Finally, remember that making a policy work requires an ongoing effort. 
      "You really have to work at this," Bruce says. "You can't just do it and 
      say that's it. You have problems that come up every day." 
      Margaret Steen edits InfoWorld's Enterprise Careers section.

Cyber Law Journal: E-Mail Abuse Leads to Firings at Investment Firm 
             

          May 14, 1999

           By PAMELA MENDELS KPO
          E-Mail Abuse Leads to Firings at Investment Firm
          The internal investigation at Edward Jones, a large investment firm 
          based in St. Louis, began in April after an employee complained about 
          an offensive e-mail message. 

          It ended last week when the company said that it had fired 18 
          employees, allowed one to resign and disciplined 41 others. 
          The company, which has 2,700 employees in St. Louis, has disclosed few 
          details about the incident, and has not released the names of the 
          employees involved. But what is known suggests that Edward Jones, like 
          many employers, is concerned about the potential of employee e-mail to 
          cause mischief in the workplace, and is taking serious steps to 
          control it. 
          "There is a heightened awareness and a moving toward a closer 
          examination of companies' approach to e-mail," said Amy H. Kohn, a 
          lawyer and employment law consultant for Hewitt Associates, a 
          management consulting company in Lincolnshire, Ill. 
          Kohn said that companies are worried about a number of problems raised 
          by employee e-mail. One is the increasing use of e-mail as evidence in 
          corporate litigation. Another is the ease with which confidential 
          financial information or trade secrets could be broadcast to the 
          world. 
          One measure of companies' increased awareness of the power of employee 
          e-mail is the growing number of employers that monitor it. About 27 
          percent of companies surveyed this year by the American Management 
          Association reported that they stored and reviewed e-mail messages, up 
          from about 20 percent in 1998. Generally, employers look at e-mail in 
          spot checks or in the course of investigations. 
          At the same time, the American Civil Liberties Union is hearing from 
          employees disturbed about e-mail snooping. The organization receives 
          about six to seven complaints a week, according to Jeremy E. Gruber, 
          legal director of the ACLU's Workplace Rights Project. Among those 
          complaints was one from a woman who found that intimate messages she 
          had sent to her boyfriend through the company e-mail system had been 
          printed out and posted on a bulletin board by her boss, who had 
          monitored the messages, Gruber said. 
          In general, Gruber noted, the law offers little privacy protection for 
          employee e-mail, and employees should be aware that even after they 
          delete a message, it is still likely to exist somewhere in the company 
          computer system. 

                How much personal use of company e-mail is acceptable?

          Gruber believes this lack of protection is a workplace injustice. 
          "People are at their job 9 to 5, usually even longer these days," he 
          said. "They clearly are going to have to conduct some personal 
          business in the course of the day. And these days, that often involves 
          e-mail." 
          But employers have their own worries when employees begin tapping out 
          notes on subjects that have little to do with the job at hand. Kohn 
          said that companies are grappling with the question of how much they 
          should allow employees to use e-mail for personal messages. 
          Some workplaces are informal enough that tough e-mail restrictions 
          would be at odds with company culture. On the other hand, employers 
          fear that if they allow use of the corporate e-mail system for things 
          like, say, the sale of Girl Scout cookies, they could also be opening 
          the door for things that are less desirable, at least in corporate 
          eyes, like online labor organizing or just general time-wasting. 
          Companies are also wary of employee e-mail ending up as the 
          centerpiece in workplace discrimination cases. 
          For example, a racist joke sent by e-mail to about 22 Citibank 
          employees two years ago is a significant piece of evidence in a race 
          discrimination suit brought by two former Citibank employees against 
          the company. Citibank believes the case, which is pending in federal 
          district court in Manhattan, is without merit and has filed a motion 
          to dismiss it, a company spokesman said. 
          A related suit, in federal district court in Brooklyn, was dismissed 
          recently, in part because the judge ruled that a single offensive 
          e-mail was not enough by itself to create a hostile working 
          environment. Stephen T. Mitchell, a lawyer for the former employees, 
          said he plans an appeal. 

          In the Edward Jones incident, an employee at the company's St. Louis 
          offices complained several weeks ago about receiving an 
          "inappropriate" e-mail, said Mary Beth Heying, a company spokeswoman. 
          She refused to describe the content of the message in any detail, but 
          said the company took action "to make sure each of us is comfortable 
          in our place of work." 
          An article in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, citing an employee, said 
          that a company memorandum sent out in response to the incident 
          mentioned e-mail containing pornography or off-color jokes. 
          After receiving the complaint, the company began investigating the 
          matter, and "discovered quite a few associates were involved," Heying 
          said. She said the misconduct included not just e-mail abuse, but 
          inappropriate use of the Internet. Punishment was meted out based on 
          the seriousness of the offense. Those who were not fired received 
          warning letters, she said. 
          Heying said the company allows for some personal use of the e-mail 
          system. For example, she said, an employee could use it to contact a 
          child at college. 
          But before they are given Internet access, Edward Jones employees are 
          required to sign a document that delineates appropriate and 
          inappropriate uses of the company network. "It is a very clear policy 
          on what is acceptable, what is not acceptable and what the 
          ramifications will be," Heying said.

9/27/00

You'll find help with your Web Detective assignment here under
Interface Design. Look for content about Web site navigation. 

CNNfn - Internet boosts fears of reference-checking - April 01, 1999 
       

      Internet boosts fears of reference-checking 

      April 01, 1999: 11:08 a.m. ET

      USA TODAY (NB) -- By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY. A growing number of job 
      seekers who want to find out what their former employers are saying about 
      them are using the Internet to find the services that make the calls. 
      Some call the trend a job hunter's best defense against negative 
      references. But critics say it only entraps former employers and fuels 
      lawsuits. 
      Another concern is that the accessibility of these services will have a 
      chilling effect on what companies say about former employees. 
      How the process works: Job seekers provide a list of former employers who 
      should be called. For fees ranging from $60 to $100, the services ask 
      questions about the applicant and provide a written report. 
      Some of the services use court reporters, maintain a database of 
      employment lawyers or send information kits outlining legal options to job 
      seekers as preparation for potential lawsuits if references are negative. 
      "Some poor applicants are like the walking dead," says Guy Fowler at 
      Documented Reference Check (DRC), a service that reports doing thousands 
      of checks each month. "They can't get hired, and they don't know why." 
      To avoid accusations of snaring unsuspecting companies, the services don't 
      pose as a potential employer. Instead, they may say they've been hired to 
      do a background check for the purpose of employment. 
      "We stay totally above board," says Pam Myers, president of HRI, which 
      does several hundred such reference checks a month. 
      But that doesn't mean the services don't camouflage themselves. To keep 
      former employers from catching on, DRC uses subsidiaries that close shop 
      every 90 days and reopen with new names, letterheads and phone numbers. 
      Allison & Taylor, which did more than 4,000 checks for clients in January, 
      uses two phone systems to foil caller-identification systems. 
      "It's amazing what people will say," says Terra Dourlain . 
      Some of the services have quietly existed for years, but their debut on 
      the Internet has brought a flurry of business. 
      The trend has some lawyers urging employers to only give out bare-bones 
      references. 
      Others say the services are a valuable courtroom tool. 
      Kurt Entsminger, a Sterling, Va., lawyer, used DRC reports to help land a 
      million-dollar verdict. "It was a very important piece of evidence to show 
      blackballing was going on." 
      Reported By USA TODAY, http://www.usatoday.com . 
      10:02 CST 
      (19990401/WIRES ONLINE, PC, BUSINESS, LEGAL/)  

      home | digitaljam | contents | search | stock quotes | help 
      Copyright © 1999 CNN America, Inc.
      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

CNNfn - Net job-seeking gets more traditional - January 20, 1999
       

      Net job-seeking gets more traditional 

      January 20, 1999: 4:56 p.m. ET

      USA TODAY (NB) -- By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY. Job hunting on the 
      Internet isn't just for the technology savvy anymore. 
      Clergy members, college deans and others in more traditional fields are 
      jumping online to find work, a shift that is fast shaking up the job 
      search. 
      "It's changing the business," says Jeffrey Taylor, CEO of Monster.com, an 
      online career network. "Before, there was no way to mass market yourself." 

      A ranking of jobs sought via the Internet found only three of the top 10 
      searches in the third quarter were specifically related to technical 
      fields, according to CareerMosaic, an online employment site. Common 
      keywords included management, nursing and finance. 
      "When we tell people that 'manager' is the No. 1 search, they're amazed," 
      says Bernard Hodes , president and CEO of CareerMosaic's parent company. 
      Now low-tech employees are becoming more comfortable with computers and 
      willing to job hop in a tight labor market. The surge is coming as the 
      number of employers with online job postings explodes. Levi Strauss, Nike 
      and Salomon Smith Barney are among many who are using their Web sites as a 
      recruiting tool. 
      Despite the online trend, Dan Blohowiak, author of Your People are Your 
      Product, warns that companies that abandon traditional methods altogether 
      risk losing out on good hires. But few are backing away. A survey of 
      employers by the American Management Association found 70% were using the 
      Internet in some way in their job recruitment, up from about 50% a year 
      ago. Signs of the shift abound. Two Internet job-posting companies, The 
      Monster Board and hotjobsndash.com, will be first-time advertisers on the 
      Super Bowl telecast. "I've got a foot in the door," says Denise Myler, 41, 
      of Idaho Falls, Idaho, who is job hunting online for a home-based, 
      data-entry job. "I'm getting a lot more exposure that way." 
      Even those who aren't actively looking are casting a net to see who might 
      bite. 
      "It puts my talents out there, and then I can just sort of screen calls," 
      says Michael Hilgenberg, 43, a sales vice president in Thousand Oaks, 
      Calif. "It seems a lot more efficient." But it may be difficult to update 
      online rsums. 
      And if a cloaking service isn't used, posting rsums online can be risky. 
      "People have literally been let go once a rsum is found online," says Tom 
      Flood, marketing director for JobOptions, an online job service. 
      Reported by USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com 
      10:23 CST 
      (19990114/Copyright 1998/WIRES ONLINE, BUSINESS/)  

      home | digitaljam | contents | search | stock quotes | help 
      Copyright © 1999 CNN America, Inc.
      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

Students Search Web for First Real-World Jobs 
             

          April 29, 1999

          Students Search Web for First Real-World Jobs
          By LISA GUERNSEY
          It was 3 o'clock on a Wednesday morning, and Carla Arellano was sitting 
          in front of her computer in her off-campus apartment, trying to keep 
          her eyes open. In just a few hours, her résumé was due at Georgetown 
          University's career center. 

                Scott Robinson for The New York Times 

          At that late hour, her main concern was making sure that her résumé 
          had the right keywords. "I was trying to put certain words at the 
          beginning of a sentence, so that a computer might catch it more 
          easily," Ms. Arellano said, recalling that sleepless night. " 
          'Analytical' -- that was one of my words. And 'qualitative skills.' 
          And 'consulting.' " 
          Ms. Arellano, a senior at Georgetown, was having her first encounter 
          with a high-tech job search. She was building an electronic résumé 
          that could easily be found once planted into a prospective employer's 
          computerized database. She was also scouring the Internet for Web 
          sites with résumé-writing advice and bookmarking job boards. But she 
          wasn't finding the experience to be everything she expected. 
          "Everyone said that the Internet would help," she said, "but it was 
          not as easy as everyone said it would be." 
          Before the Internet, job searches were done in person. College career 
          offices were nerve centers on campus, as places where students would 
          leaf through binders full of career information and sign up for 
          interviews with employers who came to campus. Job fairs required 
          attendance. The firm handshake and clear gaze were the order of the 
          day. 
          Now most students visit career centers online first. They post résumés 
          and search for job information on the Internet. 
          They may close the deal in person, but they often start in front of 
          the computer. 

                “On Monster.com, I would get four to five E-mail messages a day, 
                but they were geared to people with a lot of programming 
                experience.” 
                Tony Oliver, Georgetown University 

          New York University, for example, has developed an in-house system 
          called Careernet that gives students online access to job postings 
          aimed at N.Y.U. students. Georgetown has developed a Web-based 
          scheduling system, through which students find out if they have been 
          selected for interviews with employers coming to campus and then sign 
          up for time slots. Columbia University uses a similar system that 
          requires students to send their résumés to the career center 
          electronically. 
          Most students in the job market are intimately familiar with their 
          campus's career center Web site, even if they have never visited the 
          office in person. 
          Kristi Syrdahl, an N.Y.U. junior, said she had had more luck with her 
          university's Careernet than with nationwide job boards. She spent her 
          winter break using her home computer to search for a summer job or 
          internship. She found not one but two. She also found her current 
          part-time job through the Careernet. 
          But many students feel the same ambivalence about electronic job 
          hunting that Ms. Arellano did. 
          They love the Internet's speed and its breadth of information. Some 
          students said they checked online job postings whenever they found 
          themselves near a computer. But many of the same students are not 
          hopeful about finding a job online. And they are wary about technology 
          -- instead of humans -- making decisions about which jobs they might 
          be qualified for. 

                Carol T. Powers for The New York Times 

          This should be a good year to experiment with ways to find jobs, since 
          there seem to be quite a few jobs out there. Employers who 
          participated in a survey last fall by the National Association of 
          Colleges and Employers forecasted a 10 percent increase in the number 
          of openings this year. While the job market is not as flush as it was 
          for 1998 graduates -- who benefited from the best year this decade for 
          job seekers -- it is still quite strong, said Camille Luckenbaugh, the 
          association's employment information manager. 
          As might be expected, jobs in information technology are some of the 
          easiest to find, and as with many other high-tech positions, most of 
          them are posted online. Some companies have devoted sections of their 
          Web sites to recruitment, announcing job openings and requesting 
          résumés. National online job boards like Monster.com and Careerpath 
          list thousands of openings every day -- many of which are in 
          telecommunications, software and technical consulting industries. Job 
          seekers can simply skim the job postings, or they may post digital 
          versions of their résumés and fill out online forms that are compiled 
          in databases viewed by employers. 
          Jobs for college grads without computer-science backgrounds, however, 
          are harder to find using online job boards. 
          Monster.com has a "campus zone" and Career Mosaic has a "college 
          connection" section. Both offer advice, but most of their listings are 
          not aimed at people fresh out of college. 

                CONSUMER INFORMATION 
                Career counselors for college students offer this advice: 
                List your computer skills on your résumé, even if you are not 
                looking for a high-tech job. 
                Don't include your Internet home page address on your résumé 
                unless you have groomed the site for a business audience. 
                Include your e-mail address, and check for messages often. 
                Don't expect companies to open your e-mail attachments. Always 
                send another copy of your résumé and cover letter as a text 
                message in a fax or via postal mail. 
                Before going to an interview, visit the employer's Web site. 
                Know what's on it. 
                For the most part, getting your foot in the door still entails 
                getting your foot in the door. Try to line up in-person 
                interviews when you can. 
                The best place to start an online job search is the Web page of 
                your college career center. These sites may also help: 
                THE NON-PROFIT CAREER CENTER:
                www.idealist.org/career.html 
                THE ENTRY LEVEL JOB SEEKER ASSISTANT:
                members.aol.com/dylander/jobhome.html 
                CAREER MOSAIC'S COLLEGE CONNECTION:
                www.careermosaic.com/cm/cc/cc1.html 
                MONSTER.COM'S MONSTER CAMPUS:
                campus.monster.com 
                WETFEET.COM:
                www.wetfeet.com 

          "Online searching wasn't very helpful," said Tony Oliver, a English 
          major at Georgetown who was looking for a consulting job. "On 
          Monster.com, I would get four to five e-mail messages a day, but they 
          were geared to people with a lot of programming experience." 
          Patricia Esianor, a graduate student in public administration at New 
          York University, said she had "been searching basically everything" 
          but had not had much success online either. She posted her résumé on 
          the Job Direct Web site. 
          "So far the feedback I've received has been for things I don't want to 
          do, in places I don't want to go," she said. She wondered if a real 
          human being was even reading her résumé. 
          "It seems as if a computer is reading it," she said. "It's too 
          impersonal." 
          Despite such setbacks, most students still seem to visit online job 
          boards when starting their search. They are also putting a lot of 
          energy into creating the perfect electronic résumé, sometimes called a 
          "scannable" résumé, one without any special formatting or graphics 
          that might trip up an optical scanner. 
          These days, most electronic résumés never even make it into print. 
          They are simply sent via e-mail or pasted into online forms. College 
          career centers devote entire workshops to electronic résumés, teaching 
          students how to send them as e-mail attachments or create text-only 
          versions without tabs or line breaks that get garbled in transmission. 

          A few companies simply print out these résumés once they have arrived 
          electronically. But some large corporations like Hewlett-Packard and 
          Kaiser-Permanente feed them into résumé management databases. Many of 
          the databases organize the résumés by matching words in them with a 
          list of keywords that the companies are looking for. Seeding a résumé 
          with the right keywords can become a full-time obsession for some 
          college seniors -- particularly those business or computer science 
          majors who hope to work for large companies. 
          George Tarnopolsky, a business management and marketing major at 
          Cornell University, said he had even seen students add a section 
          called "keywords" at the bottom of their résumés, right under 
          "experience" and "education." Once the section is added, Tarnopolsky 
          said, the number of times employers look at your résumé increases from 
          "something like three times a week to five times a day." (People using 
          Monster.com, for example, can check how many employers have looked at 
          their résumés.) 
          Liberal arts students do not usually spend as much time focusing on 
          keywords because their target employers are less likely to have large, 
          automated résumé-management systems. And in general, these students 
          may find the Web less useful. Many liberal arts students search for 
          jobs in the nonprofit arena or at government agencies -- positions 
          that are often the hardest to find. Those employers do not often rely 
          as heavily on national online job boards, like Careerpath. Also, 
          nonprofit employers rarely have the resources to visit campuses for 
          interviews. 
          Instead, such employers are starting to send job listings to college 
          career centers, for posting on their online job boards. Or they send 
          information about the positions to an online service called Jobtrak. 
          Jobtrak maintains a database of job openings for use by college career 
          centers only. Employers send their job postings to Jobtrak and 
          designate the colleges they would like to target. They pay $18 per 
          listing per college, or less if they are posting to more than one. 
          More than 800 campuses use the service. 

                “Everyone said that the Internet would help, but it was not as 
                easy as everyone said it would be.” 
                Carla Arellano, Georgetown University 

          To give employers yet another way to narrow their recruiting, the Ivy 
          League schools, along with Stanford University and the Massachusetts 
          Institute of Technology, served as hosts of an "Ivy+ Virtual Career 
          Fair" two weeks ago. The one-week "fair" took place on the Web. Only 
          students from the 10 elite colleges could enter. Once they logged in, 
          they were required to add their résumés to an electronic book, which 
          was open to employers. Students could browse job openings and ask 
          employers questions via e-mail or online bulletin boards. 
          The Center for Arts and Culture, in Washington, was one of the 150 
          participating employers. Malissa R. Bennett, programs and operations 
          manager for the center, said that the fair was the center's first 
          chance to actively recruit students online. She added that she was 
          impressed with what she saw. 
          Still, she was not ready to go completely digital. When it came to 
          accepting résumés, "I specifically asked for a paper submission," Ms. 
          Bennett said. "Some applicants, those who seemed more serious about 
          the job, took the time to send in a complete paper application with 
          cover letter, résumé and writing sample." 
          An awareness of that perception hounds today's college grads. 
          "e-mailing my résumé didn't get the same results as going to the 
          career center and meeting companies," said Ms. Arellano, the 
          Georgetown senior. "It seemed that e-mail wasn't taken as seriously by 
          employers." 
          Ms. Arellano did get a job she wanted, as an information-technology 
          analyst for Chase Manhattan Bank. But she landed it by meeting her 
          employers face-to-face at an old-fashioned campus interview, with a 
          paper résumé in hand. 
          She had mixed feelings looking back at those frenzied weeks she spent 
          online. 
          Although she was able to do more research on the Web than would have 
          been possible otherwise, she didn't like the impersonal nature of 
          applying for jobs over a computer. 
          But she couldn't be happier about one use of the technology: When 
          Chase decided to let her know that she would soon get a formal job 
          offer, the bank sent her a quick note via e-mail. 

The dangers of posting your resume online - Jul. 29, 1999

            NEW YORK (CNNfn) - If you think posting your resume online is the 
            next great way to land better employment, you're probably not alone. 

                 A growing number of job-seekers are flocking to the Web in the 
            hopes of avoiding the mass mailing of cover letters and those 
            networking phone calls to their cousin's best friend's brother in 
            the hopes of securing an interview. 
                 But if you think you can post your resume, kick back and watch 
            the offers flood in, you may have another thing coming. 
                 "Some people have better luck than others," said Pam Dixon, 
            author of "Job Searching Online for Dummies." "It all depends on 
            what kind of field you're in and where you are on the job 
            continuum." 
                 More importantly, by posting your resume online, you may be 
            opening yourself up to current employer ire and identity fraud.

                 
            Job seekers flock online 

                 There is little question that the proliferation of 
            resume-posting services on the Internet has dramatically simplified 
            the job-hunting process. 
                 Whereas prospective job-seekers once had to hunt down willing 
            employers through classified ads and repeated phone calls and 
            companies had to pay big bucks for recruiters to find sought-after 
            candidates, prospective employees and employers can now skip the 
            middleman altogether by logging onto the Net. 
                 The Web also has increasingly put the ball in the job-seeker's 
            court. 
                 "In the old days, networking was about who you knew. In the 
            Internet arena, it's about who knows you," said Peter Weddle, author 
            of "Internet Resumes: Take the Net to Your Next Job." 

                 But the success of online resume-posting can be difficult to 
            gauge, since Internet job sites are generally responsible only for 
            bringing applicants and employers together and rarely are 
            responsible for sealing the deal. However, most of the larger 
            job-search sites report an increase in both the number of resumes 
            posted and employers using their database service. Monster Board 
            alone, one of the most popular job-seeking Web sites, hosts more 
            than 1.6 million resumes with thousands of new resumes being posted 
            every month. 
                 The popularity of online resume banks among employers has been 
            prompted in part by the tight labor market, which has forced 
            companies to get creative when looking for new blood. 
                 Increased access to the "passive" job seeker also has bolstered 
            resume-posting sites. Passive job seekers, in growing demand as the 
            labor market becomes more and more competitive, are those that are 
            generally satisfied with their current employment situation but 
            might be open to new opportunities under the right circumstances. 

                 
            Landing an interview

                 Recent college graduates and employees who have been in the 
            work force two or three years, especially in the fields of high-tech 
            and finance, have the best luck landing a job through a resume bank, 
            as do high-level executives, according to Dixon. 
                 "When recruiters go online, they are just assuming a lot of 
            resumes are going to be in the early career stage," Dixon said. And 
            good executives are just eternally in demand. 
                 But mid-career workers can have a difficult time finding a job 
            by posting their resumes on the Internet. That's because mid-career 
            job seekers tend to be more choosy than younger workers regarding 
            location, salary and benefits, making finding the right job online 
            more difficult for them, says Dixon. 

                 
            Privacy concerns 

                 Because posting a resume online is so easy, it may be tempting 
            to just throw up your resume on as many sites as possible to bolster 
            your chances of landing a job. 
                 But that strategy could blow up in your face. 
                 "There is no privacy on the Internet and job seekers need to be 
            really careful about where they put their resumes," Weddle said. 
            "It's almost guaranteed that your resume will end up in places that 
            you had no idea even existed."

                 Resumes get duplicated throughout the Web because Internet 
            companies hoping to build up their own resume banks use software 
            programs, known as "spiders," to pluck resumes from competitors' 
            sites. By bolstering their databases, these companies hope to draw 
            big advertisers to their own job sites. 
                 Another problem with online resumes is "salvaging." Companies 
            wanting to find out which of their high-level staff members are 
            seeking new opportunities sometimes hire human resource specialists 
            known as "salvagers," who scour job sites for current employee's 
            resumes, often simply by searching for the company's name. 
                 However, these cloak-and-dagger tactics are largely limited to 
            high-level employees with access to sensitive company information or 
            intellectual property. 
                 "This is a real problem only if you are working in a high-tech 
            field or biotech or anywhere where there is highly-competitive 
            software development or research and analysis going on," Dixon said. 

                 While many prospective job-seekers may be most worried about 
            their current employer spotting their resume online, identity theft 
            or stalking should probably be at least as big a concern. Resumes 
            often contain sensitive personal information, such as addresses and 
            telephone numbers, that can be used fraudulently to set up bank 
            accounts and credit cards in your name. 
                 "There are a lot of creeps on the Internet," Weddle said. 
            "There's just a certain amount of risk." 
                 Personal data is also sometimes used to put people on direct 
            mail lists or marketing lists. 

                 
            Job sites respond 

                 The growing concern among consumers regarding privacy on the 
            Internet has sparked new protective measures on many job Web sites 
                 Monster.com, for instance, allows users to choose between 
            "live" or "archived" resumes. A live resume can be accessed by any 
            of the site's paid subscribers. An archived resume, on the other 
            hand, is kept on file until job-seekers find an ad they want to 
            respond to and send companies their resume through Monster.com. 
                 Another strategy, adopted by CareerPath, allows users to submit 
            confidential resumes, which leave out the name and contact 
            information of the job-seeker. Companies interested in hiring these 
            applicants can send them e-mail through an anonymous address hosted 
            by CareerPath. 
                 Eliminating contact information or even the name of former 
            employers, as some resume banks permit, can be problematic, however. 
            For one, a "salvager" will easily be able to recognize an employee's 
            resume by a few characteristics, such as the company name or even 
            division and job title, even if the person's identity is missing. 
                 Leaving out information may also limit your job search. 
                 "If you eliminate too much information on the resume document, 
            it becomes less valuable," said Bruce Skillings, president of 
            CareerMosaic, which takes a more laissez-faire approach to its 
            resume bank and currently does not offer any additional privacy 
            protection. The company does plan to introduce some new privacy 
            features early next year. 
                 "We don't want to give people a false sense of security. 
            There's no way of knowing that a recruiter (subscribing to the 
            database) is not working as a third party for a company that you 
            don't want to see your resume," Skillings said, claiming it's simply 
            impossible for employment sites to screen all their database 
            subscribers. 
                 Another industry insider says it's just a matter of time before 
            the fears regarding employers finding out you are seeking new 
            opportunities dissipates altogether. 
                 "Eventually, everyone is going to have their resume on the Web 
            and there will be less and less sensitivity to this issue," said 
            Craig Besant, vice president of marketing for Monster.com. "Just 
            because you have your resume up there doesn't mean you're unhappy." 

                 
            Guarding your privacy 

                 If you are planning to take your resume online, there are 
            precautions you can take. 
                 For one, don't post your resume just anywhere. Choose a site 
            that has an effective firewall, a security system that keeps 
            outsiders, including "spiders," away from a Web site's internal 
            network. You can tell an Internet site is protected by a firewall if 
            it requests a password for access to its resume bank. 
                 Exclude personal information, such as addresses and phone 
            numbers, from your online resume and consider using a third party 
            e-mail address, sponsored by Yahoo! or Hotmail, to make it more 
            difficult for con artists and current employers to identify you. 
                 Consider using an online job agent instead of a resume-posting 
            service, especially if there is a legitimate concern your employer 
            could find out. Job agents, offered by many of the same sites that 
            offer resume-posting, e-mail users when they have targeted positions 
            job-seekers may be interested in based on a profile they have filled 
            out. 
                 Finally, although many companies purge resumes from their 
            databases every 4 to 12 months, it may be a good idea to date your 
            resume. That way if an old resume comes back to haunt you, you can 
            point out to your employer that it is left over from a previous job 
            search. 
                 Bear in mind that privacy may be less of an issue for you than 
            for others. If you are straight out of college for instance or 
            unemployed, there will be no major reprisals if someone runs across 
            your resume online. If you are a high-level tech worker with access 
            to sensitive information, however, the consequences may be more dire 
            and you should probably avoid online resumes altogether. Head to 
            your nearest recruiter instead. 
                 Ultimately, job seekers will have to decide for themselves 
            whether the risks of putting their resume online are worth the 
            benefits. 
                 "It comes down to personal choice," CareerMosiac's Skillings 
            said. "You have to police yourself in this world… you have to decide 
            whether you want to expose yourself or not."  stories
                  Web provides job listings for all careers - June 10, 1998

Web provides job listings for all careers - June 10, 1998 

      Get wired, get hired 

      Truckers, ministers and midwives can all look for work using the Web 

      June 10, 1998: 2:41 p.m. ET

      Job poaching grows popular - Sept. 19, 1997 

      Wanted: high-tech execs - Sept. 18, 1997 

       
      Monster Board 
      CareerPath.com 
      The Dixon Report 

      More related sites... NEW YORK (CNNfn) - If you're looking for a job using 
      the information superhighway, be prepared to yield to some 18-wheelers 
      who've been cruising the Web the same reason. 
       In the past, the career opportunities to be found on the Internet have 
      been almost exclusively geared toward sysops and other computer-minded 
      employment seekers.
       However, as more and more people take to the World Wide Web, job listings 
      have responded to the varied market, offering everybody from ministers to 
      midwives a chance to find their dream jobs.
       It's not just white collar positions. TruckNet, for example, looks to 
      hook up companies that need their products shipped with people who have 
      the big rigs to take those shipments across the country. 
       The trucking industry has been faced with too few drivers for too many 
      shipments for years and TruckNet president Craig Zweiner explained that, 
      despite trucker stereotypes, the Web was the best place to find these 
      folks.
       "We are finding out that the veteran drivers are logging onto the 
      Internet," said Zweiner. "They may be looking for a change and with 
      TruckNet they can fill out one application and send it to many companies."
       Zweiner said truckers' interest in the Internet is unsurprising since 
      many are away from their families for long periods of time and e-mail is 
      gradually replacing phone calls as the preferred mode of keeping in touch.
       The blue-collar job listings aren't limited to just truck drivers. 
      HVACjob lets people who fix heating, ventilating, air conditioning and 
      refrigeration equipment find the best positions available. Manufacturing 
      Marketplace allows you to look for a wider variety of 
      manufacturing-related positions. 
       If your job search is looking to take you to a higher plane, consider 
      MinistryLink. Sponsored by Saint John's School of Theology & Seminary in 
      Collegeville, Minn., MinistryLink seeks to pair up those people interested 
      in a religious career with appropriate openings all over the world. 
       "It was a matter where we saw a need and asked how we could help connect 
      those who are looking with openings," said Linda Schreiber, coordinator of 
      the Web site which was established in 1994.
       While St. John's is a Catholic school, the site advertises positions from 
      various faiths. Most postings, though, are Catholic.
       Many of the job openings are in the Midwest but MinistryLink could set 
      you up with a position in more remote climes. For example, an Alaskan 
      Diocese is looking for a campus minister to "carry out adult religious 
      education in Eskimo bush villages."
       Perhaps no non-computer industry has embraced Web-based job listings more 
      than health care. 
       A widely expanding array of job opportunities has led the industry to 
      seek out applicants in every corner and the Web provides a way to find 
      those qualified for health care work. Among the top health care job 
      posting sites are Allied Health Opportunities, Health Care Recruitment 
      Online and Medsearch. 
       Some health care sites have gotten even more specific, however. The 
      American College of Nurse-Midwives are looking for a few good people to 
      care for women during labor and birth. 
       

      The time is now

       It would be a mistake to think if your career doesn't involve computer 
      code or HTML you don't need to be ready for how the Internet is changing 
      job searches, said Pam Dixon.
       Dixon, the author of "Job Searching Online for Dummies" said Web-based 
      employment ads aren't just for techies anymore. "If you want to look for a 
      job, you'd best be online."
       

            "If you want to look for a job, you'd best be online." 

             
            Pam Dixon 
            Author, "Job Searching Online for Dummies"