I’m a sick puppy today - congested to the brink of watery-eyed blindness, the works. I’ve probably been getting sick for a week or two, but have been trapped in the day-to-day bustle so much that I haven’t noticed that I’ve been feeding the illness with the loop of exhaustion and dehydration (i.e., making up for lost sleep with caffeine, etc.). ...

SEATTLE - The next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Web browser makes it easier for people to surf the Internet without leaving a trace. Companies that sell advertisements online - including Microsoft - can electronically gather tidbits about Web surfers' habits, and then use that information to help decide what kinds of ads to show. However, in the newest "beta" version of ...

Throughout high school and most of college I kept a "rejection jar," which I stuffed with the scraps of every "we're sorry to inform you" note I'd ever received and sometimes even quotes from particularly harsh or dismissive critics I'd encountered. My volleyball coach, for instance, used our one-on-one post-season wrapup simply to tell me I was the weakest athlete the ...

Few human resources topics get more attention in the courts than those involving company policies. Maybe that’s why a quick Google search produces page upon page of suggestions and tools to help companies develop their policies. So, exactly what is the connection between company policy and the law? Edwin Zalewski, a human resources subject matter expert with J. J. Keller & ...

Scott Stacy was driving home from work in late September when news of the Mark Foley sex scandal came over the car radio. The details were shocking. Foley had sent sexually charged e-mails and instant messages to former teenage pages, in which he made repeated references to sexual acts and body parts. But to Stacy, the story was all too familiar. ...

Workplace dysfunction may be funny when you’re watching “The Office,” but it’s serious business when you’re trying to cope with it every day. The good news is that it doesn’t have to bring you down. Nobody says dealing with dysfunction is easy, but if you follow this advice, chances are you can at least stay above the fray: • Step Away ...

Communicating confidence and reliability is essential to the success of any business. And since administrative assistants are often on the front lines of a company's public image, knowing how to make a good first impression is one of the unspoken but fundamental parts of their jobs. Whether you're interacting with a customer, your boss or a colleague in another company, a ...

We all know the U.S. economy isn't doing so hot, but that fact isn't monolithic: Some industries are hiring and thriving despite the overall slowdown. Check out Business Week's list of great places to launch a career, and the essential information on landing a job at the top 35 companies. [widget:297] Browse through this slide show to learn about what kind ...

Job No. 1 for the next president? In the minds of an overwhelming number of Americans, it's fixing what ails the sick economy. What the voters will have to sort out are very different approaches offered by Barack Obama and John McCain. Both of their fix-up plans rely heavily on tax cuts, but in sharply different ways that speak to the ...

Finding a job can be as time-consuming as actually having a job! It can take days, weeks, even months, to land that dream job. So it's no surprise how easy it is to get discouraged, distracted, and depressed. There are two important things to remember &mdash you're not alone and we're here to help! HRPeople comes to your rescue with the ...

My IT company generally has a casual atmosphere that our twentysomething employees enjoy. However, these days T-shirts and flip-flops are the norm, and I feel like our professionalism is lacking. How can I get people looking nicer without alienating my staff? — A.N., Irvine, Calif. Your situation is not unusual. In a recent survey by Los Angeles-based temporary employment agency OfficeTeam, ...

The state of Alabama has given its 37,527 employees until 2010 to start getting fit, or they'll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free. Alabama will be the first state to charge its overweight workers who don't try to slim down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthful behaviors. Alabama already charges workers who ...

Experience, Inc., the nation’s leading provider of career services for college students and young alumni, today announced results of its 2008 Life After College Survey, in which 70% of recent graduates reported they left their first job within two years of their joining. Additional high-level findings of the 2008 Life After College Survey include: • 43% of Gen Y are ...

You have a staff morale problem: Existing employees are upset over the high salaries and incentives being offered to new employees. These incentives have become critical to your recruiting success. How do you keep everyone happy without jeopardizing your recruiting efforts? What the Expert says: Recruiters have learned to get creative in order to find and hire top talent. As part ...

by Louise Kursmark | Monster Contributing Writer In any employment market, good companies want to keep their best people. But when labor becomes scarce, as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects it will for the next decade or so, employee retention becomes an increasingly critical priority. What, then, can companies do to retain the people they worked so hard to ...

by Louise Kursmark | Monster Contributing Writer Is it time for your annual employee survey? Before you begin what’s often a time-consuming, disruptive process for both you and your workforce, pause to ask yourself what the purpose of your survey is and, most critically, what you plan to do with the results. Otherwise, you may be spending company resources without returning ...

It's being called the coup de grace for France's decade-long experiment with a 35-hour work week — a policy that inspired both envy and ridicule in Europe and the U.S., and even some copycats. But the short work week proved difficult to implement and was derided by some in government as a "straitjacket" on France's economy. Now a new law lets ...

Would you ever want to give up a healthy chunk of your salary? In effect, that's what you'll be doing if you disregard the various employee benefits you'll have access to in your first job. Many new college graduates simply don't understand their employers' benefits programs or their significance in real-dollar terms. "They underestimate the value of their benefits and don't ...

Chris Carter, formerly president of a Cincinnati-area auto parts maker, has suspected for some time that his age (he's 59) could make it more difficult to land his next job as a senior executive. His fears were confirmed recently when Carter (not his real name) contacted a recruiter about a top post at another parts maker. "The recruiter told me, ...

Contracting is the life, isn't it? You put your bare feet up on your desk, make a few phone calls to clients who eat up your advice like caviar, and then just count your money. Not quite. There are lots of things that can go wrong when professionals go independent. So it's a good idea to survey the road for some ...