Careerbuilder – Paul's Tech Talk

Looks like a scam to me : Personal Shopping Assistant!

PaulNovember 14, 20087 Replies

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Good afternoon!

We found your resume at _________________ and we would like to propose you a
position of Personal Shopping Assistant.

Imagine having an exciting job with incredible salary (up to $100,000/year) that
lets you use your creativity while being paid to shop. Welcome to the world of
personal shopping!

As we know shopping is the world’s favorite leisure activity, but in our busy
society an increasing number of people need to hire someone to do their
shopping. Thus personal shoppers are more in demand than ever before.

There are absolutely NO START-UP FEES and NO FEES for being employed at this
position. As long as you live in the USA, and you have a credit card or any
other line of credit, have 1 or 2 free hours during the day – you are eligible
for this job!

[ad#ad2-right]This is what you will have to do in short:
• Purchase the requested goods using your credit card.
• Send us receipts.
• Wait for us to issue a credit to your credit card in the amount of purchase
plus shipping fee plus your commission which comprises 10%.
• Ship out the goods.
• You are finished, come back for a new list of goods.

If you are interested in Personal Shopping Assistant position please fill in the
form below and send it to: Open2usa.job.dep@gmail.com
Our manager will contact you within two working days.

————————————————FORM————————————-
Full name ______________________
Residence country _____________________
Age _____________________
Contact phone ______________________
Availability time _______________________
————————————————FORM————————————-

This letter confirms your resume has been duly processed and your skills
completely meet our requirements for Personal Shopping Assistant Vacancy.

Thank You,
John Walker

[ad#ad2-left-1]I wanted to bring this up because of two things that I saw first off that made this look like a scam. One is they want to “CREDIT” your credit card and two they use a GMAIL account. I am going to say this is looking more and more like a scam. If anyone else has any other ideas about this just leave your comment. I don’t see how this can be real. I am thinking once they have your credit card information, they’ll start using it.

Largest Employer : University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is planning layoffs!!

PaulOctober 23, 2008

Is this the beginning or the end of the recession? After seeing this today I wanted to talk about this development. If they layoff a large number of people is this going to effect your chances of finding a job? Here’s what they had to say:

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has plans to reduce its 50,000 workforce by a small percentage. UPMC did not immediately release any specifics.

“As the economy deteriorates, we are proactively taking these steps to ensure that our growth in expenses is not outpacing our growth in revenues,” a UPMC statement said.

[via WTAE.TV]

So now that they have said this, what’s the percentages of the workforce are going to be laid off? I wanted to talk about how you could get ready for the imminent day of this. Here’s some good links to consider:

5 ways to improve your chance of getting hired.

Are you asking to be scammed?

And here are some other companies who are planning layoffs or have laid off people:

Mahalo Lay’s off around 10% of it’s workforce!!

Merck Laid off 13% of it’s workforce

With all this that is going on in the world I thought it was something that needed to be said and let people know about these developments.

Are you asking to be scammed?

PaulOctober 15, 2008

As we go further into the economic death, we are faced with the most undesirable aspect of the human culture. That is to say, scammers are going to use the chance to find people to scam. I don’t say this lightly because scammers have become more cunning and dubious through the years. They are actually using the internet as well as most companies. They are going to sites like Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, and other hiring sites to get people to apply for jobs.

<<See Previous Post — Nationwide Marketing Scam

Having said that, I recently had a problem with being tried to be scammed. I applied to a job posted on Careerbuilder and that is how they got a hold of my home address. I did not think about the security problems associated with applying for jobs on line, until recently.

As you can see that is how they got a hold of my information and have made myself vulnerable to scams and also, other potential problems. I am talking about Theft ID and also spam. Although spam is to be expected with anything we do online. I’ve come to the conclusion that we will always have to deal with spam. I wanted to talk about how to be careful when you apply for online jobs and put your information out on the internet. I’ve started taking some steps to prevent this from happening again.

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No Longer am I going to apply for any more private companies — if I can’t see who they are then they have something to hide.

To prevent spam — I am going to make an email address just for my resume. That way I don’t have to worry about spam on my main account.

If it’s too good to be true, it is probably not — I am going to start using that philosophy when I’m about to apply for a job. See picture above, advertising way to much money for a Customer Service rep.

Don’t ever put your Social on your Resume — That is the most crucial part, if you want your identity stolen that is one sure way to get it stolen. Even though that should be painfully obvious it is sometimes overlooked.

I am sure there are more but that is the basic idea of the whole thing. I will probably come up with even more ideas later on but this was one thing that I have been thinking about all day. I also think we have to starting asking the questions before the seriousness of the scammers come to bear. They will never go away but until we get serious, they will always be there to taunt us and laugh us. I am not sure how to do it, Do you? Are we just supposed to sit here and take it or do we fight back and how? These are importantquestions for anyone to consider when you are faced with the possiblity of fraud or being scammed? How do we deal with it in the future? Should scammers be punished serverely or moderately?

5 ways to improve your chance of getting hired.

PaulOctober 10, 20083 Replies

Having seen the economy this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is time to redo all the important essentials and get all my ducks in the order as they say. I’ve been thinking of how best to be ready in case the dreaded day comes when my employer no longer needs my assistance and what could I do to be prepared.

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Get Someone to Critique your Resume — This is the most important step because this is the first place employers look when they want to hire someone. So how do you get it critiqued? Here are some good links to help you start off with: Careerbuilder Critique, Mind of Root Peer Critique(Last until Oct 30, 2008).

Have your Resume Ready to upload to Resume sites — You should always register at all the important resume sites just in case. The Sites that I recommend are : Monster, Career Builder, Hot jobs, Dice, US jobs, Best Jobs USA, Computer Jobs, and Nation Job.

Use your website as a place to put your Resume — Have your resume available in case some contacts you and tells you they know someone who is looking to hire people. Have this resume hidden and only give it out to people you know. This is also known as networking.

Network as much as possible — There are sites out there that have made it easier to network. Sites like linkedin.com, this site is great because of the 6 degrees of possibility as I call it. You know someone, they know someone, and then you will both know the same one!! This also will greatly increase your chance of an employer finding you.

For those who want to be Self employed — I wanted to say that most people who want to be self employed know just how hard it is to begin with. So I’ve got some interesting links to help start you on your way. First link is Technibble.com Computer Business Kit, This has Maintenance Sales Letter, Work Order, Marketing Analysis and Payment Overdue Letter. It is also a good idea to have an MP3 Advertisement that you can give to podcast and throw them the link to it. You will need to market yourself to the public in ways that no one has thought of. You will on an occasion have to spend money in order to get money, it’s always been that way but it seems to work.

These are some great tips that will greatly improve your chances of landing that job or becoming even more chance of you making money. If you have any tips or want to suggest ways to improve upon these tips please email me. If you like what you see discuss it on the blog or click on my ads to help offset the cost of this blog.