124-Year-Old Company Ruined By Typo

Mistake costs UK government equivalent of $13.6 million

Kristen Felicetti

Think making a typo doesn't matter? Think again. Someone's single letter typo cost legal fees of up to �9 million ($13.6 million) and ended a 124-year-old family business.

What was the offending typo in question? The letter "s."

In February 2009, Welsh engineering firm Taylor & Sons learned that Companies House, the UK government's registrar of companies, had recorded the company as having gone bust. It hadn't, but Taylor & Son, a completely different company, had.

The mistake was corrected after three days, but the damage to Taylor & Sons had already been done. The false details had been passed onto clients, suppliers, and credit lenders. Orders were cancelled, contracts were lost, and credit from suppliers was withdrawn. Specific losses included Taylor & Sons' best customer, Tata Steel, which was worth �400,000 ($607,000) a month, and a potential �3 million ($4.55 million) contract with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.

"We lost all our credibility as all our suppliers thought we were in liquidation. It was like a snowball effect," former managing director and co-owner Philip Davison-Sebry told The Telegraph.

Within two months of the typo, Taylor & Sons went into administration (similar to Chapter 11 bankruptcy). Davidson-Sebry sued and won. On Tuesday, the British High Court found the government liable for the demise of the business, which could leave taxpayers with a �9 million ($13.6 million) legal bill.

That is one costly typo. Let's hope Companies House has some money leftover to hire a good team of copy editors.      

Do I Get Paid If We're Closed For The Blizzard?

Your entitlement to pay for snow closings depends on state law and whether you are exempt from overtime

Donna Ballman

You get the good news that your office is closed due to the big (if not as big as expected) blizzard and you don't need to cross country ski your way in. While it's great to have a snow day, it's tough if you're living from paycheck to paycheck. Do you get paid if the office is closed due to snow?

Whether you're entitled to be paid when the office is closed depends on whether you are "exempt" salaried or not. I normally say it's best to be hourly so you can get overtime pay. Many employers intentionally misclassify employees to avoid paying overtime. While it's great to get overtime pay, in the case of weather and emergency closings, it's probably better to be exempt. Here's what you need to know about getting paid during a weather closing:

Exempt employees: If you're exempt and you worked any portion of the work week, your employer has to pay your entire salary, whether or not the workplace is closed for a natural disaster such as snow, hurricane, or flood. Fair Labor Standards Act regulations state, "If the employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available." This would include natural disasters, so if you are able to work after a blizzard then you must be paid even if you didn't work any portion of the week. If you can't get there on time or have to leave early due to the blizzard but the office is open, they can't deduct for any partial days you worked.

Vacation time and PTO: The company can deduct from your vacation time or PTO for the time taken. However, if you have no accrued vacation or PTO time available, they still can't deduct from your pay if you're exempt.

Non-exempt employees: If you are non-exempt, then your employer doesn't have to pay for the time the office is closed. However, if your company takes deductions and you're a non-exempt salaried employee it may affect the way overtime is calculated. If you report to work after a natural disaster, only to find out that the workplace is closed (assuming they didn't notify you), then your state law may require some pay.

State by state: New York law and District of Columbia law require the employer to pay you at least four hours of wages. Massachusetts and Rhode Island require three hours of pay. New Hampshire requires two hours minimum pay for showing up. New Jersey and Oregon laws require the employer to pay you at least one hour of wages. Other states that have some requirements for pay if workers report for duty as scheduled include California ( 2- 4 hours) and Connecticut (only certain industries, 2 � 4 hours). If your state doesn't have such a requirement, maybe the arctic blast is a good time to talk to your state legislators about protecting employees.

Who Is Exempt?: You're not exempt unless you fall into very specific categories. For more about whether or not you are correctly classified as exempt, check out my column, Salaried Workers, Do You Get Overtime Pay? Odds Are You Should!

If you're stuck in a blizzard, contact your supervisor or manager as soon as possible to find out whether or not you're expected to go in to work. If you can't get in touch with anyone, then only go in if it's safe for you to do so.      

The Three Colors Of A Job Hunt

Why grey is more than just a pin-stripe suit

Rhona Bronson

There are essentially three ways of being in a job hunt � actively looking for a job, not looking for a job, and inactively looking at what's out there. Most time and attention is spent on the first two, but it's the third � inactive job seeking - that can yield the best, most surprising and awesome job opportunities.

Of course when you're unemployed, laid off, in a bad work situation, or in a train wreck industry you should be actively seeking a new job. This is the time you're registered on job boards, writing and rewriting your resume, tailoring cover letters, and constantly scanning options. Then, there are those of us lucky enough to be in good jobs, happily employed, or those who have decided to be out of the work force, or given up the search. These people are not looking for a job, even if they sometimes fool themselves into thinking they are.

So who are the third type of job hunters � the inactive seekers? These are people finishing up their first or second or third year in a first job, those who have hit a ceiling in their current jobs but still want to grow, or those who feel bored by now doing the same job again. Many are happily employed, but would welcome an opportunity to do something new if the opportunity presented itself.

But opportunities rarely just pop up out of the blue, so how do people inactively seek a job? A few ways:

Regular Scanning of Job Listings. Even after I became employed in my latest position, I never stopped all the automated job feeds that came to me via email. When I was actively looking I got several feeds daily. Now that I'm happily employed, I get 1-2 of my favorite feeds weekly. The exercise keeps me sharp about what's available, the currently requested skill sets, and how I need to continue to grow in my current position so I'm always employable should the worst ever happen.

Selective Networking. When unemployed, active job seekers go to many networking events. Once employed, smart career professionals continue to network, just less aggressively. They can be more selective on the networking sessions, and pick the more expensive seminars that truly help them improve themselves, provide skill training or updates. This again positions a person to have a stronger network when and if they become unemployed and need to start actively asking for references, leads, and ideas on new employment.

Association Profiles. Recruiters look for employees several ways including association rosters in both professional and trade associations and by digital profile searches. Smart employees keep their profiles up-to-date including latest wins on major projects, and make sure they stay affiliated with active clubs and professional groups.

Seminar Attendance. Similar to Networking and Associations, seminar attendance puts you out in the world speaking to people interested in the same things. It helps keep you fresh in your current job, and sometimes even leads to a new one. I once lost one of my best young employees when he went to a seminar in Philadelphia on a detailed programming topic. After asking a few pointed questions, a few managers from a hot publishing firm made sure to swap business cards with him. Several phone conversations and one interview later he was offered a new job that paid much more and gave him new challenges that I couldn't match. He didn't go to the seminar looking for a job. He went to improve his skill sets, but his passion for the field and thirst for knowledge made him stand out in the crowd to his next employer.

Opening Side Comments. When you meet someone at a cocktail party, networking event, or any type of meeting, engage with your fellow participants. Just by commenting to someone that their job "sounds interesting" can lead to new opportunities. Frequently the other person might respond, "Wow, I had no idea you even liked this stuff." Just by admitting that you're happy but interested in new things can open doors you never thought existed.

Taking the Meeting. One friend was recently asked to consider a job at a competitive company. He's happy where he is, but he took the meeting, because as he admits, "You never know." He quickly stopped the interview process when he confirmed the competitive company was not for him, but not before exploring what they might offer and thanking them for the consideration.

The old saying remains that those employed are in the best position to be offered the next job. The unsaid part is that the next job offer is likely to go to someone who wasn't even "officially" on the market,but was curious enough to hear about a new challenge. In some fashion, they were inactively keeping job ideas and opportunities in their peripheral vision.

Job hunting, like most things in life, is never just a black and white endeavor �not looking at all (black), or actively looking (white). Instead, many jobs are found in the grey areas -- meetings, seminars, through unexpected, dropped comments, or a reference by someone who just sees you in a new spot they've seen. Never ignore the grey areas. Sometimes the rosiest and most amazing positions are hidden and can be found there.    

Bag The Commute, Work From Home

Telecommuting jobs are going mainstream at last

Carol Kopp

Don't try to read this while you're stuck in rush-hour traffic, but we've got good news for you: The decades-old promise of bagging the commute to work from home may be a reality at last.

FlexJobs, an online job search company which focuses on telecommuting opportunities, reports a 27 percent increase in the past year alone in the number of postings for remote jobs.

And, it has a list of the top 100 companies to watch for remote opportunities in 2015. Predictably, tech companies like Amazon, at number 4, take up a fair number of slots in the top 100. But the range of skills in demand for remote work, and the companies that need them, is surprisingly wide.

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Health Services Professionals

With increasing demand for home health care visits for the disabled and elderly, companies that provide them are looking for people to work in the field, and from home. Insurance company Humana, with over 50,000 people on staff, has offered telecommuting jobs to licensed registered nurses, home care providers, social workers and related professionals. Other big companies including Aetna, UnitedHealth Group, HealthFirst, Health Net and CVS Caremark are on the list, too.

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Educators

The growth of online education is providing opportunities for instructors who want to work from home part-time. Kaplan, number 6 on the list, has a million students on its rolls worldwide and employs more than 30,000 teachers to coach them, many of them working remotely on flexible schedules. At the higher-education level, Western Governors University, number 35, offers courses that are "independent of time and place" for instructors as well as students. Several other institutions of higher learning, including the University of Maryland, make the list, too.

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Government Work

Even the federal government is catching up with the trend. The U.S. Department of Transportation offers telework opportunities for air traffic, railway and highway safety inspectors as well as desk-bound jobs in finance and analytics. The Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture also look for flex workers.

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Customer Support

In today's world, "customer support" covers a wide range of tasks, from hand-holding buyers of new gadgets to direct sales to debt collection. Those jobs increasingly are available with a remote option. Number 2 on the FlexJobs list is Convergys, a global management company that serves big clients seeking to outsource some or all of those functions. The venerable Kelly Services has branched out from its temp-secretary roots to provide short-term services in a wide range of professions. It's number 5 on the list for remote job seekers.

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New Tech

Well, duh! America's biggest technology companies are practicing what they preach when it comes to home office productivity. It's no shock that Amazon is a top innovator, at number 4 on the list. The company has customer support specialists working from home as well as from its many fulfillment centers. IBM, at number 8, hires people around the globe to provide its technology consulting services.

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Executive-Level Jobs

Clearly, many companies are getting over their need to keep their employees under management eyeballs at all times. In fact, another study from FlexJobs, of the most surprising work-from-home job listings of 2014, is littered with high-level titles like chief operating officer, chief executive officer and senior staff attorney. They may have to offer telecommuting to get the best candidate. A report from Inc. magazine indicates that eight out of 10 people would work from home at least occasionally, if given the chance.

Words To Remember

If you're looking for a job that allows telecommuting, there are certain search terms that you should keep in mind. If your skills fit the bill, any of the following job titles could trigger a response, according to FlexJobs: consultant, case manager, sales representative, engineer, marketing manager, account executive, interpreter/translator and developer.

In case you're wondering, FlexJobs practices what it preaches. It's a "virtual" company, and all of its employees work remotely.

Want to see the top 10 companies hiring remote positions? Click through below.

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10. Westat

1/10

Westat is an employee-owned statistical survey research corporation in Rockville, Maryland, providing research services to agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as businesses, foundations, and state and local governments.
Sample job titles: Senior Study Director, HR Generalist, Clinical Research Associate
> Find a job at Westat

10. Westat

1/10

Westat is an employee-owned statistical survey research corporation in Rockville, Maryland, providing research services to agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as businesses, foundations, and state and local governments.
Sample job titles: Senior Study Director, HR Generalist, Clinical Research Associate
> Find a job at Westat

Put Google to Work for Your Job Search

Learn to speak Google's language

Susan P Joyce

Google can find job opportunities with specific employers. It can also help you find additional employers who might be good places for you to work.

Google searches and indexes millions of web pages every day, but it doesn't index the whole web every day. So, doing your search every day can show you very different results.

Speak Google's Language

Google is very smart when you know how to help it understand what you want. Here are some tips on speaking the language called Google.

To search on a phrase -

Often your query will include a phrase, like a job title. When that happens, enclose those words inside a set of quotation marks like these job titles:

"medical assistant"
or
"guest services representative"

Without the quotation marks around the words in a phrase, Google will think that you want results with the words scattered anywhere on the pages it finds.

To request pages containing more than one term -

To require Google to find more than one term or phrase on a webpage, add the word AND, in all capitals, in front of each additional term.

So, assume we want to find a job as a medical assistant. To find medical assistant jobs, use this query:

"medical assistant" AND job

Then, Google's search results will include pages that have the phrase "medical assistant" plus the word "job" on them.

If we wanted those medical assistant jobs to be in New York City, we could combine our query terms like this:

"medical assistant" AND job AND "New York City"

To have Google eliminate pages which contain a specific term -

Perhaps our search results contain many part-time jobs, and we're interested only in full-time jobs. So how do we eliminate those part-time jobs? We put a minus in front of the phrase "part-time" like this:

"medical assistant" AND job AND "New York City" -"part-time"

Or, if you want New York City but not the island of Manhattan
"medical assistant" AND job AND "New York City" -Manhattan

As usual with Google and punctuation, don't put a space between the minus sign and the term to be excluded.

To have Google choose pages which contain one term or another term -

Sometimes a job title or skill or location can be described using more than one term, and you want to see all the pages that might contain any of those terms. Or perhaps you are considering two different jobs, and you want to see every page that contains one job or the other job.

For example, the job title "medical assistant" may be spelled completely or abbreviated as "medical asst" on a webpage. Or, possibly you are considering jobs as a "medical assistant" and as a "medical coder" which are completely different jobs.

Use Google's "OR" function -- all caps, again -- and clearly show Google which terms you want by putting your "OR" statements inside a set of parenthesis. Your search query would look like this:

("medical assistant" OR "medical asst") AND job AND "New York City
or
("medical assistant" OR "medical coder") AND job AND "New York City
or
("medical assistant" OR "medical asst" OR "medical coder") AND job AND "New York City

You can combine several terms, as in the last example above, before Google gets confused.

To have Google help you find target employers -

It's smart to have a list of employers where you might want to work, and Google can help you with that too. Start with an employer you know you want to work for. For example, assume you want a medical assistant job at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.

To have Google search one specific website -

If you want Google to search an employer's website (or your favorite job board), add the word "site" followed by a colon and the site's domain name, with no space between the word "site:" and the search term!

To search for jobs only at MGH, first we need to find the domain name for the hospital.

So, we do a search on the hospital's whole name, like this:

("Massachusetts General Hospital" OR mgh) AND Boston

When we look at the search results, we see that the hospital's domain name is MassGeneral.org.

Now we can tell Google to look only on the MGH website by doing this search:

site:massgeneral.org AND "medical assistant" AND job

Again, no space between "site:" and "massgeneral.org."

To have Google find similar websites -

If, as in our example, MGH was one of your target employers, Google can help you quickly find similar employers, too. Simply type in this query:

related:massgeneral.org

Type in "related:" followed by the domain name of the site you want Google to use as an example of the websites you want it to find. Again, no space between "related:" and "massgeneral.org."

Now you can apply the site: search to those sites, too, to find even more jobs.

For more help fine-tuning Google searches, check out the options on Google's Advanced Search page. Google can be much more useful than we think -- when we take the time to learn its language.