JibberJobber Downtime Why, and What Now

JibberJobber Downtime Why, and What Now The last few weeks have been really exciting on the development side of JibberJobber.  One of my developers is rolling out a major enhancement to the job postings which should add considerable value to each user.  Another developer is working on a very cool enhancement to the video library which, of course,  should add considerable value to each user. Another developer is fixing and tweaking little things here and there to make JibberJobber more intuitive, flow better, etc.  Why? To  add considerable value to each user, of course! While they are working hard, and our users are working hard on their job search, weve had some unplanned and unfortunate downtime that has been beyond frustrating.  Let me share with you what happens, and the why of the last few weeks, and what we are going to do about it. When JibberJobber goes down at least four people, including me, QA, the developers, and the server admin team, get an email alert, immediately.  Shortly thereafter, I (and Liz) start to get emails from our users some are very kind, some written out of sheer frustration.  Bottom line, we know its happening were just not sure why its happening. But we jump in and work on figuring that out.  There have recently been three reasons why JibberJobber has gone down, which I share below. Note that we havent had any data breaches that we are aware of, and no user has lost any data. If there were a data issue, wed revert to our backups, which run at least once every 24 hours. Server software incompatibilities.  There is a certain software on our server that provides a necessary function. However, were pretty sure that this software, which I wont name, has caused our server to crash multiple times over the last few years. This is kind of the worst scenario because the resolution is that you have to physically touch the server (which means, if its after hours, someone has to get out of bed, drive down to the server farm, and sit there and get it to reboot), and has sometimes taken hours to get back up.  We should be switched off of the software this week or next week, and have this issue behind us.  I really, really hope that this is the problem, and that the solution will give us long-term peace of mind (which we havent had for too long). Bad guy users. Well, Im not sure I would call them users. Maybe losers is a better word. These are people who get a free account, and then, as a user, abuse the system.  The latest, last week, which took our server down for 10 minutes (kudos to my developer who identified the problem immediately and resolved it) was posting multiple job postings per second.  It was too much activity and took the server down.  The resolution is to find things like that, and remove the ability for a user to abuse.  In this case, only allow someone to post X number of job postings every Y minutes, or something like that.  The immediate solution in this case was to terminate the user and block their IP address. Horrible, horrible, people. The most frequent issue weve had lately has been hackers or spammers. They havent gotten JibberJobber accounts, they just set up servers from multiple places to attack our server. We have had this kind of activity coming from about 15 different countries, and have worked on blocking them when we see them there are some automated server-side solutions that look promising, to handle this 247, without us looking and blocking all the time (which is exhausting, and very distracting).  We have applied one as a band-aid solution and so far its doing a pretty good job (although we have had some issues with regular users who were blocked). Once we get the server software incompatibilities fixed, well move to a more long-term solution for this issue. The bottom lines: We are very sorry that downtime has happened, We have been, and are, working on keeping JJ up, and reducing the unplanned downtime significantly, We appreciate anyone who has reached out kindly and patiently, asking WHATS UP??? We understand the frustration, because we feel it too, from anyone who has reached out and said WHATS UP, GET JJ UP!!! Im hopeful that our strategy moving forward will make JibberJobber more reliable for you.  If you have any questions, please dont hesitate to reach out to me. JibberJobber Downtime Why, and What Now The last few weeks have been really exciting on the development side of JibberJobber.  One of my developers is rolling out a major enhancement to the job postings which should add considerable value to each user.  Another developer is working on a very cool enhancement to the video library which, of course,  should add considerable value to each user. Another developer is fixing and tweaking little things here and there to make JibberJobber more intuitive, flow better, etc.  Why? To  add considerable value to each user, of course! While they are working hard, and our users are working hard on their job search, weve had some unplanned and unfortunate downtime that has been beyond frustrating.  Let me share with you what happens, and the why of the last few weeks, and what we are going to do about it. When JibberJobber goes down at least four people, including me, QA, the developers, and the server admin team, get an email alert, immediately.  Shortly thereafter, I (and Liz) start to get emails from our users some are very kind, some written out of sheer frustration.  Bottom line, we know its happening were just not sure why its happening. But we jump in and work on figuring that out.  There have recently been three reasons why JibberJobber has gone down, which I share below. Note that we havent had any data breaches that we are aware of, and no user has lost any data. If there were a data issue, wed revert to our backups, which run at least once every 24 hours. Server software incompatibilities.  There is a certain software on our server that provides a necessary function. However, were pretty sure that this software, which I wont name, has caused our server to crash multiple times over the last few years. This is kind of the worst scenario because the resolution is that you have to physically touch the server (which means, if its after hours, someone has to get out of bed, drive down to the server farm, and sit there and get it to reboot), and has sometimes taken hours to get back up.  We should be switched off of the software this week or next week, and have this issue behind us.  I really, really hope that this is the problem, and that the solution will give us long-term peace of mind (which we havent had for too long). Bad guy users. Well, Im not sure I would call them users. Maybe losers is a better word. These are people who get a free account, and then, as a user, abuse the system.  The latest, last week, which took our server down for 10 minutes (kudos to my developer who identified the problem immediately and resolved it) was posting multiple job postings per second.  It was too much activity and took the server down.  The resolution is to find things like that, and remove the ability for a user to abuse.  In this case, only allow someone to post X number of job postings every Y minutes, or something like that.  The immediate solution in this case was to terminate the user and block their IP address. Horrible, horrible, people. The most frequent issue weve had lately has been hackers or spammers. They havent gotten JibberJobber accounts, they just set up servers from multiple places to attack our server. We have had this kind of activity coming from about 15 different countries, and have worked on blocking them when we see them there are some automated server-side solutions that look promising, to handle this 247, without us looking and blocking all the time (which is exhausting, and very distracting).  We have applied one as a band-aid solution and so far its doing a pretty good job (although we have had some issues with regular users who were blocked). Once we get the server software incompatibilities fixed, well move to a more long-term solution for this issue. The bottom lines: We are very sorry that downtime has happened, We have been, and are, working on keeping JJ up, and reducing the unplanned downtime significantly, We appreciate anyone who has reached out kindly and patiently, asking WHATS UP??? We understand the frustration, because we feel it too, from anyone who has reached out and said WHATS UP, GET JJ UP!!! Im hopeful that our strategy moving forward will make JibberJobber more reliable for you.  If you have any questions, please dont hesitate to reach out to me.

Figure out how much you should be paid (and three cheers for transparent salaries)

Figure out how much you should be paid (and three cheers for transparent salaries) Do you know the salary of every employee at your company? I think you should. I mean, who is being protected by secret salaries? Certainly not the employeethe more transparent salaries are, the more accurately an employee can assess his or her value to a company. Youd think that companies benefit from secret salaries and thats why they keep them secret, but really, if salaries were 100% accurateperfectly pegged at the employees worth to the companythen the company would have no problem revealing all salaries. The only people who benefit from secret salaries is the human resources department. If they make an error, they can hide it. No one will know. And then they can make ten errors. Because no one knows if the secret salaries are hiding one error or one hundred. So large companies keep salaries under wraps in order to hide all the mistakes, making the cost of transparency high. But today smaller companies often make salaries totally transparent. I havent done it quite yet with my own company, but Im going to. Ive been giving everyone some data just to get them ready for the big picture. Almost everyone is not happy, because even in my little start-up, Ive made salary errors. For example, the person who was underpaid was not so much jubilant about a potential raise, but upset about his current underpayment. The person whos losing the housing allowance mostly for tax purposes does not seem to mind. The person who is making way more than everyone else minds a lot that Im planning on revealing everyones salaries. But honestly, I think that person will work much harder if everyone knows the truth. And it should be that way. This experience has taught me that you should always try to get to a company that has out-in-the-open salaries, because that means you have more out-in-the-open managersmanagers that have so much self-confidence in their ability to value accurately a business contribution that they can set airtight salaries and stand by them. Of course, most companies are not there yet. Especially the larger ones. Fortunately a bunch of companies have arrived with tricked-out tools for figuring out what you should be getting paid. And what your co-workers should earn as well. Heres a sampling of the top tier of those companies: Payscale.com is my favorite. In fact, I like them so much that I was mentioning them in all my speeches and then I asked them to do a sponsorship with me. (And they did.) So, anyway, the reason I like Payscale is that they systematically collect data in very specific categories so you can match your situationyears of experience, geography, educationto get your real value in the market. Bonus: These are the people who bring you statistics on the real cost of corporate meetings. Salary.com is a good one if you are trying to get a raise. Salary.com is not as thorough as Payscale with its data collection. So employers generally favor Payscale. But Salary.com skews higher than Payscale, so if you have to bring a first number to the negotiating process, use Salary.com. Bonus: These are the people who bring you the statistics on how much a housewife is worth. But really, if companies are smart, the conversation about salary will go quickly. You tell the company how much youre worth. You bring very good data to back that up, and the company pays it. Then other factors like company culture become much more important. Thats where Glassdoor comes in. Its US magazine for the company you are consideringa little gossipy, with first-hand information about companies from the people who suffer in them. Bonus: Glassdoor is a new company and there are not a lot of competing perspectives on the site yet. So if you drop a bomb about the place you work, itll hit hard.

How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile is Found in Google

How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile is Found in Google With more than 225 million business individuals now on LinkedIn, there is a growing trend to ensure that a LinkedIn profile is not only created professionally, but can also be discovered by search engines such as Google. As a result of the public nature of the majority of users’ LinkedIn settings, an increasing number of individual profile pages are appearing in search engine results â€" particularly when searching for, validating or screening the information and expertise of potential candidates. LinkedIn advise that in order to ensure your profile is displayed in search engines like Google, Bing Yahoo, your profile can be made visible by adjusting your settings, sending out at least one invitation to a business colleague or friend and adding as a minimum, one connection. In order to ensure your profile is visible you will need to amend your settings. The process should only take a couple of minutes and can be found by going to your profile avatar (picture) in the top right corner and choosing ‘Privacy Settings’ as an option. Here you can amend who can see your profile picture (‘Change your profile photo visibility’ and ensure your settings are ‘Everyone’) and ‘Edit Your Public Profile’. Users have a tick list of profile content which you can opt for everyone to see. Additional Sections: LinkedIn recommend users to ensure their profile is updated regularly (at least every month if you are wanting to be top of results), as well as checking all additional sections have been correctly filled in.  These sections include: Attaching a headshot as your profile photo  This should be a professional business photograph. Users should remember that all profile images are searchable on search engines, especially in Google Images. Therefore care should be taken on the choice of image used, perhaps choosing to reflect a corporate element for a business networking site here are 7 pictures you should NEVER use. Completing your Headline  This is the wording which is shown next to your profile picture and name on LinkedIn. Some people like to customise this to fully reflect your role and act as an aide to stand out from your competitors its shown as a summary in all search results. Here are 10 LinkedIn Headlines that stand out from the crowd. Writing a short description to include in the Summary box  This is similar to a summary of a CV and is meant to be a couple of paragraphs detailing you and your role make sure you spruce it up! Adding industry specific key words under your job history  If you work within a business sector which has unique industry key words, recruiters will search on those requirements and therefore your profile will show in search results. Entering each of the skills expertise you possess  This acts as an additional section to add industry specific skills. Care should be taken however to ensure that you only accept skills from individuals endorsing you which are relevant to your business area. As LinkedIn are constantly changing and updating their offering, a number of optional areas have recently been introduced to complete such as: Projects: The option to complete the project name, date, project URL, description and to add all team members relating to that project. This feature could be useful if you are a contractor and working regularly on project-based work. It could be an excellent way to demonstrate the structure, workflow and expertise required for the project. Languages: You have the ability to enter any other languages spoken and the degree of fluency of said language. This could be beneficial if you are interested in moving to work overseas. Publications: Individuals utilise this section to mention any publications or editorials written, including the title, publisher, publication URL, and ability to add any other authors. If you work within a niche business area and have written publications on your areas of specialism, this will give recruiters and hiring companies’ visibility of your knowledge and expertise within your industry. Organisations: If you belong to any industry organisations, there is the option to enter the organisation name, position held, occupation, time period and any additional notes. Again, for a recruiter this is very useful especially if you were to work within a niche industry or sector.   It will help position your profile as a stronger match on any keyword searches being carried out by recruiting companies. LinkedIn also gives you the option to add honours awards, test scores, patents, certifications and any volunteering causes you work on. If you want to be discovered by recruiters on LinkedIn, you should ensure that you have completed the following checklist: Is your profile being kept up to date? Have  you entered all the relevant information to your current job? Have you completed your skillset? Have you ensured that both your profile and picture are visible to ‘Everyone’? And finally and perhaps most importantly, ensure the contact details in both the contact box and your profile are visible and up to date. Author: Vicky Jones (@VixJones) is Head of Marketing Communications for Montash.

6 Top Tips for Minimising Your Student Debt Whilst Still at University

6 Top Tips for Minimising Your Student Debt Whilst Still at University Going away to university is a hugely important milestone for many young people. Not only do you start taking the first steps towards your dream career, but you also get some independence. But frivolous, independent living â€"  and of course, university fees â€"   don’t come cheap. And with the cost of going to university rising, more and more people are struggling to cope with crippling student debt. If you’re thinking about heading to university in the autumn, you don’t have to let debt concerns worry you. In fact, there are a whole host of ways you can minimise your debt whilst you’re still studying: 1. Scholarships, Funding and Bursaries If you’re a UK resident, you may be entitled to additional funding or bursaries (grants you don’t pay back) depending on your parents income. Likewise, some courses and universities will offer scholarships to particularly gifted individuals. Before you make your final choices on courses and establishments, do your research. Find out if you will be eligible for additional cash injections at certain universities. Any extra cash you do get, should be stored in a savings account and used to help you through university â€"  not to blow on a night out in Fresher’s Week! 2. Live at Home If you really want to reduce your student debt, choose a university that is close to home. By living with your parents and commuting in every day, you will be able to save considerable amounts of money over the three years. You will only need the loan for your course fees, so will have a smaller amount of debt to pay back at the end of your time at university. While half the fun is living away, you can still enjoy all the benefits of university but at a reduced cost. 3. Spend to Your Means It can be tempting to live lavishly at university, even though you don’t have much disposable cash. If you want to keep your debt to a minimum, make a conscious effort to spend to your means. When your loan goes into your account, don’t blow it all on a big night out or a spending trip. Instead, make sure you have enough to live off until your next cash injection. 4. Keep a House Budget When you live in a student house, it is everyone’s responsibility to pay the bills on time. Set up a joint account and draw up a budget. Firstly, make sure everyone pays enough money into the joint account to cover the rent and bills. You then need to decide if you’re buying food as a house or individuals. If you choose to do this together, make sure everyone knows how much they owe and when. You should also find out some  simple ways to make your money go further. This is good practice for when you buy or rent your own place after university. 5. Get a Part-Time Job Getting a part-time job to help you make a bit of extra cash is another great idea. Not only does it stop you finding yourself in a great deal of student debt, it also keeps money coming in so you can enjoy your time at university. If there is a shortage of jobs in your area, you can always put your university degree to good use and go freelance. If you’re a writer, photographer or designer, offer up your services in your spare time to make some cash and get some experience. You never know, you might be able to make a profitable business out of this foray. 6. Avoid Overdrafts Where possible, try and avoid overdrafts. While they can help you out in the short term, you may end up worse off in the long run. For example, if you exceed your overdraft limit or fail to clear it by the agreed date, you will be hit by hefty fines. If you do use an overdraft, make sure you pay everything off as soon as you can. By following some of these tips, you may be able to minimise your university debt. Obviously, you will always end up with some debt at the end. But by making a conscious effort to be money savvy, you might be surprised at how simple it can be to save some cash.

What are the Best Cities to Find a Job

What are the Best Cities to Find a Job Earlier this year, Forbes released its list of the best cities to find a job. The top spot did not go to a metropolis like New York City or Los Angeles. The winner was: Austin, Texas. What makes Austin such a great place for jobs?According to mashable.com, Austin is home to large employers in fast-growing industries such as technology and healthcare. Also, since it is the home of a very large university, The University of Texas, a lot of millennials live in Austin.Photo Credit â€" Pexels.comHowever, there are big cities near the top of the list among the best places for jobs. San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC and Boston are in the top five according to glassdoor.com These cities offer high median salaries ranging from $67,500-112,000 a year as well as the highest job satisfaction and work-life balance ratings in the country.evalBut are these numbers really an indicator as to which city is best cities for employment? After all, it’s great to have lots of millennials and a major university in your town, but is that really an indicator of how great the city is for employment? Surprisingly the answer is yes.According to data on 24/7 Wall Street.com the city with the lowest unemployment rate is Ames, Iowa home to Iowa State University. Many cities on the list were in fact college towns such as Fayetteville, Provo, Boulder and Sioux Falls just to name a few. The large cities mentioned above, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC and Boston all have universities as well. Universities attract the best young talent, renowned faculty and generate a high level of research activity thus creating job incubators. If you are not currently living in a college town consider moving to one. It’s the best place for jobseekers.A lot will also depend on your profession. There are jobs that are in demand everywhere right now and you do not necessarily have to move to the biggest job market out there. According to CNBC, the top in demand jobs right now are home health aide, physical therapist, financial advisor and software engineer. Also you should consider whether the cities with most jobs statistically are a good fit for you personally. You should consider lots of factors such as: do you see yourself living here long term? Do you like the climate? Does it have convenient public transportation? As well as many others. The best cities for job seekers are not necessarily the most convenient.Looking for the Cities with Best Job Markets? Try Looking AbroadHave you ever considered working abroad? If not, then you should. According to a report by PwC, London, Paris, Tokyo and Amsterdam rank in the top five in tools for changing the world, quality of life and economics. As an added bonus, living abroad is an exciting and rewarding experience full of adventures and exciting opportunities. All in all, the cities with best job markets may not even be in the United States.Every source will have what it believes as the best cities for jobs in the US as well as t he world because so much depends on the criteria.However, one thing is certain. In order to contend for the best jobs you need to have the best resume. Right now, you can create a resume online or get help from one of our resume gurus. The entire process takes only three steps.evalFirst, fill out the online application. Here you would need to tell us what you need help with and how soon do you need the work to be completed. If you have an existing resume, you can upload it to us for review.Next you will be contacted by one of our military resume writing specialists. You will have access to a live person who will happily answer all of your questions and discuss you experiences in greater detail. The final step: download your resume. It’s that easy!

Great stuff goin on - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Great stuff goin on - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Since I released my book a mere two weeks ago a crazy amount of great stuff has happened. Here are some of my favorites: My blog is now one of the worlds top-20 business blogs according to Technorati. Liz Strauss named me both an SOB (Successful and Outstanding Blogger) and a 1 in a million blogger (Thanks Liz and thanks Ann for thinking of me). Ive been contacted by a company who makes management training videos about making a video about happiness at work. Ive been contacted about speaking at the largest training conference in Romania Ill be doing an interview with Penelope Trunk who writes about new business ideas for the Boston Globe. The reviews for my book are still coming in and are still overwhelmingly positive. I was able to give away 100 copies of my book in just 20 hours. I was contacted by the editor of a Lithuanian business newsletter about reprinting one of my posts. One of my posts was translated into Chinese. Ill be talking to an American speakers bureau about getting some speaking gigs in the US. My blog was accepted into the 9rules blogging network. I was interviewed for a podcast by Andrew of jobacle. Itll be up on January 7. All of this and more in just two weeks. Things are almost happening too quickly now. I LOVE it! Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Best Consumer Rated Resume Writing Company

Best Consumer Rated Resume Writing CompanyThere are many different companies that offer services in helping you create a resume and when looking for the best consumer rated resume writing company you may find that they do not have your best interests at heart. When you hire a professional company to help you write your resume, it is imperative that you do not make the mistake of hiring a company that offers cheap services and less than stellar products. You need to hire the best consumer rated resume writing company that has the most amount of experience in writing resumes.You may think that you can take a template and customize it yourself and that is something that a lot of people have been able to do, but you have to realize that not everyone has the time or the skills to do this properly. It is not uncommon for some individuals to create a template and then use the template to submit their resume to multiple companies. This is a very inefficient way to go about making sure that y our resume is as appealing as possible.If you go with a professional resume writing company, you will be given more attention than you would if you just sent it off to several different companies on your own. These companies will not allow you to submit the same job to each resume service. Instead they will allow you to focus on building your resume and see what kind of results you get.Resumes are extremely important when applying for a job because you want to make sure that you make it to the interview stage of the process as quickly as possible. Your resume should speak to the employer in such a way that they can easily picture you when they look at your resume. You also want to make sure that you have done your research so that you are giving them the best idea about who you are and what you have to offer them.One of the best ways to get the best out of a resume is to include all of your skills, experience, education, and previous positions on the resume. The more information tha t you include on the resume the better your chances of getting hired. If you do not have many skills that will be valuable to the company, you can always include a list of things that you have studied and even things that you have done for free or for no money at all.When you apply for a job, you do not want to have a bad experience. You do not want to use an inferior resume and end up with a mediocre position or higher pay scale at a less than ideal company. You want to provide the best possible information that you can so that you can get the kind of job that you want.In order to find the best services for getting your resume written, you need to do some research on the job openings in your area. You can do this by visiting the official website of your state's unemployment office. You can find any number of different jobs that are available in your area that can be filled with people with the proper skills and experience.These online resumes can come from anywhere in the country a nd are going to give you the opportunity to be contacted by the employer in their region. When you are looking for the best resume writing company, you want to make sure that you are looking at a company that is going to offer you the best service. This way you will be sure to get the most out of your resume.