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July 2016

Jul 01
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Job Search Tips You Can Learn From Political Campaigns

By Your Employee Matters

em-july16-1 The presidential election is approaching fast, and every newscast features some type of discussion or ad related to the candidates. Instead of changing the channel, consider tuning in. You could learn a few tips from political campaigns that help your job search succeed.

    1. Be Friendly

      Rarely will you see a political candidate frown. That’s because they know they need to be friendly. So smile, make eye contact, use your manners and call people by the right name when you print resumes, talk to hiring managers and interview for jobs. These actions show that you’re friendly, likeable and nice, and they attract people as you demonstrate that you’re a team player.

    1. Keep it Simple

      Of course you are familiar with product names and technical acronyms associated with your industry, but you risk turning off hiring managers who is not familiar with those terms. Stick with simple language on your resume and during interviews as you share your skills and wow potential employers.

    1. Enlist Superdelegates

      Every successful job search is achieved with help from a team. Ask former co-workers to be a reference, ask friends to share potential job openings, and ask a career center to proofread your resume. All of these people can support your job search, boost your morale and help you land a job.

    1. Answer Questions

      Some job interview questions are hard, including why you left your previous job or why there are gaps in employment. Anticipate the tough questions and prepare answers that are direct. Skirting issues only shows that you are not trustworthy or ready to tackle tough challenges at work.

    1. Use Social Media

      In addition to finding jobs on social media sites, you can use Google Plus, Twitter and LinkedIn to build your brand and image. Share relevant news articles, discuss trends and talk about your opinions as you gain credibility it the field, engage your audience and stay visible to potential employers.

    1. Share a Short Message

      You are passionate about your experience and may even have a vision for what you want to do in a new position, but use fewer words not more. A short message is more likely to hold a hiring manager’s attention and allows everyone to get a turn to talk during interviews.

    1. Be Trustworthy

      Employers are looking for team members who tell the truth, follow ethical behavior and live with integrity. Tell the truth about your qualifications and during interviews as you demonstrate your trustworthiness.

Jul 01
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Is It Infected, Or Just Busted?

By Cyber Security Awareness

cyber-july16-4 - CopySometimes it looks like a virus and it turns out to be a virus. Other times, a simple hardware malfunction can mess you up in ways that will make you think you’ve been infected when all you really need to do is replace a damaged component. Here are a few examples of hardware errors that some people mistake for infection:

Computer Keeps Shutting Itself Down

If this happens with a laptop or desktop computer, the issue could be as simple as your computer overheating. Fans will wear out and break down, driving up the temperature, and your PC or laptop will shut itself down to avoid any damage due to overheating. This is common for people whose work is media-intensive or if you play CPU-hogging high-end computer games. You can usually replace any fan that’s busted, but if it’s the graphics card, you might need to buy a whole new one. In the meantime you can always downclock your computer and leave your tower open and use a desk fan, but this fix is a little unwieldy as anything but a temporary fix.

Blue Screens

This is usually an issue related to poorly-made hardware drivers. It could also be a hard drive or a motherboard that’s on its last legs. In any event, it’s usually a problem that can be solved with either an update or an upgrade. There aren’t a lot of viruses that will give you a blue screen of death without any other symptoms.

Computer Won’t Boot

This could be an issue with the power supply. Check to ensure everything is in order on that end and then try again. If that doesn’t work, it may be your CPU.  If you’re getting a “No Bootable Device” message, then that usually means that your hard drive is the culprit, and you’ll want to run Startup Repair.

Jumbled Data

This is the most “virusy” symptom on the list, but it might actually point to issues with your RAM. Your computer’s temporary memory might simply be “misremembering” something when it tries to read the data back to you.

The good news is that replacing one component is usually pretty affordable and pretty easy. The bad news is that it’s a bit like maintaining a car that’s acting wonky: You might not know what you need to replace until you’ve already replaced a dozen other things. In any event, these are issues where antivirus software won’t do the job.

Jul 01
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Cyber Security in Science Fiction

By Cyber Security Awareness

Scyber-july16-3 - Copyo-called “hard” science fiction uses speculative concepts and “day after tomorrow” age technology in order to tell us stories about the human condition, society. “Soft” science fiction is less concerned with speculation as to how technology will affect our daily lives than in, well, space opera, giant robot action and things of that nature. In both varieties, you see a lot of high-end advanced technology, and yet, unless the story is specifically about cyber-security threats to this technology (for instance, the hacker-heroes in The Matrix), these films almost never delve into what those threats are. Here’s some of our favorite sci-fi tech that would be ripe for the hacking:

Jaegers, Pacific Rim

One of the questions that needs to be asked of the movie Pacific Rim: Is there really no way for those giant robots to be controlled remotely? We’re willing to bet that even if the people who run them can’t figure it out, it wouldn’t take too long for a well-funded Kaiju-conservation eco-terrorist to find a way to take control of, or at least sabotage one of those big robots. It wouldn’t be the first time military grade equipment had been hacked.

Rekall, Total Recall

Total Recall centers on “Rekall,” a sort of virtual-tourism agency that implants the memory of an incredible adventure, and then wipes out any trace of memory that you had ever gone to Rekall. The process goes wrong within the film, but because of simple technical errors, not because it was hacked. Here’s the first problem: How do you get word of mouth when your business model is that nobody remembers buying their vacation from you? More importantly, if the process is so slipshod and insecure as to go so horribly awry as it does in the film, what’s to stop a hacker from creating their own army of personal soldiers by having an inside man swap some data disks around? Rekall is, after all, just a media-distribution channel, and those aren’t always difficult to break into.

Robocop

The funny thing about the original Robocop is that it didn’t actually foresee the internet. Somebody wishing to hack Robocop would need to somehow sneak up on him and change his firmware. Today, that would be very easy to do remotely, especially considering Omnicorp’s laissez faire attitude towards creating an effective product. Given the public demand for police reform and groups like Anonymous, it wouldn’t be long before a real life Robocop was hacked and Omnicorp lost their government contracts.

Part of the reason movies don’t cover cyber-security in these movies is it would slow the plot down quite a bit to devote a whole twenty minutes to how they plan to encrypt their laser gun firmware. All the same, you do have to wonder what an IT guy’s job looks like on the Empire’s Death Star.

Jul 01
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Is It Bricked Or Can It Be Fixed?

By Cyber Security Awareness

cyber-july16-1 - CopyA “bricked” device, a PC that just isn’t going to work ever again, an Xbox 360 that suffers the dreaded Red Ring Of Death, an iPhone that you might as well start using as a coaster, can be frustrating and, if it’s one of your prized possessions, something that you use to get a lot of work done, a little heartbreaking and might even set you back on some money you could be earning.

From the minute you see the blue screen flash on your monitor at startup, you get that feeling like there’s a rock in your stomach, and you start mentally calculating what it’ll cost to replace your busted computer. But, before you go all Office Space on your PC tower out in a vacant lot, consider that it might be fixable! Here are some easy fixes for devices that seem all but ready to start pushing up daisies:

Windows 10 Blue Screen of Death

If your PC or laptop suffers from the Blue Screen of Death, error C1900101-20017, with installation of Windows 10, here’s what you can do: Go to C: . Windows . Software Distribution > Download, and delete every single thing in the folder. Then go to the $Windows.~BT folder in the root directory of C:, and delete that, too. Now if you want to install Windows 10, you’ll want to download the ISO files from the Microsoft website. Prepare a bootable USB drive or DVD, and reboot your computer. Tap F12 or Delete when the display appears, and this will take you to the BIOS menu. Disable overclocking, enable UEFI bBoot from BIOS, reboot from your USB or DVD, and you should be good to go.

Xbox 360 Red Ring Of Death

This is a hardware issue, but it’s usually an easy one to fix. Note: It will void your warranty unless you have a professional handle it. What you want to do is replace, reattach and recamp the heat sinks in your system. A heat gun applied to the motherboard’s solder joints can improve your rate of success here. The fix is pretty easy, and some people make some nice supplemental income buying broken Xboxes and fixing them for resale.

Phone Or Tablet That Won’t Turn On

In many cases, a hard reset is all you need to get your phone or tablet running again. You can boot into recovery mode on most devices by holding the volume up and the power button until you see the word “Start.” Some devices may have their own ways of doing this.

Jul 01
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A Crash Course on Snow Plow Insurance

By Business Protection Bulletin

bb-july16-4Here’s the dangerous thing about snow plowing: By nature of your job, you’re on a slippery, frozen road that you can’t even see. So it’s hardly a stretch to say that, as important as auto insurance is in general, snow plowing liability is doubly important. If you run a team of drivers, then it’s only a matter of time before someone chips some private or public property or does some damage to the plow. Here’s what you need to consider when considering your snow plow insurance:

The Scale Of Your Company

When insuring your vehicles and drivers, you need to consider to what extent you can afford to pay for damages out of pocket. For some companies, it’s not a big deal to manage their own repairs for all but the worst accidents. Others need a more comprehensive plan. Obviously you’re not going to be driving without any coverage at all, but how much do you need based on what you can afford to cover yourself?

Not Every Accident Is A Collision

A lot can go wrong when your job involves dealing with harsh weather. A driver is as liable to suffer an injury while strapping the chains onto the tires as they are to slide into another truck while driving. The risks that you and your drivers take are not isolated exclusively to collisions, and your policy needs to reflect that.

Training

Training for a snow plow driver is a little more intensive than training for a pizza delivery guy. You’re looking for safe drivers with clean records (this is very important when getting them covered under your commercial auto policy) who are fast learners, because, after all, Winter doesn’t last forever. In most states, you don’t need a special license to operate a snow plow, but you will need a permit in order to operate a commercial snow plow business. Luckily that’s something that you can take care of on your end, you won’t need your drivers to worry about it. You have to expect at least a minor accident now and then with such a tough job, but good, safe drivers can mean the difference between a minor accident and a major one, and they can help keep your insurance rates nice and low.

Jul 01
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Keeping People, Property, and Your Reputation Safe With Football Team Insurance

By Business Protection Bulletin

bb-july16-2You don’t want to be the person who says “What’s the worst that could happen? It’s just little league!” Whether you’re running a youth soccer team, an amateur baseball club or a professional rugby team, your athletes are taking the game very seriously, and when people are taking the game very seriously, they push themselves and one another to do their very best. In other words, you don’t need to get drafted in the NFL to sustain an injury in the line of duty. Sports team insurance not only protects you from liability, it protects your players and the venue owners. In short: As soon as you’re moving the game out of the backyard or the public park, then it’s time to look into football team insurance.

Bodily injury and property damage are the main concerns in youth sports insurance, or any athletic insurance, really. Now and then, a ball is going to crash through a window, a quarterback is going to twist an ankle. We do everything we can to reduce injury and property damage in sports. We encourage stretching and warm up and safe play, but sports are physically demanding and unpredictable. That’s a big part of the fun, and a big factor in liability.

The most likely injuries to take place will be to the athletes, and the most likely damages will be to surrounding property. However, there are a lot of “civilians” involved in the game indirectly, from spectators to volunteers and vendors. A tackle that flies right through the sideline and knocks a food vendor over, a football that catches a spectator on the nose, sports wouldn’t be exciting if it weren’t for the fact that “anything can happen,” but they wouldn’t require comprehensive liability coverage, either.

cover all of your bases.

Jul 01
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Do You Need REO Insurance?

By Business Protection Bulletin

bb-july16-1“Real estate owned” can be a misleading term for people who are new to the deal. Isn’t all real estate owned by somebody? The difference between owned real estate and real estate owned, or REO, is that the latter refers to real estate that is owned by the lender. This could mean real estate that’s owned by a bank, a loan insurer, a private lender or a government agency. In other words, REO is usually invoked as a three letter word for “repossessed.”

REO property is usually the result of a foreclosure, and will typically be the result of a home with a lower market value than the amount owed on the home. We saw a lot of these in the real estate crash in the 00’s, with many homes becoming REO properties following an epidemic of bad loans. It’s also common to see many REO properties hitting the market following a real estate bubble.

So, from the sound of it, it seems like REO is a bit of a burden to bear, right? If you own an REO property, then that means that your borrower isn’t paying you back, and the home is worth less than you put down to cover it in the first place. REO insurance can, at the very least, help to ensure that the investment isn’t a total loss.

Step 1: Determine the Equity on the Property

Once the property goes into a distressed status, such as the borrower missing mortgage payments, the lender will need to determine the equity on the home. You can do this with a BPO, or Broker’s Price Opinion, or you can order an appraisal. From here, the borrower may request a short sale, or the foreclosure process will begin.

Step 2: Foreclosure Auction

If you can sell a home through a foreclosure option, then it never becomes an REO property, and will still be covered by homeowner’s insurance.

Step 3: Comparing Quotes and Buying Coverage

From here on, buying foreclosure insurance is just like buying any sort of property insurance. You compare quotes from lender placed property insurance providers, select the package that best suits you, and you’re set.

Jul 01
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How Does Maritime Construction Insurance Differ?

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

CON-july16-4Maritime construction is a niche field within the construction industry. Most of the people who work in this area of construction will specialize in it, and they’ll carry the requisite special qualifications, training and licensing to prove it. Jobs like underwater welding are very different from welding in the dry environment of a workshop or an above-ground job-site. As such, the insurance demands for maritime construction is very different as well.

Waterborne Equipment

Many insurance policies actually feature an exclusion on this note. If you take your equipment out on the open water and something should happen to it, your basic policy is probably not going to cover the loss.

Watercraft Liability

Whether you’re getting to the jobsite on a speedboat or a rubber raft, watercraft liability will be a requisite if you’re doing any maritime construction. Any damage in which your vessel might be implicated, you’ll want liability for it.

Marine Floater

“Floater” sort of takes on a double meaning here: Any installation you’re building in order to work on a project, you’ll need some coverage for it. On land this could mean a scaffolding, on the sea it might mean temporary constructs that allow your team access to the exterior of the project without having to swim to get there.

Adverse Weather

Choppy weather is to be expected on the sea, but it can turn bad in ways that can cost you weeks worth of work. Storms, the shifting of the tides and simple bad sailing conditions can set your schedule back quite a bit. Insurance to protect you from adverse weather conditions is doubly important on sea as on land.

Knock for Knock

A common insurance agreement in offshore construction is the “Knock for Knock” arrangement. What this means is that all parties involved will cover their own ends, even if it could be proven that another party was at fault. You see Knock for Knock used in all sorts of construction projects, but it is especially popular in marine construction. Many deals are made with this agreement on smaller projects simply because there are so many additional angles to cover on the sea, and this simplifies the process a bit.

Maritime construction insurance is one of the reasons that this is a specialty field. This, along with the special training, equipment and materials required. If you ever want to explore that niche, the investment of time, money and energy to get started may prove to be well worth it, of course. It’s easier to dominate a niche than it is to dominate an entire industry.

Jul 01
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What Exactly Is An Act Of God?

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

CON-july16-3In legal terms, an act of God isn’t, in fact, a religious experience. Well, that’s not to say that an act of God couldn’t be a religious experience, it’s just that that’s not inherent in the legal definition of the term. An act of God essentially comes down to the unforeseen and the unpreventable. You can reduce the likelihood of accidents on the job site by making sure that you don’t allow any drinking, fighting or general carelessness on site, you can reduce the likelihood of accidents on the road through proper auto maintenance, but you can’t prevent a flood or an earthquake no matter how many safety courses you attend.

Acts of God will exempt a party from strict liability and from negligence in common law. Many building contracts have a provision allowing for acts of God to excuse unexpected delays in a project’s completion. However, damages and delays owing to a natural disaster may be disputed as acts of God in some circumstance.

The key word is “unforeseeable.” If someone falls off of a scaffolding and spends the next four weeks in a cast because of an earthquake, then that will usually be chalked up to an act of God. If they saw a storm coming in, decided to keep working, and then got struck by lightning, then the “act of God” claim may be contested.

“Act of God” is sort of a liability free-pass card, exempting you from responsibility for things that you couldn’t possibly have predicted. There are a few steps that you can take to ensure that there is no gray area, no room for doubt when you need to lean on this legal term:

    1. Keep tabs on the weather. Don’t assume, for instance, that a storm “isn’t going to be as bad as they say.” It might not be so bad, but do you want to bet your career on it?
    1. Keep all of your safety equipment in tip top shape. You don’t want to give people any wiggle room to say that that safety harness would have snapped eventually with or without the earthquake.
    1. This goes for your vehicles, as well. It’s hard to claim a small flood as an “act of God” when your truck was the only one slipping and sliding across the road.

An act of God can be a sort of Get Out Of Jail Free card when it comes to liability, but you can’t play it every time.

Jul 01
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What’s Expected of High-End Builders?

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

CON-july16-2Anyone who knows how to swing a hammer can probably erect a shed. If you have a little bit of experience in building, then you can probably take a wall out of a home to extend the living room, or put one up to split the master bedroom into two. If you work in construction as a professional, you’re expected to know just about everything, and if you don’t know it, then you know somebody who does. So what is that a high-end builder does that an everyday construction foreman doesn’t?

Well, it’s really about the market and the approach to designing and building something. A skilled construction crew can build a home just as well as a high-end construction team can do it, but a high-end construction crew is catering to a wealthier market, and typically building custom structures that are designed not only to be lived in, but to appreciate in value by leaps and bounds. You don’t hire a high-end crew to put together an apartment building or build an additional room onto your house, you hire them to build a dream home.

Here’s what to consider if you’re thinking of pivoting into high-end construction:

  • There’s a lot of money in it. Like we said, you’re catering to a wealthier demographic. You’re likely to take fewer jobs, but you’ll typically earn quite a bit more on each contract. This is true whether your team is the one building the house, or you’re just doing the wiring and light fixtures. On the other hand…
  • It’s a smaller market. If you’re looking to build mansions and Summer getaway homes, you’re going to be making more money, but probably doing far fewer jobs. Unless you live somewhere like Beverly Hills, you’re also looking at a much longer drive to get to the jobsite every morning, as you’re going to be moving all around your territory to work with your clients.
  • It’s collaborative. You need to collaborate with your client from the start, and throughout, on the design of the house. Some professionals can’t stand this part.
  • It’s mostly marketing. If you can build a cabin, you can probably build a mansion. You need to convince your potential clients that your team is specially suited to building homes that are lavish and aesthetically pleasing. A selective portfolio goes a long way towards building this trust.

High-end construction isn’t for everyone. Some markets just don’t create enough demand to support a new high-end construction companies, some professionals are more comfortable with the work they’re already doing. Specializing is a great way to keep your foothold in your field, but you need to make sure there’s a market for your specialty.

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