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Explaining How Credit Scores are Used in the Hiring Process You might be wondering why credit scores are used in hiring processes. While you may have never heard about it, it is actually a more common practice than you might think. Companies and institutions such as banks, universities, retail stores, financial institutions across the United States use credit scores to determine whether an applicant is good for the open position or not. Even though you might think that this is illegal, it is not. In general, it is a legal undertaking for companies to look at your credit score. This is yet another reason why you should make sure that your credit scores are good and up to date. So why would they be using your credit information in a hiring process? For some of these companies, employees will be exposed to a lot of money and have a financially responsible position. Your credit information can actually help them determine whether you are a financially responsible person or not. Companies think that if you cannot handle your own money, why you would be qualified to handle their money? On the one side, if you think about it, it is a very valid thought. On the other side, the credit history will not tell the company how you might have gotten all the debt. What if one of your family members is really badly sick or a similar situation? In this case, you have not been irresponsible with your money, but you saved a family members life. You might have been willing to take on all this debt and then work from there. Sometimes numbers are just not an accurate representation of your life. Companies that do use your credit are not only determining whether you can handle money, in some instances they use it as an indicator for your character. It will tell them if you are responsible with your money and finances you are a responsible person. A person that will not be tempted by money or certain situations in a workplace is a person they can securely trust with their funds, their tasks or their great projects. One thing is for sure, the company needs to let you know that they are going to check your credit history in their hiring process and they also need to let you know what they are checking for. The criteria they are looking is the criteria they have to tell you about before you give them the permission. Unless they tell you and have a signature of permission from you, they are not allowed to check and use your credit history. If they miss these above mentioned steps, you do have a case in you hands that you can bring to the court. In some instances, some of the people that were not told about the credit check and have been denied have had a good case in their hands. But as with so many things in life in the United States it pays off to have a good credit history and such a check will not ruin your career moves. Check your credit history every year since once a year the big credit companies do have to give you a free credit report. In the case that you find any wrong or dubious items on your account go ahead and dispute them. Oftentimes companies might just have put a claim against your account that is not really caused by you. Why do companies do that? Money has caused many bad things in the world and a company that wants their money back is going to run after any lead they have. Therefore disputing your case and putting your credit score back to normal can be an essential part in your application and hiring process with some companies.

Music copyright infringement How Does Music Copyright Infringement Affect Me? Music copyright infringement happens all around us every day, by both well meaning people downloading music from their favorite social networking site to the guy who’s reselling MP3s. To be certain, most people who commit music copyright infringement don’t realize what’s going on, and are in turn doing something very illegal and prosecutable in the United States. Copyright Infringement, as defined by Wikipedia.org states: “Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is protected by intellectual property rights law particularly the copyright in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term bootleg (derived from the use of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) is often used to describe illicitly copied material.” We’ve all heard of ‘bootleg’ recordings – usually audio recordings taken from concerts and sold on home made cassettes or CDs and distributed (sometimes out of the trunk of a car) to anyone that will buy. Bootleg recordings have changed, however, as music copyright infringement has branched into video recordings. Music copyright infringement has exploded with the advent of the internet, and now people from all over the world are sharing every type of imaginable file – from eBooks to audio to music – and small label artists began feeling the pinch years ago. However, many new and older artists are beginning to see the beauty of the internet, and are offering their music for sale track-by-track on iTunes and other MP3 sales websites, as well as through their own band websites and MySpace pages. The internet has exploded in the possibilities it’s given up and coming musicians to become visible, while at the same time drastically increasing the number of music copyright infringement cases – some of which were against innocent people who just weren’t informed. Music copyright infringement cases have helped to create organizations that protect the fair use of an item, such as a song. Organizations such as CreativeCommons.com and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help individuals to know their rights under copyright acts. While there are organizations that help you understand your rights as a purchaser of copyright use, there are organizations that want to limit the ways in which you use the products you buy. It is rumored, for example, that record distribution and production companies want to limit the ways in which you use the music you buy – they don’t want you to put it on your computer or make a Mix Tape or CD from it – for fear of ‘sharing.’ It seems to me, however, when music publishers and distribution companies limit uses like this, they’re opening up a tidal wave of music copyright infringement cases. By limiting the use of purchased material, the companies are alienating their client base and pushing all their sales away from physical products and toward electronic ones – which are much harder to control. A way in which these companies tried to limit the uses was by creating a DRM program, which severely limited the where a CD could be played (on one computer, for instance). And, in one drastic measure, Sony placed a DRM program on all their CDs in the Winter of 2005, and severely crippled several networks when their ‘program’ was actually malware that seriously crippled network security. As you can see, music copyright infringement is something that is currently being fought between end users and music production and distribution companies. In this new century, we must find a way to retain copyright, and allow the customers to use the products they buy in a meaningful way, or otherwise the market will shift and the industry as we know it will be abandoned.

Why Time Management Makes for a Better Employee Time management is a major issue in the workplace. When time is not utilized efficiently, it leads to sloppy work, missed deadlines, and way too much stress. Employers are constantly seeking ways to teach their employees to manage their time better for a simple reason – a team that manages its time well is a team that is productive and successful. Everyone has done it. You’ve know that there is a big deadline approaching for weeks on end, and you kept telling yourself that have plenty of time. Then, suddenly, it is the day before the project is due, and you haven’t even begun it. You know you will have to pull an all-nighter, and even then you will be lucky to get everything done in time. Your heart is racing, your head is pounding, and you’re cursing your procrastination yet again, thinking about how much time you wasted surfing the next when you could have been doing a little work on the project every day, so it wouldn’t be so overwhelming. The end result of a project like this is predictable. You may get it in on time, or at least close to the deadline, but your work is likely to be sloppy. The rush job you did will be evident to everyone, and if your project involved making a pitch to a potential customer, your time management failure may end up costing your company big money (and costing you a job). As if you were not stressed enough already! If you contrast that performance with one in which you had effectively managed your time, the difference is clear. If you have worked on the project over the entire time span you had to finish it, a little bit at a time, then you would have had time to make sure your work was up to par. You wouldn’t have been scrambling for last minute information to include, and you could have made sure your work was free from little errors like typos or pages that printed incorrectly. Most importantly, you wouldn’t feel like you needed a week long vacation when the project was over, because your stress level never would have hit the roof. So, how do you become a happier and more effective employee by managing your time better? The first thing you can do to become an effective time manage is simple – write yourself a to-do list everyday. Not only does a to-do list help you think through exactly what you need to accomplish so you don’t forget anything in the rush, but it also helps you feel accountable for everything that needs to get done. If you write “spend 30 minutes on the big project” on your to-do list, it is a lot harder to come up with excuses why you can put it off for another day. Your conscience will make you want to get through everything on that list. If it seems like you never have enough time in the day, keep a journal of all of your activities. If you spend 20 minutes chatting by the coffee pot, write it down. After a week, look back over your activities. You may be surprised how much time you actually spend doing nothing. Now that you know, you can reinvest that time more wisely. The last thing is the hardest thing – getting over procrastination. This one is sheer willpower. When those voices in your head start arguing over whether to work on something now or put it off until later, listen to the work now voice. Give yourself manageable goals, like working on something for 15 minutes or 30 minutes, to get started. Once you experience the freedom from stress that time management brings, that procrastination voice will be a thing of the past.