The 10 Best Websites For Your Career

Today we’re launching our first-ever list of 75 websites for your career. My colleague Jacquelyn Smith and I started with a list of almost 700 sites nominated by readers, and then combed through them, trying to zero in on those that offer the best tools and advice for job seekers and workers looking to advance their careers. 

We’ve also pulled out ten sites we think are the most useful places to spend your time online. We’re calling them the “best,” but we say that with some humility, since we know that every job seeker and worker has a different set of priorities and needs. Though we researched widely, we realize our picks could be a subject for debate. Please tell us your thoughts.We’ve included the job aggregators Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com, where you can do a job listing search quickly and efficiently, Monster.com, because it’s packed with free advice about job search basics like résumé and cover letter writing, Idealist.org  because it’s the best job board for non-profit jobs and volunteer opportunities and USAJobs, the massive listing of federal jobs. We’ve also referenced the careers site of our competitor, The Wall Street Journal, because it’s full of high-quality content (and even sometimes includes links to our stories). Our No. 10 recommendation is really a piece of advice: Find a site that is specific to your career area, like finance or technology or journalism, and check listings there.

As we launch the lists, I feel compelled to say, as I’ve written numerous times before, that no job seeker should spend all day on the internet, reading career advice and sending résumés into the black hole of online postings. Rather, the web should be a place where you can get help and advice on job search basics like writing a résumé and LinkedIn profile, preparing for interviews and salary negotiations and researching and mulling over job options. If you’re in job search mode, coaches recommend you spend no more than 10% of your time online. The rest of the time should be devoted to pursuing leads, networking, researching companies where you want to work and getting out and meeting people in person.

That said, the web can also be a place where you find valuable leads on open positions and tell your network you are looking for work. In January I posted a story about David T. Stevens, who had worked in sales for two radio stations in San Jose, Calif. The day he left his job, he posted a status update on LinkedIn that said, simply, “I’m up for grabs. Who wants me?” One of his contacts got in touch immediately and recommended him for a program and events manager post at the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce. Less than two weeks later, he started a new job there.

Another story from real life: a New York City editor I know was looking to move back to Dallas where her parents lived and she had previously worked for six years. She had left in early 2007, and though she was in touch with some of her old colleagues, she hadn’t told anyone she was looking to move back. In a search on Indeed.com in August, she saw a posting at her former employer and noticed that the contact person was someone she knew. She emailed him and he got back to her within 10 minutes, eager to set up an interview. Within a month she had the job. “I think they evaluated me on my merits,” she says, “but it helped that I had the personal relationship.”

Her story is telling: Most people get jobs through people they know. Though a web search can alert you to opportunities and let other people know that you’re looking for work, it can’t replace personal relationships and the work of following up.

How the Most Successful People Motivate Themselves (And Stay Motivated)

Often the biggest problem people have with achieving their goals–New YearResolution‘s included–is getting started.  It seems that Sir Isaac Newton got it right with his First Law of Motion: Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.  Many people just can’t seem to get underway and as a result they simply don’t take action.

So, what does it take to get started? One easy way is to have someone light a fire under you—“if you don’t do X, by such and such a time, you’re fired”—or you light one under yourself.  (“I am not going to sleep tonight until I have taken a first step toward finding a new job.”)

The problem with lighting a fire under yourself (or having it lit for you) is that eventually your backside gets burned.  It’s not a great long-term strategy. Once the threat ends, you have no real motivation to continue. And if you are operating in an environment where you are constantly threatened, it gets demoralizing very quickly.

So, what is the best way to get started?

Identify:

• Something that you want and
• Something that you can do about it with your means at hand, i.e. taking an action that is within your level of acceptable loss. (The the cost is minimal, if the action doesn’t work out.)

Put that way, there are only four logical explanations for why you are not moving toward your goal:

1. Habit.
2. You don’t have the means at hand
3. The perceived cost is too high. Or
4. You are lying to yourself about what you want.
   The fourth is rarely the case.  Most people who say they want to get a new job, or meet someone or lose weight really do want to find new employment, find that significant other or be thinner. As for habit, in this case, that’s “simply” a matter of getting used to taking action. (More on that in a second.)

So this means is if you aren’t taking action toward what you want, you either perceive taking action as either being too costly, or too risky.

What’s the solution?

It seems simple, doesn’t it? Reduce the cost and risk to acceptable levels, so that you could get underway.

Now, if it were as easy as all that, you would have done it.  So, you need some help.

Here’s one easy solution. Talk to a friend about the challenge you face. (“I really want to find a new job, but I just can’t seem to get going.”)

Together, come up with a list of possibilities, being as specific as you can. In the case of the new job, you would identify what you want to do; whether it makes sense to do it on your own—i.e. start a company—or work for someone else, etc.

Figuring all this out could take a couple of conversations, and that’s fine. But don’t wait until the end of all your talks to get moving. Remember, we want to make sure that habit, that is you are in the habit of not moving toward what you want, is NOT the problem.

So, at the end of the first conversation, the one where you decided your next job will be with another company, you immediately start compiling potential firms to contact and maybe even go so far as to talk to people who have the sort of job you want.

At the next meeting, you and your friend would try to come with a complete list of places that might hire you, as well as who to contact at those firms.

Then you’d set a deadline—say a week—when you will report back to your friend. At that meeting you say what you did to follow up, or explain why you didn’t do anything.

Isn’t setting this deadline the same as lighting a fire under yourself? Yes…but also no. Yes, in the sense that you have drawn a proverbial line in the proverbial sand.  But no, because you are acknowledging up front that you may not take action.

Let’s suppose you don’t. At the next meeting with your friend, you would explain why.  Maybe it was because you were sick and so you give yourself a pass. But it could be you didn’t take action because you found the idea of cold calling companies too intimidating.

In that case, you and your friend would try to break down the next step into even smaller parts. (Is there someone you know, who can get to someone they know at the company; is it possible to find out if they take online applications seriously. If that is the case, you wouldn’t have to cold call.)

And so the process would go until you reduced taking the next step to a point where it is doable.

The Lollipop War

I recently got a tour of the Spangler Candy Company, a family-owned firm in Bryan, Ohio. The company makes 10 million Dum Dums lollipops there every day, and they have a whole separate building where they store the sugar — enough to fill eight Olympic-size swimming pools. The CEO, Kirk Vashaw, says he wants to expand the factory and make even more candy there. There's just one thing he needs.

"Let us buy sugar on the free market," he says.

As it turns out, there are two prices for sugar: the price you pay in the U.S., and the price you pay almost everywhere else in the world.

The price in the U.S. is about 15 cents a pound higher than the price in the rest of the world. That costs Spangler Candy an additional $3 million a year.

The higher U.S. sugar price is spelled out in U.S. law. You can find it right here, in the latest version of the farm bill, which says that the U.S. government shall guarantee a minimum price for sugar that is not to drop below 22.9 cents per pound.

Because of the higher price here, lots of candies that used to be made in the U.S. — Life Savers, candy canes — are now made overseas.

Candy makers have been fighting the sugar thing in Congress for years, but they keep losing to sugar farmers.

A few days after my trip to the Dum Dums factory, I went to Sabin, Minn., to meet a sugar beet farmer named Blane Benedict. "Our family's been farming here since the late 1870s," he told me as he showed me around the farm.

People in Sabin say the whole local economy benefits when the farmers start turning their beets into sugar. Benedict says the farmers need that special protection in the law because sugar farmers in other countries get help from their governments, too.

But Daniel Sumner, an economist at the University of California, Davis who used to help set farm policy, doesn't buy it.

"It's a very common rationalization," he says. "'The other kids are doing it.' " Sumner points out that the sugar lobby spends more than all the other agriculture lobbies on political campaigns.

Of course, the candy makers have their own proposed legislation that would get rid of the sugar price rule — and, they say, would help keep candy-related jobs in the U.S.

That bill comes up regularly in Congress, but always loses. The latest farm bill, which would extend the sugar program, is expected to pass.

Still In The Middle Class, But Standing On A Banana Peel

Most U.S. workers fit snugly into the middle class, but they worry a lot about falling out of it, according to a poll released Thursday.

After years of watching home prices slide and job creation stall, 6 in 10 Americans say they fear tumbling from the middle class in the next few years, the Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll suggests.

And the negative sentiment is increasing: Only 29 percent of respondents say the country is headed in the "right direction." Back in November, they were feeling much more optimistic, with 41 percent saying they felt the country was on the right course.

So if most people are feeling insecure this spring about their economic futures, who are they blaming?

Elected leaders, take note: 64 percent say Congress is making things worse, and only 8 percent believe it is making things better. President Obama is more popular than lawmakers, with 36 percent of Americans saying he is making things better. Still, the poll found that 45 percent say Obama is making things worse, and that optimism has faded since his re-election.

The head of the president's National Economic Council, Gene Sperling, spoke at a National Journal event where the poll was released. He pointed a finger at Congress, saying it should not have allowed massive, across-the-board spending cuts to kick in on March 1 to reduce deficit spending.

Sperling thinks the automatic spending cuts are creating a drag on job creation. "For us to be putting a brick on the economy ... is the opposite of what we should be doing," he said Thursday. "It's moving us in the wrong direction."

The poll, which is conducted quarterly, surveyed 1,000 middle-class adults by telephone April 5-9. Respondents defined being in the middle class as having a job and being able to pay their bills. U.S. Census data show the median income for a family of four is $68,274

.

Take The Money And Run For Office

This is an abridged version of a story airing this weekend on This American Life. The story is part of our series on money in politics.

We imagine lobbyists stalking the halls of Congress, trying to influence lawmakers with cash. But often, it's the other way around: Members of Congress stalk lobbyists, looking for contributions.

"Most Americans would be shocked — not surprised, shocked — if they knew how much time a U.S. Senator spends raising money," Sen. Dick Durbin told us.

There are special call centers across the street from the Capitol where Senators and Congressmen sit, often for hours a day, calling potential donors to ask for money.

And lawmakers and their staffs are constantly trying to find lobbyists to organize fundraisers. For the most part, these are much more mundane than the fancy black-tie galas you sometimes hear about on the news.

Take a look at this invitation for Rep. Tim Bishop, a democrat from New York. It's at a restaurant called Johnny's Half Shell. Cost: $500 to $2500. Time: 8:30 a.m.

Eight thirty a.m. is not glamorous. And lots of these fundraisers happen at breakfast.

Here's another invitation, this one for a a Republican candidate, Steve Daines of Montana. It's at the offices of the Associated General Contractors of America, a big trade group in town. Imagine 15 people eating appetizers in a conference room. Not glamorous.

A congressional watchdog group called the Sunlight Foundation collects these invitations to fundraisers and puts them online. We crunched some of their numbers. (Notes on the data are at the bottom of this story.) Here's a breakdown of fundraisers, by category:

Sifting through the invitations, the same venues come up again and again. Lunch at The Capitol Grille, dinner at Bullfeathers, cocktails at the Monocle. Here are the top 10 locations for fundraisers between 2008 and early 2012. They form a ring around the capitol.

Not all of the events are boring. There are pheasant hunts, golf tournaments, sailing trips. This past week, for a thousand bucks, you could join South Dakota Senator John Thune at a Van Halen concert. Here's a count of fancy events from 2008 through early 2012:

And here's a graph of all fundraisers in that time:

So how do lobbyists actually pay to attend these events?

Sometimes, they pay with plastic. There's often a space on the invitation to put your credit card number. Some lobbyists send their donation in ahead of time. Some want to hand over the money in person.

"We have a policy that all checks have to be hand delivered," says financial services lobbyist Scott Talbott. "Wouldn't you remember if someone handed you a check rather than sent it in the mail?"

What does the money buy? What are corporations and special interests getting in return for the billions of dollars they spend lobbying each year?

If you're cynical, you think money buys votes, and Washington is owned. Money drives everything.

Lobbyists and politicians usually tell you the opposite. The money has no effect. After all, they say, donations come from both sides. Exporters vs. importers. Bankers vs. Realtors. Businesses vs. unions. The money cancels itself out.

Rep. Barney Frank says both of those positions were caricatures.

"People say, 'Oh, it doesn't have any effect on me,'" he says. "Well if that were the case, we'd be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior."

On the other hand, Frank says, money isn't the only thing that influences lawmakers.

"If the voters have a position, the voters will kick money's rear end every time," he says.

But the fact is, a Congressman's district doesn't care about most legislation one way or another. Most of what Congress does affects the minutiae of tax law and business code and replacing the "and" in subsection b of title 1 with an "or."

The only people who do care, or who even understand what the small print means are the lobbyists, and the industries and interests they represent.

Fundraisers and campaign contributions don't buy votes, for the most part. But they buy access — they get contributors in the door to make their case in front of the lawmaker or his staff. And that can make all the difference.

"You may end up voting the wrong way because you haven't fully understood both sides of the story — even if you do have integrity," says Walt Minnick, a former Idaho Congressman who now works as a lobbyist.

Minnick says, for example, that he met with representatives from the payday loan industry, which contributed to his campaign. "Some of the folks in that industry were a little unsavory," he says.

"There weren't any people who were applying for payday loans that came in to see me," he says.

Money in the political system helps explain why oil companies get big subsidies even while their business is booming, why the federal government provides flood insurance for rich people to build beach houses in hurricane zones, why corn syrup that goes in soft drinks gets federal subsidies and fruits and vegetables don't.

If a congressman went in front of a town hall meeting and said "For $5000, I'll sit down with any one of you and have breakfast, and you can tell me exactly how you'd like me to vote" he'd be booed off the stage.

But in Washington, that's what happens every day.

*Note: For the graphics in this piece, we analyzed more than 13,000 event invitations. Thedata came from Political Party Time, a site run by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, and was compiled largely through submissions from sources in Washington.

Politicians are not required to file reports about their fundraising events. As a result, not all fundraisers are included in the Political Party Time data set.

Podcast
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/16/177489268/episode-356-the-surprisingly-entertaining-history-of-the-income-tax

Attention Getters: Methods
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7. Many people think that pasta is very harmful for their figures, but they are mistaken.
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Why Amazon Supports An Online Sales-Tax Bill

If you:

1. Live in a state that charges sales tax

and

2. Buy something from an online store that does not charge you sales tax,

then you are supposed to:

3. Calculate the sales tax yourself and add it onto your annual state tax bill.

Not surprisingly, as we reported last week, almost no one actually does this.

As online retailing has grown, sales tax has been a growing issue for state governments, which say billions of dollars a year in sales taxes are going unpaid. Brick-and-mortar stores don't like it either, because it gives online retailers an advantage.

But states may soon be able to force out-of-state retailers to charge state and local sales tax.The Hill reports:

The Senate is expected to pass legislation this week that would empower states to tax online purchases.

EBay is fighting the bill. The company just sent out "tens of millions" of emails to its active U.S. sellers, asking them to fight the bill, the WSJ reports. The bill exempts businesses that have less than $1 million a year in sales. EBay wants the exemption to go up to $10 million a year.

Amazon, on the other hand, supports the bill. In fact, a company exec wrote a letter to Senatorsthanking them for introducing the bill.

What gives? Why would Amazon be supporting a bill that would require it to charge sales tax, and give up an advantage over local retailers?

There are a couple possible reasons.

Reason #1

Collecting state and local sales tax all around the country would require a fair bit of effort on the part of online retailers, because sales tax rules vary from state to state. That's not a huge deal for a giant company like Amazon, but it would be more of a burden for smaller online retailers. From Amazon's point of view, that's a good thing — it makes life harder for Amazon's smaller competitors.

That's why big businesses, despite what they may say, often like regulations. They make life harder for small, would-be competitors. But in the case of Amazon, this argument is less compelling: Amazon spent years doing everything it could to avoid charging sales tax.

Reason #2

Under current law, Internet retailers have to charge sales tax in states where they have a significant physical presence — like, say, a big warehouse. For a long time, Amazon kept warehouses out of big states so it could avoid charging sales tax in those states.

Brick-and-mortar retailers didn't like this, and started lobbying state governments to push for Amazon to charge sales tax. So Amazon changed its strategy. The company agreed to start paying sales tax in more states — and it started building huge warehouses near major metropolitan areas in those states.

The warehouses meant the company had to start charging sales tax. But having warehouses closer to big cities also allowed Amazon to start offering same-day delivery to millions of customers.

As the FT reported last year, the brick-and-mortar stores got the level playing field they wanted for sales tax. But they also got a new level of competition from Amazon. If the company can make cheap, same-day delivery work, it will eliminate one of the last advantages of physical stores.

Career Job Search Tips

Trying to find a job is not most people's idea of a good time. Making the search as efficient and as effective as you can will make it yield results more quickly, so you can stop distributing resumes, and get back to paid work, as soon as possible.

Network

• All the resume-polishing in the world will probably not have as much positive impact on your job search as one solid personal connection. Your personal and professional relationships are the key to your future career. People with whom you've worked, and people who've known you for years, know what you're capable of, and can serve as invaluable leads, references, and sources of information in your job search. Use them as much as you can. Most friends and colleagues have been in a similar situation at one time or another, and most likely, will be happy to help you.

Government Help

• Local, state and federal governments frequently offer job banks, consultations and listings that are designed to aid you in your job search. Take advantage of these programs -- they're there for your use. If you have low, or no income, and need further education to update your skills, talk to a representative at your local government job center about the possibility of subsidized classes at a college or trade school. Government agencies also sometimes offer to pay part of a new employee's salary, to encourage employers to hire him. This can help to get your foot in the door at a new job.

Cold Calling

• Cold calling is one of the more difficult aspects of a job search for many people, because it involves calling people who don't know who you are and, more than likely, have nothing to offer you. If you're determined to do everything possible to increase your chances of success, you should be cold calling, resumes in hand, at every opportunity. It can't hurt, and if an opening appears at one of the places where you've recently left a resume, an employer may give you a call. Cold calling also helps you overcome your hesitancy to sell yourself. Developing skills in self-promotion, even when the process is difficult, will help to make you more effective as a job seeker.

Education

• Take an honest look at the education that you have, and how it stacks up against the people who're competing with you for jobs. If you feel that your education is lacking, you may want to consider postponing your job search and returning to college full-time, to improve your job chances in the future. Alternatively, you could enter a program part-time and continue trying to find a job. In a rapidly changing world, having up-to-date educational credentials can make the difference between success and failure when you finally locate the job you've been looking for.