[Completely OT] ... job hunters, what would you pay for ...

In article , "jmcquown"
wrote:

MissysMom wrote:
I should think there would be a market for such a resume'
writing/cover letter service. There could also be a market just for
editing manuscripts. If you like and are good at finding the
grammatical errors, you might want to think about adding that service
to your business plan.

Just my $.02.


---LMM (Little Missy's Mom)

I used to edit marketing materials pre-production when I worked for a
company. I'm good at catching interesting grammatical errors (aka "my
brother has an agreement with his landlord to exterminate himself" heheh).
Later I went to work for a company who had already had some fancy tri-fold
colour mailers printed and the owner was so proud, passing one around to
show everyone his fancy new brochure. First reading, I noticed it said,
"Toll Tree Support". Uh oh. They'd already had 10,000 of them printed.
LOL

Jill



That which started as the Canadian Alliance Party printed a large number
of flyers before someone caught that they were advertising the Canadian
Appliance Party. A toaster with every vote?

Subsequently, after the party fractured, a splinter group called itself
the Conservative Reformed Alliance Party. It took them a week to
realize the acronym.

US political advertising, however, has proved equal to the acronym
challenge. The War On Poverty was announced before its acronym was
analyzed, as was Stop Inflation Now.

Still, for this group, Carter's description of stopping inflation as the
Moral Equivalent Of War seems to win the political acronym contest.

Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

Biskybabe wrote:


You'll also want to talk to a lawyer and get a contract that makes it
clear you're not responsible if they don't get a job. Setting customer
expectations is really important for any sort of consultant.

Oh good grief. To write cover letters or resumes? You're joking, right?
Our society hasn't become *that* ligitious, has it??

Yes.

Tell me it ain't so, Howard. OK, just call me naive. Suing the person
you hired to write your resume because you didn't land the job.
stepping on soapbox and assuming geezer mode
Half of what's wrong with this country is that people don't know how to
suck it up and say "It was my fault." Taking full responsibility for
your screw-ups and failings is becoming a lost art.
I was pondering the other day how many lawyers are in the small town
that's the county seat here. Tons of lawyers in a dinky little town!
Guess that's why.

Sherry

In article .com,
wrote:

Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

Biskybabe wrote:


You'll also want to talk to a lawyer and get a contract that makes
it
clear you're not responsible if they don't get a job. Setting
customer
expectations is really important for any sort of consultant.

Oh good grief. To write cover letters or resumes? You're joking,
right?
Our society hasn't become *that* ligitious, has it??

Yes.

Tell me it ain't so, Howard. OK, just call me naive. Suing the person
you hired to write your resume because you didn't land the job.
stepping on soapbox and assuming geezer mode
Half of what's wrong with this country is that people don't know how to
suck it up and say "It was my fault." Taking full responsibility for
your screw-ups and failings is becoming a lost art.
I was pondering the other day how many lawyers are in the small town
that's the county seat here. Tons of lawyers in a dinky little town!
Guess that's why.


I was born in Northern New Jersey, but have spent my adult life in the
Washington DC metro area. We occasionally ask "why does DC have all the
lawyers but NJ has all the toxic waste dumps?"

The answer should be easy. New Jersey won the toss.

No, I don't say that every document must be approved first by a lawyer
-- but that assumes that someone has a working knowledge of the laws
pertaining to the topic. I'm not an attorney, but I recently joined the
American Bar Association to keep track of law relating to some of my
mainstream professional interests in privacy and information security.

There may be some free or low-cost resources. At one point, the Small
Business Administration has, and it still may, a volunteer program
called SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). A SCORE coach can
be useful both from a standpoint of general setup, someone with
practical contractual experience, and also the kind of person that may
read the cover letter.

One other point for cover letters and resumes -- there are more and more
computer programs that scan for buzzwords and acronyms, rejecting
applications that don't have the EXACT terms. Researching the company
really should be the applicant's responsibility, since knowing the
company is tremendously helpful at interviews. Prior to receiving the
cover letter, unless it's generic, encourage the applicant to give you
information about each company, or consider charging to research that
and give them a summary for interview reference.

When does one need lawyers? My life may be too complicated. Right now,
I have my home refinance waiting on one piece of paper: a lien release
from my ex-wife's semi-ex divorce lawyer. This lawyer has had over two
years since she was paid. I say semi-ex, as my ex has tried to fire her
and she's refused the communications. Acting in the guise of my
ex-wife's lawyer, she hauled me into court for an issue that my ex and I
were handling quite nicely, and for which my ex told her not to act, but
she acted anyway as a ploy to get legal fees.

So, unless the previous lender can produce their copy of the quitclaim
and it satisfies the new closing company, I will have to get a second
lawyer to compel the first to file the lien release. Where things really
get funny is that I will join with my ex-wife and her SO in placing this
and other actions that affect all of us financially.

The new attorney, for example, will be charged with conveying to the
court a letter firing the ex-divorce-attorney. My ex sent a certified
letter to the judge firing her lawyer, but the clerk of the court
returned it unopened, saying any communications had to go through the
attorney of record. Catch-22.

Next, we need the new attorney to block the old one from taking any
collection action until the court/bar association review her charges.

On another front, if a client doesn't pay me, I will probably have to
take legal action -- or make the threat thereof. They don't want to
upset the end client, so hearing that subpoenas may be issued to that
client may be enough to resolve the situation -- and break some old
professional friendships.

Let me preface this by saying that my brother is a lawyer (not practicing,
he teaches law at Loyola University).

My contender for "favorite lawyer joke"...

What's the difference between a rooster and a lawyer?

A rooster clucks defiance!

[if you don't get it, say it out loud, transpose the words, and use "the
clients" in place of defiance]

Hugs,

CatNipped

"Biskybabe" wrote in message
news:2005071022304927544%biskybabe@hotmailcom...
On 2005-07-10 18:08:48 -0700, "Jo Firey" said:

More information than you ever wanted at http://tinyurl.com/buv4w

Briefly. The way the tax code reads, all income is taxable unless it
says elsewhere it isn't. No threshold. Note the taxes cannot exceed
the income. Just seems like it some times.

I miscalculated taxes something fierce a few years ago. Got utterly
screwed come April 15th. It was September before we'd actually received
enough income to cover what we'd already paid out in taxes. Painful.
Made an impression... I'm now much more careful about stashing 40% of
our income in the account we pay taxes out of.

b

This year we had to make a 2-year loan in order to pay 1 year's worth of
taxes. At this rate we're going to be paying taxes 20 years after we're
dead!

Hugs,

CatNipped

CatNipped wrote:
Let me preface this by saying that my brother is a lawyer (not
practicing, he teaches law at Loyola University).

My contender for "favorite lawyer joke"...

What's the difference between a rooster and a lawyer?

A rooster clucks defiance!

[if you don't get it, say it out loud, transpose the words, and use
"the clients" in place of defiance]

Hugs,

CatNipped

For some reason that reminded me of the joke...

What's the difference between a seagull and a baby?

A seagull flits along the shore.
--
Adrian (Owned by Snoopy & Bagheera)
A house is not a home, without a cat.

On 2005-07-10 20:52:47 -0700, said:

You'll also want to talk to a lawyer and get a contract that makes it
clear you're not responsible if they don't get a job. Setting customer
expectations is really important for any sort of consultant.

Oh good grief. To write cover letters or resumes? You're joking, right?
Our society hasn't become *that* ligitious, has it??

Would you risk everything you owned on believing no one would sue you
if they didn't get a job?

I wouldn't.

b

On 2005-07-11 06:32:02 -0700, said:



Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

Biskybabe wrote:


You'll also want to talk to a lawyer and get a contract that makes it
clear you're not responsible if they don't get a job. Setting customer
expectations is really important for any sort of consultant.

Oh good grief. To write cover letters or resumes? You're joking, right?
Our society hasn't become *that* ligitious, has it??

Yes.

Tell me it ain't so, Howard. OK, just call me naive. Suing the person
you hired to write your resume because you didn't land the job.
stepping on soapbox and assuming geezer mode
Half of what's wrong with this country is that people don't know how to
suck it up and say "It was my fault." Taking full responsibility for
your screw-ups and failings is becoming a lost art.

*Some* people. It's actually a small minority, but having a good
contract tailored to your business means you are protected.

Think of a contract as taking full responsibility for your own business.

That being said, we actually do quite a bit of work while we're
negotiating contracts and before they're signed.

b

On 2005-07-10 21:46:41 -0700, said:

I used the "home office" income tax deductions. The criteria was pretty
strict, IIRC, but it worked for me because the room I used for an
office already had its own entrance to the house. I had to keep track
of how much of the computer I used for business, and was allowed to
depreciate the cost of it. Also a percentage of the electricity/gas.

We decided not to deduct the office space because of the capital gains
taxes upon selling the house. We do deduct a portion of our electricity
(and given we're a software company supporting 5 different operating
systems we have a LOT of computers) and all the computers are owned by
the business.

"Biskybabe" wrote in message
news:2005071108130238165%biskybabe@hotmailcom...
On 2005-07-11 07:33:21 -0700, "CatNipped" said:

"Biskybabe" wrote in message
news:2005071022304927544%biskybabe@hotmailcom...
On 2005-07-10 18:08:48 -0700, "Jo Firey" said:

More information than you ever wanted at http://tinyurl.com/buv4w

Briefly. The way the tax code reads, all income is taxable unless it
says elsewhere it isn't. No threshold. Note the taxes cannot exceed
the income. Just seems like it some times.

I miscalculated taxes something fierce a few years ago. Got utterly
screwed come April 15th. It was September before we'd actually received
enough income to cover what we'd already paid out in taxes. Painful.
Made an impression... I'm now much more careful about stashing 40% of
our income in the account we pay taxes out of.

This year we had to make a 2-year loan in order to pay 1 year's worth of
taxes. At this rate we're going to be paying taxes 20 years after we're
dead!

Yeah, we had to do the loan thing, too. not fun. Not fun at all.

b

I know. If you can look at the pretty new sofa every month for two years
and say, yeah, that's nice, that's what we're sacrificing to pay for - well
that's not too bad. But when you look at the *billions* of tax dollars
being spent on fruit fly research - well that makes it harder to dig that
money out of your wallet every month for two years!

Hugs,

CatNipped