When you’ve been laid off, you quickly find that job hunting can be a job in itself — only often with even more stress. Staying positive and knowing how to find the right job for you can be difficult. Following a few simple rules can make the difference between the unemployment line and working full time.

1. Establish a routine. Don’t sleep in! Set the alarm, eat breakfast, get dressed and get moving. Set up at least one interview or other scheduled activity each day if possible; this way you always have something to look forward to.
2. Treat job hunting as a job. Put down the remote and leave the video games alone. Don’t sit around the house waiting for employers to call you back, go out and get the job you want.
3. Take a class. Going back to school is a great way to catch up on what’s happening now in the work force and can help you make connections that lead to a job in your field.
4. Attend networking meetings. Connections can be the key to finding the job you want and by meeting with others in your area of expertise, you can help increase your chances of finding a job. Community colleges, your local town hall and churches are super places to start.
5. Update your resume. Working with charities, learning a new skill or completing a class are all resume worthy and can make you more desirable as an employee.
6. Acquire a new skill, specifically in computers. Becoming proficient in creating spreadsheets and any other computer programs can make or break your chances of getting hired and looks great on a resume.

[Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She often can be found blogging about education and scholarships for college.]

Lawsuits against employers are up, which makes it a poor time to cut some types of training.

As the recession has worsened, employers have looked deeper and deeper into their budgets for ways to cut costs. Things that once seemed critical to good business now often seem like luxuries.

One of the things that often gets sacrificed is training. Ironically, taking a look around at the headlines lately, it quickly becomes clear that training is more important than ever during this recession. For instance, while training for human resources staff on issues like wage-and-hour regulations is harder to fund, this economic downturn has been the launching pad for more wage-and-hour lawsuits than ever. This report from Martha Lynn Craver at The Kiplinger Letter should send a chill down a lot of HR spines:

Wage and hour lawsuits are rising, outpacing all other types of workplace class actions. The increase comes as more workers laid off during the recession seek legal remedies. The lawsuits typically revolve around allegations that hourly workers eligible for overtime are misclassified as exempt in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Last year, the 10 largest private wage and hour settlements totaled nearly $364 million, 44% more than the 10 biggest settlements in 2008.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The stats collected by  Lynn D. Lieber at Workforce.com are equally unsettling:

From 2007 to the end of 2008, employment claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission increased by 14.5 percent, from 83,000 to 95,000. In 2008, retaliation claims filed with the EEOC jumped 22 percent, from 27,000 to 33,000 claims. Corporate counsel reported significant rises in employment disputes in the past year, with discrimination suits rising by 11 percent. The Department of Labor recently added of 250 new wage-and-hour field investigators—a staff increase of more than a third—along with additional new staff in the department’s Office of the Solicitor. In December 2008, Wal-Mart agreed to pay as much as $640 million to resolve 63 class-action lawsuits involving wage-and-hour violations across the nation.

Lieber argues that whatever a company’s financial situation, there are four kinds of training too essential to cut in this environment. One, obviously, is wage-and-hour training. She says it’s especially important because most violations are accidental, which makes them no less costly:

Current economic conditions have resulted in drastic cost cutting and the slashing of work hours and overtime, which can lead to unwitting violations of wage-and-hour laws. Wage-and-hour violations most frequently occur simply because employees do not have accurate information on how to properly record hours or supervisors lack training in wage payment practices.

The other types she declares uncuttable are trainings on violence in the workplace, ethics and sexual harassment. That last one is particularly interesting because last month Time Magazine did a feature suggesting that sexual harassment lawsuits are also on the upswing:

The story centered on the recent judgement against drug-giant Novartis, in which employees testified against a boss who they said refused to hire women because, as one quote from him put it, “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes flex time and a baby carriage.” A dozen women were awarded $3.36 million, with the company assessed another $250 million in punitive damages:

The Novartis verdict is deemed precedent-setting because it went far beyond simple pay discrimination. Employees alleged discrimination based on pregnancy and motherhood, too — claiming that women were fired when they were on maternity leave and mocked by superiors if they were visibly pregnant. It’s these motherhood-related allegations that may have tipped the scales to the tune of the multimillion-dollar penalty.

Whether this will truly open the door, as the article suggests, to a flurry of new litigation remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: it’s a whole new legal landscape out there, and, even in these tough economic times, solid training isn’t as expendable as some managers think.

The Atlantic's graphic projecting the economic outlook through 2015.

Relief for the millions of Americans out of work could be on the way on today, after more than a month of maneuvering in Congress. Federal extensions for unemployment insurance expired on June 2, and have been shot down in three votes since then by Republican lawmakers who say more extensions for the jobless will add to the federal deficit. During that time, an estimated 1.3 million Americans have run out of benefits, out of some 14.6 million unemployed.

The new authorization for extensions is expected to pass today, as it will be taken after the swearing in of Democrat Carte Goodwin, who’ll replace the late West Virginian Sen. Robert Byrd and give the party the 60 votes they need to win.

For many people, it won’t be a moment too soon. Congress has turned jobless benefits into a partisan issue before, even earlier this year, but this time seems to have inspired far more anxiety than before. As Laura Bassett reported one personal story at Huffington Post earlier this month:

Debra Rousey of Gainesville, Georgia, says that she received an unemployment check of $194 last week, half the usual amount she receives, along with a letter announcing that this check would be her last. She is now in a complete panic over what to do next. “I’m desperate and devastated,” she told HuffPost. “I didn’t get any warning. I was barely making ends meet on $330 a week, trying to diaper my grandchild and put food on the table for the four people I support. What do I do now? How am I going to make rent next month? I keep thinking, ‘If I end up in a cardboard box, can I find one big enough for everybody, or do I have to send my son to live with someone else?’”

It appears that relief is set to arrive. Perhaps the bigger news now is that White House is looking toward the end of the year — and seeing more extensions in our future.

The legislation is expected to pass, but a slow economic recovery suggests jobless benefits will need to be extended again in November. The unemployment rate is 9.5% and the number of people out of work is about 14.6 million. “I think it’s fair and safe to assume that we’re not going to wake up at the end of November and find ourselves at a rate of employment that one would consider not to be still in an emergency,” [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said at a White House briefing with reporters.

But can these extensions of unemployment benefits go on forever? Certainly many unemployed workers will be counting on them for some time to come. But Derek Thompson of the Atlantic argues that with high employment projected through at least the next two years (see chart above), there will come a point when the unpopular decision to cut end benefit extensions does indeed need to be made.

There are no obvious cut-off points. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say, for example, that once the job-openings/unemployed ratio sinks below 4.5 (now it’s at 5) we immediately cancel the extended benefits program. At some point, however, unemployment benefits will discourage workers from seeking real job openings. For now, the San Francisco Fed estimates that UI artificially inflates the unemployment rate by about 0.4%. But in a healthy economy, Paul Krugman has acknowledged that especially generous or long benefits are a disincentive to work, as we’ve seen in Europe.

So when extensions finally are cut off, what then? The Christian Science Monitor just came up with an article that lays out six alternate ideas for improving Americans’ economic situation. These include such action items as taming the deficit, clarifying tax policy and creating a long-term growth strategy, but really only half of the suggestions would do much to help unemployed workers out in the same way that benefits do. One of these ideas is to provide more aid to states, another is having the Fed buy more securities and promote lending, but the truly intriguing one is this:

Incentivize hiring: Obama continues to sell the so-called HIRE tax credits for firms that employ people who lost jobs during the recession. Mr. Charlton in Pittsburgh, whose online business is called the Resumator, says more should be done along this line and to help start-up firms get seed money. (He hopes to hire a couple of people, but his young firm is in what he calls “survival mode.”) Some economists have called for a payroll-tax holiday on new hires, or for tax breaks on business investment in equipment and research.

Without economic recovery, however, it seems unlikely that jobless Americans will be much in the mood for experimention — or expired benefits.

Health care is among the fields offering transition job opportunities around the world.

Is the “transition” job a worthwhile move for someone established in his or her career? It’s been considered preferable, traditionally, to hold out for something in one’s own field rather than take an unrelated job simply to pay the bills. But as with so many other things in this recession, conventional wisdom is not what it used to be.

One of the reasons many unemployed workers do volunteer work today is to fill their resumes between jobs. In support of transition jobs, Denene Brox argues that they fulfill the same purpose — while offering a salary to boot:

In addition to providing you an income, transition jobs put you back into the ranks of the employed, the group most attractive to potential employers. “Transition jobs help you avoid those large gaps of unemployment on your resume, which is a concern in this economy,” says Nancy DeCrescenzo, director of career services at Eastern Connecticut State University.

The experts quoted by Brox also seem to think that one of the main reasons transition jobs became stigmatized no longer applies:

“I don’t think taking a transition job will hurt your resume, because the number-one thing that recruiters and employers ask is what you’ve been doing with your time. So you’re better off doing something than nothing. It shows that you’re a go-getter — that you’re out there working hard, doing whatever it takes to pay your bills,” says career coach Deborah Brown-Volkman.

Keri Coffman-Thiede on JobDig goes one step further — to her, a transition job is something that should be looked on as a positive opportunity. She relates her own experience as an example:

A transition job is work that is easy, you CAN’T take it home with you, and your career aspirations are in no way tied to it. For example, I used to be a recruiter. I called myself “a recruiter.” I felt loyal to the organization and incredibly responsible for filling their / my open positions. My ego and sense of self was wrapped up in this work — work that stressed me out and I didn’t find personally satisfying. Then, I took a customer service position in the same organization and life changed.

Coffman-Thiede discusses both the difficulties and rewards of her choice:

This “transition” job was a drop in status, responsibility, stress and pay AND allowed me the space for the work I DID want to come into my life. I literally could feel my muscles relax more and more as each month passed in this new, easy job. By about the fourth month, I had new energy and was interested in exploring what I would really like to do for work. Eight months into this transition job, the answer hit me as clearly as if it were written in the sky…I’m a coach! The great thing about this transition job is it also allowed me the time and energy to then pursue my dream job. I spent the next 2 years in this transition job while I got my training and certification in coaching and starting my own practice.

If you think a transition job might be for you, Patricia Soldati has a fantastic column on how to succeed in getting one by explaining to potential employers why you are motivated and qualified to make such a leap:

Career-changers have an additional challenge: How do you convey why you spent 10 or 20 years doing one thing and are now intent on doing another? In other words, what is your ‘transition story’ — that makes good sense AND emotionally grabs the hiring manager? The situation requires you to prepare a story that is rational, succinct, compelling and totally positive. You must be able to share it in a couple of minutes. And, there must be an emotional component that captures the imagination of the interviewer.

Soldati provides great guidelines for doing just that. I recommend reading the article in its entirety, but here are her three basic steps: 1) explain what you’ve done, (2) explain why you’re changing, (3) explain what value you bring to the new field.

It looks like we’ve hit a turning point for the transition job — whether for financial, strategic or other reasons, it’s no longer taboo to take one.

Volunteering for groups such as the Red Cross has become a resume-builder for many in the recession.

Once upon a time, conventional wisdom was that someone who already had a job was around six times more likely to find a new job than someone who was out of work. Unfortunately for the unemployed, things just got worse. A lot worse.

Last week, CNN Money reported that many companies and recruiters are no longer considering unemployed applicants:

Employment experts say they believe companies are increasingly interested only in applicants who already have a job. “I think it is more prevalent than it used to be,” said Rich Thompson, vice president of learning and performance for Adecco Group North America, the world’s largest staffing firm. “I don’t have hard numbers, but three out of the last four conversations I’ve had about openings, this requirement was brought up.”

Whether or not employers can legally advertise that they will only accept candidates who are already employed — by, for instance, stating it in a job listing — has become a murky gray area. Some companies have removed such language from their job materials, including one South Carolina recruiter who did so after being asked about it by a CNN reporter working on the story!

But whether or not it’s explicitly expressed, what’s obvious is that even those who have been laid off for reasons that have nothing to do with their performance have a lot to overcome.

So…where to start? Many people who haven’t been able to find a job are finding other ways to boost their resumes, as this article explains:

They are tour guides, airport greeters, hospital helpers, fund-raisers and more. They provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work for free. They are volunteers. And, neither the struggling economy nor summer doldrums have taken a lasting toll on their numbers or hours of service. But they aren’t always easy to find: Some area organizations have worried about finding enough help this year. Yet help has come from a strange place: the ranks of the unemployed. Many people who have lost their jobs are volunteering to stay busy and fill gaps on their resumes.

What’s most interesting to me about the article is that it tracks how attitudes towards the recession and unemployment have shifted. Initially, many people faced with job insecurity or job loss dropped everything else to focus on finances. But that has shifted yet again, sometimes for the very reasons laid out in the CNN Money report:

When the local economy hit the skids, “we initially lost volunteers - about 200,” Baugher said of the volunteer corps of nearly 2,000 people today. Then, as Lee County’s unemployment soared — to a peak of 14.2 percent in January — “we got droves of people coming in to volunteer: people who’d lost their jobs. … Quite a few got jobs through volunteering.”

In fact, entrepreneur and author of The Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk thinks that job-hunting is the last thing you should do when you’re unemployed. She’s got five other things you should be doing, which all at their core are basically ways to prepare for your next job.

The one that makes the most sense to me is number five, “practice talking about yourself with everyone.” Rarely do people acknowledge that interviewing is a skill that takes practice, and many people — particularly those laid-off after years with the same employer — are decidedly out of practice:

High performers practice for interviews. So now you know what you’re aiming for, but you need to talk about it with everyone – parties, at the gym, on the phone with friends. When they ask how you’re doing, talk about what you’re doing like you are in the job interview. And the good news is that the better you get at talking like that, the more you will actually believe your story, the story that being unemployed is lucky because you have learning opportunities.

However, eventually most people will be back to the job search, and news like the CNN Money report can be discouraging. But it’s important to remember job-search-steps.com’s assessment of the unemployed jobseeker’s secret weapon: “Actually, you have one big advantage from a job search standpoint when you are unemployed: time.”

This is the billboard that greeted President Obama in Buffalo.

When President Obama arrived in Buffalo, New York, a few weeks ago, he got about the last thing in the world he wanted: upstaged. Rather than reporting his message of economic recovery, media outlets were leading with reports like this one from CBS:

Frustrated western New Yorkers have a pointed message for President Barack Obama when he visits the economically troubled region Thursday: “I need a freakin job.” The president makes another stop on what the White House calls his “Main Street economic tour, this time to Buffalo, NY, the anchor city in a region that was hard hit long before a recession that made things even worse, Awaiting him will be a billboard carrying a simple, direct message: “Dear Mr. President, I need a freakin job. Period.”

Outwardly, the White House claimed not to be letting one billboard interefere with the president staying on message. But quickly it became clear that this one sign, which boiled the U.S. unemployment problem into one simple slogan, had struck a nerve. It seemed like even the president was listening:

But here’s a sign the job seekers’ message to the administration may be getting through: The White House just announced Obama will travel next Tuesday to Youngstown, Ohio — where unemployment hit 15.1 percent last month, the city’s highest jobless rate in more than 15 years. The focus of Obama’s visit: “jobs and the economy,” according to the White House. And a more direct sign still: Obama press aide Bill Burton was asked about the billboard in today’s press gaggle. His reply was, “The President is here to talk about jobs, what his administration has done to create jobs, what we need to do in order to create an environment where small businesses can create jobs. So the answer is, we’re on the path to creating more jobs, and we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Suddenly a victory march became a pledge to work harder on jobs creation—and all, basically, because of the sign. It was the brainchild of a group that runs a Web site called inafj.org, the brainchild of Jeff Baker, a Buffalo businessman who lost his small business in 2009. Suddenly, CNN was calling him, more or less, a folk hero:

Unemployment is part of everyday life for millions of Americans and one man finally decided to do something about it. He created a grassroots organization, “I need a freakin’ job,” to give a voice to the fifteen million unemployed.

Whether or not Baker is a folk hero—and opinions run the gamut—he definitely touched a nerve. It may be true, as the president’s defenders argue, that there’s only so much Obama can do about job creation. But anger about the failed economy has hit a boiling point, and Baker’s billboard channeled it effectively.

The question is, what will he do with that momentum? Though Baker is clearly a conservative himself, he claims inafj.org is a non-partisan effort. But the website has an anti-government tone that is sure to turn off a lot of moderates. Some of the rhetoric goes way beyond the immediate problem of unemployment, and the angry tone is more motivational than practical. Some of the laundry lists of complaints:

Cynical is what you become after witnessing the destruction of American exceptionalism and realizing that you are a casualty of a handful of greedy animals feeding on the soul of a great nation. Obvious is the government’s need to get out of the way so that inventive young entrepreneurial Americas have the opportunity to stimulate an economy that produces jobs. Catastrophic is being a recent college graduate with diminished opportunies and the real obligation to repay educational debt.

The site’s endless hyberbole aside, it does highlight some issues that barely get attention in the mainstream media; the 27 percent youth unemployment rate, for instance.

If Baker can succeed in building a grassroots movement, what exactly will it do (besides sell T-shirts, which are the site’s current #1 export)? There is a petition on inafj.org that visitors can sign, but it doesn’t reference any specific plan of action. Is inafj.org doing anything but venting American rage at unemployment?

Baker thinks so, though he won’t give specific details. In any event, we can expect him to make plenty more noise.

More workers are looking for the exit, the government reports.

The Great Worker Exodus of 2010 may finally have arrived. Several economists last year had projected a huge uptick in workers walking away from their jobs, but when January 1 rolled around and the economy was still mired in layoffs and unemployment, their prognosis seemed a lot less likely.

That appears to be changing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans quitting their jobs in February surpassed the number being laid off or fired—the first time that’s happened since October of 2008. For the 15 months since, the average number of workers quitting their jobs has been hovering around 1.75 million, way down from the 2.7 million average since the BLS started tracking the data 10 years ago.

Clearly, the largest and longest recession since the Great Depression created a widespread feeling that anyone was lucky to any job, making workers a lot less likely to risk leaving a regular paycheck. Also, there weren’t nearly as many jobs to go to, and there was fierce competition for a lot of jobs that might have previously been easy to transition into.

However, job dissatisfaction, employee ambition and other factors that prompt workers to leave their job didn’t go away. That’s why surveys conducted in the last quarter of 2009 found that as many as 60 percent of workers said they planned to seek another job when the economy improved.

That job exodus appears to have begun, with the BLS reporting that about 1.87 million people quit their job in March. That’s 100,000 more people quitting than were laid off in the same time period. The shift will likely only get bigger, and it has companies specializing in recruitment and outplacement services ramping up for a big need in the market, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Adecco Group, a world-wide staffing firm based in Zurich, has seen several of its clients ask for candidates for key positions after employees made surprise departures, says Vice President Rich Thompson. Although so far there haven’t been widespread departures, Mr. Thompson says his company is readying itself for large-scale changes within the next few months. “We’re preparing for a massive reshuffling of talent at all job levels in all industries,” he says, noting that the recession earlier this decade was so short and shallow that the turnover this time around is likely to be much greater.

While a shift like this can be scary for companies looking to retain talent, overall economists see this kind of “workforce mobility” as a positive sign for the economy. Time Magazine added it to its list of reasons the economy “isn’t a total basket case” and the Motley Fool made it one of three signs the job market is back.

However, the timing could be more a matter of perception than real change in the economy. Indeed, stockbloghub.com points out that while fewer jobs are being lost, there is still a dearth of new jobs being created:

The problem has been, at least since the middle of 2009, not with too many people being fired, but with not enough new jobs being created … In February and March, the rate of new hires did pick up a little bit, but it remains at a very low level. In March this year, there were a total of 4.242 million people who got new jobs, up from just 3.670 million who found new jobs in March of 2009. The total number of people who lost their jobs fell to 3.698 million this year versus a total of 4.444 million who lost their jobs in March of 2009….The number of job openings has started to increase (the job openings numbers are a snapshot of the last day of the month, while the hires and fires are the totals for the month), but they still remain far below the worst points of the 2001 recession and the jobless recovery that followed it.

Almost one-quarter of employers around the globe say they can't fill crucial positions.

From our Problems We Didn’t Expect to See in 2010 Department comes news that despite continuing layoffs, economic crashes and exorbitant unemployment numbers, there is still a huge talent shortage among employers worldwide. In fact, it’s only gotten worse.

Last week, Manpower released their 2010 Talent Shortage Survey, a study of more than 35,000 companies in 36 countries. In all, 31 percent of employers said they were having trouble filling critical positions in their company, up one percent from last year. The ten countries hardest hit were Japan (76%), Brazil (64%), Argentina (53%), Singapore (53%), Poland (51%), Australia (45%), Hong Kong (44%), Mexico (43%), Peru (42%) and Taiwan (41%), although China was right behind that with 40%. In the U.S., 14 percent of employers reported trouble filling positions.

So how exactly can there be a talent shortage when unemployment rates are so high around the globe? Manpower calls it a talent “mismatch”; in other words, job seekers aren’t well-suited for the available jobs.

The list of top unfillable jobs looks nearly identical to last year’s: 1. skilled trades; 2. sales representatives; 3. technicians; 4. engineers; 5. accounting and finance staff; 6. production operators; 7. administrative assistants and production assistants; 8. managers and executives; 9. drivers; 10. laborers.

“As the global economy slowly recovers, employers will remain focused on maintaining financial flexibility and doing more with less,” said Jeffrey A. Joerres, Manpower Inc. Chairman and CEO. “Applying the same mindset to their workforce, employers have gotten more specific about the combination of skill sets that they are looking for, not only seeking technical capabilities in a job match, but holding out for the person that possesses the additional qualities above and beyond that will help drive their organization forward. This conundrum is upsetting to the ubiquitous job seeker, who will need to take more responsibility for his/her skills development in order to find ways to remain relevant to the market.”

However, some believe that the whole idea of the talent shortfall is a myth. Kevin Wheeler of the recruiting site ere.net writes:

Even in this recession, everyone I speak with is moaning about not being able to find the quality candidates they think they need. Maybe they have caused their own problem by narrowly defining jobs, by using yesterday’s criteria to solve today’s problems, and by a lack of imagination. We (hiring managers, executives, HR folks, and recruiters) set up expectations and define jobs based on what is traditional. We work from habit and past experience. This is not necessarily bad, but may not match our current needs or the available supply.

Wheeler believes there are two keys to correcting the “mismatch”: better training that will allow employers to mold the skill sets of their employees better, and expansion of the pool of candidates, which he sees as widening job expectations and definitions. Recruitment and outplacement services are another resource for “matching up” talent with openings.

Wheeler’s main point is that whether or not there is a talent shortage in 2010, there doesn’t have to be one; whatever mismatches exist, they can be fixed. That’s the best thing for both employers and employees, and his conclusion—while admittedly idealistic—is a reassuring thought: “There are no labor shortages or surpluses — there are just shortages of imagination and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for filling our own needs.”

Beware of job offers that aren't what they appear to be.

No matter how miserable things get in the unemployment picture, you can always be sure someone out there will try to make it worse.

Lately, it’s a lot of someones—namely, criminals who are circulating a record number of scam employment offers, in the hopes that frustrated job seekers will be desperate enough to bite.

And the worst part is, they do. So often, in fact, that the Federal Trade Commission recently announced a crackdown:

[The action targets] con artists who are preying on unemployed Americans with job-placement and work-at-home scams, promoting empty promises that they can help people get jobs in the federal government, as movie extras, or as mystery shoppers; or make money working from their homes stuffing envelopes or assembling ornaments…The FTC announced seven new cases against promoters of the job and money-making scams, including one that victimized more than 100,000 people. This brings to 11 the number of cases the agency has brought since last spring challenging these types of operations. In each case, the FTC got a court order temporarily barring these operators from continuing their deceptive, illegal tactics and freezing their assets.

The companies indicted by “Operation Bottom Dollar” run the gamut of scams. Government Careers Inc. ran ads on job-seeker web sites that claimed they could connect respondents to postal service, border patrol and wildlife jobs for a fee of $119 for “study materials,” The government charges that there were in fact no tests for which to study, or that the vacancies did not exist at all. The same company charged $965 for resume editing and employment exam prep, promising not to collect fees until a job was secured, then demanding the money before the promised jobs materialized.

One company promised, “Collect up to $9,250 with my simple 3 minute form.” Another sold lists of “pre-screened jobs.” Still another promised up to $500 a week assembling angel pins at home. The catch on the last job was that participants, after paying sometimes hundreds of dollars in start-up fees, needed to have their pins approved by the company — which, of course, rejected almost all of them.

However the scams change, the most important rule for avoiding them remains the same: if it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Rick Ellis from AIS Media explains how the most common frauds work and offers some tips for staying ahead of 21st century con artists:

One typical guise is an international company that needs to hire U.S. citizens as agents to perform certain services. The scam is simple: the lure of a home-based job that requires very little work and pays big dividends draws victims, who end up losing money and, in many cases, becoming victims of identity theft (and sometimes even unwilling accomplices to crime). The too-good-to-be-true positions include payroll clerks, customer-service representatives, shipping managers, mystery shoppers, and craft assemblers–all promising hefty salaries, benefits, and huge commissions. The company obtains personal and banking information from the new hire, and checks are sent with instructions to wire a portion of the funds to a third party to cover expenses. In some cases, packages immediately arrive with instructions on re-shipping merchandise to international destinations. Once the checks are deposited and the packages are shipped, the dream job quickly becomes a nightmare. The checks the victims deposited are fake. The duped “employees” lose the money they wired and are often susceptible to theft and identity theft. And in many cases, they have also unknowingly re-packaged and shipped stolen merchandise, often purchased with stolen credit card information.

Red flags should include emails from unknown senders; companies that have no legitimate, searchable web presence; requests for personal information; and applications that require a cash payment.

One particularly twisted take on the job-scam game has arisen in the wake of massive layoffs: a cell-phone scam preying on recipients of unemployment checks. In this one, victims are told their benefits have been deactivated, and that they need to call a number to have them reactivated. When they call the number, they are asked for access information to their accounts, which are then cleaned out.

Some people may not understand why anyone falls for scams like these, but this is a key point:

‘Even when they know it’s a scam, I’ve had people say, “Well yeah, but what if I can make a thousand dollars out of it?”‘ said Tabatha Marshall, founder of PhishBucket.org and a crusader against these schemes. ‘People are hurting, and so many are willing to take the risk.’

Finally a bright spot: more employers are trying to ease the uncertainty of downsizing.

The current recession has led to a slew of layoffs, so it’s not hard to understand why many people consider this the worst period in their lifetime to be part of the workforce.

But if there’s anything positive to take away from the downturn, it may be the increased interest in and awareness of the importance of offboarding employees the right way.

As Jen Carpenter writes:

The economic downturn …gave rise to an increasing number of companies taking an interest in outplacement. Outplacement has become a sure-fire way (no pun intended) for employers and employees alike to have the best possible experience during the downsizing process. It not only helps displaced employees amp up their skills and find their next job, but it also helps employers maintain a good image of their company and its practices.

More employers were already beginning to realize that last year, according to a separation practices study that found:

More employers have adopted outplacement as a solution to preserve their employer brand and reputation. In 2001: 53% of companies offered outplacement services to all officers and all senior executives compared to 67% in 2008—an increase of 26%; 50% of companies offered outplacement services to all executives compared to 65% in 2008—an increase of 30%; 39% of companies offered outplacement services to all exempt employees compared to 55% in 2008—an increase of 41%.

In the U.K., The Guardian reports this month that public-sector layoffs are likely to create a similar demand for outplacement services, even as they’re cutting operating costs:

So why would central HR departments bother with outplacement services when budgets are so tight? To some extent this would depend on the resources they have. Outplacement specialists – well some of the larger ones – will be able to handle the fall out from redundancy and restructuring programmes, from dealing with the legal aspects of redundancy, to helping those who lose their jobs find other options, to refocusing and re-energising those employees who stay on.

If this trend continues, we may at least look back on this recession as a turning point for how employers deal with cuts in the workforce.