Career

Barbie is looking for a new job, and she's exploring several options: surgeon, architect, computer engineer, news anchor, and environmentalist.

Barbie's latest career move will be decided by an online vote that ends Wednesday, Feb. 10, and will be unveiled Feb. 12 at the Toy Fair in New York. Given the job prospects for some of these career paths, let's hope voters choose wisely.

He'd worked in the Starbucks in Sherman, Texas -- an hour due north of Dallas -- for seven years, and shift-manager Benjamin Amos wouldn't have been blamed for thinking that his tattoos were a non-issue. It hadn't just been the cultural mainstreaming of tattoos in the past decade; the popularity of the A&E television series Inked in 2005 and 2006 was just one indication; but he was hired with the tattoos firmly in place and he says he'd worked, covering them per dress code, for so many years.

Last February, however, it suddenly became a problem and, say filings with the United States District Court Eastern District of Texas, and the store manager told him the regional and district managers didn't like the tattoos. When he refused to resign, according to Amos, she fired him -- later phoning him to apologize for the poor handling of his termination.

Perhaps it's time to tell your employees to stay off Facebook while at work. And maybe it's time to tell your kids to also stop spending so much time posting status updates or clicking video links.

It's official, Facebook is the most popular social media network and because of that, it also causes businesses with Facebooking employees to be vulnerable to its viruses, or at least that's what 60% of companies believe. Perhaps that's because more than a third of the businesses were infected with malware, or software that installs malicious programs on computers. For those of you keeping count, that's approximately a 70% rise in 2009, according to Internet security company Sophos.

If you're looking for cities where the population, jobs and household income are growing -- imagine that -- then head for Texas. Or Tennessee, North Carolina or Georgia. They are among a small group of states that have shown surprising expansion, despite the recession, according to a survey on the nation's highest-growth areas. The study, dubbed "9 from 2009," was conducted by Little Rock, Ark.-based data firm Gadberry Group, and included only areas larger than 10,000 occupied households that met certain growth requirements.

The reasons these nine cities managed to grow amid the bruising recession is that they have booming industries, stable housing markets and quality-of-life amenities, such as good schools and proximity to jobs and recreational areas.

Eating breakfast before facing the day is important, numerous research has found, making the stories of hungry job interviewees a perfect example of why fueling up is important.

Golden Grahams cereal -- which I'd normally associate as a breakfast cereal for children, but is apparently popular with adults -- is giving away what it calls 75 Golden Grants, which are 12 boxes of its cereal every week for three months, to winners of its contest for the best description of a job hunt experience in 120 characters or less.

The contest started Feb. 3. Two of the best submissions each week will be turned into videos each week with the job hunt advice, such as not to lie or exaggerate on your resume:

Joseph Gliottone has a quick comeback to his former advertising colleagues when they ask him about his new job picking up dog poop.

"It's the same product category, but a different clientele," said Gliottone, 53, who was a senior vice president of print production at an ad agency in Boston, and earned $158,000 a year before being laid off in December 2008.

He's now a professional pooper scooper and franchise owner of DoodyCalls, which charges about $16 a week to clean up after a dog. Since starting his business in Essex County, Mass., in September 2009, Gliottone hasn't made any money yet with the 12 clients he has, and needs about 50 to break even.

Employees spent 19.2 hours a week -- nearly half a work week -- worrying about what their boss says or does, according to a new survey commissioned by workplace expert Lynn Taylor.

Taylor, author of book of boss-managing tips called Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant -- TOT, found that 13 of those hours came during the week and 6.2 came when workers should be taking a break from workplace worries: the weekend.

"You have to set limits as you would with a child," Taylor told WalletPop. "Especially in 2010, you can't just manage up, but parent up without patronizing."

Though clearly many employees are worried about keeping their jobs (in another survey, she found workers spend three hours a day worrying about job security), Taylor points out that even if 10% of U.S. employees are unemployed, that means 90% are employed. She advocates for an approach she has given the acronym of CALM:

"Communicate with your boss bravely, openly, honestly and frequently. Take the initiative," she said. "Anticipate -- try to be aware of problems before they escalate and have solutions ready. Laugh -- I believe that levity diffuses tension and creates a better atmosphere. Manage up by using negative and positive enforcement for certain behaviors, much as you would with a child."

One of the first things I did when I was laid off as a newspaper editor a year or so ago was get some business cards printed. Nothing fancy, just my name, e-mail address, Web site and cellphone number so potential employers could find me.

Now, as I continue trying to become New Media savvy, I learn about Poken, a social business card that bills itself as a "bridge between your life online and offline."

It's a small gadget to hang around your neck or keep on a keychain. It holds a USB port and keeps a digital file of whatever information you want to share: e-mail, Web site address, Facebook page, Twitter name, LinkedIn name and info from other social networks.

We all know something's not right. That despite the promises made to us since childhood, we do not, in fact, have it better than our parents did.

Home values have tanked. Gasoline is up, food is up, healthcare, college tuition, even heating fuel, all up, up, up. Meanwhile, unemployment is at 10% and holding (it's actually much higher if you count everyone out of work). Those in the middle class who did save dutifully for retirement saw their investments plummet along with the economy in 2008. Life for America's middle class has become less about security and more about fear.

So it was with particular interest that the nation listened to President Obama's State of the Union address, which focused on the travails of the middle class. We asked five WalletPop staffers -- middle-class parents all -- to react to the speech with their thoughts on what the middle class in America really needs.

Need a job? Know how to count? The U.S. Census Bureau needs you.

Areas around the country are reporting that after begging for applicants at the last census in 2000, for this year's count they're seeing the most applicants they've ever seen.

Samantha O'Neil, a Census spokeswoman, told WalletPop that the bureau's Web site has been "swamped with interested people" as has its road tour events. Nationally the census is looking to fill 1.17 million jobs in fiscal 2010.

But things aren't going so well in Ottawa County, Ohio, however, according to a WTOL report:

Last night, I had a devastating conversation with one of my favorite dads, about kindergarten. It started innocently enough. "Do you think test scores matter?" he asked. He has a little boy -- friend since (practically) conception to my second son -- entering kindergarten in the fall. This is the man who'd just as soon passionately argue the evils of our fossil-fuel dependent society, or why he built a 325-square-foot house, as fret over his kid's eventual career. And yet here he is, attending his first kindergarten roundup session and trying to figure out where his not-yet-five-year-old will be most "challenged."

Here in Portland, Ore., like many cities and towns across the country, it's time to start thinking about kindergarten registration. And though it seems ridiculous to link a person's future to the choices parents are making right now, well, it's surely not the first time (just look at Baby Einstein and the famously bitter battles to wangle admission to Manhattan's top preschools).

The media abounds with stories of earnings inequality based on gender: a Google search for "women earn less than men" yields 760,000 results.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women working full-time earned 80% of what men earned in 2008, and the Economix blog recently took a look at the magnitude and causes of the discrepancy in pay.

Back in 2007, Grant Desme was a second-round pick by the Oakland A's, signing for a $432,000 bonus.

Now Deseme is leaving the A's organization to join the priesthood.

Last year the 23-year old enjoyed a breakout season. FoxSports' John Paul Morosi reports that "He batted .288 with 31 home runs and 89 RBIs in 131 games last year. Then he starred in the Arizona Fall League, where some of the game's top prospects compete each year. "

So what if that dude in the cubicle next to yours decides to get a masters degree, then grabs the promotion you wanted -- but the degree turns out to be fake? A number of high-profile cases over the years demonstrate that some people in middle and senior corporate, government and non-profit management are not above using a bogus credential to get ahead.

There's Sven Otto Littorin, for instance, a Swedish government official who got caught in 2007 boasting an MBA from "Fairfax University." (The degree has since disappeared from his CV.) Or Laura Callahan, a U.S. government executive who in 2003 stepped down from her job after claiming a doctorate in computer information systems from "Hamilton University." Two things are interesting about these two cases: One, anyone doing a background check could have discovered Fairfax and Hamilton are questionable alma maters. Two, Sven happens to be Sweden's minister for employment. And before the incident cost her career, Callahan was deputy chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Degree mills have been around a long time. Obviously they have allure. Who wouldn't want a real credential, for instance, for life experience? How many of us have earned the equivalent of a Ph.D in psychology just dealing with bosses and co-workers for a decade or two?

Conan O'Brien is out of a job now that his last gig on "The Tonight Show" has aired, but like many unemployed people, he'll probably find losing his job to be the best move of his career.

The $32.5 million severance he's getting from NBC is enough to take care of him for life, but that's not the issue. As far as his next career move, getting kicked off the air for Jay Leno gives O'Brien the chance to become bigger and better than he ever could have been at NBC.

"If Conan stays in character as the quirky, weird-haired guy who wants to be in comedy ... he will be a bigger success than anyone can imagine," said Doug Hirschhorn, a peak performance coach to Wall Street's elite who helps them with career advice.

"It for sure could be the best thing that happens to him if he stays in character," said Hirschhorn, author of 8 Ways to Great Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life.

If O'Brien becomes another pissed-off comedian upset with his former employer, he'll lose a lot of interest from viewers, Hirschhorn said. O'Brien's recent zingers at NBC on how much of the company's money he spent before he left may not sit too well with people in the long run.

As I wrote about recently on WalletPop, O'Brien's new job hunt is hitting a nerve with people who are either out of a job or fearing that they'll soon be out the door. Workers can empathize with someone who has worked hard for years to get where they want to be professionally, only to lose it on a whim after being on the job for a short time.