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(11/11/04 4:43am)
NEW YORK -- People who want to earn some extra money during the holiday season should get their job applications in now.\nThe nation's retailers expect a modest pickup in holiday spending this year, despite higher gasoline prices and rising interest rates that some feared would put a damper on the season, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group.\nEmployment experts say that should translate into work opportunities for students, stay-at-home mothers, retirees and others who would like some extra cash in the final months of the year.\n"Retailers are a good place to start," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the job placement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. in Chicago. "And the time to start looking is sooner rather than later."\nHe suggests that people who previously held seasonal retail jobs should first approach their former employers.\n"Your experience will be valuable there," Challenger said. "You know the merchandise, and the retailer can get you up and running quickly."\nThose who have never done holiday sales might consider filling out applications at their own favorite stores.\n"You know the store, and not only do you get paid, you also get discounts on merchandise," he said.\nRetailers may be the obvious place to look for holiday work, but there are other businesses that may also need seasonal workers, Challenger said. These include call centers, which will be busier taking orders and dealing with billing issues; travel and hospitality firms, which may see more demand for catering or hosting dinner parties; shipping and transportation companies, and security companies.\nChallenger also recommends networking as a way to find work.\n"If you know someone working in a store you're interested in, ask them if they'd introduce you to the store manager," Challenger said. "That can get you an edge in hiring."\nJohn Putzier, a human resources consultant based in Prospect, Pa., says job seekers generally are more successful if they apply in person rather than via a Web site or by mail.\n"Every major store has somebody doing the hiring, and they want to see the applicants to make sure they'll fit in," he said.\n"Some managers may be very turned off by body art, tattoos and piercings," said Putzier, author of "Weirdos in the Workplace: The New Normal -- Thriving in the Age of the Individual."\n"But that could be a plus in trendy boutiques or edgy clothing departments," he said.\nHe also advocates people get their job applications in to retailers soon, pointing out that many "don't wait anymore until Thanksgiving; the Christmas season starts after Halloween."\nBill Tate, a vice president with Manpower Inc., a temporary employment agency based in Milwaukee, said the company expects more demand for seasonal workers this year than last in a variety of industries.\nSome are obvious, like catalog sales operations and call centers. But others have seasonal demands, too, such as financial services companies that have to handle more credit card receipts, consumer products industries that have to ship more goods and printing plants that have holiday orders for cards and custom stationery, he said.\nTate said some college students return to the Manpower rolls every summer and every holiday season.\n"For them, it's a chance to experience a variety of work opportunities" before they launch their careers, he said.\nSome, like stay-at-home parents who are looking for some extra holiday cash, "are happy with a short-term assignment," Tate said. But they can also use seasonal work as a stepping stone back into the work force, he added.\n"If you're a good employee, a seasonal job can lead to an extended assignment at a company or turn into a permanent position," he said.
(09/09/04 4:33am)
NEW YORK -- Brenda Matthews thought she had a new job lined up at Johnson & Johnson headquarters in New Jersey.\nAfter applying online for a position as a patent specialist, she was called in for interviews that seemed to go well.\n"I met with the office manager, the supervisor I would have worked with," said Matthews, 27, a single mother who lives in Newark, N.J. "They loved me."\nAnd she was offered the job. Then Johnson & Johnson ran additional background checks and came up with information on her credit report the company found unsatisfactory.\n"Just a few hours later, they wanted to take the offer back," Matthews said. "I told them, I've already told my employer I was leaving. I felt they were playing with my life."\nCredit reports have long been used to determine whether consumers can get credit cards and mortgages, and the rate they'll have to pay on them. These reports are increasingly being applied to other things, from setting the price on auto insurance to analyzing prospective tenants and screening job applicants.\nConsumer activists argue the system is unfair to many Americans, especially those with little credit experience or with blemished credit records. And some people have begun fighting back in the courts.\n"The reality is there are many permissible reasons for organizations to pull your credit report," said Evan Hendricks, a privacy expert who authored "Credit Scores & Credit Reports: How the System Really Works, What You Can Do." "At the same time, it's confusing, shrouded in mystery and constantly changing -- and that works against consumers."\nCredit reports are the records kept by credit agencies -- including Experian, Equifax and TransUnion -- that track the amount of credit consumers have and whether they pay their bills on time. Scores can be derived from the credit reports, either by the agencies themselves or private companies that are customers, to reflect an individual's creditworthiness. The best known is a FICO score, used since the 1990s by banks and other lenders when they underwrite home mortgages.\nOne of the most contentious uses of credit reports is in employment.\nMatthews, who said she was "kind of crushed" by the on-again-off-again job experience, has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging racial discrimination. Matthews is black.\nAttorney Adam Klein, a partner at Outten & Golden in New York, who is representing Matthews, said the case maintains that a person's creditworthiness "has nothing to do with employment suitability." He also argued the linkage may be especially damaging to minorities, who are more likely than whites to be denied credit in the first place.\n"Overlay that in the employment area, and there would be a substantial adverse impact on African-Americans," he said. "It's probably also true for women and for others, like recent immigrants who haven't established a credit history."\nJohnson & Johnson said in a statement its background checks enable the company to "identify the existence of negative credit payment history, such as delinquency and default." It added, "a negative credit payment history may impact a job offer where the history identifies issues significant to the position involved."\nThe company also said it apologized to Matthews for "the mistaken communication" about the job.\nThe use of credit scoring in the insurance industry also is being challenged. Many companies generate their own "custom scores" to set premiums on homeowners and auto insurance.\nSeveral states, including California, have moved to limit the practice, and the Federal Trade Commission is studying scoring to try to determine if it unfairly drives up the cost of insurance for some consumers.\nJeanne M. Salvatore of the Insurance Information Institute, a New York based industry group, said "insurance companies have found a correlation, statistically, that people who have a poor (credit) score file more claims than those who don't."\nAnd, she said, the scoring system cuts both ways -- people with better scores pay less for their insurance.\nGail Hillebrand, a senior attorney with Consumers Union based in San Francisco, said part of the problem is that insurance companies are not required to disclose exactly what part of a person's credit history they're looking in their own scoring systems.\n"The broader question is, just what does your credit score have to do with the fact that your house burned down, or your car hit a tree?" Hillebrand added.\nThe use of insurance scores is being challenged in court by six African-American and Hispanic consumers from Texas and Florida, who allege in a lawsuit scores used by Allstate Corp. are discriminatory because they result in higher insurance rates for minorities.\nAndrew Friedman, an attorney with Bonnett, Fairbourn, Friedman & Balint in Phoenix, is seeking class action certification for the case.\n"We're not saying credit scoring has no use," Friedman said. "We're saying that if they're applying an automated system, it should go through rigorous testing to eliminate any vestiges of discrimination, and that hasn't been done."\nAllstate, the nation's second-largest insurer, denies the allegations and is fighting the suit, said spokesman Michael Trevino.\n"Race and ethnicity are not part of the information that is derived from a credit report, nor are they part of an insurance application," Trevino said. "They are not relevant factors."\nHendricks, the privacy expert, noted credit reports or credit scores are also being used by some companies to check out consumers when they're signing up for electricity or cell phones, or when they fill out an application to rent an apartment.\n"That's a lot of power to put into one report or one number," Hendricks said.\nHe also noted that a number of studies have found that credit reports often contain errors serious enough to result in a denial of credit.\n"It makes it all the more important that consumers be aware of what their credit report says about them," Hendricks said.
(02/18/03 8:36pm)
NEW YORK -- A computer hacker gained access to more than 5.6 million Visa and MasterCard account numbers by breaching the security of a company that processes transactions for merchants, the card associations said Tuesday.\nVisa USA spokesman Mike Riley said that there has been no report of fraudulent activity involving the accounts and that Visa was monitoring the situation.\nHe said he could not identify the third-party processor or say exactly when or how the hacker got access to the account information, which involves some 3.4 million Visa accounts and 2.2 million MasterCard accounts.\nProcessors handle transactions for merchants, bundling and transmitting charges to the banks that issue the cards.\nVisa, which is based in Foster City, Calif., said that after learning of the incident, the company's fraud team "immediately notified all affected card-issuing financial institutions and is working with the third-party payment card processor to protect against the threat of a future intrusion."\nVisa added that under its zero-liability policy, customers would pay nothing in cases of unauthorized purchases.\nMasterCard Inc., which is based in Purchase, N.Y., said that affected banks had been notified. A MasterCard spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.