The RatRaceRebellion.com Blog

Lionbridge Actively Recruiting Internet Search Consultants

Lionbridge wrote us this morning that they're seeking Internet Search Consultants (aka Internet Assessors). Their email follows below. (Their website indicates that "United States (English)" recruitment is closed, but perhaps the page hasn't been updated yet. I'll clarify with Lionbridge and post an update here.)

~ Mike

Update - Nov. 10 - Heard from Lionbridge this AM, and they're updating their web page. "Should be done in next 24-48 hrs." ~ Mike

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Job Title: Internet Search Consultant
URL: http://www.lionbridge.com/internet-assessors

Comment: Internet Search Consultant

"Valuing your knowledge and opinions"

Type: Work from Home, Temporary, Part-time, Independent Contractor

Description:

As an internet search consultant your ultimate goal will be to contribute towards making internet search more exciting, relevant and interesting for all end users in the United States.  You will play a part in improving the quality of one of the largest search engines in the world.

The internet has now become the powerhouse of all information, everything you need to find or explore can be found on the internet, yet how can we be sure this information is entirely up to date or relevant? This is where you can contribute.  We are looking for creative thinkers who enjoy browsing the internet and would like to express their opinion on the quality and content of what is currently out there on the web.  You will be provided with guidelines and scoring criteria on how best to evaluate an internet search result.

You will have the flexibility and freedom to work from your own home, working your own hours, depending on availability of tasks (10-20 hours per week).  Payment will be based on completion of the agreed upon tasks or engagements within the specified time period.   

Requirements:
* Fluency in written and verbal English.
* Preferred level of education/certification - Bachelor's Degree (or equivalent)
* Access to and use of a broadband internet connection and associated computer and software to perform the work, all provided at your own expense
* Experience in use of web browsers to navigate and interact with a variety of content
* Time Management Skills
* Proficient with Microsoft Office applications
* A legal resident of the United States for the last 5 consecutive years.

The Organization:

Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: LIOX) is a leading provider of globalization and testing services. Lionbridge has a global network of more than 200,000 resources focused on translation and localization services across 100+ countries. To learn more visit http://www.lionbridge.com.

To Apply:

Please click HERE or paste the below link into your browser to complete and submit your application:

https://e-recruit.sap.lionbridge.com:443/sap/bc/bsp/sap/hrrcf_unrg_appl/application.do?PARAM=cGluc3RfZ3VpZD1ERUJFMkM5M0JDNjRGMEYxOTVDQTAwMTUxNzhGMkVDQg%3d%3d&sap-language=EN&rcfSpId=0006&rcfContext=GR


If you experience any technical issues when you are submitting your application please contact the following email address: us.raters.bal@lionbridge.com.   
This is an exciting new opportunity so don't miss out.

One member per household only

###

A Telework First -- "Home-Based Workforce Resource Center" to Open in AZ

In a significant breakthrough for telework, the Arizona Dept. of Commerce has funded a "Home-Based Workforce Resource Center" for Prescott.

Apparently the first of its kind in the U.S., the brick-and-mortar center will begin with a one-year grant of $187,000, the AZ Dept. of Commerce said yesterday by phone.

The news was announced recently by our friends Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham in their newsletter of the Future of Work. Among other activities, The Future of Work reports on trends in distributed work. Jim and Charlie are also the principals of Prescott, AZ's, Work Design Collaborative, which will be the prime subcontractor for the grant.

According to the newsletter, the grant was awarded to the Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACOG). "The center will be an extension of NACOG's current 'One-Stop' Workforce Investment Act resources aimed at meeting the workforce development, training, and assessment needs of a unique group of workers who are launching their own new businesses."

The Center is also intended to serve as a model regionally. As global warming mounts and it becomes clearer that the suburban "sprawl-and-crawl" model is unsustainable, Chris and I sincerely hope that it will light the way nationally as well.

We salute the AZ Dept. of Commerce, NACOG, the Prescott Mayor's Advisory Committee on Economic Development, and the Work Design Collaborative for their roles in this wonderful development, and we wish them every success.

P&G Seeks Public-Bathroom Bloggers for $10,000 Gig

Procter & Gamble seeks five people to blog from Charmin-branded public bathrooms in New York's Times Square for $10,000, the Cincinnati Business Courier reported yesterday. The job will last five weeks.

"Job requirements include interacting with hundreds of thousands of bathroom guests, maintaining their own blogs and content on Charmin-branded Web sites and popular social media sites, and sharing family-friendly video," the Courier reported.

For more on applying, click here.

When I lived in New York City in the 1980s, just using a public bathroom in Times Square was an act of extreme courage (or needy tourism). But the city has cleaned up the district considerably since then. Regardless, we wish these hardy bloggers good luck!

"How to Handle Clients from Hell" -- Michelle Goodman's New Workshop

Michelle Goodman, one of the best authorities we know on freelance writing, is offering a four-week online course for new and veteran freelance writers on "Dealing with Nightmare Clients." The course begins Wed., Oct. 21, and is sponsored by the Editorial Freelancers Association.

Michelle is the author of two excellent books on freelancing, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube and My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire (both of which we reviewed in the Rat Race Rebellion Telework Bulletin).

Michelle also blogs on freelance and related issues at anti9to5guide.com. 

For details on the course and to register, see Michelle's blog.

VIPdesk Seeks 100+ Home-Based Agents in Kentucky

Virtual call center VIPdesk, which has been steadily expanding its corps of home-based agents, announced today that it seeks 100+ agents in Kentucky.

"Customer Service Representatives will respond to incoming calls from debit card holders with questions about their account status, balance inquiries, how to reset their PIN, and more," said the company's press release.

Two weeks of paid training will start in "early December," the company added. Reps will earn approximately $8-$9 per hour.

Other factors to note (also from the press release):

"[A]ll candidates must pass a background and credit check, a fingerprinting test administered by the financial services client, and a drug test. Bilingual candidates (English/Spanish) preferred but not required." 

Rat Race Diary: Vampires on the Shelves, a Tale of Hidden Inflation

A few days ago I stopped at the local drug store to buy some contact lens cleaner. (I buy the store brand, because it's cheaper and usually as effective as most of the "name" brands.) When I arrived at the shelf, I noticed that the box looked considerably larger than before, but the price hadn't changed.

For a moment, I found myself floating up above the Eye Care aisle in an out-of-body experience, such was the power of this rarest of all retail events -- an upgrade in contents with no price increase!

I weasled the box out of its spring-loaded row to scrutinize it. After generations of tricky retail, American consumers (the word reminds me of a bunch of hungry worms in a bucket, but it's the King's English, now) have rightfully grown as suspicious of vendors as a Russian peasant in an old movie, biting a kopek to see if it's real. I squinted at the tiny print on the box, muttering to myself at yet another retail time-theft.

(All told, I've spent whole years of my life peering and squinting at boxes, wrappers, and containers of all kinds, like a myopic mouse in a kids' book, trying to decipher ingredients and searching for the tiny, cryptic, faded or just plain omitted expiration dates on retail stuff. True, comedians have been lampooning the theme for years, but since it's getting worse, let's gong it again.)

I couldn't tell offhand if the ingredients in the repackaged liquid had changed. (Had that hydroxypropyl methylcellulose been in the same position on the list the last time, I wondered, or was it now lower, indicating a dilution? They tinker with the mix every few months, trying to squeeze another penny out of it -- out of me -- and usually making it less effective each time; another example of hidden inflation.) So finally I took the plunge and bought it.

Driving home, I mentally celebrated my victory over the eye-care pickpockets. Saline solution (aka salt water) may have doubled in price in the past two years (I hope it didn't used to be yellow, but with luck that's just our drinking water), but at least my vigilance had rewarded me here. I nodded triumphantly to myself as I walked in the house.

Just to be sure of my victory, I went in the bathroom and compared the ingredients on the old bottle to the ingredients on the new box. Yes! Identical in every way! I hadn't been snookered after all.

I opened the box and peered inside. Hmm. The bottle was dramatically smaller than the box, but you couldn't tell by shaking the box at the store. The bottle was wedged into that tricky scaffolding they like to install when the box is meant to disguise the flea-world dimensions of the contents.

Still, it didn't matter that the box dwarfed the bottle. The ploy was common enough. I reached in and pulled out the bottle.

It was then that my mental victory dance came to an end. Preoccupied with all the times I'd been had by the ingredients, I saw that I had just paid the same price for 2/3 of an ounce that I had paid for a full ounce two months before. 

Bigger box, smaller bottle, "same price." Duped again!

 

   

Online Secondary Education Soars -- From 50,000 to 2M in 8 Years

Secondary-school students taking courses online has exploded from 50,000 in 2000 to 2M in 2008, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week.

"It's going to drastically change over time what classroom education looks like," one US Dept. of Education official, Brian Lekander, was quoted as saying. Lekander is the Program Manager of Star Schools, a distance-learning initiative in the US Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement.

Some 70 percent of all school districts have virtual-education programs, reported the Chronicle, citing US Education Dept. data.

While Chris and I advocate virtual learning for a variety of reasons (children can spend more time with their parents and in their communities, less time in institutions and school buses; we can reduce taxes and pollution; etc.), online courses are not a panacea, and a blend with other kinds of learning (a theme we'll have to leave for another post) might well work best.

Regardless, this much is clear: The Internet appears to be doing to public education what it has already done in so many other parts of our lives -- creating change at a pace that leaves established processes (most particularly anything bureaucratic) in the dust.    

For more on virtual K-12 education, see:

-- The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (Be sure to check out their extensive links to distance learning programs by state.)

-- MyFoxDC.com's "Online Learning Takes Off for Students"

Come Join Rat Race Rebellion on Facebook!

Chris and I just opened the Rat Race Rebellion Facebook page, where we can finally "let our hair down," and share tips, news and personal things in a warm and relaxed environment.

On Facebook, we can share much more often (it just seems to lend itself to "opening up"), and hear from you much more easily too!

Blogs and websites and newsletters are great -- as far as they go -- but they're much more "one-way" than Facebook. We're just discovering all its features, so come on over and introduce yourself!

We look forward to meeting you there!

Best,

Mike

More Work at Home for India's 750,000 BPO Employees?

India is taking another small but notable step toward letting more of its massive Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) workforce work from home, India's Business Standard reported today. One of its leading BPO providers, Quatrro BPO Solutions, has launched work-at-home pilot programs for employees in Mumbai and Delhi, and plans another for Chennai soon.

Judging from the article, Raman Roy, Quatrro's Chairman & Managing Director, is serious about building out the home-based model: "We feel this is the next-generation step for the industry. It will create jobs for people who are educated but don't have the flexibility to go to offices. Besides opening a career option for them, it will create a flexible workforce."

Another firm, Aspect Software, "the founder of the contact center industry" (per one of its press releases), is also interested in expanding the work-at-home model, the Business Standard reports.  

On the minus side, India has significant infrastructure challenges, in communications as well as other areas of the economy, and its oft-mentioned "red tape" issues could impede things as well. Further, it's not clear whether workers in significant numbers would have home environments that permit "cube-grade" (brick-and-mortar level) productivity.

Nevertheless, India isn't by any means short on entrepreneurship, and already Quatrro's Roy is planning to furnish schools with computers that the schools themselves would use in the morning, and aspiring BPO work-from-homers would use for training in the evening. 

Why couldn't we do that here in the US?

For the Business Standard article, go here.

   

Three Quick Tips to Speed Your Work-at-Home Job Search

Finding the right work-at-home job or project takes time, but there are many ways to shorten the search. Here are three quick tips to help make your research more effective.

• Use good search terms. We've included 60 thought-starters here. These are self-executing links: Just click, and a Google search is done automatically. (Bear in mind that using "good" search terms won't guarantee that all results are legitimate. Because of the high scam ratio -- 58-to-1 this week on our home page Scam-o-Meter -- some bad apples will usually turn up, and you'll need to throw those away.) 

• Check work-at-home forums for discussions of employers, jobs and scams. (For more on two forums we visit often, see Heather Schulte's recent article here, which also mentions us Rats.)

• Use tools like Whois Source and TinEye to check authenticity of websites. Many scam sites are created just before the scam is launched, and will feature bogus companies claiming to have been operating for years, with bios of executives thrown in for good measure. Whois, however, will often show that the domain was only recently created, and TinEye will show you where the executive photos -- or testimonial photos -- really came from. (Hint: Executive photos are often stolen from real company websites, and "testimonial" photos are often stock photography.)   

There are many legitimate companies hiring home-based workers, and, properly "armed," you can find the one that fits your unique needs and personality best.