What's the etiquette for following up on a job application that I submitted online? Should I call a few days later to make sure they got my résumé?
Oh my god! Stop bugging me with these questions already! Oh, wait, that's my job. Fine then. In cases like yours, there's only one good reason to call a potential employer: to sabotage your chances of getting the gig. "When I was a hiring manager, applicants would often call to check on their status," says Jessica Holbrook Hernandez, president and CEO of Great Resumes Fast and a former HR manager at Medtronic. "It was frustrating and daunting—I didn't have enough hours in the day to speak to every single person." And in a job market this dire, you definitely don't want to risk bugging the crap out of anyone who has the power to hire you.
A polite email is slightly less annoying than a phone call, so consider sending one about seven to 10 days after you submit an application. It's unlikely to hurt your chances, and you might even keep your candidacy from slipping through the cracks. Just make sure to lose the emoticons—no one wants to work with that person.
I often see Facebook status updates about missing kids, which include pleas to paste the alerts into my own status. But is it wrong to comply, since I don't know all the facts?
Please don't take this as a horrible insult, but you seem to have a little journalist in your soul. Most of your Facebooking cohorts never dream of checking the veracity of the items they share. And that's usually for the best: Social networking wouldn't be much fun if people started doubting rumors about C-list celebrities hooked on horse tranquilizers.
But kidnapping alerts do deserve some basic vetting, since there can be serious consequences when hoaxes are allowed to circulate. Fake alerts (and there have been many) undermine trust in the system, which could lead to Facebook users eventually tuning out genuine requests for help. Also, some kidnapping alerts could be the handiwork of people embroiled in custody fights; you don't want to be partly responsible for helping someone exact revenge on an ex.
"People do have an obligation to check these things out," says Russell Frank, a communications professor at Penn State University who has studied fake news. "But is it realistic to expect them to do so?" Ah, there's the rub—who has the time? We've all got work to do, families to tend, sporting events to watch. But you don't have to get all Woodward and Bernstein on kidnapping alerts: A quick Google search or a scan of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website will suffice. And consider the source, too—you might want to place more stock in an alert posted by a close pal than one from a stranger who knows your cousin's ex-coworker.
You could still get duped by a well-crafted hoax, but such is life on Facebook—even for seasoned journalists. I, for one, was briefly tricked into believing that a Dislike button was imminent. D'oh!
I recently tried to do a beer trade with someone I met through a beer fan site. The bottle he promised never arrived, and he insists it got lost in the mail. Now he's begging me not to give him a bad review. Should I let it slide?
This is your chance to savor an intoxicant even more enthralling than fine ale or stout: power over another's fate. You could easily destroy this man's beer-trading future by branding him a cheat, forcing him to live out his remaining days on a diet of locally produced lagers and macrobrew swill. Sad, really.
Given the severity of the punishment you can mete out, you must resist the urge to act rashly. "In the beer-trading world, publicly outing someone as a bad or unreliable trader should be done only as a last resort," says Josh Christie, a veteran suds swapper who blogs at BrewsAndBooks.com. You first need to give this man a chance to make amends. Ask him to ship you a replacement bottle of equal or greater value or to return the beer you sent him. And insist that he pony up for a tracking number this time.
If he balks at the extra effort and expense, it's time to go nuclear. But stay tactical. Just lay out the facts to your fellow traders; don't post the guy's personal info or resort to childish insults. Community justice is usually terrifyingly swift, and the ne'er-do-well will certainly rue his misbehavior when he finds himself unable to secure the latest release of Dark Lord.
Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wired.com.
