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Explaining How Credit Scores are Used in the Hiring Process
You might be wondering why credit scores are used in hiring processes. While you may have never heard about it, it is actually a more common practice than you might think. Companies and institutions such as banks, universities, retail stores, financial institutions across the United States use credit scores to determine whether an applicant is good for the open position or not. Even though you might think that this is illegal, it is not.
In general, it is a legal undertaking for companies to look at your credit score. This is yet another reason why you should make sure that your credit scores are good and up to date. So why would they be using your credit information in a hiring process?
For some of these companies, employees will be exposed to a lot of money and have a financially responsible position. Your credit information can actually help them determine whether you are a financially responsible person or not. Companies think that if you cannot handle your own money, why you would be qualified to handle their money? On the one side, if you think about it, it is a very valid thought. On the other side, the credit history will not tell the company how you might have gotten all the debt. What if one of your family members is really badly sick or a similar situation? In this case, you have not been irresponsible with your money, but you saved a family members life. You might have been willing to take on all this debt and then work from there. Sometimes numbers are just not an accurate representation of your life.
Companies that do use your credit are not only determining whether you can handle money, in some instances they use it as an indicator for your character. It will tell them if you are responsible with your money and finances you are a responsible person. A person that will not be tempted by money or certain situations in a workplace is a person they can securely trust with their funds, their tasks or their great projects.
One thing is for sure, the company needs to let you know that they are going to check your credit history in their hiring process and they also need to let you know what they are checking for. The criteria they are looking is the criteria they have to tell you about before you give them the permission. Unless they tell you and have a signature of permission from you, they are not allowed to check and use your credit history. If they miss these above mentioned steps, you do have a case in you hands that you can bring to the court. In some instances, some of the people that were not told about the credit check and have been denied have had a good case in their hands.
But as with so many things in life in the United States it pays off to have a good credit history and such a check will not ruin your career moves. Check your credit history every year since once a year the big credit companies do have to give you a free credit report. In the case that you find any wrong or dubious items on your account go ahead and dispute them. Oftentimes companies might just have put a claim against your account that is not really caused by you. Why do companies do that? Money has caused many bad things in the world and a company that wants their money back is going to run after any lead they have. Therefore disputing your case and putting your credit score back to normal can be an essential part in your application and hiring process with some companies.
Web Hosting - Unix vs Windows-Based Hosting, Which Is Better? An operating system functions largely out of sight, or at least is supposed to. It doesn't matter to non-geeks how a file gets stored, or how memory is used, or how simultaneous processes share the limited resources available on a computer. These are among the basic functions of any operating system. Yet, you can find very passionate supporters - who offer very detailed lists of pros and cons - for every operating system. Why? Because, though the low-level functions of an operating system do their work out of sight, there are many other features that rise to visibility. Sometimes, they do so when they're not supposed to. Weighing the pros and cons objectively could consume a book. But to select a web host operating system, a manageable level of considerations apply. They can be weighed even by those who don't know a processor queue from a pool cue. Learning Curves For most web site owners, administering the site/server is just overhead. It's not something they take pleasure in doing and they have plenty of other things to worry about. Many wouldn't know how and have no interest in learning (rightly so, given their priorities). Consequently, ease of administration is paramount for such people. Whether a Unix-based site (usually Linux these days) is easier to administer than Windows depends on your current skill set and the type of tools and level of access the web hosting company provides. But in general Linux is more difficult to install and maintain than Windows and the learning curve is steeper. FTP and Control Panels Often, you don't have to care. For many, the operating system is fairly transparent. FTP file transfers to get a new web page up to a Windows server are very much like they are to a Linux-based site. The user/administrator simply doesn't see what's behind the curtain. Many companies provide other utilities that completely mask any awareness of the operating system underneath. When that's the case, the web site owner has no reason to care, until or unless they need or want to go 'inside the black box'. Performance Performance issues can be relevant in selecting which operating system host type to choose. But for the most part, that aspect is outside the web site owner's control. Overall performance can be good or bad on either system, depending on many factors that the publisher will rarely see. The issue is a wash, as far as tipping the scales is concerned. What is more likely to be seen by a web site owner, at some point in their (and their site's) development is the database product that can be used to store information. Databases Microsoft SQL Server is relatively simple to use, yet extremely powerful and can deliver great performance. But it doesn't run on Linux. At least, not without special software to emulate Windows, which usually kills performance. On the other hand, with a bit of time invested, MySQL isn't significantly more difficult to learn than MS SQL Server and there are many free installations. Cost may well outweigh other considerations for most on this issue. Programming Languages Last, but not least, there are differences in programming languages that can be (or at least typically are) used on Windows vs Unix. If you have programmers who are skilled in Visual Basic, ASP and other Microsoft technologies, then a Windows-based host will be your preferred choice. For Perl and PHP programmers, Linux is the more common platform of choice. No single factor can push you to one versus the other operating system. And, in the long run, it isn't the primary consideration, unless you just enjoy playing with operating systems. Web Hosting - Sharing A Server – Things To Think About You can often get a substantial discount off web hosting fees by sharing a server with other sites. Or, you may have multiple sites of your own on the same system. But, just as sharing a house can have benefits and drawbacks, so too with a server. The first consideration is availability. Shared servers get re-booted more often than stand alone systems. That can happen for multiple reasons. Another site's software may produce a problem or make a change that requires a re-boot. While that's less common on Unix-based systems than on Windows, it still happens. Be prepared for more scheduled and unplanned outages when you share a server. Load is the next, and more obvious, issue. A single pickup truck can only haul so much weight. If the truck is already half-loaded with someone else's rocks, it will not haul yours as easily. Most websites are fairly static. A reader hits a page, then spends some time skimming it before loading another. During that time, the server has capacity to satisfy other requests without affecting you. All the shared resources - CPU, memory, disks, network and other components - can easily handle multiple users (up to a point). But all servers have inherent capacity limitations. The component that processes software instructions (the CPU) can only do so much. Most large servers will have more than one (some as many as 16), but there are still limits to what they can do. The more requests they receive, the busier they are. At a certain point, your software request (such as accessing a website page) has to wait a bit. Memory on a server functions in a similar way. It's a shared resource on the server and there is only so much of it. As it gets used up, the system lets one process use some, then another, in turn. But sharing that resource causes delays. The more requests there are, the longer the delays. You may experience that as waiting for a page to appear in the browser or a file to download. Bottlenecks can appear in other places outside, but connected to, the server itself. Network components get shared among multiple users along with everything else. And, as with those others, the more requests there are (and the longer they tie them up) the longer the delays you notice. The only way to get an objective look at whether a server and the connected network have enough capacity is to measure and test. All systems are capable of reporting how much of what is being used. Most can compile that information into some form of statistical report. Reviewing that data allows for a rational assessment of how much capacity is being used and how much is still available. It also allows a knowledgeable person to make projections of how much more sharing is possible with what level of impact. Request that information and, if necessary, get help in interpreting it. Then you can make a cost-benefit decision based on fact. |