By JOE LIGHT

LinkedIn Corp.’s splashy initial public offering of stock earlier this month underscored the company’s status as a major professional network. But several start-ups are banking that the future of career networking is actually on Facebook Inc.

These start-ups point to Facebook’s much broader user base: With 500 million users, Facebook is five times larger than LinkedIn.

But changing users’ mindsets might be a challenge. Some Facebook users are loathe to mix their personal and professional networks, fearing some private information might damage their work reputation.

Recruiters, meanwhile, say that LinkedIn has already established itself as the most robust source for job-candidate information.

This month, BranchOut Inc., which makes a professional-networking Facebook application, said it raised $18 million in venture capital, bringing its total to $24 million. On the day of LinkedIn’s IPO, Jibe Inc., which lets people use Facebook connections to bolster job applications, announced that it had raised $6 million.

Since January, BranchOut has gained more than 500,000 active users, Chief Executive Rick Marini said. The app helps users find Facebook friends at companies where they want to work.

Jibe CEO Joe Essenfeld said that its 200,000 active users have landed hundreds of jobs by sending applications through its service.

Mr. Essenfeld added that 26 large employers, including Amazon.com Inc. and MTV Networks, as well as 20 small businesses, accept résumés sent through the application, which lets users import connections from both Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Most people do not want to mix their professional lives with their personal lives,” said a LinkedIn spokesman, Hani Durzy, in an email.

Even though the apps are gaining in popularity among Facebook users, right now LinkedIn is still the go-to site for recruiters trying to find suitable candidates, said Debra Feldman, a job-search consultant.

“They’re using it over and above any other résumé databases, including their own,” she said. That means that if someone isn’t looking for a job but wants to field offers from headhunters, he needs a LinkedIn profile, she said.

Other job-related Facebook apps have been slow to catch on. Talentag, which lets users earn job-related “badges” and recommendations from Facebook users, had a strong debut last August, but its average number of monthly users has dwindled to 189 after peaking at 1,502, according to AppData, a market-research group.

Talentag couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Friday.

How the smartest companies are letting employees use their personal gadgets to do their jobs.

By ROGER CHENG

For lots of workers, the company BlackBerry just doesn’t cut it anymore.

As people pack increasingly sophisticated smartphones in their personal life, they’re clamoring to use those gadgets in the workplace as well. And many of their bosses are loosening up. They’re ditching the traditional BlackBerry-or-nothing policy and allowing a wider range of mobile devices, including tablets such as the iPad.

This arrangement can bring benefits for both sides. Businesses don’t have to buy as many phones for employees. Employees, meanwhile, don’t have to carry two devices around, and people who didn’t get a company phone before can have one now.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls, too. Few smartphones offer the security features that the BlackBerry is known for. IT departments also struggle with supporting business programs on newer mobile operating systems such as Google Inc.’s Android. What’s more, allowing personal phones raises a tough question: How much control does a company have over the device? What happens, for instance, when somebody leaves the company—and their phone is loaded with sensitive business documents?

The companies that have seen the most success are giving their employees the most freedom—but are also seeking a higher level of accountability. They’re asking that workers take responsibility for keeping the device safe by managing passwords and complex security functions, as well as shouldering part of the cost.

“Companies that are being successful are moving away from dictatorial approach to a shared-responsibility model,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst for research firm Gartner Inc.

Here’s a look at some of the smartest strategies that companies are using to maintain the balance.

Locking and Deleting
Most companies start with a very basic line of defense: insisting that workers use the password feature found in every smartphone. The password prevents other users from accessing any of the phone’s basic functions, forcing most run-of-the-mill thieves to erase the device to make it usable. That’s critical, because employees will often store emails and attachments with corporate data or information about future projects on their phones.

But passwords aren’t foolproof, and a technically savvy crook could break through the defense. So, what should companies do for an extra layer of protection?

Kimberly-Clark Corp. has a hard-line solution: If a phone is lost or stolen, or an employee leaves, the company erases the device remotely.

The company began allowing employees to use their personal smartphones to access their corporate email accounts in December. Since the change in policy, roughly 300 employees have connected their personal smartphones to their work email accounts, according to Ramon Baez, chief information officer for the company.

“Since these are small devices and are easily misplaced or stolen, it is vital for a company to have the ability to wipe company-sensitive information,” says Mr. Baez. The company will wipe a device as soon as it is reported lost, or if the user reaches the maximum number of attempts with an incorrect password.

Of course, a remote erasing also deletes any personal information on the phone, such as contact numbers and family photos. But the threat of losing all that may help make people more vigilant about keeping track of the phone.

Still, the practice isn’t foolproof, because a phone needs to be connected to a cellular network to be wiped. Mr. Baez is working on a “self destruct” option that would automatically erase a phone in case it’s lost and disconnected for an extended period of time.

And the practice doesn’t work everywhere. In China and South Korea, employers by law aren’t allowed to erase the personal data on their workers’ phones, according to Mr. Baez. So, he doesn’t allow employees in those countries to use personal devices in the workplace.

Walling Off Data
Sometimes it’s not enough to erase data after a phone is out of a worker’s hands. Companies in a range of industries—such as medicine or finance—have to do a lot more to protect sensitive data while employees are still using the devices. Medical companies, for instance, have to follow rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that protect customer data. In some cases, that means having patients’ information on a regular personal cellphone isn’t permitted.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. uses software from Good Technology Inc. to carve out a part of an employee’s device strictly for corporate use. Guru Vasudeva, chief technology officer of Nationwide, calls the portion a “secure container” within the phone that houses access to corporate email, address book and calendar. Work emails and attachments can be viewed in the container, but can’t be moved or downloaded into the phone itself. If the phone is lost or if the person leaves the company, Nationwide can wipe that portion of the device, leaving the personal information intact.

Beyond the typical password found on a cellphone, the container has its own password, and the data inside are encrypted, says Mr. Vasudeva.

“We looked for a technical solution with the flexibility to allow what [the employees] want, but at the same time meet all regulatory and technical requirements,” says Mr. Vasudeva.

Dealing With Variety
Beyond security, there are lots of technical headaches with workers using their own devices on the job. For one, compatibility. With a wide variety of devices using different operating systems, it takes lots of time and resources to build and test a different version of the same application for every single one.

For the time being, most companies are trying to avoid those headaches by keeping things simple. Workers who use their own smartphones generally can get access only to the company email network—not any other work software. The more complicated stuff, such as apps that provide access to company software and databases, is generally limited to the widely used BlackBerry platform.

J.D. King
.Kimberly-Clark is looking to partners such as AT&T Inc. to help it create a mobile-enterprise-application platform. This relatively new technology allows a company to create one app and have it run on all devices. For instance, a company could create an app that accesses customer-relationship-management software in the corporate database and have it distributed to all sales personnel, regardless of their phones. By using the technology, the company “gains the ability to effectively manage the cost of supporting many different devices,” Mr. Baez says.

A Virtual Solution
Some companies are working on other ways to give workers access to more than company email. They’re using a technique called virtualization to let workers tap into a much wider range of software. Companies put software, from providers such as Citrix Systems Inc., on the workers’ portable gadgets. The employees can then use that software to access their entire desktop on the device—and use the same programs on the road that they use in the office.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, for instance, is testing these kinds of systems for use with tablets such as the iPad. Placing virtualization software on employees’ personal tablets is less expensive than outfitting them with company-purchased laptops, says Jay Crotts, the company’s vice president of IT services.

Virtualization provides an answer to a basic question, he says: “How can you increase productivity and allow more ubiquitous access?”

New Ways to Pay
Not all of the problems with smartphones are technical. There’s also the matter of cost. Smartphone bills can be steep for regular users—and most people want the company to kick in if they’re using the phone for work too.

Companies that have embraced personal devices have also found ways to reimburse employees for their phone use. Mr. Dulaney, the Gartner analyst, says one common solution is to use a telecom expense-management program, which allocates some expenses to the company and some to the worker.

In some cases, companies pay for the whole data portion of the bill. Some companies go further and cover the whole thing. The situations vary, and depend on the type of employee and the type of company involved. For instance, a factory worker who’s on call might get compensated for voice but not data, while an executive might get fully covered for the phone.

Nationwide gives employees who would otherwise have a company BlackBerry a stipend equal to what their BlackBerry bills would have been, which ranges from $70 to $100 a month. The worker has to cover the difference. Employees who would not have gotten a BlackBerry are responsible for their whole bill, since for them the access to the corporate data is voluntary and considered a perk.

“We think it’s a fair deal,” says Mr. Vasudeva.

Employer-Branding Campaigns Try to Attract Most-Coveted Job Candidates

By JOE LIGHT

Companies have long set aside resources to develop and market consumer brands. Now, some are finding that to attract the best job candidates, they need to put similar efforts into their so-called employer brands.

Unlike a company’s product brands—say Fritos or Dial—employer brands target potential employees to make a company seem like a desirable place to work.

The slow job market has brought the perception that job takers are plentiful, but already companies are finding that the most skilled candidates are in short supply, and are difficult to find, recruiters say. This has prompted some companies to launch employer-branding campaigns for the first time in several years.

Potentialpark AB, a market-research firm that specializes in employer branding, has seen the number of analyses it does for companies almost double in the past year, said Chief Executive Torgil Lenning, whose clients include Hewlett Packard Co. and Credit Suisse Group.

“There’s a clear correlation with the economy. As companies realize they need to recruit, they’ll spend much more effort improving their [employer] brands,” Mr. Lenning said.

In the past, it came down to the logo outside the building. Now, marketing for job candidates involves intensive work and research, says Brian Kropp, a managing director with Corporate Executive Board Co., a business-consulting firm.

PepsiCo Inc. launched its new employer-branding campaign last fall. The company felt its previous campaign, launched a decade earlier, placed too much emphasis on its consumer brands—which include Quaker and Frito-Lay—instead of the actual positions available.

Candidates such as chemists and businesspeople sometimes assumed that PepsiCo only had roles for individuals with experience in the food-and-beverage industry, said Paul Marchand, vice president of global talent acquisition. The new campaign aims to capture candidates from other areas, such as consulting or entertainment, Mr. Marchand said. “We want people coming right out of college to consider us just as they’d consider McKinsey or GE,” he said.

PepsiCo produced a series of short videos profiling employees. The videos can be seen on PepsiCo’s careers website and on its iPad app, which launched in February and has been downloaded more than 3,000 times, according to Mr. Marchand. PepsiCo’s brand logos are noticeably absent from the app, which lets jobseekers learn about work at the company and find openings. The company also revised its LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to reflect the new campaign.

PepsiCo spent tens of thousands of dollars on research and the campaign, dubbed “Possibilities,” Mr. Marchand estimates. He says the company’s recruiters have told him it is helping to attract candidates.

The success of employer-branding campaigns is hard to measure. Unlike marketing for a particular product, which can be reflected a few months later in sales, a successful employer-branding campaign doesn’t necessarily result in more job applications, Mr. Kropp said. “The purpose of an employment brand is to get the best applications, but for those who aren’t the best fit for you, to get them to say ‘that seems like a cool company but not the right place for me to work,’” he said.

Still, AT&T Corp. says it saw the number of visitors to its careers site jump 20% after it positioned itself to appeal to the technology-savvy crowd at this year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

At the conference in March, AT&T’s recruitment materials carried “quick response” codes—bar codes that are readable by camera phones and can take candidates quickly to a careers website without typing in a URL. They also handed out contact cards with “augmented reality” glyphs that when held up to a camera phone show candidates a Web video.

AT&T’s director of staffing, Jennifer Terry, said that the company hopes the new technologies would signal to the conference attendees that AT&T had moved beyond its telecommunications roots. The company has a particular need for engineers, application developers and hardware and software experts.

“[Before], candidates might picture someone climbing a telephone pole to install something,” Ms. Terry said. “If we focus on our digital presence, it helps recruit the right people and set the stage for the company we’ve become.” The number of candidates who came to their careers website from the SXSW conference rose five times over the prior year, Ms. Terry said, and the company has five highly desirable job candidates identified for hard-to-fill tech jobs who found the company via SXSW.

Henkel Corp., a consumer- and industrial-goods company, began to rebrand its careers website and employer-marketing materials in February.

While its brands—such as Dial soap and Right Guard deodorant—are well-known in the U.S., Germany-based Henkel doesn’t carry much name recognition in the U.S. as an employer, said Nicole Nelson, the company’s manager for talent acquisition.

Under the company’s old tag line—”Inventors and Pioneers, Welcome”— “we’d go out to career events and people would say, ‘Huh? What’s Henkel?’ ” said Ms. Nelson. So, the company eliminated its pioneers tag line, which didn’t seem to resonate with job seekers, and beefed up its careers website. The website now features large photographs of smiling employees with biographical sketches and Web videos of employee “ambassadors” who talk about their jobs.

Company officials are trying to promote job opportunities internally so that employees see potential for upward mobility and can refer friends to openings. At the company’s North America offices overhead monitors will cycle through available job openings.

Ms. Nelson says it is too early to gauge the efforts’ success.

Allstate Insurance Co. says that next year, it plans to launch marketing and employment offerings that are customized to jobseekers, depending on their life stage, said Suzanne Sinclair, director of leadership talent acquisition.

Depending on the age and situation of the job candidate, the company might emphasize its stability, growth opportunities, or specific benefits, rather than have a one-size fits all marketing strategy, she said.

“When you look at different segments of the labor market, there are discernible differences in what [job candidates] want,” she said.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
Hiring by the nation’s small employers is accelerating, a sign that the stubbornly slow overall job recovery may be poised to gain momentum.

So far this year, small businesses have added roughly twice as many workers a month as they did in most of 2010, recent data show. Experts say small employers are cautiously ramping up as they gain confidence that business conditions and loan activity will hold steady or improve.

Jeff Platt of Sky Zone, a trampoline franchise company whose franchise deals rose sharply in the 1st quarter.
.Financial, technology and other service providers have been doing the most hiring, mainly in areas such as sales and engineering, while employment in construction remains weak.

So far this year, companies with fewer than 500 employees have added an average of 188,000 jobs a month, according to payroll-company Automatic Data Processing Inc. Last year, they added an average of just 68,500 jobs a month.

Those numbers still aren’t what economists consider healthy, but they’re an improvement, and they’re significant because companies with fewer than 500 workers employ about half of all private-sector employees in the U.S., according to the Small Business Administration.

“Small and young firms are the engine for job growth that we need,” says Stephen Bronars, a senior economist for Welch Consulting, a labor advisory firm in Washington, D.C. They’re “where the bulk of job creation is going to occur.”

Small Business News and Analysis on WSJ.com
.Large companies, which typically lag behind small firms when it comes to hiring, have also been hiring more. According to ADP— which derives its measure of employment from an anonymous subset of 500,000 U.S. business clients—businesses with 500 or more employees have added an average of 11,300 jobs a month so far this year, after shedding an average of 3,400 jobs a month in 2010.

A number of factors may be contributing to small businesses’ rosier outlook, including improvements in consumer spending, stock-market valuations and IPO activity, economists say.

A slight loosening of the credit markets may be another motivator. The Small Business Administration approved $9.1 billion in small-business loans between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31—the most the agency has ever backed over a three-month period—due to loan enhancements provided by the Small Business Jobs Act.

In the first quarter, Sky Zone LLC, an indoor-trampoline franchise company, signed 25 franchise agreements, up from three a year earlier. The new franchises secured 15 loans for a total of about $12 million and will each hire up to four full-time and 40 part-time employees.

“Being able to acquire financing is now a more real possibility than it was a year or two years ago,” says Jeff Platt, founder and chief executive of Sky Zone, a four-person St. Louis, Mo., business that plans to double its headcount this year.

Akraya Inc., a technology staffing firm in Sunnyvale, Calif., since 2001, is also growing. “Things have changed significantly over the last five or six months,” says Amar Panchal, co-founder and CEO. So far this year, Akraya has added eight new employees in areas such as recruiting, marketing, sales and operations, expanding the firm’s total headcount to roughly 250. Mr. Panchal says he’s now looking to hire 10 more employees. By contrast, Akraya hired just one person in 2010.

“We were not confident about the outlook for the next year or so,” Mr. Panchal says. “Many clients had hiring freezes and budgets that were frozen.”

To be sure, many small businesses remain reluctant to hire. About half of companies with fewer than 100 employees say they have no hiring plans over the next six months, according to an American Express survey conducted in February and March with 728 respondents. Of the 35% of respondents that do plan to hire, about a third say they will add only one or two.

Some surveys suggest some small-business owners still lack confidence. The National Federation of Independent Business’s small-business optimism index fell 2.6 points to 91.9 in March.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty,” says Raymond Keating, chief economist for the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, a nonprofit advocacy group in Oakton, Va. “But,” he adds, “things are clearly better.”

By Julie Steinberg

The workplace seems to be getting safer for women when it comes to sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment charges across 20 different industries decreased to 11,717 in 2010 from 15,475 in 2001, according to data provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. body that oversees discrimination laws. While the decline in sexual harassment charges could point to tougher policies in the workplace that obviate the need for federal involvement, experts say that the situation may be more complicated. Women could just be more reluctant to come forward for fear of retaliation from their employers.

Pockets of Progress

The finance, insurance and real estate industries in particular saw a significant decrease in sexual harassment charges during the last decade: 266 were filed in 2010, down from 641 in 2001. Charges filed in engineering, which includes civil engineering construction, engineering services and research and development in the physical and life sciences, decreased to 48 in 2010 from 55 in 2001.

Elizabeth Grossman, a regional attorney at the New York District Office of the EEOC, said many Wall Street firms are now conducting thorough investigations into internal claims within their HR departments.

Over the past decade, Grossman said, many firms have implemented tough sexual harassment policies: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, for example, all claim zero tolerance for sexual harassment. All three companies said they’ve had policies in place “for many years” — none would specify how many — designed to address sexual harassment and discrimination claims.

While it’s not required for employees to file a complaint with their company before reaching out to the EEOC, the agency recommends that they do so.

“[The decline in charges] may be due to the fact that a company has a strong HR department, everything gets corrected as soon as it’s reported, and there’s no reason to file an EEOC charge,” Grossman said.

“Over the years, we have continued to refine and enhance our compliance programs — including providing multiple avenues for employees to report concerns or complaints — and are committed to maintaining a workplace where people of diverse backgrounds can flourish,” a spokesperson for CB Richard Ellis, a real estate services company, said. “Because of this effort, we are seeing fewer filed cases as employees raise potential issues earlier through internal channels.”

Wake-Up Call

The finance industry has also witnessed some high-profile harassment suits over the past decade, such as those filed against Morgan Stanley and CB Richard Ellis in 2007.

“When that happens, that’s often a wake-up call within the whole industry to get their act together,” said Peggy Stockdale, a professor of applied psychology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an editor of “Sex Discrimination in the Workplace: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.” “More policies are put into place and there’s more leadership training, which could help bring the numbers down.”

Amy Siskind, a former department head of distressed debt trading at Morgan Stanley, believes that the issue of sexual harassment has been in accurately portrayed as an industry problem. The real culprits are individual managers, not the firms themselves, she said.

“The industry itself is not flawed,” said Siskind, who co-founded The New Agenda, an organization dedicated to advancing women into leadership roles. “It really comes down who the managers are in a particular division. Some are gender-blind and some are gender-biased.”

The Bad News

Although the number of sexual harassment charges has gone down and Wall Street has grown more accommodating of women over time, (see William D. Cohan’s account of gender issues at Lazard in “The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.”), a locker-room mentality may still pervade.

One analyst at a bulge-bracket bank who did not want to be named said senior executives from private equity firms with which she dealt would consistently stare at her chest or call her “sweetheart.” In one off-putting moment, a vice president from her bank hovered over her and told her she smelled “so good,” to which she replied: “Thanks, you should get this shampoo for your wife.”

In traditionally male-dominated workplaces, “you often still see the remnants of the former culture,” said Grossman.

The low harassment numbers could be a reflection of women’s desire to stay quiet. Reporting allegations of sexual harassment entails a career risk many women may not want to take, according to employment lawyers, particularly in an economy that’s still unstable and seeing layoffs. The EEOC numbers may not accurately reflect actual incidences.

“These are certainly not the numbers of people being harassed,” Stockdale said. “These are people who have gone all the way to file a complaint with the EEOC. It’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Women who file a complaint take on the risk of losing their job, receiving a demotion, being passed over for plum assignments, and other such retaliation from their employers.

“Women are terrified to come forward because they feel vulnerable with regard to their job security,” said Allegra Fishel, an attorney at Outten Golden, a New York-based employment law firm. “When a woman comes forward and complains about sexual harassment, she loses traction in the short run, for sure, and maybe in the long run for their career success.”

Retaliation Claims Rise

Employees can file a retaliation claim with the EEOC and ultimately a lawsuit against the company if they believe they are the target of retaliation by the company for having filed a discrimination complaint.

In 2010, for the first time in the EEOC’s history, retaliation was the most frequently filed charge (36,258 claims). Retaliation rates in engineering rose to 195 charges filed in 2010 from 107 filed in 2001. Similarly, the number of charges in marketing, which includes marketing research, public polling and telemarketing, increased from 5 in 2001 to 55 in 2010. Finance, on the other hand, has been on a downward slope to 1,266 retaliation charges filed in 2010 from 1,662 charges filed in 2001.

An increase in retaliation claims could be tied to a Supreme Court case from 2006. In Burlington Northern v. White, the Supreme Court expanded the scope of what constituted a retaliation claim, concluding that “the employer’s actions must be harmful to the point that they could well dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.”

“The Supreme Court ruling has made employees more confident about filing a charge,” said Adam Klein, a partner at Outten Golden and the co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the gender discrimination lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. “In a bad market, employers are less willing to tolerate [discrimination] complaints, leading to more retaliatory actions, and employees are fighting back.”

Cycles of Concern

Even for those who are pleased that companies have made strides on this issue over the past decade, they’re not ready to relax just yet.

Public interest in sexual harassment issues tends to go in waves, peaking when cases like Anita Hill’s make the front page and then receding shortly after, only to rise again when a new lawsuit comes along. (Hill was an attorney-advisor who in 1991 claimed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had made unwelcome sexual statements to her).

“People have cycles of concern,” Stockdale of Southern Illinois University Carbondale said, referring to the above phenomenon. “A downward trend does not mean that sexual harassment will go down to zero. I would hope that training and attention and good leadership practices do have a benefit, but they have to be maintained. It can’t be a one-shot-in-the-arm type of approach.”

By KRISTEN MCNAMARA
After three rounds of interviews for a sales position with Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Patricia Rosa received a letter in February saying her job application was denied based on information from a background check she authorized the company to conduct. The only blemish on her record, she says: Poor credit that built up since she lost her job two years ago.

Unemployed and in debt, Ms. Rosa is among a growing number of job hunters who find their financial past interfering with their professional futures.

Concerned about rising rates of employee theft and fiduciary issues, more employers are conducting credit background checks on applicants for some positions. Companies say the financial information can offer insight into a candidate’s level of responsibility. But people whose previously solid credit has been damaged by the economic downturn say they are victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Ms. Rosa believes her credit woes lost her the opportunity at Prudential. A company spokeswoman said Prudential doesn’t comment on specific job applicants but that each candidate authorizes the company to conduct a background check, which may or may not include a credit check.

A 49-year-old single mother of three, Ms. Rosa fell behind on her mortgage and other bills a handful of months after losing her job as a New York City office manager for a mortgage company in early 2008. “My house is in foreclosure,” the Nyack, N.Y., resident says. Ms. Rosa is now searching for positions outside financial services, believing other industries will be more tolerant of her debt.

The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act gives employers the right to conduct background checks on current and potential employees through third-party companies, with the individual’s approval. Some 47% of employers say they check the credit history of applicants for certain positions, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management of more than 430 organizations in late 2009. That’s up from 42% of employers in 2006. Just 25% of employers in 1998 said they regularly or sometimes checked applicants’ credit histories.

Companies typically look back over a period of years for patterns in applicants’ behavior, says Mike Aitken, the professional group’s director of government affairs. “It’s a longer-term snapshot to see if that’s indicative of fiscal responsibility,” he says.

The vast majority of employers who conduct credit background checks do so for jobs with fiduciary or financial responsibility, such as accounting, budgeting or those involving cash or sensitive credit-card information. Nearly half the respondents also consider the credit of candidates for senior executive positions.

Lawsuits or other judgments outstanding, or multiple accounts in debt collection, were the types of credit information most likely to keep an organization from extending a job offer, according to the survey.

Legend Financial Advisors Inc., which has about 20 full-time employees, conducts a background check that includes credit for all new job finalists, says Diane Pearson, a financial adviser at the firm.

The Pittsburgh wealth-management firm had its first encounter with a candidate’s poor credit last year, she says. A college student applying for a summer internship had a history of unpaid bills and bounced checks. The firm decided to bypass the candidate. If he had been a candidate for a full-time position, “we may have spent more time and energy” examining the circumstances, Ms. Pearson says.

Knowing what is on your credit report and offering an explanation for debt caused by a specific event could keep negative information from derailing your employment chances.

First, be sure you understand what employers can see on a credit check and make sure you understand your report so you can explain any problem areas. Employers receive a credit report, not credit score, from consumer reporting companies. A report includes debt, bill-paying history, number and types of accounts, how long you’ve had them, and whether you’ve been sued or have filed for bankruptcy, among other factors. Information can go back seven years—or 10 for bankruptcies. Credit scores, on the other hand, are used by lenders to help determine if you are financially worthy of a loan.

Certain factors that could hurt your credit score, such as a recently reduced credit-card limit, would be unlikely to hurt your job prospects. Employers focus on issues like collections and defaults, says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com Inc.

You might be tempted not to sign a waiver allowing for a potential employer to conduct a background and credit check. But refusing is likely a deal breaker, career counselors say. Employers will assume you are hiding a serious problem, and in today’s job market, they won’t have trouble finding a more forthcoming candidate. Most employers don’t seek permission for a background check until they’ve narrowed down the pool of candidates to a group of finalists, or have made an offer contingent on such a check, the SHRM data show.

“You really need to explain your circumstances,” says Tammy Kabell, of Career Resume Consulting, based outside Kansas City, Mo.

Sandy Gross, founder of Pinetum Partners, an executive search firm in Greenwich, Conn., focused on financial services, also suggests explaining the circumstances surrounding the negative information that will turn up and the steps you took to address the situation before employers run a check. “No one likes a surprise,” Ms. Gross says.

Critics of the credit checks say they create a vicious cycle that prevents those who most need jobs from getting them. Lawmakers are pushing for change. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D., Tenn.) has proposed a bill to prohibit the use of credit checks during the hiring or firing process, with certain exceptions. And some states have passed or proposed laws to restrict employers’ use of credit checks.

Consumers can request one free credit report each year from each of the three nationwide credit-reporting companies—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion—through AnnualCreditReport.com. You are also entitled to a free report in certain situations, including if you are unemployed and plan to look for a job within 60 days, or if a company says it didn’t hire you because of your credit history.

If you find mistakes, alert the credit-reporting bureaus and creditors in writing. The process takes time, so review your history at least a month or two before you expect employers, or lenders, to request it, says Experian vice president, Michele Bodda.

By Jeremy Ulmer

I have worked successfully from a home office in various sales roles in the past, and there are many benefits from working at home; however, there are also many dangers.  Sales managers and sales professionals need to be aware of potential pitfalls. Avoid the following dangers and you will be able to create a highly productive home office environment.

Never Shutting Off The Work
One of the main problems with working from home for sales people is that you are technically always at work. It becomes very hard for your mind to separate your free time and your work time. This can result in an unbalanced life-style and addictive work behaviors. Some common negative habits that are formed consist of constantly checking emails, always taking calls even during non-working ours, and working well into the night.

To help prevent these negative habits, set up a separate office space, maintain set working hours with a clear start and end time to your day, shut your computer down, and turn off your work phone during non-working hours.

Not Getting Any Exercise
Sitting on your butt for 8+ hours a day is never a good recipe for physical fitness and health. If you do work from home, then make sure you are scheduling time for your workouts or participating in some sports or activities to stay active. The body and mind are all connected. Without a strong body, your mind will lack the energy it needs to be productive day in and day out. Without energy and a high level of fitness, you will not produce the same results.

Lack Of Sales Motivation & Procrastination
When you are on your own working from home, it can be easy to slip into procrastination mode. You can help prevent this by setting weekly and daily goals. Make sure you complete your toughest work activity first thing in the day. Consider finding some accountability partners to help you stay on track.

Distractions
This can range from laundry, to cleaning, to TV, to personal calls, to running errands, and to nice weather. I have heard of sales professionals and sales managers who simply were so distracted at home, that they wanted to find an office away from home, even if it meant driving well over an hour each way. You must minimize your distractions and set clear guidelines of what you should be doing and should not be doing during working hours.

Not Feeling Like “Real Work” Was Accomplished
Despite working from home being more popular than ever before, a lot of people still don’t see it as “real work.” They think if you don’t commute an hour each way, dress up in a suit, drink coffee with your peers in the morning, and sit in a daily sales meeting, that it isn’t “real work.”
To others, working from home means you have a license to do what you want, when you want. Although this is not true, you need to make sure you set the boundaries with your friends and family. Just because you are at home, does not mean you are free to help them with favors. They need to understand the hours you work, and that you are serious and disciplined when working and can not be disturbed.

Trouble Getting Up Early
Most people don’t like getting up at 5:30AM or 6:00AM to get ready and drive into work. Working from home will often give you some degree of flexibility in this regard, however, be careful that you don’t take advantage of this too much. Make sure you are getting up, taking a shower, getting dressed, and eating before the time you want to start working. Give yourself a solid hour to prepare for the work day. So, if you want to start work at 8AM, make sure you have an alarm going off at 7AM.

Trouble Sleeping
The fact that you can feel like you are always at work means it becomes hard to shut down. Too often sales professionals will check email a few minutes before going to bed. This means the last thing on their mind are emails from their management, clients, and prospects. This is not a good way to prepare and relax the mind for sleep. To avoid this, make sure you do not log into your email within 1-2 hours before getting ready for bed.

I love working from a home office, but it is not the paradise that many people presume it is unless you are very disciplined and regimented with your approach. Avoid these dangers, and you too can enjoy working from a home office productively and successfully for many years to come.