TIPS.......

What to Do When Your New Job Is a Nightmare

by Caroline Potter, Yahoo! HotJobs

You just started a new job. It's like a dream come true -- except when it's not. What's a professional to do when she accepts a job that seems like a living nightmare? Read on for solutions and advice from a career coach.

1. Assess the Situation (and Yourself)

There are a lot of different reasons why your new job may seem less than ideal. Perhaps your boss is a micromanager. Maybe your duties are different than what you'd thought they'd be. Or a client may have jumped ship, leaving you and your coworkers suddenly scrambling. Consider what's making you miserable before taking any kind of action.

Lynn Berger, a Manhattan-based career coach and counselor, agrees. "I think you have to really scope it out." She urges her clients, "See if there's any way you can take any self-responsibility for this. Also, ask yourself, is there a way you can grow from this? Maybe you've never worked for a boss with a particular personality type, but you may be able to deal with it over time and learn from it."

2. Open a Dialogue

If your supervisor seems happy with your performance while you're not happy in the position, it may be very easy to start a conversation about what's making you miserable. She may be willing to shift your responsibilities or provide you with additional support.

If your boss seems displeased, it can be a bit more difficult, says Berger, a member of the International Coach Federation. "You've still got to open a dialogue, and the earlier the better." She urges dissatisfied employees to talk to management, saying, "Get clear on what you need from them and what they need from you."

Are you without the proper tools and support to do your job? "Throw it out there to your boss and see if he will help. You have to let people know what you need," advises Berger, a graduate of Columbia University.

If you can't talk to your boss because she's the root of your problem, Berger says, "Check it out with other people you work with. Watch how they're handling this person. And if you find out from coworkers that everyone else who's had this position has been out of there in three months, that could be very revealing."

3. Patience Is a Virtue

When Berger works with clients who fear they've made a mistake in accepting a new job, she reminds them, "It takes three to six months until you're comfortable in a new job. There are going to be growing pains, especially if you haven't started a new job in a long time."

New job starters, she says, should be prepared for a bit of anxiety as they roll up their sleeves and dig in to a new position. "It's overwhelming! You're going to be exhausted and you need to give yourself room around that."

While you're ramping up, "Observe as much as you can and not only learn the job, but learn about the company and the way it works, the way things are done," she says. That can go a long way in helping you feel more comfortable.

4. If You Leave...

Do you still feel like you have to leave? Berger tells workers to ask themselves, "Is this a perceived nightmare or a real nightmare? If you're a victim of verbal or physical abuse at work, no one should have to live that way."

However, even if you're not subjected to those horrors, you may still feel as though you're in a nightmarish situation. If you feel you've given it time and your best efforts, you may choose to move on. "No one should feel tortured or sick over a job," concedes Berger.

When looking for another position, you can explain your brief time in this job by saying, "I realized early on this wasn't the right situation." Berger says that job seekers should make the experience seem as positive as they can. Also, she wants professionals to learn from their mistakes. Before accepting another offer, "Ask questions. Visit the company a few times. Speak with employees there. Make sure you understand the full scope of the position and what the day-to-day will be like."

"You never want to regret that you walked away from an opportunity too quickly," Berger says. "As long as you know you gave it your best shot and tried, that's what really counts."

IT'S OUR PRIDE!!!

Yahoo!! We are on the race. Three of our bests are on the top 7. So keep on voting for our very own wonders that are one of a kind. Check this out!

Last update 03-JUN-2008 04:00 GMT

( ) = yesterday's ranking

1.	(1)	Ha Long Bay	VIET NAM - Asia	Vote
2.	(2)	Cox's Bazar, Beach	BANGLADESH - Asia	Vote
3.	(3)	Tubbataha Reef	PHILIPPINES - Asia	Vote
4.	(4)	Chocolate Hills	PHILIPPINES - Asia	Vote
5.	(5)	Ganges, River	BANGLADESH/ INDIA - Asia	Vote
6.	(6)	Mount Everest, Mountain	NEPAL - Asia	Vote
7.	(8)	Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park	PHILIPPINES - Asia	Vote
8.	(7)	Amazon River, River/Forest	BOLIVIA/ BRAZIL/ COLOMBIA/ ECUADOR/ PERU/ VENEZUELA - South America	Vote
9.	(9)	Mount Fuji, Mountain	JAPAN - Asia	Vote
10.	(10)	Mayon Volcano	PHILIPPINES - Asia	Vote

So keep on voting and make our mama proud!

BE AWARE!!!!

Gmail archiving program is actually spyware

taken from Yahoo TEch Blog of Christopher Null

Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:38AM EDT

If you've used the G-Archiver program to back up your Gmail (aka Google Mail) email, you've got a headache on your hands. The program has been revealed to be a malicious spyware app that emails your Gmail username and password to a secret Gmail account.

This revelation is especially troubling because most Gmail users use a single Google account to access a wide range of services. Those with AdSense accounts or Google Checkout accounts could face severe financial losses if their Gmail password were to fall into the wrong hands.

G-Archiver is wholly unaffiliated with Google or Gmail and is the product of an independent developer. The revelation that G-Archiver was spyware emerged last week courtesy of programmer Dustin Brooks, who analyzed the source code to find a crude spyware system inside, complete with the name and password of the account to which G-Archiver sends all its victims' account information. He accessed that account and found thousands of records of usernames and passwords inside, including, of course, his own. (Brooks also deleted all those records and changed the password on the account by way of vigilante justice. Good man!)

Meanwhile, in what has to be the least credible excuse/explanation ever, G-Archiver has posted a notice on its website that the program was not spyware but rather that "a member of our development team had inserted coding used for testing G-Archiver in the debug version and forgot to delete it in the final release version." Uh, right...

G-Archiver's solution, however, is correct: If you have ever installed the program you should uninstall it and change your Google account password immediately. G-Archiver is so new that it probably will not show up in scans from most anti-spyware products yet.

As well, I probably needn't bother telling you that I don't recommend installing the upcoming new version of G-Archiver when it is released, even if the "flaw" is "corrected." Same goes for other sketchy third-party applications that promise to download messages from any webmail service... provided you give them your name and password. Not all are spyware, to be sure, but you should still tread lightly in this area.

GOT CAUGHT ON THIS!!

Teen Millionaire

Not so long ago, teen Ashley Qualls lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her mom and sister. But with her computer and savvy business sense she made a better life for all of them.

By KEVIN SITES, TUE OCT 30, 12:11 AM PDT

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business.

Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known.

This teenage CEO bought her family a 4-bedroom house and built herself an office in the basement.

It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze began to catch fire.

When she saw her friends personalizing their MySpace pages, she began creating and giving away MySpace background designs through Whateverlife. The designs are cheery, colorful and whimsical, with lots of hearts, Ashley's favorites.

She also pulled quotes from popular songs and built backgrounds around those themes. "Teenage girls love quotes," Ashley says, scrolling through some of her site's 3,000 designs, more than a third of which she made herself.

Thanks to Ashley's work ethic and savvy cultivation of her peer group as a target market, Whateverlife began pulling in more teenage girls than a Justin Timberlake concert - about a million a day. With a big audience, the site attracted advertisers. Ashley's first check was for $2,700. The next was for $5,000, the third for $10,000.

"OMG Robot" is one of the backgrounds designed by whateverlife.com

At the time, Ashley's parents were divorced. She and her little sister, Shelby, were all crammed into her mother's one-bedroom apartment.

When first the check arrived, her mother was doubtful, wondering if her daughter could really make money off a website. But Ashley was confident, telling her mother: "No, I really trust this. I think it's really gonna happen."

Ashley was right. The checks kept coming and the business kept growing-to the point where she could afford to buy a brand new four-bedroom house for them to live in. Ashley also hired her mother, Linda LaBrecque, to help manage the company.

"You know, when I'm with my friends, I'm still 17." — Ashley Qualls

It was and has been a bittersweet time for them both. "It's hard to be a mom and a manager," LaBrecque says. The roles clash every day, she says, but they manage by keeping a sense of humor.

She's proud of Ashley. Prior to starting the business, she says, her daughter was too shy to even order a pizza by phone. Now she's making presentations to business executives.

The job has also made LaBrecque's life easier, allowing her to quit her job and work from home following back surgery.

But Ashley's life has become much more complicated. When her business took off, the former straight-A student quit school to concentrate on Whateverlife.

"It's a busier schedule," Ashley says. "There's more to keep track of, whether its finances or employees and making sure everything is up to date and the content is secure."

Ashley has created background designs for songs by popular artists like Britney Spears.

This MySpace background design includes lyrics from the new Spears song "Gimme More."

In addition to her mom, Ashley hired three friends to help with the business, teaching them design and then requiring them to make a minimum of 25 designs a week.

Bre Newby says Ashley is a better boss than her past employers. "It's cool to have your best friend be like your boss," says Bre, "'cause she's a good boss. She's not like rude or it's not like working at McDonald's where you have like supervisors and people over you all the time."

Has the price of Ashley's business success been the loss of a part of her childhood? She doesn't think so.

"You know, when I'm with my friends, I'm still 17," she says.

But time with friends sometimes has to take a back seat to business. On a recent afternoon, her three friends drop by to hang out with Ashley, but they have to wait for her to finish with her business advisor, internet consultant Robb Lippitt.

Ashley and Robb sit on plastic chairs around a white conference table in Ashley's basement office, the walls decorated with hearts, like a Whateverlife background.

The conversation includes overtures from Hollywood and a possible deal to help promote Britney Spears's new album on Jive Records.

Ashley has even turned down a deal for her own reality television program. "I'm really stubborn, like my mom," she says, "So I know what I want from business. And I don't want that. I like my privacy. I like to hang out with my friends. I don't want cameras following me around."

For his part, Lippit says he had concerns about working with a teenager, but Ashley won him over in the first meeting. "She doesn't sit there and say, ‘I did something well-that's good enough,'" says Lippit. He says Ashley knows, without being told, that she needs to keep developing her business, or it will stop growing.

Unlike many adults, Ashley has not succumbed to the temptations that new wealth can bring. She pays herself a modest salary of $3,000 a month. Aside from the house, she hasn't made any other major purchases.

"I don't even know how to put this," says Ashley, "But it's just kind of like the shiny feeling that when you have this money, it kind of goes away after a while. It gets old, you know. Yeah, I can go out and buy you know something really cool. But at the same time I mean I don't really need too much. I like to invest it back into the business."

Despite all her success, one thing that has eluded her - something most of her friends already have - is a driver's license.

"My mom does drive me. And then my friends drive me wherever we go," she says, "And I want to drive. Believe me. But it's just been kind of crazy lately."

It may be the one thing about Ashley's life that reminds you she really IS still a teenager.

-Producer: Jamie Rubin

-Editor: Steve Nielson