9 Stupid Interview Questions You Should Never Ask

They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question. But “they” are wrong. There are plenty. And when you ask silly things during the hiring process in particular, your hiring decision can be just as stupid as the questions asked.

HR managers and small business owners usually ask the right questions. Questions like Why do you want to work for us? and Why did you leave your last job? But sometimes, interviewers get too creative and ask off-beat, sometimes offending and illegal questions. Here are some of those questions:

“What is your favorite color?”

Unless you’re hiring an art director and are looking for an insightful reasoning to back the answer, don’t ask this. A program developer has every right to love the color orange, even if it doesn’t match his skin tone.

“What do your normally dream about at night?”

This is creepy and way too personal. You might be innocently asking about a candidate’s overall life aspirations, but dream interpretation is not the way to go about it. Instead try, “Tell me about your dream job.”

“Are you expecting?”

Even if the candidate has a noticeable baby-bump, you’re banned from asking about it. A person’s marital and family statuses are off-limits to interviewers. But what if you want a long-term employee? Ask about future goals instead.

“How old are you?”

People over 40 are protected by The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) from employment ageism. Avoid synonymic questions like“When did you graduate high school?” or “When were you born?” You know you’re sneakily asking the same thing. You are, however, allowed to ask if teenage candidates are of legal age to perform specific jobs. 

“Describe your sex life.”

This was asked during a real interview. Out loud. Over 2,000 newly hired employees were asked by talent management consultants Development Dimensions International to divulge the weirdest interview questions asked of them. This made the list and all we can say is, don’t ever ask this.

“What do you dread about work?”

This is trap. There are obvious work-related tasks we’d all like to forever banish- filing, unnecessary meetings, monotonous reporting. You’re trying to get a sense of his or her work ethic, but there’s a better way to do this. Instead of forcing an answer like “Nothing. I absolutely love every work minute,” call previous supervisors for insight. 

“What’s your race?”

This could get you in big trouble. There are some cases where appearance is a “bona fide occupational qualification” (BFOQ), like in TV or movie casting, but if you’re just looking for an accountant or project manager, steer clear of this question. 

“How many sick days did you take last year?”

Prying health information out of a candidate is strictly prohibited and could get you sued. Wanting to avoid malingering employees is justifiable, but you can’t overtly ask this. 

“Is there anyone else you would recommend for this position?”

Or you could just tell them they’re unfit for the position.

These are obviously stupid. And the legality of some is questionable. Remember: by asking imprudent and irrelevant interview questions, you run the risk of insulting potentially perfect hires and facing a lawsuit.

You also jeopardize your bottom line. Rather than focusing on informative questions, you might miss signs of a bad hire- which could be extremely costly. 25% of companies surveyed last year lost over $50,000 dollars due to a bad hire. So save 50K’s and avoid asking stupid questions. They do exist.

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of question. It’s usually a good ice breaker.

The Cost of Leaving Security Behind

One of the reasons that the Apple operating system was perceived to be so safe throughout the late nineties and early 2000s is that the user base was relatively low. The use was also limited to professional settings, so there wasn’t likely to be much more than a work email address from a Mac user. Of course, times have changed and now Mac finds itself just as vulnerable as every other operating system.

Small businesses tend to perceive themselves as the ‘Macs’ of the security world. They are successful, but on a niche level and therefore not really worth the effort of hacking. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How Attacks on SMBs Work

Cyber-attacks are typically conducted on a short or long term scale. The hacker looks for what he or she can get in the moment, then prods for potential openings. This isn’t a great strategy against large companies that may have employed an IT department to secure the network and its secrets. Smaller companies, however, tend to localize their network security in the form of antivirus software. As a result, long term attacks have great success against smaller businesses without the resources to defend for long periods of time.

What ‘Compromised’ Really Means

When Dennis Nedry hacked into the Jurassic Park security system, he replaced the administrative desktop with some graffiti and prevented access to the network through a password screen. This was the definition of ‘compromised’ that Hollywood set in June of 1993. Until the Sony breach, and then the Target and Home Depot breaches, it was our only way of understanding how hacking works. It’s subversive, that’s true, but the goal of hacking is largely information access. Hackers want data they can sell, like customer information or trade secrets.

In this sense, a network compromise represents a serious financial loss to your business. During a hacking, you either lose trust with your customers or data about the products you are building that give you a competitive edge. If that doesn’t wake you up to the reality of cyber attacks, consider that an infected compute can damage more than your own network.

Bot Nets and How They Affect You

A new challenger to the social network scene, ‘Ello,’ found itself to the be the target of a DDoS attack in late September of 2014. The network was gaining more users when the attack hit, bringing the site and its services down for 35 minutes while the team investigated the source of the problem. Bot nets are like armies, sometimes referred to as ‘zombie computers,’ and they are used to carry out an attack elsewhere on the Web. So a hacker may steal resources you use in your business to conduct an attack on another business. The result is losses on both ends, and hackers have a multitude of ways to inject these viruses into your system.

To put things into perspective, Amazon (which is a large company) loses $66,000 every minute it is not in operation. What’s your company’s number?

How to Fix the Problem

The first step is to backup your files religiously. It’s not enough to designate Tuesday as backup day, you need to automate a schedule that accesses your most important files from each terminal and backs those up to a central server that is off site. This is commonly referred to as ‘the cloud,’ and it’s a useful method to keep your files safe from attack.

The next step is to designate secure password use, meaning passwords for each terminal that are better than ‘password123.’ In this regard, it is a good idea to set employees up with a password management program to help them track the passwords they use. Also encourage employees to vary the passwords they use for each service, even if they protest.

Securing each terminal really comes down to training. Make sure that employees understand where to download securely, monitor their usage and follow up with real infractions that encourage better use. Restrictions are the best approach, because it’s easiest to restrict low level employees and grant privilieges as you go up the chain. Internet security software can help you manage firewalls, terminal access, and automated scanning to try and make this task possible.

Security is everyone’s concern, and everyone should understand how to do their part.

5 Apps To Help You Save Money on Business Travel

Posted on January 14, 2015 .

It is said that a penny saved is a penny earned. And who would understand this old adage better than a businessman who’s just floated his very first startup. The early days of business call for the prudent use of money and cost cutting on every front. This includes costs related to business travel.

Technology like smartphones and tabs enable people, who are constantly on the go, stay abreast of the latest goings-on in the corporate world, operate remotely, be in control of their day-to-day business operations, and track their everyday financial transactions.

There are several apps, which when installed on their devices, can help busy entrepreneurs make better decisions, even as they makes their way across the world to conduct business.

It is easy to make careless, money-wasting decisions when trying to juggle your time and attention between catching flights, coordinating with office staff, navigating through an unknown cite, and interacting with clients. However, thanks to the development of several money-saving apps, help is at hand.

Here are 5 cool apps that help the globetrotting entrepreneur save up.

1. Hipmunk

Platform: Android, iOS 7.0 and above
Developer: Hipmunk
Charges: Free

Need to meet clients in another town and don’t have much time to book your flight tickets and make hotel reservations? Hipmunk can help you here, thanks to its unmatched sorting ability. Use the app to search for flights by class of service, or for hotels in specific neighborhoods.

View the color-coded results by airline options, duration and prices of flights, or choose ‘Agony’ to view results where the combination of price, length of the flight and number of stops is calculated and presented.

A ‘heat map’ will show you the spots that are close to meeting locations, restaurants, shopping, and even bars, casinos and nightlife.

Hipmunk also syncs with your calendar to make it easier for you to make travel plans that fit your busy schedule.

2. TripIt

Platform: Android 2.3 and above, iOS 6.0 and above
Developer: TripIt Inc.
Charges: Free

Keep your travel plans uncomplicated by letting the TripIt app store your complete itinerary together in one place for easy accessibility. Leave it to this app if you need information related to flight schedules, hotel bookings, and meetings. What’s more? It also lets you organize your calendar in an easy manner. Talk about ease of retrieving crucial information!

All you need to do is forward all your confirmation emails to TripIt and let it do the rest of the scheduling, freeing you up to address more pressing concerns related to your business.

3. MyCityWay

Platform: Android 2.2 and above, iOS 4.3 and above
Developer: MyCityWay
Charges: Free

This clever app gives you the lowdown on more than 30 important categories that a business traveler ought to stay abreast of when in a new city for a short visit. In other words, MyCityWay gives you the complete and the most up-to-date information about the city you’re visiting. It functions as a digital guide for the goings-on in 110 cities across the world.

Whether you’re looking for local news and events, weather, dining options, public transit updates, live traffic feeds, pharmacies, movie timings, and even parking and directions to the nearest gas station, you can find it all on this app.

4. Refresh

Platform: iOS 7.0 and above
Developer: Refresh, Inc.
Charges: Free

A smart businessman will always want to do his homework before meeting a prospective client. This may include collating information related to the latter that really matters and helps you reduce (if not eliminate) the unnecessary and uncomfortable small-talk.

Refresh works by scouting the Internet and various social networking websites, and extracts information from there to provide you with details about those you plan to meet during your trip. This could be data related to their interests, life’s milestones, and other important moments that may have occurred in their life prior to the meeting. This should help you break the ice easily and make the meeting more significant.

This app can sync with Evernote, so all the notes you make about the meeting or the client can easily be saved in one place or transferred to your computer.

5. Viber

Platform: Andriod 2.3 and above, iOS 7.0 and above, Windows 8 and above, Blackberry
Developer: Viber Media, Inc.
Charges: Free

Viber is one app with all the answers to your communication worries when away on business. If you’re always concerned about your data limit, take heart because Viber doesn’t charge you a cent to make calls or send text messages over your phone’s Internet connection. But of course, the person you’re trying to contact should be a Viber user as well.

The best thing about using this app is the ease of use and the convenience it provides thanks to its high-quality user interface and the ability to sync directly with your phone’s contact list. It makes use of your existing contact number to enable other people to find you, without giving your location away.

Conclusion

While there is no such thing as the perfect app, there are always efficient (and more efficient) apps. You should be able to decide what suits your needs best after using a few of them a couple of times. Download, use and compare them for yourself, and stick with the one that makes your life simpler and helps you save money

5 Reasons Outsourcing IT Can Be Good Business

Posted on January 15, 2015 .

Outsourcing is often seen as a taboo topic by aspiring entrepreneurs. On one hand outsourcing is great for reducing overhead, something any smart business leader wants. On the other, it’s consistently cited as one of the most disliked aspects of modern free enterprise. In matters of moving manufacturing from a company’s homeland to another nation for the sole-purpose of shaving some numbers off the end-of-year balance sheet, the subject remains hotly controversial. But for small businesses looking to save big on startup costs and management, outsourcing the IT wing of their enterprise is not only a smart way to rub-out unnecessary expenses, it’s not as wicked a move as they may think.

Here’s five reasons why outsourcing IT is good for entrepreneurs big and small:

1. Faster: Off-site IT management services chock-full of experience and dedicated infrastructure are going to operate much faster than the typically dinky, greenhorn, and grassroots efforts of self-operating equivalents seen in small businesses. Hitting the ground running is crucial to startup success, and technical snags are one of the leading causes of small enterprise stalls. Investing instead in a remote IT service helps maintain momentum, quickening growth and avoiding sluggish responses to problems.
2. Cheaper: This element of outsourcing is typically at the forefront of most thoughts on the benefits of the practice. In matters of outsourcing IT specifically, the cost-savings are obvious. No investing in your own tech department, nor employing your own IT workers. The very fact you don’t need the space for servers and work stations may even be enough to reduce your enterprise to a completely virtual existence, forgoing brick-and-mortar costs altogether.
3. Predictable: The rate of your future growth as a business is, at best, barely predictable and rarely predicted rightly. The demands in which such ups and downs can have on your departments can be daunting, and IT is no exception. Handing off the majority if not all of your IT responsibilities to specialists can allow you to focus on the rapid changes without worrying about altering your infrastructure in the process.
4. Not All-or-Nothing: Small businesses with much of their existence steeped in the digital world don’t have to hand over the tech duties with ties to executive decision-making over to a third-party. Many off-site IT management services allow companies to pick-and-choose which elements they’d like outsourced. It’s no sweat to opt for managed file transfer software, for example, but maintain a direct connection to web development.
5. Not as ‘Bad': Outsourcing has a notorious reputation for being destructive to a company’s homeland economy. But in matters of outsourced information technology services, it’s often the case for companies to find cost-effective solutions on native soil. Outsourcing doesn’t always involve taking a job from country A and moving it to country B. Sometimes it’s simply hiring another company, perhaps in another state or county, to handle a workload better alleviated from your small business.

Small businesses and start-ups face tremendous hurdles in the race to success. The energy required to make it there – capital – isn’t limitless. The potential for injury – business snags – will inevitably occur. Conserving the former and reducing risk for the latter is critical, and one of the smarter ways to do this is to outsource IT duties. It allows business leaders to increase productivity, save money, and focus exclusively on the tasks at hand unique to their market or industry. Additionally, outsourcing doesn’t have to be as controversial a technique as one might think.

Securing Your Site Against Online Hackers

When you are running a website there are all kinds of different dangers a designer can run into. When you are running a website where you are attempting to sell your photographs there are rather distinct factors you are going to need to have to worry about. Hackers and malware are things that everyone on the Internet needs to worry about.

The size of the company doesn’t mean there is any sort of protection against hackers. Some small business owners think they are safe if they are operating under the umbrella of a larger company because those firms tend to have tighter security. Despite that tighter security, hackers almost always find a way in.

Small businesses tend to think they’re safe because they are flying under the radar of most hackers and the people who send out malware. The problem is that if you are running a site where you are selling photos you are basically painting yourself as a target, especially if your photos are good. If your photos are of something or someone that a lot of people want to see you are going to be an even bigger target. So how do you protect your site and your photos against people who want to get at both illegally?

Watermarking

If you are more worried about your photos than the integrity of your site, then you will find watermarking a rather effective approach. This simply means that you overlay the photos with either a brand from your site or with your name. You can make the watermark almost anything you want, but the intent is to have it there so that you can remove it when a photo has been purchased and it stays when people steal or simply download the photo without first offering up attribution or payment.

Using Flash to Display Your Work

Most images that are displayed online are going to be in the regular old JPG format. This makes it easy for you to sell them to a number of different sites, but it also makes it incredibly easy to download to a thief’s computer. Putting your gallery in Flash means that hackers or thieves cannot simply and easily download the images.

Shrink Wrapping

Shrink Wrapping is another approach not unlike watermarking with a twist. This process is basically the practice of using Javascript to display one image with another. When the hacker or thief goes to download the image they are trying to take without paying, they will actually download something else and this something else is usually just white wall.

Antivirus Software

If you have gone with an approach like putting the galley in Flash or watermarked the photos, it might actually be quicker and easier to get at your entire site, instead of the photos one by one. If you think your site is going to be a target you are going to want to have an antivirus software installed on any computer where you access the backend.

Depending on the size and reach of your company you are going to want to have differing levels of investment. Rest assured that there is an antivirus software for any size of business that will protect you against those who want to get into your files and grab whatever they feel like taking.

All of the Above and Then Some

The fact of the matter is that there is almost no sure fire way to make sure your site is 100 percent protected. Every defense someone puts up has been circumvented at some point in time. The key is to protect your property as well as you possibly can.

The best way to make sure you have put enough guards in place for peace of mind is to do more than one of the above approaches. Shrink wrap or watermark as well as use Flash and have up to date antivirus software. The more layers of security you use, the harder it will be to get through. The real key is to make cracking your code such an annoyance that the hacker moves on to other targets.

An Overview Of The Most Common Mobile Application Categories

Applications, both web and mobile, are in the continuous process of making our lives easier and simpler. Let us begin by understanding what these applications are actually all about. It is just a set of programming code, that is designed for performing any requisite or pre-defined functionality. An app can be of several types that differ based on their definition, functionality, technology and working methodology.

Common Application Types

What does our mind think of, when we talk about applications? We may imagine an app being a utility app, or a social networking app, or say a gaming app. Considering these options, what does one think of the so-called “App World?” Is it the end of it, or just the beginning?

Talking about apps in the present scenario, we should be more specific as well as generic over the type of app, and the purpose it is meant for. Let us discuss here some of the most commonly used categories of applications, and their respective requirements and benefits. Apart from these major categories, there can be a few others as well, fitting into these outstanding ones according to their functionality and development procedure.

Let us now dive deep into the pool of applications, understanding each one-by-one.

• Native Apps: These are developed for particular platforms, using an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Native applications use IDEs because of their—
  – Project Management Tools
  – Tools for version control
  – Debugging
  – Integrated support
  – Built-in library support
  IDEs are used because there is no direct option for development of native apps. Some of the most popular features of native apps include: multi-touch support, build-in components, easy to use, documentation, Fluid Animation, etc. The commonly used technologies are Native IOS and Android, PhoneGap, and Accelerator Titanium.


• Hybrid Apps: This is a combination of both the native and web applications. Native apps are installed on a computing device, and developed for specific platforms. Whereas, web apps can work globally, and developed for multiple platforms. One can access and use web apps, directly in a browser, with the help of an Internet connection.
  Hybrid Apps are a combination of web and native, having more features than both individually. Therefore, hybrid apps can function with or without a network connection, and can work on multiple platforms. These apps are well-integrated with both web-based services, and device files system. They have a browser embedded for dynamically updating any online content. Phone Gap, Blackberry Native and HTML 5 are some of the commonly used technologies for developing hybrid apps.


• Generic Apps: In simple words, these apps can be explained as the mobile websites that work with all the mobile phones and platforms. Generic applications do not need a specific GUI, are content oriented, and have a compact view. These apps work on a number of platforms, with web API based app development. Android, Objective C and Microft C# are some commonly used technologies for its development.


• Dedicated Apps: These are like static apps, specific to certain requirements. They are dependent directly upon the limited functionality and few of the module requisites. These apps are considered better than a book marked apps, because of their well-structured functionality, relying on the requirement set. These apps can also be understood as websites that are customized to work efficiently on mobile devices.


• Bookmark Apps: These are applications for letting the users save those web resources that they wish to access at a later stage, into properly organized lists to be shared online. In simpler words, one can even say bookmark apps to be like mobile websites. These apps make a website compatible to view in mobile versions, and on handheld devices such as tablets and cell phones. These apps are recognized with names who are different from the actual links. They come with drag and drop functionality, and work in a more organized manner. They can be developed with Graphics or APIs, HTML 5, or any basic scripting language.


• Cross-Platform Apps: These are applications that can work freely on multiple platforms. Such apps can be based on either of standard components, or run-time packages. Due to their multiple platform support, user-friendly environment, development ease, multi-touch functionalities, and a lot more, these apps have gained wide-scale use and acceptance.

The current era, thus, belongs to mobile application development, that explores the latest technologies of the future. For the same, one has buckled up and prepared for the brand-new application journey.

The Cloud Holds the Key to Disaster Recovery

If there is one certainty in enterprise, it’s that things will inevitably go wrong. A server will go down, the network will go offline, or a natural disaster will damage the entire infrastructure. It’s in those moments, when every moment that you’re offline costs thousands of dollars, that a solid disaster recovery plan is vital.

Most businesses have a disaster recovery plan to some degree. However, what many businesses fail to realize is that disaster plans are not something to be created and then never thought of again, and only pulled out every few years to change some names. Disaster planning is an ongoing, fluid process, and most companies are well-served to revisit their disaster plans annually, if not more often.

Not only should disaster plans be updated regularly to reflect a growing and changing business model, it also needs to be updated to reflect changing technology. Case in point’ The rapid growth and expansion of cloud computing services has added a new element to disaster planning – one that no company can afford to ignore.

The Cloud’s Role in Disaster Recovery

Regular backups have always been a part of any solid disaster recovery plan. However, as the amount of data produced increases every day (by some estimates, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created daily), so does the need for more efficient ways to back up and save that data.

Some businesses still rely on backup tapes, stored in a secure offsite location, for their disaster recovery efforts. However since the amount of data that the average organization has to store doubles every year, backup tapes are starting to prove impractical for many companies. Add to the backup and storage issue the current trend toward zero-downtime (or as close as possible to that goal) and the need for greater levels of agility and access to data, and it’s easy to see that the days of tapes as a form of reliable backup are numbered.

Indeed, according to a new report from Forrester Research, the tide is shifting toward the cloud as the backbone of a disaster management and recovery plan. The report reveals that in the last year, the number of companies using cloud services for backup has doubled, with more than 15 percent of companies forgoing the traditional forms of backup to the more efficient cloud. Experts predict that the numbers will only continue to grow, with the rapid growth in data creation.

Benefits and Challenges to Using the Cloud

The benefits of using the cloud for disaster recovery are clear: Instead of just backing up data, or new data, the entire server, including the operating system, applications, data and patches are copied onto a virtual server that can be backed up onto another offsite server within minutes. If a disaster occurs and the entire network needs to be re-created, network administrators have everything they need at their fingertips. Instead of rebuilding from the ground up, by reinstalling operating systems, applications, patches and recreating data, it’s all ready to reinstall. Therefore, downtime can go from a few days to, theoretically, a few minutes.

Alternatively, by using a public cloud provider, the data is automatically backed up and maintained by the provider; regardless of what happens onsite, the owner of the data can access it from anywhere at any time. The cloud also makes it easier to back up more frequently, takes space considerations out of the mix and reduces costs, primarily administrative and recovery costs.

All that being said, though, there are some drawbacks to using the cloud as the foundation of a disaster recovery plan, and most of them can be boiled down to one word: Security. One of the major stumbling blocks for many companies is the perceived lack of security when transmitting and storing data virtually. Cloud computing security solutions have come a long way, though, and with advanced threat detection and blocking capabilities, data logging, encryption and access management, cloud backup is no less safe than traditional methods.

Moving to the Cloud

According to the Forrester research report, companies shouldn’t make the leap to the cloud for all of their data backup and storage needs right away, but instead take a phased approach. Still, incorporating the cloud as part of a disaster recovery plan is the means of entry to the cloud sphere for about 25 percent of companies, who are moving portions of their workload to virtual servers as part of the recovery plan. However, as familiarity and comfort level increases, it’s reasonable to expect that more companies will place greater amounts of their workload in the cloud – and that disaster-related downtime will become the exception rather than the rule.