Business: The Ratings are Coming!

The Ratings are Coming!

Written by Bob Nicholson

Small businesses have always known repparttar

importance of word of mouth. Many successful businesses have been built on word of mouth referrals, and many have been killed by bad word of mouth.

But now repparttar 136069 landscape is changing, making word of mouth more important than ever - only now, that word of mouth is being communicated on repparttar 136070 Internet.

People - your customers - are turning to repparttar 136071 Internet as their primary source of information on products and services. Instead of opening repparttar 136072 yellow pages of their phone book, they turn to Yahoo or Google. And in addition to websites and listings for local businesses, they are finding ratings and reviews!

Sites like Amazon.com and ePinions pioneered product rating systems. In some categories, these ratings have become essential to a product's success: more than 60% of consumer electronics purchasers report that they consult online ratings before making a purchase decision!

Ratings have also become common is a few other business categories, such as restaurants and hotels.

But repparttar 136073 online ratings explosion is just starting; Internet entrepreneurs are demonstrating that virtually anything can be rated online.

RateMyProfessors.com, launched in 1999, allows college students to rate - well, professors. The site has accumulated over 3 million ratings, and has spun off another site, RateMyTeachers.com, aimed at high school and elementary students.

ApartmentRatings.com has repparttar 136074 most comprehensive database of apartment ratings, with almost 250,000 reviews. RateMDs.com was formed to allow patients to rate their doctors. A new site, ClubRatingz.com, allows patrons to rate nightclubs and bars (perhaps while recovering from hangovers?)

Rating sites are even risking repparttar 136075 wrath of repparttar 136076 legal profession: LawyerRatingz.com provides attorney ratings and reviews.

All of these sites feature a fair share of rants and raves. Many of repparttar 136077 comments are semi-coherent ramblings, often typed with Caps Lock down. But surprisingly, over time and with enough ratings, a fairly accurate picture emerges. Some reviewers provide well-thought reviews and useful information. And repparttar 136078 sites are being visited and read!

Employment Screening Today – Are Online Database Searches Enough?

Written by Thomas C. Lawson

In today’s employment environment, HR managers are faced with repparttar

monumental duty of hiring and maintaining, as well as repparttar 136060

ongoing development, of employees. But repparttar 136061

single most difficult task lies first in hiring repparttar 136062

right people.

Not only are prospective employers faced with repparttar 136063 largest available potential workforce since repparttar 136064 Second World War, but, as things have become more sophisticated, so have repparttar 136065 deception techniques of those who would shaft you and your company. Negligent hiring, sexual harassment, and frivolous employee lawsuits have increased sharply in recent years, as have repparttar 136066 incidents of workers’ compensation fraud and employee theft.

What Can You Do?

In repparttar 136067 area of hiring repparttar 136068 most qualified candidate for repparttar 136069 job, there are repparttar 136070 reference checks, repparttar 136071 employment and education verification and repparttar 136072 background check. A good background check should include thorough candidate identification, financial and driving histories and criminal convictions at any and all court levels. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy.

Today, you must conduct as thorough a check on repparttar 136073 company doing your screening as you would on screening your candidates. Why? As mentioned, a lot of little companies have sprung up touting repparttar 136074 wonders of overnight background checks, some of which could be illegal. A number of these firms, which rely upon database research to compile repparttar 136075 background data, without so much as a verification of repparttar 136076 information, discovered.

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