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Twitter Shifts To More Security Using DMARC Protocol for Emails

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Twitter sends out lots of emails every day to its’ users letting them know what’s happening on Twitter. But there’s no shortage of bad actors sending emails that appear to come from a Twitter.com address in order to trick you into giving away key details about your Twitter account, or other personal information, commonly called “phishing”.

Earlier this month, we began using a new technology called DMARC that makes it extremely unlikely that most of our users will see any email pretending to be from a Twitter.com address. DMARC is a relatively new security protocol created by a group of organizations to help reduce the potential for email-based abuse.
Without getting too technical, DMARC solves a couple of long-standing operational, deployment, and reporting issues related to email authentication protocols. It builds on established authentication protocols (DKIM and SPF) to give email providers a way to block email from forged domains popping up in inboxes. And that in turn lessens the risk users face of mistakenly giving away personal information. If you’re interested in a more technical explanation, you’ll find it here.

While this protocol is young, it has already gained significant traction in the email community with all four major email providers – AOL, Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail – already on board, rejecting forged emails. We hope to see it gain more coverage for our users as even more email providers adopt it, and that it gives you more peace of mind when you get an email from us.

What Women Want At Work [Infographic]

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What do you want at work? What does success mean to you? What is your biggest challenge at work? LinkedIn asked these very questions (and more) to thousands of professional women around the world to better understand the challenges women face in their careers, what success means to them now and how that’s changed over the past 5-10 years.

While some stark differences emerged by country, we uncovered some key global trends. Today, almost two thirds of working women say that success is about achieving the right work-life balance. This is a major shift from 5 to 10 years ago when ‘salary’ topped that list along with an ‘interesting job’ and ‘responsibility’. Interestingly, work-life balance wasn’t really on the radar then.

These findings emerged from our ‘What Women Want @ Work’ study, released today in celebration and support of International Women’s Day on March 8th.

LinkedIn Women @ Work Global

So what’s changed? The upheaval of the global economy has meant fewer staff and resources so we all have to do more with less. The other major factor has been the growth and reliance on technology. We increasingly operate in an ‘always on’ work environment where many of us can’t resist starting and ending our days on our smartphones. The line between work and home life has blurred as technology has become systematically ingrained in our lives. All of this seems to have contributed to women taking stock and reassessing what’s really important to them.

Not surprisingly, our study tells us that working women the world over are looking for one thing above others – greater flexibility. As a working mum of two little boys, I know only too well what a juggling act it can sometimes be. Two out of three of working mums we surveyed agree and ‘would like more flexible work conditions’. Furthermore, there is a strong belief that for the next generation of professional women greater flexibility will be crucial for their success – a whopping  4 out 5 agree with that sentiment.

Other big issues that the study surfaced included concerns over lack of investment in professional development and lack of a clear career path. Encouragingly and despite all this, there is a great deal of confidence and optimism about careers and future opportunities – with 3 out of 4 women believing they can ‘have it all’. Perhaps that’s what women really want.

So where can professional women turn for support? As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn is a great place to start.

  1. Get career inspiration. Choose someone you admire at your company, check out their LinkedIn profiles and take a look at the steps they took in their careers to be successful.
  2. Seek out women mentors. Join LinkedIn Groups for professional women in your industry or region. Make new connections and learn from others.
  3. Ask, and you shall receive. If flexibility is an issue where you work, connect with other women on LinkedIn via your own network and utilise LinkedIn Groups to gain advice on how to ask for flexible work conditions. Then, set a plan to present to your manager. You can also research positions similar to your own on LinkedIn to understand the skills required so you can have regular informed conversations about your position.

Engro Pakistan Becomes The Only Local Company in Top 5 Employer Ranking

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Engro is the only Pakistani private company that could find a place in the list of top 10 ranked employers as most of the companies are foreign multinationals in a survey conducted by ROZEE.PK.

While one should expect Engro among leading contenders, the question arises what brings the local conglomerate among the top 10 employers?

Another Pakistani firm, Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC), also features in the list at the 10th position, but it is a public sector concern.

“I am not surprised to see Engro among top 10 employers because fast moving consumer goods’ (FMCGs) manufacturers usually come in the limelight because of their heavy marketing budget and big volumes,” Khurram Schehzad, Head of Research at Arif Habib Limited.

“Engro is a heavyweight with businesses ranging from food to fertiliser and energy. The company’s stature matches the top league where you find Unilever and Nestle Pakistan,” he said. “However, what is important to consider is that why other Pakistani companies are not in this list.”

“We all know that the sample of any survey is important, so we cannot say that any minor change in the sample of this survey will add many other companies to this list,” he said.

Schehzad pointed out that there are big local groups like Mansha and Tabba groups but since their nature of business is mostly industrial, they may not secure a place among top 10 employers.

Like Schehzad, other analysts were also not surprised to see Engro among the ranks of top companies. But they argue that a number of big corporate names, including multinationals, should also be there.

Looking at the presence of Unilever and Nestle Pakistan in the list, analysts say FMCG manufacturers usually give more perks and have relatively better job security that attract graduates to these companies.

While Engro is the fourth best employer among top 10, interestingly it did not secure any rank among top five companies considered favourite by females with a graduate degree.

On the contrary, the company got second position among males with a graduate degree, two ranks up compared to its overall fourth position as the best employer.

“It is better to see everything in the right context,” Zia Abbas, lecturer at the Applied Economics Research Centre (AERC), University of Karachi said. “Since the nature of business is very important, we should not think that those companies that could not make it to the list are not good employers.”

Companies that secured positions in this ranking are good companies, but it cannot be safely said these are the best employers in Pakistan, Abbas said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4th, 2013.

LinkedIn Tells How And What To Say To recruiters

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Dania Rashid

There are 200 million LinkedIn members (and growing), but this doesn’t mean there are 200 million expert members looking for jobs. Here are 5 ways to stand out from the crowd and win the hearts, minds, and attention of top recruiters.

1. Be ‘highly searchable’ for busy recruiters

Back in 1997, I rode the NYC subway with a pile of faxed and mailed in resumes in my hand every Monday evening. I would screen them one by one, hoping to find the perfect candidates to show my hiring managers on Tuesday morning.

Keywords barely mattered back then. Today, they are practically the only thing that does matter. Why? Because recruiters start by running searches for candidates, and they can only find you by the skills you’ve listed. Being concise is good, but not at the expense of completeness.

You can find the appropriate keywords from job descriptions that you apply for. Make sure you mention them.  Some repetition is fine, even helpful – especially if multiple positions have involved similar skills and duties – but remember that a human will be reading your profile at some point. Avoid obvious ‘keyword stuffing’, as it will undermine your credibility. Here is an example of how to incorporate words artfully:

“Developed PowerPoint presentations for the Board of Directors”
“Responsible for creating PowerPoint decks”

Even if you’re not job searching now, many recruiters build a ‘pipeline’ of future candidates, and it’s good career sense to be on the radar of as many recruiters as possible.

2. Give them a consistent picture, across your LinkedIn profile and resume

Your LinkedIn profile will more than likely be viewed, reviewed, and compared with your resume. Don’t get tripped up by creating confusion or mistrust in a recruiter’s busy mind.

Here’s a simple rule: Be sure that the titles and dates match. If they don’t, you may fail to meet expectations on the core requirement of integrity. Recruiters hate having to withdraw offers from candidates when everyone in the company has fallen in love with them.

It’s true that many job search experts encourage job seekers to create different versions of their resumes. If you opt for that strategy, ensure the basic facts are consistent. Adding emphasis on certain roles, or certain dimensions of your skillset, can be totally appropriate, but be  transparent. For example, if you have a title that doesn’t match the standard titles in your industry or your actual responsibilities, add an explanation in parentheses. For example:

Vice President, Marketing (Acting in Marketing Manager role)
Director of Finance (independent contributor)
Office Manager (also responsible for Human Resources)

3. Remember the personal touch

In the same way that you would not go up to a stranger and ask them to hold your hand without having gotten to know you first, one of my pet peeves is when people send LinkedIn invitations without personalizing them. In other words, just because some of us are open networkers, doesn’t mean that we don’t want to know how you learned about us. Customize your invitation when you ask people to join your network. Include how they know you, how you can help them by being a part of their network, and/or how you hope to work with them in the future.

On LinkedIn, if you have fewer than 50 connections, you simply need to find more. A large network gives you visibility of more profiles (up to your 3rd degree with a Premium subscription). Therefore, you’ll have a greater chance of seeing the name of the hiring manager or recruiter at a company you’re interested in. You probably have more potential connections than you think – try listing out all the people you knew at your former companies, your bowling team friends, and your college classmates.

4. Lead with your LinkedIn identity

As mentioned in #2, you should expect a recruiter will try to research you on LinkedIn. Make it easy! Neglecting to include the link to your LinkedIn Profile on the top of your resume could lead to mistaken identity. For example, if your name is Steve Smith, there are hundreds of your namesakes who live within 50 miles of New York City. A link on the top of your profile will send the recruiter straight to not only your background information but also to your endorsements, recommendations, honors and awards which can send you straight to the top of the pile.

When you sign up for LinkedIn, you are automatically assigned a Public Profile link for just this purpose. The default link includes your name plus a set of randomly generated numbers by the system, for example, www.linkedin.com/pub/steve-smith/5/8a/4a0. The Public Profile can be edited quite easily to just include your name instead of a bunch of numbers, and it will be much more appealing to a recruiter. If your name is popular, such as Steve Smith, you may have to be more creative as there are many of you out there. You can try adding relevant acronyms or adjectives, such as: www.linkedin.com/in/SteveSmithNJ or www.linkedin.com/in/SteveSmithCPAfor example.

5. Look work-ready in your LinkedIn profile picture

While having an unprofessional or inappropriate picture won’t necessarily put you in the “no” pile, it may leave a recruiter concerned about sharing your resume with a hiring manager. A professional photo will give the impression that you are a serious candidate worth evaluating, and your LinkedIn profile is 7 times more likely to be viewed if you have a photo.

Let’s start with a fundamental point that’s often overlooked: your LinkedIn picture should be of you, not a picture of your family or your dog. Also be sure to represent yourself professionally. Avoid posting pictures where you are staring up into the sky, looking like you’re having a bad day, or clearly in a non-working mode. For example, the picture of you dressed up like Spongebob on Halloween is best saved for other social media sites.

A picture is only worth a thousand words if it is high-quality, so consider getting your headshots done at a major retail chain for a low cost. Or, get help from a family member or friend: use a high-resolution camera, and select a neutral background with indirect lighting. Remember to smile! Your picture should exude confidence.

Finally, dress for success. Imagine it’s the first day in your new role, and you’re ready to walk through the door. Note this could be different if you’re walking into an office, a plant, a store, or some other work environment.

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According to Jobvite, 93% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find talent. With those percentages, you simply have to learn to take advantage of the tools LinkedIn has given you. Think of yourself as a recruiter. How would you find yourself on LinkedIn? Then, how would you contact yourself and how long would you wait for a response?

When used strategically, you can delight recruiters, and LinkedIn can become the light at the end of the tunnel that you have been waiting for!

Microsoft Envisions A Future Of Interactive Surfaces, Walls And Devices [Video]

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Back in the early days of Microsoft, Microsoft’s mission was to put a PC on every desk and in every home — an ambitious goal for the time. Behind that was the conviction that computer technology had the innate capacity to enrich peoples’ lives. The trick was applying it in a way that made sense, solved a problem, or generally made life better.

When dramatic technology changes are on the horizon, just describing a possible future isn’t enough – sometimes you have to show it and let people experience it themselves. Over the years, Microsoft has created immersive showcases that show how future technologies could shape our world – first through the Microsoft Home, which opened its doors in 1994, and later through facilities like the Envisioning Lab, which explored possibilities for the workplace of the future.

This work continues at Microsoft’s new Envisioning Center, which is all about imagining how technology could be used to make life easier and more enjoyable, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in revolutionary ones. The Envisioning Center is located here on the Redmond campus and it’s been rebuilt from the ground up to incorporate the newest ideas and latest technologies. Today Microsoft announced its opening.

The facility encompasses scenarios at home, at work and places in between, and is inspired by our product teams, Microsoft Research and by the trends across the industry. I like to think of it as a concept car that allows us to share what it might be like to experience future technologies with visitors, get their feedback, tweak, remix and discuss. It’s all part of advancing the trends we think have the greatest potential.

As part of today’s opening, Microsoft put together a short video that gives a sense of what’s inside – and while none of these ideas are meant to be predictive about our products, they do highlight some of the key trends they are investing in, such as machine learning and NUI. They also give you a sense of where these technologies could lead us over the next five to ten years.

Over the course of the next few days you’ll learn more about some of the work Microsoft is doing to improve our understanding of how people interact with technology and some of the breakthroughs they have made. In the meantime, sit back and get a glimpse of Microsoft’s vision for the future.

PostPlanner For Facebook Is Now FREE Fro Everyone

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Thursday, Feb 28, 2013 marked the end of an era for Post Planner! On that day they cancelled all Pro accounts (at $4.95/mo.) and made it official…

Post Planner Pro is now FREE for everyone!

Yes, any page manager on Facebook can now use Post Planner to schedule and manage posts on ALL the pages they admin… for FREE. Yes, you heard that correctly:

free-post-scheduler

“on ALL the pages they admin… for FREE.” Are we insane to offer our once flagship product for FREE?

Reason 1: Facebook’s Scheduled Posts are Free

You probably know that back in June 2012 Facebook came out with their own scheduling app for fan pages. Like most things on Facebook, the app was offered for free to page admins.

wasted-time

The response to the app has been tepid at best. Most people tell me it’s a pain in the butt to use — and wastes more time than it saves.

For example, to schedule a post on 2 different pages, you have to navigate to each individual page and then make about 20 clicks to get a single post scheduled.

And then you can’t see all your scheduled posts (for different pages) in one place.

So if you want to see what’s planned for the next couple days — you have to go to each individual page again — and then click around the admin panel there.

Sux!

Nevertheless… the feature IS free. And free is a very compelling price — a price PostPlanner wants to compete with.

A World of Hurt

The reality is — it just pains us to know so many page managers are out there having to rely on Facebook’s scheduled posts to manage their future posting. Wouldn’t it be better if they could just use Post Planner to manage all their pages in one place?

Yes, it would.

And now they can… for the same price as Facebook’s scheduled posts… ie. FREE.

Facebook Is Changing Its News Feed Design : Check The Glimpse [Pictures]

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Two months ago, an Australian designer named Fred Nerby redesigned Facebook as a side project for himself and posted it to Behance. His design went nuclear. Nerby says at minimum it’s received 20 million views worldwide. 

Just twenty-four hours after his design went live, he says firms from around the world started reaching out to him. “I honest lost count after a couple of days,” Nerby tells us over email. “Things changed drastically for me and I got invited to spend time overseas talking to a large number of companies and creatives within the digital space, both agencies and more product/platform based companies in the California region (Facebook being one of them) and also Australia, which has been fantastic!”