---

[ FAST FACTS HAWAII ]

---

BACK TO TOP
|

NATIONAL
Interviewing skills will help land a job

If you're unemployed, or hunting a new position, you might not realize that your interviewing skills are just as important as the data on your resume and the professional experience you've accumulated.

Jeff Harvey, staffing director at pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC, offers a few tips:

» Use the Internet. With so much data online these days about companies -- especially the publicly traded ones -- most employers see no reason you'd walk into the interview without a very good idea of what the organization makes, does or sells.

» Is your work experience sort of all over the map? If so, take advantage. Employers like a candidate with skills that range beyond just the particular position you're there to pursue.

» Do you speak a second or third language? Willing to move to Bangladesh? Know a company's activities or future interest in moving outside the United States and you might find your desirability increases dramatically.

» Team skills are always attractive. "Employees who have team-based experience know how to follow and lead," Harvey said. "They are flexible workers."

» Personality matters. If you don't have any, chances are good the company won't have you.

Work attire can affect your image

Have you reviewed your work wardrobe lately? Might be a good idea.

In a recent poll, 81 percent of workers said a person's work attire affects one's professional image and nearly half, 46 percent, said clothing significantly affects how someone is perceived on the job. The survey involved 972 people 18 and older in professional work environments. It was conducted for Menlo Park, Calif.-based OfficeTeam, a temporary staffing firm for administrative professionals.

'Password' is easy code to crack

Our computer-based world is now a maze of passwords, designed to protect our sensitive data from thieves and snoops. But are we safe?

The folks at Fiberlink Communications Corp., a Blue Bell, Pa.-based maker of software and other high-tech products, conducted a recent password-cracking experiment. With an eight-character password on a standard 95-character keyboard, there are quite a few possible combinations: 6,634,204,312,890,625 to be exact, according to Fiberlink.

The company then tested a standard computer's calculative prowess against our common habit of using simple words as passcodes.

So, for the example, using the word "password" as the password, a standard desktop computer took less than a second to determine this, when assembling all the different letter combinations. Adding the single digit 1 to the password required 3 seconds. Typing "password" with an asterisk in the middle took the computer 38 seconds to decipher.

And the combination that was not cracked, after the machine was left to compute for more than 10 minutes? "p@$$w0rd"