The 5 Questions You Should Ask an Interviewer

Trust me: it’s different now. In this economy, where unemployment is high and you have many more job seekers than jobs, you can’t afford to improvise on the interview. So yes, if you got called in to talk about a position, be psyched. But then knuckle down and do some prep work.

Find out as much as you can about the position you’re interviewing for, how the process will go, and who will be interviewing you. Research the people you’ll be talking to (use Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and real-life contacts) so you have common ground to discuss, and check out the company and the competition.

Wait, you’re not done yet. You still have to ace the interview. These five questions will pull you ahead of the pack:…

Love in the Time of Layoff: Bankers Are to 2007 as ________ Are to 2009

Last week we found ourselves on a two woman bar tour, consisting of just ourselves. We were flitting between two groups of guys, one group was at Spitzer’s and another across the street at ‘inoteca. After a glass of wine and some assorted cheeses at ‘inoteca, we would dash to Spitzer’s to chow on truffle mac and cheese with some Aussies. Had we not been so amused by our own antics, we would have gone home pleading a ‘breakfast meeting,’ well that and the cutie in a suit stationed in the doorway of Spitzer’s, who had been frantically blackberrying for the better part of an hour. So stoic was his demeanor that we just had to dub him the Downtown Centurion. One of us and we won’t say who (we do write for Dating a Banker Anonymous) was about to make her fourth entrance of the night when the Downtown Centurion deigned to speak to her. She had taken to switching up her hair and taking off her leather jacket that was “totally giving her street cred” every time she switched locations.

Downtown Centurion: You forgot to take your hair down.

DABA Girl (smooth): Huh?

Downtown Centurion (eyes still on BlackBerry): You’ve been taking your hair down and putting your jacket on every time, you come in. Don’t mess up your flow now. Although personally, I’d be interested in seeing the jacket off and hair down combo, but maybe you’re saving that for later?…

Recession Briefing 6.4

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

Bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are now taking place at a rate of 6,000 per day, and are on pace to reach 1.5 million this year. (USA Today)

The former chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, said Thursday that the government has lost credibility on economic matters and is largely to blame for allowing the nation’s biggest banks to become “too big to fail.” (Huffington Post)

New York has begun renting vacant luxury apartments to house the city’s growing homeless population. “Granite countertops. Terraces. Marble bathrooms. Walk-in closets.” (New York Daily News)

Screwed: Possibly 1,070 in Florida

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.

Today’s partial total: 4,350

In Florida, Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, may lay off 1,070 employees as part of budget cuts. Over the next three years, France Televisions will pare back 900 jobs. … The Capital Group Companies based in Los Angeles will cut 820 employees in the next two weeks. … Philips Products will close its doors, putting 600 people in Elkhart, Indiana, out of work. Lloyds Banking Group in London will shed 530 jobs. … Autodesk, on the heels of a first quarter loss, will eliminate 430 jobs…

Keeping Healthcare Costs Down

The cost of medical care can be astonishing in the best of times. In a down economy you feel the pain even more—especially as policies change. For example, doctors may require you to pay up-front for services, then collect from your insurance company. Or, they may charge you for the remainder of their fees not fully covered by insurance. Then there are the health insurance companies, which are more prone to question, delay or deny insurance coverage for treatments.

You don’t have to feel helpless in the face of these challenges. Armed with some knowledge and the willingness to argue for your rights, you can keep those costs from killing you.

Be proactive: Before having a procedure, get preauthorization or clearance from the insurance company. This way you know what to expect in terms of coverage and payment responsibility.

Know your rights: Say you see an in-network surgeon at an in-network hospital, but have an out-of-network anesthesiologist. Often insurance companies will reject or limit coverage, claiming that you did not use an in-network provider…

Life on the Edge—of the City

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness…

–From “Here is New York” by E.B. White

Driving through the parkland north of New York City and heading up the Taconic Parkway sets our current economic troubles in geologic perspective. Boulders the size of houses and trees—maples and pines and elms, some of them a hundred years old— sit imperiously as traffic flows by. The to-ings and fro-ings of the drivers and the speed and mania of commutation ebb and flow with the rising and falling of dollars to be gotten in Gotham.

My friend Steve is one person who flowed and is now ebbed, thanks to the loss of his job this spring. Over the years, he had commuted in from parts of Westchester, making his way progressively north until he was grinding it out with a car ride to a train ride. The job allowed him to support a growing family and still have access to woods and alone time.

“I never thought once about moving into the City,” says Steve…

Media Just Wants to Be Free

You’ve slashed your entertainment budget to the bone. No more Friday night movies for you and you’re cutting off the digital cable. But you still need your Mad Men fix and you don’t want to miss the next Batman blockbuster. Thanks to the abundance of the Internet, you can scrap that entertainment budget altogether and go all-free-all-the-time. We’ve rounded up several sources that will keep your media habits intact without burning a hole in your wallet.

TV & Movies

Hulu.com – Why it’s great: New shows, old shows, 144 movies and trailers. The hitch: The new shows expire and the movies are cut with ads.

YouTube.com – Now home to more than just viral videos of six-year-olds talking about Darth Vader, YouTube has a movies and a television section from “old media.”

Freemooviesonline.com – If you’re a fan of the good, the bad and the extra-cheesy this website is for you. Uninterrupted streaming video of all the rubber-suited monsters and spaghetti westerns you could want.

Guba.com – This site has a good selection of streaming movies, especially anime and foreign films of the Asian persuasion. However, like most of the Internet, this site is 90% porn by volume…

Screwed: 494 at Deere & Co.

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.

Deere & Co. will “temporarily” lay off 494 at an Iowa plant, with more firings to come…the city of Sacramento sent layoff notices to 168 employees this week… Waukesha Engine in Wisconsin is cutting 113 employees at the end of this week…Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut will ax 80 staffers… the Alameda County Court system will cut at least 70 jobs…

Recession Briefing 6.3

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

With American college costs rising, and the American dollar strong against the Canadian currency, more and more high school students are looking to Canadian universities for their college education. (New York Times/The Choice)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is feeling the effects of the recession first-hand: Having moved his family to Washington, he has found himself unable to sell the family’s suburban home in New York — and now is renting it out instead. (Associated Press)

High-rolling broker to waiter: Some former Wall Street employees, highly trained and accustomed to comfortable salaries, are finding themselves forced to accept low-wage work. (Wall Street Journal)

You Say “Recession,” I Say “Spad”

In American English, we have a handful of words for the recession: downturn, slump, bust, economic collapse, financial crisis. We talk about “hard times” and “tough times.” Here at Recessionwire, we’ve used all those synonyms to death. So we decided to look beyond our borders at how our friends around the world refer to the recession. (And not so we can look smart at cocktail parties.) (Okay, maybe a little bit.) We think they sound best thrown randomly into the middle of an English sentence, using a thick, “authentic” accent…