Careful Who Your Friends Are!!!

More and more of our clients are no longer resting with the 3 references that we conduct on our candidates behalf. We are getting word that many of our clients are actually searching online for potential employee's Myspace home page to learn more about their interests and the friends that they associate with. Some have even gone as far as informing us that they may call names from their Myspace page to obtain informal references.

With that being said, how is a candidate to respond to this new method of background checking.

One possible solution is to delete friends that you are concerned with. While it may not sit well to weed through friends that you deem "undesirable", when it comes to finding employment in a tough, competitive marketplace, you may need to make some hard decisions.

As this is a new techique, I would love to hear from you as to your thoughts and recommendations to deal with this new reality.

Salary Guide Accounting Silicon Valley

Real Time Salary Survey. We are in the process of compiling a salary survey . One of the ways that we thought we could be different was by taking several of our recent placements and providing compensation information. Our thought is that it would be invaluable to our clients and prospects as well as to candidates, to see real-time salary information rather than data that is sometimes a year or more old. Let me know your thoughts. See below for the last five placeement we completed in May in Silicon Valley.


Salary $180,000.00
Bonus 8-15%
Stock 70,000 shares
Size of Firm 50M
Job title Controller
Years of experience required 10-15 years

Salary $ 78,000.00
Bonus discretionary
Stock 2,500 shares
Size of Firm 1B
Job title IT Auditor
Years of experience required 2-4 years

Salary $ 150,000.00
Bonus 20%
Stock 90,000
Size of Firm 20M
Job title Corporate Controller
Years of experience required 8-10 years


Salary $ 90,000.00
Bonus 10%
Stock 2500
Size of Firm 900M
Job title Sr. Financial Analyst
Years of experience required 5-7 years

Salary $ 55,000.00
Bonus 5-7%
Stock 0
Size of Firm 25M
Job title Staff Accountant
Years of experience required 3-7 years