YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION!

So much depends on how others see you...especially when they're making decisions about your career and credit! For instance, whether you're thinking of making a career move in the near future or in the next few years, you need to pay attention to your online image. After all, potential employers do!

And Google searches aren't the only thing you have to be wary of. Banks and lenders only need to look at your credit score to form an opinion of you. The credit score article below can help you make sure you're taking the RIGHT steps to improve your score.

As always, please forward this issue to friends, family members, or coworkers to help them make favorable impressions with employers and lenders. And please call or e-mail if you need any personal assistance at this time!

Many people go online to look for love, friendship and camaraderie, advertising themselves to be found by the interested or like-minded. But be careful...employers are now jumping into the "Googling" game to see what you might have left out of your resume.

CareerBuilder.com recently released some findings that might make you rethink and retool your online image. This popular site for job hunters surveyed hiring managers, and found that 26% of them say they use Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo to research job applicants. Further, 12% say they use "social networking sites" to do the same. Most interestingly, a whopping 51% percent of the employers who did this type of diligence on job applicants admitted they did not hire the candidates based on what they found!

A potential employer doesn't need--or want--to know that a job applicant likes candlelit dinners and horseback riding at midnight. And while hobbies might provide a creative outlet that helps manage stress, finding out a candidate is the President and founding member of the National Toilet Paper Roll Artists Organization...well, it could cause a hiring manager to wonder if your interests and skills really match the job being interviewed for.

So be picky about what you post! Use pseudonyms if you need to interact with others who collect plastic spoons or engage in dog barking competitions. Don't put anything on a dating site that you wouldn't want your grandmother to read about you.

The Internet has become the online equivalent of that place where "everybody knows your name." All a potential employer or client has to do is "Google You." Depending on what they find, your chances of success could change...and you might never know why.

By Edward Jamison, one of the nation's leading authorities on credit and credit repair. For more information on Edward Jamison and his services, visit http://www.jamisonlawgroup.com/.

I have been forecasting for quite some time that Fair Isaac would eliminate the loophole that allows people to quickly increase their credit score by being added as an authorized user on someone else's established credit card...and sure enough, the time has come.

Marketers Made Loophole Too Prominent to Ignore

For the most part, this loophole has stayed under the radar until recently when a few companies came out of the woodwork with a marketable service that catered to consumers who will benefit from this practice. These companies recruit people from all over the country who have older credit cards with low debt ratios and offer them $100-$300 for each person they add to their credit card as an authorized user. Then, they market to consumers with limited credit histories and/or high revolving debt ratios and offer to have them added as an authorized user on a seasoned trade line for around $1500 per credit card and pocket the difference. As this practice became more popular, it wasn't long before the over exposure of this loophole shed light on the flaws of Fair Isaac's software.

New Software Will Eliminate the Loophole

Under pressure from lenders, Fair Isaac made the decision to invest the money into correcting this loophole. The correction is fairly simple: When Fair Isaac takes that snapshot of somebody's credit file, they are going to look at one extra field that they previously had not looked at when generating the score. That field is the one that says who is responsible for that account. If the scoring software sees that the person is the primary on the account, then it will score the report just like it had done before and no change to the credit score will take place between the old and the new scoring model. This will also hold true if it says that the account is a joint account. But if they see that the responsibility on that account is as an authorized user designation, they will completely ignore that entire account when calculating the credit score. It doesn't matter if the authorized user was added five years ago or yesterday; they will instantly lose the benefits created, if any, from that account being shown on their credit report.

Going Forward

Due to the fact that the scoring model is changing in a few months coupled with the fact that some lenders are even denying applications in some instances if an authorized user account is present, I would advise that people refrain from getting added as an authorized user immediately. The benefit will soon be gone, and taking advantage of that benefit before it leaves may leave a person at risk for having a loan denied by some lenders.

Yours To Counrt On

Dave Magua

EWM Realtors

Weston, Florida

wwww.westbrowardhomes.com