Helene went straight home and waited by phone all day. The phone never rang.

As week drew to a close, Helene began to get nervous. She hadn't heard from HR. She wondered what had happened. She convinced herself that everything was fine, that HR department must have been swamped. She wasn't exactly sure what would be more important than calling and welcoming her onboard, but she knew HR department had a good reason. After all, Helene was most qualified candidate; hiring manager told her so.

Days went by and still Helene heard nothing. Confused by situation, she anxiously glanced through Sunday morning classifieds wondering what had gone wrong.

Unfortunately, this happens to many jobseekers. They are offered position by interviewer and they never hear from HR or it takes months before a firm offer is made.

But there are steps that you can take as a jobseeker to minimize your risk of being strung along by an employer.

An easy and often neglected step is to find out what comes next after each interview. Establishing next step gives you some control over hiring process, and helps avoid guessing game. Make it a point to leave each interview with a clear understanding of what you are supposed to do and what hiring manager is supposed to do.

We've all heard old saying "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish". It never ceases to amaze me that someone will join an income opportunity program, but not effectively promote it and scout out new customers. Most people join programs of this type to generate income, and they pay a monthly fee to be involved.

They first might try all free advertising available, and that may or may not generate some income. However, they are using "tried and true", but very "tired" ads supplied by affiliate, and wonder why they don't do better.

Then they try some paid ads using same tired ad copy in newsletters, ezines and on web sites with similar results. At this point, they might do one of two things, and sometimes both. The first is they discount this type of advertising as not being effective, and/or quit affiliate program. After a program gets saturated, thousands of people have used these affiliate supplied ads, and potential customers have seen them a "jillion" times. Once an ad gets "tired", it is a waste of time and money to continue using it.

However, many people rely on ezine advertising to sell these affiliate programs that others are failing at, and do very well. So what are they doing to be successful?

They do not just post an ad, and wait for dollars to arrive in their mailbox. They have not fallen into what is referred to as "the earn while you sleep" trap. You know, you throw up a few ads on web, and at night people all over world are sending you their hard earned money. They realize that like anything else, if they are to succeed, they have to work at it.

The first thing they do is write some original ad copy, and back it up with their own web site. With cost of registering a site AND a full year of web hosting for about $35, (see http://bitshack.com) which is probably less than their monthly fee to affiliate program, this is a must.