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This collection includes short articles about conducting background checks, an online matchmaker for developing technologies, electronic whiteboards, powder room promotions, renting CIOs, and encrypting e-mail messages.

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Of RÉsumÉs and Rap Sheets

If you're launching or growing your company and feeling a little desperate for tech talent, you may be tempted to hire first and think later. Bad move. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, a huge number of candidates -- at all levels -- lie on their rÉsumÉs. More than half the companies surveyed by the organization in 1998 found that job candidates had falsified information about their previous employment.

John Putzier, president of FirStep Inc., a human-resources consulting firm in Prospect, Pa., says free-form job titles make matters even more confusing. "If I'm interviewing a 'guru,' is she a project manager or just a wacko?" Putzier says.

The worst-case scenario, he says, can lead to a negligent-hiring suit. "If someone has been convicted of assault, and you could have found that out and didn't, you could be putting the lives of employees, customers, and clients in danger," he warns.

Fortunately, there's a way to protect your company. First, make any job offer contingent on a background check. Then, to save time, hire a screening service to do the checking for you. Third-party services, like Laborchex, in Jackson, Miss., can turn such requests around in a matter of hours or a few days at most.

Laborchex, which took its service online a year ago, now plays Sherlock Holmes for 1,000 clients. For an average cost of $70 a candidate, Laborchex staffers poll the applicant's past employers and gather driving and criminal records, credit reports, and other publicly available information.

The snooping is all aboveboard, says Laborchex owner and president Rene Barbee. "We make sure we have a legal release from the applicant before we do the review," he says.

However, hiring an outsider to do your background checks is potentially perilous, says lawyer Julie Moore, president of Employment Practices Group, a training and consulting company in Windham, N.H. "A person can sue you for what your independent contractors do," she says.

So if you do hire a background checker, cover your you-know-what. Ask for references and a copy of the company's insurance policy. Make sure the company complies with the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. Finally, says Moore, get an indemnification contract. "You want to make sure the background-check firm will pay the defense costs and any settlement if it was their wrongdoing that brought on the suit," she says. --Jill Hecht Maxwell

Your Average Joe

It's no surprise that nontechnical professionals, such as photographers and real estate agents, consider the Web a valuable business tool. But what is surprising is that such Main Street proprietors are now buying up more domain names than their high-tech counterparts are -- further evidence that the Web is, well, everywhere.

Top First-Time Domain-Name Buyers, by Occupation
1. Photographers
2. Attorneys
3. Real estate agents
4. Church officers and clergy
5. Insurance agents
6. Internet service providers
7. Restaurateurs
8. Physicians and surgeons
9. Software professionals
10. Accountants

Source: Network Solutions Inc., January 2000

Virtual Swap Meet

At yet2.com, one company's mothballed technology can be another's moneymaking treasure.

Launched earlier this year, the Web site is intended to streamline the clunky process of researching, selling, buying, trading, and licensing technologies.

According to yet2.com, based in Cambridge, Mass., businesses spend more than $100 billion annually on research and development for technologies that, for one reason or another, they end up wanting to sell. Yet2.com's mission: turning that research into revenues.

The company provides businesses with a searchable online marketplace for their technologies. Successful deals often result from online connections made between buyers and sellers whose paths otherwise might never have crossed. In one early transaction, for instance, a home-appliances company was negotiating with an aerospace company.

Like any good matchmaker, yet2.com keeps interested parties anonymous until they agree to an introduction. Buyers and sellers then negotiate their own deal. Yet2.com's cut varies depending on the deal's bottom line but never exceeds $50,000. (Companies also pay an annual fee to use the site.)

The forum's first 200 registered users range from lone inventors to members of the Fortune 500, says Conrad Langenhagen, director of strategic planning. Small companies may benefit by finding research done by bigger companies, he says. And start-ups and soloists may be able to sell their own innovations online.

Thomas G. Field Jr., professor of law at Franklin Pierce Law Center, in Concord, N.H., however, says electronic searches will never replace the traditional system of human brokers.

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