Question: I’m searching for a new job and hopefully a new career. I’d like to work with a dot-com and have been scouring the newspapers for ads. What other places can I go to job search?

Answer: If you’re looking for an opportunity with an Internet firm, I suggest checking out the Web. There are plenty of national online job sites like monster.com and hotjobs.com that let you search by type of job, industry and location.

Even if you want to stay in the same area, you should look over listings in other states, if only as a point of comparison on salaries and benefits. This is obviously limited when reading a local newspaper.

So check out national online newspapers as well. You can access a number of them via an affiliated online service called careerpath.com.

If you know the name of the company you’re interested in, you can go directly to its Web site and send your resume. I suggest trying to differentiate your resume to somehow grab attention from firms that are probably inundated with applications.

Question: With office space in Los Angeles getting more expensive and harder to find, I am leaning toward hiring home-based workers. My concern is managing productivity outside an office. Can you help?

Answer: Out of sight doesn’t necessary mean out of mind. In fact, use of telecommuters has been increasing at large and small companies alike. At this point, 7.4 million telecommuters are employed in this country by firms with less than 100 employees.

It’s been reported that those companies benefit through cost savings and increased productivity. Indeed, absenteeism is reduced because there are fewer reasons for telecommuters to miss work.

So much for your general concerns. Regarding the management of people outside the office, we must first redefine productivity as it relates to teleworkers.

It’s not just about doing more. It’s also about the quality of work, time taken to do the job, and ability to multitask.

You could make impromptu phone calls and e-mail requests to check up on your home-based employees, but that could send a signal of mistrust and hurt your ability to motivate them. So you’ll need to set up clear and detailed guidelines so each worker understands your expectations.

Question: About 18 months ago, our company decided to get into the 21st century by designing a Web site. The problem is that we designed it poorly and now need to upgrade or totally revamp it. What do you suggest?

Answer: Whichever way you go, set up a Web site that bolsters the image or brand you want for your company. You would never consider photocopying your company brochure. So why create a poorly designed Web site?

I don’t want to suggest that image is everything. I want to make it clear that image is everything. You must keep that in mind when developing and delivering your online message.

First, decide what your goal is in setting up the Internet site, because that will go a long way in determining its design. Here are a few guidelines:

– Clearly display contact information. Try to include every possible way someone can reach you e-mail, phone, fax, etc. You might want to post contact numbers at the bottom of every page along with your copyright notice. Or you can simply have a link for making contact.

– Sometimes more is just more. Don’t overdose your users with gobs of graphics or content that may be hard to decipher or even meaningless. Simple is often better.

Also consider the hardware and software constraints of your customers. Test your site using a relatively slow modem. Experiencing the frustration of trying to download your own home page might motivate you to redo the site.

– Identify what is most attractive to you when visiting a retail store or Web site. Keep in mind that human nature doesn’t change because the experience is virtual. However, while ads on television and radio passively expose customers to your product, on the Web you must provide them with an interactive experience that catches their attention quickly and effectively.

A few sites you might want to check out are onradio.com, rolandintl.com and sypzone.com.

Question: My company is probably reaching capacity as far as profitability goes. We could, however, increase our margins if we can save money on our advertising costs. Do you have any hints?

Answer: Saving money, whether it’s business or personal, can always boost your bottom line. So regardless of whether you’re a big company or a small one, cutting costs can really matter.

There are lots of ways to cut back on advertising costs. Here are a few tips:

– Piggyback your ad materials with other mailings, including invoices, reminder notices and thank-you notes.

– If you’re willing (and able) to wait until the last minute, you can sometimes pay less for ads by bidding on remaining space in newspapers and magazines.

– Faxing costs can be cut back if you eliminate a cover sheet, use the standard rather than fine mode, and wait until the rates go down to transmit.

– By setting up a system to collect customer comments, you can save money on market research. You will need to come up with a creative way of collecting these suggestions and adding the names and information to your database.

Lorraine Spurge is a personal finance advisor, author of “Money Clips: 365 Tips That Will Pay One Day at a Time,” and business news commentator. She can be reached at (818) 705-3740 or by e-mail at [email protected].