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Semtech Corp. said Wednesday that it received a federal subpoena relating to its stock options, and Monster Worldwide Inc. said it anticipates a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe as the scandal over executive option grants continued to grow.
Semtech, a maker of semiconductors for cellular phones, said today it received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York. The company, which is based in Camarillo, Calif., also said two shareholder lawsuits were filed in California state court.
Monster, which operates the Monster.com job-listing service, said it is preserving all documents related to stock-option grants in anticipation of an SEC investigation. This month, Monster launched an internal company probe and received a federal subpoena.
At least 49 companies are facing federal or internal investigations for possible stock-option manipulation. As the number has grown in recent weeks, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed against the companies. At least 15 executives at the affected companies have lost their jobs.
The issue is whether executives illegally backdated the grants, increasing the value of the options by timing them at low points, thus boosting the payout.
On Capitol Hill, more lawmakers expressed interest in the stock-options investigations. At a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee on pension accounting, Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., said he was "very disappointed by the Enron-type shenanigans that are going on.
"This is wrong and must be stopped," said Enzi, who is also chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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In terms of my career, I've had an easy life. To start with, I have the 'right' accent. You wouldn't believe the number of times people have assumed I'm trustworthy and intelligent just because of the way I speak. One former employer actually admitted being swayed by my accent within a minute of the start of my interview. My gender (male, if you hadn't guessed) and skin colour (white) certainly helps with some employers too. Hard to believe it's the 21st century, isn't it?
So although I've done alright for myself, lots of it is down to being on the lucky side of people's prejudices. And on finding gullible editors. (3-1 to me!) Even so, I've had eight 'proper' jobs along the way, so I've learned a great deal about the career process. Here are my top tips for getting a job.
Job hunting
People make the same mistakes when searching for work as they do when looking for a partner. The more difficulty they're having, the less motivated they are to search. But it's all about numbers! If you're having trouble getting a job, you should apply for more, not less. You could:
sign up to every local recruitment consultancy and to Web-based ones too;
make sure the consultants don't forget you; contact them once a week to ask if any opportunities have come up;
look in local papers for job adverts;
send letters or emails, along with your CV, to any companies you think you might want to work for; and
walk in to companies and ask them if work is available.
Do your research
Before you apply to a company, you should do your research:
use the Web to learn everything you can about what your potential employer does and what their goals are;
if you're applying for an advertised post, make sure you understand what's required of the candidate. If you don't, call and ask; and
if you don't have some of the experience or qualifications an employer is looking for, give them a call to ask if they'll still consider your application. You might say that, although you don't have all the experience or qualifications they're looking for, you're highly motivated and very keen. You could then highlight some of the qualities that you do have that are in the job description.
The CV
The problem here is that you could be the ideal candidate for a job, yet be terrible at writing CVs. To write a decent CV you need good English skills, sales skills (as you're selling yourself) and knowledge of good CV structure and style. It doesn't matter if you're a great lawyer, a hard-working manual labourer or a knowledgeable marine biologist, you won't necessarily have all three of these CV-writing skills. Therefore there's potentially a lot to learn, but here are some tips to get you started:
if any of your friends are good at getting jobs, ask them if you can see their CVs. A search online for 'CV examples' might prove useful too;
tailor your CV to each individual company you're applying to by highlighting relevant experience only. For example, if you have a programming background, but you want to get into writing technical manuals for an IT company, don't just list the programming projects you've done. Instead, draw their attention to any guidance notes you've written along the way;
your CV doesn't have to be long. In fact, potential employers usually prefer you to get to the point. Don't take three sentences to say one thing; that's getting dangerously close to bureaucratic English;
in the employment history section, consider what's relevant to your potential employer only. Don't get bogged down in the day-to-day details unless the job you're applying for involves the same tasks. Usually one or two lines summarising the company and your role will do;
after this summary, say what you have achieved that's relevant to your future employer. This might be providing a good level of service to your customers, learning a new skill, or that you've simply gained a professional attitude;
if none of your previous roles are directly related to the post you're applying for, you could highlight your relevant knowledge and attributes in a 'core skills' box above your employment history. Only include skills that are relevant to the potential employer. This might be that you're hard working, or that you have a good knowledge of Microsoft Office;
people worry too much about the little things on their CV, like the fact they start too many sentences with 'I am...' or 'I also am...' It might read better if you can rewrite some of these sentences, but what matters more is that each sentence is relevant to your potential employer;
people also worry too much about hobbies. To me, hobbies are simply a talking points for the interview. One line listing three or four things you like doing in your spare time will suffice, e.g. I like reading, tennis, shopping and watching football; and
ask friends and family to read over your CV and offer suggestions.
The cover letter
When applying direct to companies, as opposed to through recruitment consultancies, you'll usually need to send a cover letter (or cover email) to go with your CV. Use the cover letter to grab their attention: you want to engage them to look at your CV and get you in for an interview. In the letter:
tell them the post you're applying for;
explain a bit about yourself and your background, making sure that every point is relevant to the post;
mention something about their company that you like which has attracted you to the role; and
don't bore them. It need only be two or three short paragraphs.
Interview
Like writing CVs, being good at interviews is usually a completely different skill to the skills required in the job. This is because most interviewers aren't properly trained to conduct interviews, so they don't know how to learn about you properly. I find that doing well in an interview generally only proves that you're good at interviews. However, that won't stop them hiring you! Here are some tips:
the quicker you and the interviewer are relaxed the better, so break the ice with a joke. It doesn't even have to be funny to relieve some tension. It could be about your journey, e.g. "It felt like the traffic was moving backwards", or about the area: e.g. if it's posh and beautiful, say: "I was expecting something a bit more upmarket"...Like I said, it doesn't even have to be funny;
try to think of the interview as more like a conversation. I know it's not easy, but once you've broken the ice with your very droll joke, the interviewer will become less Jeremy Paxman and more Michael Parkinson;
think about the sorts of questions they're likely to ask about your CV and your relevant knowledge. Prepare answers that will highlight the skills they are looking for;
it's alright to be nervous; interviewers expect this; and
interviews take practice. Everyone gets turned down for roles, so don't worry about it. You will get a job! It's just a numbers game.
Negotiating your contract
People are scared to negotiate, because they don't want to offend their potential employer, but if they've made an offer then they're interested in you! The worst they can do is say: "Sorry, we can't increase the offer".
offers usually arrive by letter, or they tell you direct over the phone or in a second interview. When you get one, don't forget to add up the value of other benefits, such as the pension scheme and medical insurance; and
in three out of my last four jobs, I negotiated a higher salary simply by saying that I was expecting, say, '2,000 more, or by saying that their offer is less than my previous salary. It's perfectly OK to look and sound a little disappointed at the offer, but don't go over the top!Stand out from the crowd
What works for me is I like to take little gambles to stand out from the rest. For example, when I applied to The Motley Fool, I thought that to stand out for a company like this, I'd write my cover email in a more conversational way than a 'normal' formal letter. I wanted to sell my technical background and give the impression of someone with a reasonable command of English, whilst also showing that I'd grasped the overall tone of the website...I don't know if it worked or not; my editor will probably now tell me I was the best of a bad bunch. He's always trying to score points! (3-2)

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New research from OECD suggests shows that Britain actually has the highest employment rate of the G8 countries, bettering that of France, Canada, Japan, Italy, Germany, the USA and Russia.
According to the report, Britain's employment rate stands at around 72%, and it also has the second best 'inactivity' record. This should come as no surprise to Britain, which as we all know, is a country that lives to work and works to live.
'Work' must be considered differently to 'employment'. 'Employment' implies the state of having a job, with sufficient (or nearly sufficient) income to survive on without significant state welfare. 'Work' implies the actual act of working: the hours, the traveling, time management, orders from the boss and so on. Britain is employed, that much is evident from the research, but it also works hard, much harder than it gives itself credit.
Overwork
While a strong work ethic is usually healthy, it becomes counter-productive when it starts to take over: work is done to enable living, but it is not a substitute for living. People usually separate work from the rest of their lives in the same way that sleep is discounted from your usual life description, but even that distinction becomes hard when a person spends more of their awake life either going to, coming from or at work than they do 'living'. The description therefore needs a rethink: work is life, or equally applicable, life is work.
'Work' can be split roughly into two categories. The first is necessary work, that which a person does to have enough money to eat, travel, watch tv etc. The other is compulsive work. In this case, the worker pursues a career in search of some greater goal, or just merely for the sake of it; the everyday requirements of living are not an immediate problem, but the stresses, successes and developments of their job are entirely distracting. The necessary worker works purely to make money to exist on, with work merely being a necessary evil to that end, a kind of penance that is paid to earn the right to exist.
The compulsive worker also works for money (usually larger sums than the necessary worker) but is also driven by abstract aspirations, such as career success, power, authority, the sensation of being important etc. In either case, work is the main ethic of the day, be it a voluntary undertaking or a grudging sigh before entering the office for another day that was just like yesterday but slightly closer to payday.
All Work and No Play'
Work comes first in a modern Brit's life, with no siestas or July 4th to get in the way, and in this way defines our existence. The question 'what do you do' does not simply mean 'where do you work' but 'what kind of person are you? Are you winning life, or have you been relegated to the back of the pack? Is it ok for me to be seen talking to you?' What we used to call 'life' is squeezed in between work and sleep like mortar around a brick; you do not adapt your work schedule to sort out your family, you mold your family to fit your more important work-life.
This way, the kids are picked up by their unemployed uncle on Tuesdays, and the ageing parents are booked for non-consecutive Sundays. Shopping is squeezed into the lunch break, social life remains on hiatus until 6 (with the exception of covertly-sent emails, inaudibly whispered monologues and for the truly reckless, msn messenger) and bodily functions are best left until you get home.
With everyone bending daily to the work-ethic, it is ironic that so many people would rather do without it. Bank holidays are strategically placed to catch those stressed workers just before they turn crazy and show up to work with a rifle. Any excuse for a day off, any excuse' the kindest mercy is a bout of some non-threatening disease for a couple of days, or the death of a distant and barely acknowledged relative, anything to wrest a day 'off' from work. Really, it should be called a day 'on', that is, a day when you can actually 'log on' to life; time spent at work is time when your life is 'logged off', and the simple screensaver displays its lonely message: '--- will be back soon'
Busy Busy
There is no doubt that much of Britain's present power comes from its busy, busy workers. History clearly shows the economic value of a hard day's work, voluntary or otherwise. In terms of economic success for their organisers, Soviet five-year plans, Chinese sweatshops and even the Slave Trade are all brilliant methods that bring results for those holding the whip: work works. However, as these examples show, sometimes it is better to ease off from the work-ethic, but then it is not always easy to do so: life for the necessary worker is as impossible as that of a prisoner of Stalin's gulags, with the loaded gun instead replaced by hard, economic need. But if you must work to live, why kill yourself working?
No matter how many posters there are on the workplace wall, and no matter how loud your shirt or sniggeringly humorous your computer backdrop, work is no substitute for life. That is why we describe people who think nothing but work as having no life, that is, no thoughts, opinions, desires, interests or even needs outside those of 'The Job.' Trying to create a kind of pseudo-life around work doesn't work either; you may be eating, but a 'business lunch' is still work. No matter how well the day is going, wouldn't you rather be somewhere else?
The answer to reclaiming 'life' does not lie in banishing work, though; there is some dignity in labour. The answer lies in the approach. Use your time off. Conserve your energy so that when you finish for the day, you do not just get home, pass out and wake up in time to leave again. Do not dismiss dreams and opinions as 'silly'. If wanting to go to Australia or learning to play the harpsichord or playing 'it' with your kids is silly, then what do you call spending eight to nine hours a day watching the clock, fantasizing about your lunch and training yourself to recognize the sound of the boss' footsteps? Remember to live. There has been a spate of publications in recent years listing things to do and see in your lifetime, '1001 places to see before you die', '101 things to do before you're thirty', and so on. 'Work' is not one of them.
Daniel Wallis
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