Here are examples of questions asked during an interview for a promotion, with tips for responding, and advice on how to make the best impression. How To Demonstrate Why You’re The Best Candidate When External Candidates Are Being Considered If a vertical position on the career ladder at your company opens, find out from your Human Resources department whether management plans to fill the position internally, or whether they plan to seek external candidates....

Initial claims for benefits increased to 353,000 in the week through Aug. 21, up 4,000 from the previous week’s revised level and roughly in line with what economists expected, according to seasonally adjusted data released Thursday by the Labor Department. These figures don’t reflect two pandemic-era programs that are set to expire on Sept. 6—programs that pay benefits to more people and for longer than they would typically. Weekly volumes are still about 100,000 higher than before the pandemic, though far smaller than the 750,000-900,000 range seen for much of the last year....

Here’s a quick look at the most significant economic indicators of the day and what they tell us. Initial Jobless Claims The number of people initiating claims for unemployment insurance fell for the second week, suggesting the uptick in job losses caused by the omicron surge in COVID-19 cases is subsiding. There were 238,000 first-time claims last week, down from 261,000 the previous week and a recent peak of 290,000, data from the Department of Labor showed....

Initial claims for unemployment benefits declined to 385,000 in the week through July 31, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised level, according to seasonally adjusted data released Thursday by the Labor Department. The decrease was about what economists expected, according to a consensus estimate of 386,049 cited by Moody’s Analytics. The drop draws claims closer to their pandemic-era low of 368,000, hit twice this summer. Progress toward the pre-pandemic level of unemployment benefit claims (210,000) has mostly stalled the last few months, with claims hovering around the 400,000 mark since mid-May....

Letters of Credit Letters of credit, including sight letters of credit, rely on documentation. To get paid, the beneficiary (often an exporter or service provider) needs to submit documents to specific banks. Those documents typically include the letter of credit itself, as well as additional documents proving that the exporter met their obligations to the buyer. Letters of credit are tools for payment, separate from a purchase or sales agreement. LCs help to ensure that the person on the other side of the deal performs specific actions....

What Is a Letter of Intent? An LOI is a starting point between two parties that are negotiating a business transaction, such as a sale or purchase, a merger, or a joint venture. A letter of intent clarifies the intentions of those involved in the deal and the major provisions that still must be agreed upon. Though some of the provisions of the letter may be binding, the overall letter is not intended to be binding to both parties....

What’s the Difference Between a Liability Deductible and a Self-Insured Retention? Deductibles are often used on general liability, auto liability, and workers’ compensation policies. SIRs are automatically included in many errors and omissions (professional liability) and commercial umbrella policies. The deductibles and SIRs found in liability policies purchased by small businesses are relatively small, such as $500, $1,500, or $5,000. Those found in policies purchased by big companies vary widely, from $1,000 to $100,000 or more....

To help pay for the spending in the American Families Plan and make the wealthy “pay their fair share,” Biden is proposing to raise taxes, including those on long-term capital gains, which affect sales of assets like stocks and real estate that an owner has held for at least a year. The president wants to raise the top federal rate for long-term gains, which would apply to households making at least $1 million, to 39....

Soft skills are the interpersonal attributes you need to succeed in the workplace. They are how you work with and relate to others—in other words, people skills. What Are Soft Skills? Soft skills are the skills that enable you to fit in at a workplace. They include your personality, attitude, flexibility, motivation, and manners. Soft skills are so important that they are often the reason employers decide whether to keep or promote an employee....

Learn more about these guaranteed payments, including how they are taxed. What Are LLC Guaranteed Payments? Guaranteed payments are paid to LLC members (owners) regardless of whether the company has generated net income during a given time period. They ensure the LLC members will get paid a certain minimal amount even during periods when the company is unprofitable.  How Do LLC Guaranteed Payments Work? Information about when and to whom guaranteed payments will be paid by a multimember LLC should be included in the company’s operating agreement....

There are no surefire signs that will unequivocally tell you what the market is going to do, but this isn’t to say that you can’t get a feeling for coming changes. You can get a good idea of upcoming trends by watching the flow of money into and out of the market. Yes, it’s a little like rolling the dice. But as you get better at it, the process becomes more reliable....

What Is Medical Necessity? Medical necessity can be defined as a medical procedure, service, or test required following a medical doctor’s diagnosis. U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services defines medical necessity as “health care services or supplies needed to diagnose or treat an illness, injury, condition, disease, or its symptoms and that meet accepted standards of medicine.” Medical Necessity and Your Insurance When it comes to getting paid for a health insurance claim, you need to make sure whatever services or procedures you have done will be covered....

We’ll cover the similarities and differences in detail below. How They Compare When deciding between a cashier’s check and a money order, it’s important to know the details about each, including where to get them and what fees you’ll pay. Maximum Issue A primary difference between money orders and cashier’s checks is the maximum dollar limit. Money orders typically have maximum limits around $700 or $1,000, although actual limits depend on the issuer....

If approved by Congress, President Joe Biden’s economic relief package would bring stimulus checks of up to $1,400 per taxpayer plus $1,400 per dependent to eligible households around the country. (For a single filer, the cut off would be $75,000 in annual income for the full payment and $100,000 to get anything.) While lawmakers have debated whether to make the payments more targeted, the survey found that recipients at all income levels were expecting to save more if this third round materializes, Bloomberg reported Thursday when it released the findings....

Geber86 / Getty Images Not only do Democrats want to increase the existing $2,000 per child tax credit to $3,000 to $3,600 (though with lower income limits for the extra money,) they would deliver the funds in a vastly different way: instead of claiming the benefit at tax time, parents would receive a monthly payment from the IRS ($250 a month for a child 6 to 17 and $300 for under 6)....

Although U.S. billionaires took a 7.8% hit to their collective holdings between February 2019 and March 2020 (when the pandemic first struck), with their wealth falling from $3.2 trillion to $2.95 trillion, they gained it back and then some over the next 13 months, according to an analysis of data from the Forbes real-time billionaire list by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive organization. The chart below shows just how small the setback was compared to the massive gains that followed....

The poll was conducted between October and December 2021, when the stock market was repeatedly hitting new highs. Since then, high inflation and gas prices, along with concerns that the economy will get worse, have sent stocks significantly lower and made saving for retirement even more challenging. The benchmark S&P 500 stock index is in a bear market, defined loosely as a drop of at least 20% from a stock or index’s recent peak, and many individual stocks are down even more....

How Payday Loans Work A payday loan is essentially an advance against your next paycheck. You give the payday lender your pay stub as proof of income and tell them how much you want to borrow. They give you a loan for that amount, which you’re expected to repay when you receive your paycheck, along with the payday lender’s fee. The repayment period is based on how frequently you get paid, i....

Before You Begin Most investors are anxious to get their money into the markets. They want a few hundred dollars to start changing their life. With that attitude, you might be heading toward failure. You should always start with no money and zero risk. Paper trading is a wonderful method to see how much you would have made (or lost). There isn’t any rush to skip this step, because the penny stock market will always be there waiting for you....

Inti St. Clair/Getty Images You don’t have to hop from real estate agent to real estate agent to end up causing commission disputes over who is the procuring cause. You might think that it doesn’t make a difference because the seller pays the commission, but buyers typically sign buyer-broker agreements, making the buyer responsible for payment of the commission. This is the case even though that fee is paid from the seller’s proceeds....