Holding the Line: What It's Like to Be a Probation Officer

The true goal of the criminal justice system is to rehabilitate people convicted of crimes, not just to punish them for wrongdoing. The rehabilitation process is complex and one of the most important figures in a person's return to society is his or her probation or parole officer. There are tens of thousands of jobs in the United States economy for probation officers. Those who have the necessary skills are in high demand for this challenging but rewarding career.

What Probation Officers Do

image via Flickr by John Linwood

A probation officer's job is to manage the cases of several individuals who have recently been released from prison and need to maintain certain requirements to remain free. This includes finding steady employment and housing, remaining drug free, violating no other laws, and maintaining contact with a parole officer for updates. These and other tasks make this an ideal job for people who are detail oriented, have good interpersonal skills, and excellent written and oral communication skills.

Becoming a Probation Officer

Work as a probation officer is entry level and requires no prior experience. It does require college coursework, with preference for those with criminal justice degrees. The minimum age to become a probation officer in most states is 20, and an individual must be a legal resident of the United States before applying.

In addition to a college degree, probation officer candidates must undergo physical and psychological examination to determine fitness for service. This won't be as rigorous as exams for police officers, but it will require a clean bill of health from a physician and psychologist. Probation officers must not have a criminal background themselves.

Finding Work as a Probation Officer

Every state has different requirements for those applying for work as a probation officer, so interested parties should find out what their state demands by doing some research online. All state corrections agencies will have this information, and some states contract with independent organizations that offer parole services. As in any field, volunteer experience will improve an aspiring probation officer's resume. Ideal places to get relevant experience are in social services organizations.

The Day to Day of Probation Work

Probation officers have a variety of job responsibilities, from formal desk work to community outreach. Officers receive on-the-job training in everything from state parole law to drug testing procedures and conflict de-escalation tactics. Depending on the needs of the district, officers may receive weapons training and be issued firearms or non-lethal arms (pepper spray, Tasers, etc.) for visits to parolees in the field.

The schedule of a probation officer can be erratic, so it's definitely not a traditional 9-to-5 position. It also rarely involves a low-key work environment. Probation officers are expected to regularly visit parolees at their residences, which may include halfway houses and other monitored living facilities. Comfort interacting with a variety of people in a wide array of environments is essential.

Probation officers do the necessary work in the most crucial period of a struggling person's experience in the criminal justice system. With the right education, training, and experience, a probation officer can be the difference between an offender's rehabilitation and recidivism.

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Tips to Trade Forex Successfully

Forex Trading – Reaping Profits With Prudence

The scope of the forex market is immense, especially in the growing market of modern economies. There is an increasing need for different currencies by corporate and government organizations. With multinational projects, investments and industrialization there is a constant need for foreign currencies that will arise in the present and the near future. In this lies a scope of high income and assured profits when you purchase viable currencies and sell these at the right time. When we talk about selling an important aspect to note is the nature of market trends. The currency you have purchased will fetch you good profits when sold at the right time.

Understanding the Forex Trading

To start with forex trading, you have to understand the different aspects of this kind of trading. Along with theoretical knowledge, you also need to recognize technical nitty-gritty of forex market in order to play it smartly. In forex trading, risks are definitely there and a good trader is the one who knows how to surpass these risks. Your first aim should not be harping around for the ambiguous profit. Make sure you do not lose anything and in an attempt to do that even ‘zero-profit and zero-loss’ condition would be just fine.

Get Assisted by Professional Forex Advisors

For safe and at the same time meticulous trading, novice traders often rely upon the advisors. This is the right thing to do. When you have limited ideas and resources in your hand, it is always a big help to get erudite under the suggestion of an experienced advisor. The good thing is that different online forex platforms also support the traders with quality advisory services. They feed learning materials, current market news and trends, applications and effective trading advices.

Do not Hesitate to Install a Tool for Trading

There are advanced and user friendly tools available for you when you start accessing your accounts independently. Make the habit of checking the market trends on a regular basis; timely decisions in case of purchases and selling of your currency stocks are vital for a successful transaction. The nature of the forex market is such that investors can hold their stocks in currency trades for a significant time schedule or even choose to sell within a period of a week or two. In this your forex broker will play a role of constant guidance for you.

Work Smart not Hard

Investing in forex trading is such a sector where working hard does not have any meaning unless you are planning to play smart. In fact, smart traders do not have to work hard! There are several trading options for you and distinct tool are also available for the traders. Alter your options meticulously – never underestimate the thinking process.

Find a Good Trading Platform

To kick off your online forex trading venture, first you have to find a good trading platform. The trading platform should be reliable, where you can make seamless and secure money transfers. Moreover, good trading platforms feature numerous beneficial options to the users. For example, you may get the initial trading amount from the web platform, just after signing up with the website. You can also get bonus amounts, right after your first deposit. Hence, consider these options thoroughly before making a choice. PrimeTrade is such a trading platform which offers secured, seamless and user-friendly trading environment to the forex trading enthusiasts.

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The 7 important questions to ask before Investing in a Stock

There are many investors who do their home work before they start investing in a stock. Many stock market crashes has not only taught us to do due diligence of the stock but also to avoid the careless nature of selecting a stock. Before you start finding stocks with excellent fundamentals, you should first look at seven important questions to ask before investing in that stock.

Here are the questions:

1. Is the company free to adjust prices to inflation?
2. Is it likely that a new product or service will come along within the next 10 years and completely wipe out customers’ needs for this product or service?
3. Does the company have a strong moat? A moat is one or more of brand, exclusivity, size or price (for example, does the company have a strong, trusted and recognizable brand, does it have an identifiable consumer monopoly in its region or globally, is it large enough to overcome competitors or can it compete effectively on price for long periods of time?). What does the company do or have that protects it from competition and keeps its customers coming back?
4. If a new competitor came along with one year’s worth of unlimited funds to fight for the company’s customers, how vulnerable would the company’s future be?
5. If the company had to quit advertising or expanding for the next year, how badly would it be hurt? Could it recover after that year and bring customers back?
6. Does the company produce a product or service that has been used by its customers for at least the past 10 years?
7. Will this company’s products be used for the next 10 years?

If the company you’re looking at can make it past these questions, chances are you’re looking at a great company that just might make a terrific investment. On the other hand, if the company fails to pass through these questions, it’s probably best for you to ignore it and move on.

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Tips for Successful Day Trading

Day trading is the practice of speculation in securities, with frequent buying and selling of stocks. Day traders close their positions within a day before the market is closed. Most of these traders rely on price fluctuations, technical indicators and patterns. Some traders usually close their positions within few minutes, the technique is known as scalping.

This Infographic on Tips for successful day trading can help you become a successful day trader.

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Top 5 Technical Indicators That Will Make You Rich

Technical analysis is a vast subject with nearly limitless facets one can travel into, but the problem most people run into is that they do not even have a good grasp of what the basics are and how to use them. With a few simple techniques applied PROPERLY, you can do some serious damage in whatever market you are trading.

The top 5 technical indicators:

1. Horizontal Lines - Yes, you heard right, just boring old horizontal lines. These are the most overlooked, yet one of the most effective ways to trade in any market. The proper way to use horizontal lines is to see where price has bounced off of in the past. You should be able to see an obvious place to draw a horizontal line for this to work. If you are looking too hard, then it is not there. Once you see an obvious horizontal line then you have to wait until price interacts with that line and then trade accordingly. The most important part here, and with the other indicators, is that price has to interact with the horizontal line. This is the part that most people forget, they believe that since it is approaching a horizontal line of support or resistance that they should trade the other way. The truth is that you have to wait for price action at the horizontal line.

2. Round Numbers - These, are de facto horizontal lines. The only difference is that these occur in specific places (i.e. 1.0000, 1.0100, 1.0200 in a currency pair) these are nothing more than strong psychological levels for the people who are participating in the trading. After all traders are the only people who make price move, and whatever psychology is going on in their head, the successful trader must understand.

         

3. Trend Lines - These are much like horizontal lines, in the fact that they must jump out at you when you look at the chart, but instead of being horizontal, these are slanted, to follow the tops or bottoms of where price was at in the past. These lines are less trustworthy than the plain horizontal lines, but they still work wonders in specific situations. The situations that work the best is where price respects the lines over and over again, and it gives a price action indication when it returns to the line.

4. Moving averages - These are like trend lines, except that they ebb and flow with the price of the instrument. You will often see price respecting these lines and then blowing right through them. Your goal in using these lines is to use price action as an indicator of when price will be respecting the line and when it will not be. That way you can be on the winning side of the trade when price blows right through a moving average, when so many other traders took the opposite position and thought price was going to bounce off.

5. Fibonacci Retracement Lines - These lines are from the famous golden ratio that Fibonacci first derived. These are drawn from the top of a move all the way to the bottom of it. They try to predict where price will run into trouble and possibly reverse back into the original direction of the trend. When coupled with price action, this can be as reliable as any other indicator out there.

If you are still with me until here, you will have noticed I have brought up the topic of price action many times throughout this article. If you are unfamiliar with the term, price action is anything that tells us what price is currently doing, this is usually manifested by candlestick pattern reading but has many different facets to it as well that are beyond the scope of this article. If price is coming down to a horizontal support line and it drops down to it and then pushes back upwards, then which way is price moving? Most people trade right into support when price is moving down, and they have no indication that it will ever reverse, which is just dead wrong. Wait for the price action and always ask yourself "Where is the path of least resistance?"

It is important that we have an objective factor like price to tell us what is about to happen. Why is price objective? It is because it is not open to interpretation. If you ask 10 different traders to draw the trend-line you will likely get 10 different answers, but if you ask 10 different traders what the price is, you will get the exact same answer (if you have an accurate feed that is)

These indicators are all simple, but there is really no need to get any more complicated, if you use them with solid price action, only taking the best setups, you are almost certainly going to become a net-winning trader.

Author: Jeff Willette

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Tips for Opening Franchise

Do you want to start your own business and be an entrepreneur so that you can be your own boss but aren't interested in starting from scratch with a brand new company? If so, you may be thinking about starting a franchise, such as a Cold Stone franchise or something else along those lines. No matter what type of place you want to run, you know that the key is finding top talent when looking for employees and then retaining the best ones. A low turnover rate means that the business will run well consistently and that you will have to spend less time finding workers. So how do you do it? These tips can help. 

1. Communicate with your employees. 
When your workers are doing everything right, make sure that you tell them. When they are making mistakes, talk to them about that, as well. Not only does this help to make them better workers, but it gives them incentive to stay. Employees like to have a boss who communicates with them so that they know what they should be doing at all times. It makes them feel wanted and appreciated. If they feel ignored or overlooked, they may start searching for another job. 

2. Show them that they can move up. 
There are different levels for workers in any industry, whether they are just starting out, working as a supervisor for a certain shift, working in overall management or something along those lines. Make sure that your workers know that they can move up into these positions, gaining more authority and increased pay as they go. One of the biggest reasons people leave their jobs is that they feel like it's a dead end. They think they have to leave if they want to move up at all and improve their quality of life. If employees know that they can do that by staying with your company, that is far easier for them, and they will stay. 

3. Create a positive work environment. 
There are times when work is going to be stressful. You can't fully avoid that. However, you want to create a positive work environment so that people enjoy their jobs and so that they like the people they work with. This can help reduce stress, and one of the biggest reasons people stay in jobs is because they like their coworkers.

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