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The latest — and possibly most narrowly focused — is Just Drinks, a job board for people looking for work in the beverage industry.

We aren’t just talking about bartenders here — the site includes everything from sales and marketing to manufacturing to finance and HR. The common thread is all the jobs are for companies that make and sell wine, beer and other beverages.

Odds are you won’t have use for this particular site, but it’s appearance is representative of the state of online job boards: More and more recruiting sites pop up every day, many catered to a niche group, giving recruiters more options for attracting talent.

When you’ve got a job to fill, look to see if there are any applicable niche boards out there.

Candidates are often more honest in their LinkedIn profiles than in the resumes they send employers.

At least that’s what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said at the Social Recruiting Summit held recently at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

His reasoning: Resumes are read only by a few people in a company, who know nothing about the candidate. On the other hand, candidates might have hundreds of LinkedIn connections, and in theory, know or have worked with all of them.

Reid’s point: It’s pretty hard to lie publicly in front of current or former colleagues.

Of course, LinkedIn profiles aren’t really replacements for resumes — most users don’t put the same detail into a profile, and there aren’t many versions tailored to different types of positions.

But some experts recommend finding a candidate’s profile to quickly make sure it matches the info the candidate sent to you.

Not putting the proper care into building the page could cost a company some qualified candidates — after all, no matter how applicants hear about a job, they’ll almost always head to the company’s Web site before doing anything.

Here are four big mistakes many companies make on their Careers Web page, according to CTO Joe Rotella, speaking at the 2009 Society for Human Resources Management conference in New Orleans:

1. Using a generic e-mail address to collect applications — People want to talk to people, Rotella says. It looks better to the candidate if the company lists the HR manager or a recruiter’s address instead of “hr@company.com.”
2. Hiding the important information — The most useful or most interesting information should appear on a page before the user has to scroll. Keeping the pages arranged correctly involves working with IT to test the site on different browsers and configurations.
3. Ignoring what the audiences wants – The key question when making any decision about the site should be, “What does the target audience want to see.”
4. Dumping all the information into an FAQ section – Rotella calls FAQs the “junk drawer of the Web.” All relevant info should have already appeared in other sections, he said.

More than 64% of employers expect staffing levels to remain steady in this year’s second quarter, according to a recent CareerBuilder survey. Just 14% said they plan on adding staff. Another 14% will reduce the number of employees, and 7% aren’t sure.

As for 2009 so far:

• 13% of employers increased headcount in the first quarter
• 16% reduced headcount, and
• 60% saw no change.

Companies’ salary plans for this quarter follow a similar pattern:

• 46% expect compensation to stay flat
• 29% expect to give raises averaging from 1% to 3%
• 12% expect raises to range from 4% to 10%
• 1% will give raises greater than 10%, and
• 5% expect compensation to decrease.

Last week, U.S. Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) told 652 employers their I-9 forms were being audited. That’s more than the number of audits ICE conducted in the entire previous fiscal year. In addition to I-9s, many of the audits will also include subpoenas for EINs, payroll records and correspondences with the Social Security Administration regarding no-match letters.

The nationwide inspection follows an April announcement that ICE planned to focus the majority of its resources on prosecuting employers who hire illegal immigrants.

The list of companies being audited hasn’t been released. ICE has described the effort as a “first step,” meaning there will likely be more mass inspections in the near future.

What should HR managers do if they get a Notice of Inspection (NOI) from the feds?

Preparation is key. Employers must act quickly — the NOIs generally require HR to turn over all I-9s within three business days.

If I-9 records don’t pass muster with ICE, the agency could launch a criminal investigation. But even if there are no criminal charges, employers could face civil fines for faulty record-keeping.

An audit doesn’t always mean charges or fines are coming. After receiving an NOI, employers should:

• Respond quickly, even if it’s to ask ICE for a time extension
• Choose one point person to correspond with ICE — that will avoid any inconsistencies in the information given
• Notify all managers and employees who deal with I-9s and related documents
• Secure all applicable records — any missing documents could be seen as an attempt to destroy evidence or sabotage the investigation, and
• Consider conducting their own internal audit.

A new study from no less than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and powerhouse IBM finds that workers who maintain online connections to their bosses produce more than those who don’t.

The surprise finding: Not only were people who frequently communicated online with their manager more productive, but those who avoided their managers online were much less productive.

The researchers (two of them from MIT’s Sloan School of Management) analyzed a wide range of electronic communication channels, including e-mail, buddy lists and social networking activity of 2,600 workers over 12 months to come up with their conclusions.

Employees who maintained constant electronic communications averaged an increase in revenue of $588 per month over the average; the luddites who didn’t produced $98 per month less than the average.

The researchers concluded that the under-performers probably felt pulled in too many directions with no clear leadership or direction.

As the modern workforce becomes more geographically dispersed it’s become a challenge for workers and managers to stay connected and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Using electronic tools to forge stronger bonds and communicate tasks, objectives and feedback seems to be a key way for companies to keep everyone connected and productive.

To read the details of the MIT/IBM study, visit here.

Shelley Sawers, wife of the new head of the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6, opened a Facebook account and posted photographs of her family, the location of their home and the identities of several close family friends and associates.

Her husband must’ve been pretty surprised to learn his wife had posted such personal information (as well as pictures of him in his swim trunks) on a social networking site, given that MI6 employees are bound by strict secrecy guidelines.

Mrs. Sawers’ family will most-likely need to be moved and her children may now need extra protection.

The move was not only an embarrassment for her husband, but the British government, which just announced its new “strategy for cyber security,” a cross-government program to address the UK’s cyber security issues.

You may not be head of the Secret Intelligence Service, but how important do you think it is to keep personal information or pictures off social networking sites?

Don’t ask people to e-mail you.

Apparently, spammers have been trolling Twitter to locate fresh e-mail addresses to add to their lists. The common strategy is to use a program that searches the site for phrases like “E-mail me at” or “Contact me at” and automatically copies the address that follows.

Experts recommend keeping e-mail addresses out of Twitter posts. In a post about an open position, for example, instead of giving an e-mail address to send resumes, give readers a link to a listing on a job board or your company’s site.

One in five companies have experienced insider sabotage or security fraud by a member of the IT staff, according to a new survey of 400 IT administrators by CyberArk. Of those companies, 36% say the IT employee delivered privileged information to a competitor.

Overall, 33% of IT workers admit they’ve used their administration rights to access confidential information, such as HR records, customer databases and layoff lists.

To make sure your business isn’t the victim of sabotage or theft, here are some tips experts recommend:

• Perform reference/background checks — Checking applicants’ history is one way to keep out IT staffers who might abuse their access privileges.
• Make sure the rules are clear — IT employees can be more likely to violate policies than other employees because they have a better idea of how to get around technology controls. That’s why it’s important to have rules about who can access what and discipline people who break them.
• Restrict access — Employees should only be able to view data that they need for their jobs.
• Change passwords — Passwords should be changed regularly and be complex enough to stay unpredictable. That’ll reduce the likelihood of unauthorized employees (or even ex-employees) accessing things they shouldn’t.