Every Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week.

Sprinklr, a social media management platform for businesses, raised $5 million in its latest round of funding, underscoring the growing emphasis companies are placing on social media. This news follows the massive acquisition of Sprinklr competitor Radian6 by Salesforce.com for $326 million. What factors drive this focus?

The career search isn't just for the unemployed, and in a recent column, Paradigm Staffing founding partner Lindsay Olson offered five tips for job-hunting when you're employed. While you'll probably want to do the majority of your research from the privacy of your home or another out-of-office location, these strategies will hopefully help you land your next position.

Move over, Apple and Google: Microsoft has its mojo back. In a column earlier this week, The Atlantic's Rebecca Greenfield proclaimed that after a branding and product renaissance, Microsoft now looks like "the hippest tech company on the block." What's behind this resurgence? After all, Microsoft is the same company that was portrayed as slow and uncool in the "Mac versus PC" commercials Apple rolled out.

If you want to make as much money as possible in your lifetime, here's some food for thought: Your chances of doing so are significantly higher if you're attractive. This infographic shows the relationship between beauty and salary, and the numbers will astound you.

We know that many employers research potential candidates online, but one job-seeker recently argued in court that Google's autocomplete feature has tarnished his reputation and hindered his ability to get work. "The autocomplete function in Google's search bar fills in crimes when my client's name is entered," said Hiroyuki Tomita, a lawyer in Tokyo, where the case was heard. "He lost his job, and has had other job offers rescinded, likely because of this association."

When asking for a raise, should you tempt your boss into giving you a counteroffer by presenting a job offer from another firm? This hardball tactic is definitely not for the weak of heart, but a Robert Half UAE recruitment study found that 36 percent of respondents, who were all senior human resources executives, noticed that companies were more likely to give employees counteroffers to incentivize them to stay with the company.

So is it time to fire up the job search, if only for the potential bargaining power?

Most companies have some form of a social media policy for client-facing Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts, but some firms take things a step further with a personal social media policy for employees. The Washington Post's "On Small Business" section recently polled professionals from the Young Entrepreneur Council to see how they governed their employees' personal social media habits. All three experts were against formal rules, but advocated common-sense guidelines that protect the company without stifling employee expression.

Read on for four reasons your workplace doesn't need a personal social media policy, based on the major themes in the experts' responses.

Want to work at a firm that's poised for growth? Look for a company with a female owner. Over the past 15 years, the number of women-owned businesses has gone up 54 percent; in addition, employment has risen 9 percent and revenue is up 58 percent. Only the big-name, publicly traded firms can match those numbers.

In many professions, the economy has negatively influenced job happiness; according to new research, however, nurses who became licensed during the recession are healthier and happier at work than their peers who became licensed before the recession.

Could you be sabotaging your job interviews without even knowing it?

With one stupid statement, you can take yourself out of the running for your dream job. Unfortunately, many candidates are following bad advice and need a refresher course in what not to say on a job interview.

1. Sorry I'm late.
Let's start with the basics. Never, ever be late for a job interview. It's almost impossible to recover from tardiness, even if you're a perfect match for the job.

The usual excuses (traffic, subway delays, dog ate your resume, alien abduction) aren't good enough. The interviewer is thinking: “If he can't make it on time for the interview, what can we expect if we hire him?”

Every Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week.

Trader Kai Herbert is suing J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. over a typo in his employment contract that would give him a salary of 24 million rand -- about $3.1 million. Unfortunately, the actual salary the firm meant to pay Herbert was 2.4 million rand, or just over $311,000.

After the typo was discovered, Herbert elected not to take the job, and instead filed a lawsuit against J.P. Morgan to the tune of 580,000 pounds ($920,000) for reneging on the contract as written. The firm's defense team argues that Herbert should have recognized the outsized salary immediately.

If current salary trends continue, it won't be long until women breadwinners become the majority. The age of the alpha female is upon us: nearly 40 percent of working women earned more than their husbands as of 2009, which is up from 25 percent in the early 90s. Liza Mundy, a Washington Post reporter and author of "The Richer Sex," predicts that by 2025, more than half of U.S. households will have a woman at the financial helm.

Did you know that many of today’s job postings list “having more than 250 LinkedIn connections” as a qualification for an ideal candidate? This is especially true in business development, social media management or fundraising positions. And, not surprisingly, more and more employers believe that having a robust professional network connotes success and an ability to connect with others.

Online marketplaces for independent workers such as oDesk and Elance are more popular -- and profitable -- now than ever before. Both sites report about 1.5 million registered contractors, and oDesk announced today that each year since 2007, it's doubled revenue.

Elance has maintained similar growth. Speaking with Mashable, Elance CEO Fabio Rosati said, "We have reached a tipping point where the early adopters have convinced everyone else that this is the way to go. Our first quarter this year will be the fastest growth we've had in our company's history."

What's behind the massive growth of these online marketplaces for independent workers?

Earlier this month, we wrote about the over-the-shoulder Facebook reviews many employers are conducting as part of the interview process, but other companies are taking things a step further by requesting that applicants hand over their Facebook password.

The unemployment rates for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars increased in 2011 to 12.1 percent; conversely, unemployment rates for non-veterans went down to 8.7 percent. In 2010, the unemployment rate for veterans of those wars and non-veterans was 11.5 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively. Interestingly, veterans from other wars are more likely to have work: the jobless rate for all veterans fell from 8.7 percent to 8.3 percent. Why have post-9/11 veterans been having such a tough time finding jobs?

New research by Ipsos for Reuters News finds that 47 percent of global workers feel their workplace has a "psychologically safe and healthy environment," while 27 percent of the respondents disagree with that statement entirely. Ipsos polled 14,618 employees from 24 countries to gauge how safe they felt their workplace was physically and emotionally.