Honest Job Sites?

theirpuppet asks: "I've hit every job site I can find, and it's pretty much impossible to find an honest one. Dice displays the same ads regardless of whether you want the last day's postings or the last week's. Monster sells your email addy to every spammer in the universe. The other ones lie about the amount of viable postings that they have, or they just rip them from Dice/Monster. Where are the honest ones, worth visiting? Yes I know the tricks, don't give your email addy out, apply to the companies directly. But it's not the point. Spending hours a day combing through the same ads over and over in search of one that might be new is ridiculous!"

Comments

I would tell you...

[Captain Pedantic]

...but I am looking for a new job just now, and I don't want you to find it!

They don't exist

[reaper20]

There are none in my opinion.

The best "job site" I have found is networking the old fashioned way. Calling up old friends and looking around. My parents, friends, their friends, etc. etc. Also, you'll be surprised how easy it is to walk into some places and just ask questions.

Don't settle for that "have you looked at our website?" excuse either, nine times out of ten, that thing isn't updated, ask to talk to someone important. It's a down economy, but good, smart people are always hard to find.

I found my job about a year ago, and I _still_ get calls/emails from the Monster.com Spam Lover's Club.

selling addresses

[freaktoad]

What makes you think monster sells email addresses to spammers? I've been using the same email account on monster for three years. that account is dedicated specifically to monster.com usage, and i've NEVER gotten any spam in that in box.

Re:selling addresses

[teridon]

I have to agree with you there. I use a sneakemail address for monster, and I have never received any spam at that address.

honest? what?

[jjshoe]

i find that local run job web sites are the best, even if they only have a few postings they are at least legitamit (sp)

other then that, word of mouth is the best way to go. just ask everyone! be it someone you know or not. some jobs have openings that never hit websites or papers etc, they just wait for the right people to come along.

It's a different world

[perljon]

Employers aren't desperate for employees. They have a little time to choose and lots of candidates. It's going to be harder for a stranger to get hired. Network baby... If you are unemployed, take that entry level position, and hope for a shining letter of recomendation. Then apply for that real-tech job. I'm a perl developer... I worked as a secretary at my current job, and the applied for my real job as a perl developer.

I have 4-5 years of perl development experience, and this is what I had to do to get in. If you are unemployeed, be shameless. If you are just looking for a job upgrade, network. The old rules apply now. It's no longer an employees market.

Re:It's a different world

[gentlewizard]

It's a different world in more ways than one. Right now, employers have the upper hand again, but their downsizing and rightsizing and other cost-cutting measures have had a severe impact on employee loyalty. As soon as the economy turns around, the demanding employee will be back. And this time, it'll take more than Foosball tables in the breakroom to attract and keep good talent. It's gonna take REAL cash, not inflated phony stock options.

Employees have wised up, learned to play the game better. They're just waiting their turn. Or they're picking up their marbles and going out on their own.

craigslist.org for bay area

[scrytch]

not that i've gotten a job from anything i've sent through craigslist, but the postings there seem rather more like actual existing job openings than the "let's send out our weekly advertisement on hotjobs" listings.

Your newspaper's classifieds are indicative of the market. Don't see any tech jobs in there? Then there probably aren't any -- at least none they're considering unsolicited candidates for. Start looking at temping and be prepared to take some truly crappy and short-term jobs in that field...

Re:craigslist.org for bay area

[nosferatu-man]

I've gotten three jobs, and innumerable interviews, from craigslist. Companies that not only know about it, but also post openings there, are companies that are likely ready to hire. Highly, highly recommended.

'jfb

Re:craigslist.org for bay area

[Telastyn]

Furthermore, usually the postings on craigslist are done by the hiring manager directly, meaning you're much more likely to be judged via technical skills than certification and/or keyword spam.

Re:craigslist.org for bay area

[DEBEDb]

I second the recommendation; and they also have
sections for, among others, Boston, New York,
and, I think, Colorado and Chicago areas. Check it out.

Re:Honest Job Sites?

[MagnetarJones]

I just landed a job after 7 months of unemployment, I found that most of the major sites (Monster.com, etc.) didn't really help, although I did get a few calls (Most were for jobs I wasn't even remotely qualified for). I live in Upstate New York and was lucky to find a local site http://www.davincitimes.com/ that concentrated on Engineering and Technical job listings and found my new job through them.

Local headhunters that specialize in specific career areas are helpful but you need to call them constantly so they have your name fresh in their heads. Another I found useful was the local newspaper web site that had career listings in just this area. While looking at specific employers web sites pay attention to where they say they post jobs, a lot of employers I looked at didn't post jobs on their web site, they used another "Career oriented" specialty site.

Good luck.

I have had the BEST luck with:

[xagon7]

http://www.computerjobs.com

Typical bait and switch

[j-turkey]

Its getting pretty typical for hearhunters to do a bait and switch on the postings. Since September, 2001, its been getting worse and worse. Jobs are listed on Dice with outlandishly high salaries (for what they are), just so a headhunter can increase their resume-base. I've called on a number of those hours after they were posted, and I get "Oh, that position is no longer available, but what about this other horrible job?"

Its horribly dishonest, and I've had better results from a local paper every time. I've also seen pretty good results from net-temps, although I haven't looked there in months.

Good luck!

-Turkey

Re:Typical bait and switch

[/dev/trash]

I've called on a number of those hours after they were posted, and I get "Oh, that position is no longer available, but what about this other horrible job?"

I haven't gotten many calls but the ones I did get went like this:
"I see you worked for Siemens"
"Yes"
"Do you know Novius Radiology"
"No, I was a programmer on the Home Health End"
"Oh, um hey do you know of anyone who knows Novius Radiology?"
"No, not really, but..."
"Okay bye then"
Funny thing is that my resume pretty much explicitly said what I worked on, so his claims of "reading my resume" were lies.

ridiculous?

[BigBir3d]

How is it that the most legitimate source is ridiculous? Ads in the paper are by companies truly looking for someone to hire, not just thinking about maybe hiring someone, as alot of online job sites end up listing. Not to mention that the number of people that reply to newspaper ads is ever shrinking, making your chances of an interview very high.

Of course, if you go into an interview with the same attitude problem you display here, it could be a long wait indeed.

Now is not the time for being picky or elitist. If a company is in business right now, and has been for a few years, they might be stable enough to make it through this drought right now.

Bite the bullet, take a job that is not perfect, and spend your leisure time away from work looking for the "perfect job."

Chances are, there are many people that are in your immediate area that are immensely more qualified than you are, and realising that this is the time to eat some crow.

Also, check out the headhunters in your area. Avoid the newer ones that do most of their stuff online too. The crusty 60 year old guys who've been doing this for 20 or 30 years have the best networks imaginable. Use them to your advantage, they don't get paid until you get a job, and the money usually comes out of your new employers pocket.

Re:ridiculous?

[Polo]

Unless you've been out of work for quite some time, I think it makes more sense to look around a bit for a good job you'll be satisfied with. It's been my experience that "You're only as good as your last job". That means unless you take extra care, people will mostly look at the last job on your resume and think that's what you do.

Of course, the less money tucked away, the harder it is to follow this path.

Re:ridiculous?

[sjames]

Actually, the last time I went job hunting, I found that the ads in the paper were mostly 'example' job descriptions posted by agencies who wanted more resumes for their filing cabinet.

The hard part is determining who is sincere and who is just leading people on when they can least afford it.

I did end up getting a job through a headhunter, but it was one who advertised honestly as an agency.

Go direct

[fm6]

The big problem with DICE, aside from stale listings, is that it allows headhunters to post freely, and doesn't provide a way for users to separate headhunter offers from direct offers. Any job board that does this is not going to be able to match applicants with jobs, because most headhunters use the listings dishonestly. They don't want to find applicants for the specific jobs they list -- they just want to add names to their rosters.

The job placement industry is, alas, dominated by moral and technical morons. Yes, there are serious, ethical headhunters who actually try to meet the needs of employers and workers. But they are few and far between. Most are depressingly similar to spam advertisers. They don't care how much of other people's time they waste with cold calls, resume flooding, and sending people to interview on jobs they have no hope of getting. Just as long as they place enough people to meet the rent.

Last time I tried to find a job through techies.com, they allowed you to restrict your search to jobs offered directly. But that was 3 years ago, and they seem to have droped that feature. Cut too much into their revenue stream, I guess.

You simply have to connect directly with the employers. Google is indispensible for this purpose. Every day, do a search on your title and qualifications, and throw in a few keywords that companies tend to use on their jop openings pages, like (duh!) "opening" and "careers".

You should also troll local company sites directly. Make a list of likely employers in your area, and go to their web sites every day. That's how I got my current job.

And death before the internet too

[fm6]

Have you looked at the help wanted ads lately? In technical jobs, they're as bad as the online listings -- full of headhunter spam.

Employers don't like them either

[DevilM]

As a former hiring manager at various dot coms and now CEO of my own, I can tell you that I would never bother to put an ad on a job site. Doing so would just be asking for a barage of emails from people I have no interest in hiring. The only effective way I have found is to network. I always get my people from user groups or from mailing lists I am apart of. If in the rare case that I can't find someone from those two places then I use a recruiter. Not any recruiter mind you as only good ones are worth their weight. For those who care, I am currently using the services of WaveStaff, which is a company started by my former agent.

Re:Employers don't like them either

[DevilM]

Sorry for the confusion, but I was referring to technical mailing lists; not job lists.

Re:Employers don't like them either

[King_TJ]

So far, I've had very little luck getting jobs via recruiters and consulting firms.

I think I've tried working with at least 10 in the St. Louis area now, and this is what commonly happens:

They call and call, acting super-interested to meet me and get ahold of an updated (or slightly revised to suit their needs) resume, promising they have an employer that needs someone to "start immediately".

I do exactly what they ask for, and take out my time to drive to their place and visit with them in person. (Usually, we spend about 10 minutes exchanging greetings and talking a bit about things we could have just discussed over the phone, really. Then they thank me and promise to keep in touch.) After that, I hear nothing for days. After I get ahold of them, asking for an update, I get told "Sorry, but it turns out that job opening has been cancelled. The good news is, they could open it up again though - so I'll let you know if anything happens!"

After that, I basically never hear back from them again.

Sometimes it doesn't even go that far. I just hear nothing, and when I call them, they say they don't have any more information yet. (This is when they typically get that slightly annoyed tone of voice, that says "Quit calling, wasting my time. I'd have called you if something actually happened with this company.")

Am I just using the wrong people, or is this pretty often how it goes? When recruiters contact me these days, it just turns me off more than it gives me any hope....

Re:Employers don't like them either

[DevilM]

That is the typical experience with recruiters and it is why they have such a bad name. I think it is all a misunderstanding. IMHO, you should think of a recruiter as an agent. You need to recruiter to find you a job because you don't have the time to deal with all the potential employers. The recruiter should only be willing to take you on if two things are true. First, they can make a decent amount of money on you. Second, the employer has very little hope of getting someone of your skill set without going through a recruiter.

None of the above helps people of average skill set in a down economy. Thus, if you are one of those people you sould avoid recruiters.

Re:Employers don't like them either

[xtremex]

Thank GOD I'm not the only one! That's EXACTLY what has happened to me. The best one yet, is when an EMPLOYER has 16 guys in a room interviewing you all at the same time! I've had 3 in the past month. Last one was 23 guys being asked the SAME question, one after another! And 4 of the guys were from the same recruiter as me! I was wasting my time. On my resume it says 10 years of Solaris...on one of my interviews this month the HIRING manager asked me if I used Suns! I'd like to know who GETS these jobs. I want to do what they do...

Re:Employers don't like them either

[King_TJ]

I wouldn't say "it's all just a misunderstanding" though.

The problem is, even if I view a recruiter as an "agent" - they're the ones contacting *me* in most of these cases.

If they contact me, they should be pretty certain my skills are perfect for one of their employers.

In reality, they usually don't even know much about technology. (The last guy I talked with asked me if I could give him a "more detailed list" of all the types of servers I've worked with than what was on my resume. I started listing things such as "IIS server", "Apache server" when he stopped me and said, "No, I mean - servers like HP or Compaq or Dell." I said "Oh! I've worked with almost all of the different major *brands* like IBM, Compaq, etc." Then he said "Good. I see you have Citrix listed. Haven't heard of that brand before."

FlipDog

[jpsst34]

Try Flipdog

Re:FlipDog

[jpsst34]

I guess I should give a little background on flipdog. Although they do have some job postings that are directly posted by companies, this is the minority of what you'll find there. FlipDog's real service comes in the fact that they scan companie's websites for job postings, cache the pages, and allow you to search and view these postings. They crawl the sites constantly and any time a job posting is added, changed, or removed this is updated on Flipdog. Because you are viewing a snapshot of the real posting, you can be sure you are applying for a real position (At least as sure as if you went directly to corporate sites). You can also set up search agents to email the current job postings to you pretty much daily.

ConsultUtah.com

[jdevons]

I am currently completing the beta testing of http://consultutah.com's new site. (Mine)

I am a senior developer at a mid-sized company in Utah. As we were trying to hire people, we received millions of calls from "headhunters" wanting 25-35% of the person's first year salary!

I, then, started ConsultUtah LLC.

ConsultUtah.com will do the following:
1. Never give out your personal information to advertisers
2. When a company wants to contact you, you will receive an email asking if you want to give that company permission to contact you
3. We charge 10% of the person's first year salary (to the hiring company) and that percentage can be negotiated based on volumn.

Right now I am accepting emails addresses to notify you when we go live. (November 1st) You will only receive a single email from us, then our knowledge of your email address will be blown away...

Re:ConsultUtah.com

[walt-sjc]

For what you do, 10% is a RIP OFF. At least the head hunters do SOME work to earn their pay.

If you want to earn that 10%, you are going to have to do some WORK for that money. Considering that most other job sites only charge a couple hundred bucks for listings, you are at a serious disadvantage right off the bat.

So are you going to interview all potential candidates and employers and only match them when the fit is good? Are you going to schedule interviews? What's your "value add?" What makes you different? Your list of features is a "me too" list as other sites have pretty much the same thing.

Re:ConsultUtah.com

[phorm]

10% of a year is definately huge. xx% of the first xx months would be a lot better. However, I do see the one advantage in this is that they're going to try and get you the highest pay possible, in order to maximize their percent return.

Still, if it's 10% before taxes, that's a slaughter. If it's after taxes then I'd be quite willing to pay that for a job that pays 130% of a cheap job. Even in other cases it may round off to more take-home than on the crappy job you get elsewhere.

Of course, not everyone get a 130% pay increase. But then, they get nothing unless one takes the job, correct?

I don't work for them, I've never heard of 'em, but I suppose it works for somebody - phorm

Mod parent up

[The Mayor]

Flipdog rocks. Best job website I've seen by far.

Rid of claus

[fm6]

How is it that the most legitimate source is ridiculous? Ads in the paper ...

The submitter didn't say anything about "ads in the paper". He just said "ads". I think he was referring to the postings on job sites that really are nothing but ads for recruiting firms. And ploughing through the same "ads" over and over, wherever they are, really is ridiculous.

my epxeriences

[secret_squirrel_99]

I have a fair amount of experince with sites like these both from an employers and well as a prospective employees perspective. And in my opinion they really aren't worth the trouble.
From the employer perspective we get something like 400 resumes for every posting. 375 of them are useless. The people are severely underqualified, way over qualified, live outside of a reasonable commuting area, have unrealistic salary requirements etc. Because of the ease of submission, or perhaps because they can't read we get all of these useless resumes. That makes it harder for us to sort, and less likely that we'll be able to spot the best candidate before becoming fatigued
From the prospective employee side, everytime I send a resume I know that 500 other people, most of whom aren't qualified have sent resumes for the same job. OTOH whenever we run a newspaper only ad, or when I have replied to newspaper ads, we get a small number, of almost always qualified applicants, and as an applicant I almost always get a call back
I'd recommend using all of the traditional methods, friends, family, classified etc. And if you're going to send a resume, if they dont speccify email, send one printed, it gets far more attention

flipdog.com

[itwerx]

FlipDog searches companies' own websites.

Pro: Stuff you'll never see anywhere else, even the local paper
Con: Their listings are usually a few days or a week old so in today's market they're often already filled!
Pro: No headhunters!
Con: No headhunters...
Pro: No spam!
Con: Their interface is a little clumsy and sometimes the search bot doesn't grab the ad correctly. It's easy enough to just click directly to the originating site though.

jobs.perl.org

[pne]

If you're looking for a job with Perl, I've heard good things about jobs.perl.org. I have no personal experience with the site, however.

Quite simple

[sehryan]

Try your local newspaper. Some papers will even let you search online if you are too lazy to go buy a paper.

Still in beta, but here's an honest site

[gregwbrooks]

Grassisgreener.com has been a terrific resource for me. They use a spidering algorithm (ala Flipdog and others), but it seems to be particularly deep. When I last checked, they had several times the number of jobs listed as, say, Monster.com.

Disclaimer: I'm not associated with the company in any way.

How about jobs in Denver?

[sedawkgrep]

I've been out of work for almost all of 2002.

As was stated above - Dice is almost worthless after the first time you search it. The market here is just awful. No jobs that I can find anywhere, and those that are available have 10k applicants.

Anyhow I'm a Senior UNIX admin and network/system security expert seriously seeking a job in Denver!!!

HELP!!!

sedawkgrep

Small job, big job (Re:It's a different world)

[phorm]

Agreed,

Sometimes you have to go for the bite and tag that lower-end. I'm an IT Administrator (actual title). Actually, it's a small business, with a routered internet connection, and about 6 computers. I do a lot of programming custom software though, but the IT Admin part rarely bothers me as keeping things patch usually prevents breakage and the other employees are relatively informed.

I don't get paid a whole whack of money, surely not as much as many other "IT Admins" do. But they appreciate my work, and having IT Admin on my resume along with glowing recommendations certainly helps in the long run.

I definately see the secretary to programmer thing. Sometimes all it takes is a foot into where you want to work, and a little patience.

X many years ago if you went to college and got a piece of paper, it got you a good job. I think employers finally got royally sick of all those that couldn't actually pull the weight of that piece of paper. Until we get rid of all the losers that are getting shoved through IT programs (people with degrees who couldn't program their way out of a paper bag), then we'll continue to have a lot of really overqualified secretaries.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one that faced this problem. No matter what one's experience, without a lot of really good recommendations a resume on monster is only get an inbox full of spam. I tried and that's all it got me, until I started looking at the lower rungs on the ladder.

Power to the overqualified secretaries, you'll get that promotion when you FSCK the super-important linux server that the MS-certified geek keeps looking for a GUI on - phorm

Or both? (Re:What about contract work?)

[phorm]

At first, I took my lower paying job and let it pay the bills. I also work some contracts on my own, run online under phormix (which sadly enough, leaves me little time to re-edit my own .com webpage). The contracts get the goody money, the rest pays the bills. If you're good and get referrals it works out quite nicely.

Small things lead to bigger things - phorm

Simple Equation

[Knightfall]

In a month

Number of interviews from local newspaper ads - 9
+ Number of interviews from online ads - 0
= Never looking at online ads again.

It has become an annoyingly common fact that the online resources, once revolutionary and powerful are now junk. The jobs are always filled, and that is the 1 in 1000 submittals that get a response. The only way to move jobs now is through local papers and personal networking (in my area at least).

Just my 2/100 of a dollar.

Re:Simple Equation

[xtremex]

How do you network when all the people you know are unemployed or every person you know who you've asked has no openings at their job? I've asked every person in my family, my wife's family, I even put a posting in the church newsletter!

regional sites!

[cr@ckwhore]

I recommend regional based sites! For example, here in the People's Republic of Maine, we have "jobsinme.com", and "southernmainehelpwanted.com". Screw monster and those other whores ... the good jobs are listed a bit closer to your own home area.

As far as locating regional job sites that apply to you ... google search, and AM radio ads will usually throw the URLs around.

Spam... from monster????

[Misch]

Umm... I don't think so. I have yet to receive a single spam addressed to the address I used for Monster.com. net-temps, however has. I use unique addresses for each place I put my resume up, or submit an application to.

In fact, net-temps is the only place I've received spam from.

(No, I don't want to pay you $70 to have your automated system tell me about my resume, when I can just have my career counselors to do it for free.)

Directemployers.com : companies tired of job sites

[geekotourist]

Adding to the lists: directemployers.com. This site was set up by many companies which were tired of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to other job sites. Participating companies include Google, Sun, HP and more. Searches link directly to a company's web site.