Slashdot Mirror
Internet Job Boards a Bunch of Hype?
netglen brings us an article that discusses the reality behind online job sites like Monster, Hotjobs, and CareerBuilder. It appears that, while these sites may try to make you believe otherwise, they may not be the best bet in helping you find employment. netglen asks: "So, is this article accurate in its account on how poor these boards perform in finding [jobs]? This sounds pretty dismal to me. Two years ago, I tried Monster for the first time, and I managed to get a job on the first try. Since then I haven't gotten anything. Does anyone in IT even use these boards to look for a job?"
Not just the Bay Area but even upstate NY. My friend's brother, who had just graduated was looking for a job. Needless to say that he was submitting his resume' all over the place. Finally, somebody tipped him off about Craiglist.org and bam. First interview, he got right in.
Moral: Craiglist is not just for the Bay Area but works elsewhere too.
Free XBox, PS2
Well if you're going to look at the context, you may as well look at the article.
You can't compare most newspaper job listings to online job boards because most newspaper job listings are run by the same job board.
The article is very fair, provides information that I did not have access to otherwise, and does not promote headhunters in any way. The only thing it promotes is (shocker) finding jobs via personal networking.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Ask the Headhunter sells a book and offers a free website and newsletter. All three are simply spectacular sources of advice, whether you are unemployed or not. I hype it every chance I get (and made a recent post about it here on slashdot; I wonder if the article submitter discovered ATH through my post).
Nick Corcodilos is not trying to hype his services as a headhunter. He no longer even works as a headhunter. A common misconception about headhunters is that job seekers should look for them or hire them. That is not true, and rarely happens. Headhunters are hired by employers looking to fill a position. You're not likely to be able to hire a headhunter to get you a job; instead you'll be contacted by a headhunter if he's aware of you through his contacts and thinks you're suitable for a position he is looking to fill.
Corcodilos is looking to sell his book, but he gives out tons of free advice through his website and weekly newsletter. He's even interacted with interested geeks on slashcode based forums like use Perl;. ATH floated around as a meme in the Perl community due mainly to Andy Lester starting around 2002. That was very convenient for me because I was "surplussed" in late 2002. I bought the ATH book immediately and have found its advice invaluable ever since (yes, I do have a job, and I still find the advice invaluable). Andy Lester used the ATH information to help in making hiring decisions.
The comparisons you suggest between job boards and headhunters don't make any sense, since headhunters don't offer a service to job seekers. If you read the site, you will see this for yourself.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I hire all of the technical talent at my company. We are a small systems integration and consulting firm doing about 6 million a year in revenue.
Here is my bottom line response to Monster. It looks great, but is priced WAY out of my range. I can't afford the thousands of dollars they want for posting my open positions. Even there economy option is to restrictive. One job post, 60 days, no changes to the verbage, under one position heading...$500. So Monster simply isn't an option for us.
Sure, if I am ebay or some other mega-sized corporation hiring tens or hundreds of people, then one of those boards may be an option, but my guess is that most small business under 100 people find that it is priced out of their range.
Where do I post now? Craiglist
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
Your experience is the same as mine. I've posted this very thing before as well. Monster and WashingtonPost job boards are useless. The list of headhunters I had three years ago has nobody left still doing that work. I worked my personal network as well, and I got a few hits. I also got one offer...a good offer. I'm just waiting to be told when and where to start.
The job boards do serve one purpose. They're good at filling out the unemployment forms online on where I've applied to positions. I had over 150 to choose from...at least 20 a week. It's a good thing they will accept three a week or I'd be filling out the forms forever.
Semi-topical perhaps, but if you're looking to find out about legit work-at-home jobs--not those envelope-stuffing or pyramid marketing scams--check out wahm.com, the "Work-At-Home Moms" (but the information's good for anyone with a work-at-home interest, Mom or not) website. They've got message boards, informational links, and debunkment of the most common scams. I've been looking for a resource like this for a long time.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I am an IT director for a smaller consulting group. I can tell you that I've NEVER had a 'good batch' of resumes from Monster or CareerBuilder. Both were far too expensive for the resumes that we received.
The best resumes ALWAYS come from a Newspaper ad that has people respond to an email address, referencing a specific job in the 'Subject' field. I immediately weed out the people that can't use email, or follow directions. I know they are all local, and can start weeding from there.
I spent $500 for an ad on CareerBuilder, and got 400 resumes, about 6 were usefull and none were hired. I spent $75 on a newspaper ad, got 90 resumes, and ended up with about 10 that I could have hired. MUCH better results...
My
Hi,
I run workzoo.com, a job meta-search. We try to filter out work at home and (hope none of them are reading this) by simply looking for job titles in all caps.
Mark.
Yeah, right.
In December we posted a sales position to monster.com. It was the first job we ever advertised using them, and from what I heard, it was a good way to generate lots of prospective employees. In it, we listed the responsibilities and minimum experience required for the position. We also said -- clearly -- that we wanted applicants to call us instead of send resumes. (We get lots of resumes, all they do is take up space in the "Keep this or the lawyers will make money" file cabinet.) What we wanted was a sales person to call us and demonstrate their skills on the phone.
The responses: Zip.
Oh, there were resumes sent to us. They were sent in exactly the way we told people not to. There were even two phone calls. No body had skills that were even close to what we were looking for. I quickly came to the conclusion that most job seekers on monster are so jaded by looking for work that they don't even bother to read the posting and just click "send" on their resume.
Score Monster 1 - Us 0
Monster made their money, we got Zip. I might as well have written the job posting on toilet paper and stocked the bathroom in our building with it... Never mind... That would have gotten a better response..
In the end, we filled the position the old way. Via the network of customers and vendors we have build over the years, and by asking "Hey, do you know anyone who can do the job..."
Any other employer have a similar experience?
I'm a headhunter (still active, but I'm selective about searches I do). I also run a publishing business called Ask The Headhunter, which has become a lot more fun and a much bigger part of my time. The web site is free. The book isn't. But my agent fleeced my publisher a long time ago for a big advance (that was her job - to get the royalties up front), so while I love to know the book is selling well, nothing I do is designed to sell books. I haven't done another book because it's much more profitable to license my ATH features to web sites, newspapers, periodicals, corporate clients, and the like - so you can read them for free. Those "subsidies" let me keep my own site and newsletter free. Hope that answers some questions about motivations and who I am.
What's more important is the subject of the thread. Some people sometimes find jobs via Monster, et al. But the only credible studies that have been done suggest that the boards are a lousy way to find or fill a job. Do you really think their success rates are decent? I don't. The strongest indication that I'm right: they don't publish their success rates. Never have. never will. Go ahead - ask them. They will never publish their results because they suck. So they talk about "30 million resumes online!". Yah. Ever hear the George Carlin line, "Suppose you could have everything in the world. Where would you put it?"
While I found out about this thread through GoogleAlerts, it was a spate of emails I got from slashdotters who read my article -- all the email so far is from people who think the boards suck, and who have had lousy experiences.
Some people love the boards. No skin off my nose. But if I needed a job, it's the last place I'd look.
Forget headhunters. Like jdavidb points out, headhunters don't find you jobs. We only work for employers, and we don't look for candidates on boards or solicit truckloads of resumes with want ads. The hacks who waste your time not headhunters. They're bottom-feeder recruiters who are dialing for dollars -- and they treat you accordingly if your keywords don't match their limited vocabularies.
One person on this thread said it well: all his/her jobs have come from personal contacts developed over time. Consistently, studies show that 40-70% of jobs are found and filled that way. The big boards seem to be responsible for about 1-3%. Niche boards produce better. Job listings on "professional" sites are better, too. Company sites are pretty good, too. But my casual polls (for about 10 years) of managers suggest that managers hire people they know first; people recommended by people they know second; and then it peters out dramatically. You want a job? Your best bet is to go hang out (literally or virtually) with people who do the work you want to do. That's your best bet -- others get to know you, see your value, and they recommend you to a manager. (Hey, I don't claim it's quick or easy. But it beats blasting out 10,000 resumes and waiting by your screen for an email announcing that you have qualified to be A Successful Telemarker if only you'll ring up your PayPal account for $95.
Speaking of fees: The latest racket on the Big Boards is charging you $79 for a Titanium Upgrade on your resume. That puts your resume "higher on the results list employers get when they do a search for people like you." Yep. 30 million resumes in the data base. Did you know that the "basic deal" on CareerBuilder allows an employer only 300 "results" each day? Lotsa luck getting your Titanium resume up ahead of all the others. More interesting: emloyers are doling out the same payola to get their job listings "played higher on the list". So everybody's paying the boards off for
Nick Corcodilos
Ask The Headhunter(R)
I do most of the hiring for a small internet entertainment company in Montreal. In the past few years we've advertised job vacancies (mainly programers and graphic designers) about a dozen times in our local newspaper and online (mainly Monster). We usually get around 20-30 resumes from a newspaper ad and around 200-300 from job boards.
For most of the positions we've ended up hiring people who saw our ad online. In our experience the most qualified responses come from the job boards. However, we've also noticed that the least qualified responses also come from the job boards. Of the 200-300 responses we'll get from an ad, may 30 of them are worth considering. The rest are pure garbage.
When I have a stack of 200-300 resumes to go through initially I'm looking for any excuse I can come up with to thin the pile. Speaking as someone who's read a lot of resumes here are the things that irk me the most...
1. Language - Even though we're located in Montreal which is in a predominantly French city our ads are always posted in English. Atleast a third of resumes will come in French. A few always come in other languages such as Spanish or Polish. To me that displays either laziness arrogance or cluelessness. None of which score any points for the applicant. If they can't be bothered to send me a response in the language of the advert, I can't be bothered to read it. These resumes are generally relegated to the circular file.
2. Distance - Even if our ad is for an entry level position in Montreal, we still get a large number of responses from people who either want to telecommute or relocate to take the job. We get people apply from as far away as Africa or Asia (and rarely Europe). Some of these people will even want us to sponsor their immigration to Canada. We might go to the trouble to do that for someone with unique talents but not for an entry level programmer. These resumes also get sent to the circluar file.
3. Vastly Overqualified - Whenever we post an opening for an entry level programmer we'll get 5-10 responses from people who are so vastly over qualified that there's little chance they'd be happy here (and stay with us long term). People who were professors or who have PHDs are not good matches for entry level positions.
4. Totally Wrong Careers - We get a fair number of resumes from people who seem like good candidates except for the totally wrong career. For example we had one guy apply who had been a chef for 15+/- years. He'd attended several prestigeous culinary schools and had worked at some rather well regarded restaurants. But now he wanted to give programming a shot.
5. Egregious Resumes / Cover Letters - When you apply for a job you should make some effort to "put your best foot forward". A surprising number of people don't. These run the gamut from simply bad spelling and grammar to people who send us resumes and cover letters for different companies and positions. Then there are the resumes with obviously bullshit "objectives". I mean things like "To synergize new ideas outside the box and take my employer to the next level of ebusiness". There also was the guy who had a resume to be a mechanical engineer (or something similiar I forget exactly) who had replaced the words "mechanical engineer" with "database admin" most places in his resume. Not everywhere mind you, just most.
6. Stalkers - If you send your resume and you don't hear back from me, its fine to send one follow up email. However don't start calling, faxing, and emailing on a daily basis to make sure I read your resume. Rest assured if you do
that I will read your resume but there's no chance you'll get hired. Same goes for post interview follow ups. Feel free to call me once. If I want to talk to you, I'll call you. If I don't call there's a reason.
7. Upon Request - Every time we post a job opening, we include what we want you to send us when you apply. References, portfolio, etc. It never fails that people send us resumes that say "Portfolio available upon request". Are they stupid? Did they not read the ad? I've got 200 resumes to go through am I going to take the extra time to request portfolio individually? Certainly not.