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?"
C'mon, look at the context. The name of the site is asktheheadhunter.com. Whose interests do they have in mind?
Also, more obvious, is the job market isn't what it used to be. Sure, it's harder to get a job now than it was a few years ago. But that doesn't mean that monster and the like aren't useful.
Now if netglen said "I compared Monster to my local papers' classifieds, and to the headhunters, and got a better response rate from the headhunters", that would be useful. Maybe netglen doesn't have any marketable skills. That doesn't mean monster isn't helpful.
The experience of myself and others I know is that job boards are better than headhunters, worse than going directly to a company's website. Most of us won't even talk to headhunters- they overpromise and overhype. Now that's irony, because that's what they say about the job boards.
The only responses I've ever gotten from these boards was not from replying to a job posting, but posting my own resume and letting them come to me. It's easy, and IMO the best way to find jobs via those kinds of job boards.
Mark
Those online job sites are so filled with contract positions and work at home garbage that it's frustrating to do any kind of real search. The local newspaper uses career builder which is a little better because it's stocked with real classified ads that appear in the newspaper. Better to stick to something local than some national job search scam.
No, most IT people go to job sites that aren't job sites [like craigslist] which are under the radar enough not to be innundated with
- non-local job postings
- spam
- headhunting agencies getting contacts without offering jobs
- idiotic HR drone job postings
As long as they're there and employers are posting jobs on them, you'd be a fool not to.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
an internet job boards is reduced to using that antiquated of mediums known as "television" to push their product.
I think a lot of people are turned off by the ridiculous job requirements and the blatant posting of non-existant posititions. Most people I know have gone back to what works best:
Networking with people you know.
A friend of mine is leaving her job next week. We've already talked about her bringing me on board if things look good from the inside.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
And to justify the loss of your salary when your boss catches you.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
Its usually used as a last resort.
When a job opens up, first they look internally for someone to fill it, then they go off a referal basis (and at this time, who doesn't have a few friends that are unemployed IT workers?), then they look locally in papers and such...
THEN they go out to a place like dice to find a job.
The market isn't "good enough" for them to work well. The market is a lot better than last year, but needs to build back up to happier times before places like monster will get you a job fast.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The main problem with Monster (from the employer's perspective) is the absolute deluge of applications. We get 2000+ applications a month. Just wading through them is a full time job. The fact that we may miss a few is inherent to the problem. It's probably Monster's (and other's) biggest problem.
More importantly;
Does anyone in HR use these boards to look for an employee?
Clearly, as another posted pointed out "headhunter" writing the article has an axe to grind. After all, if we find jobs on these boards, he's not getting the outrageous fees he once got for placement (about 1/3 of your annual salary!)
Also, there is one key facet missing. Many of us, myself included, see jobs listed on Monster.com and the like. We THEN go to our friends and say "do you have a contact at company X, they have a job posted, and I'm interested." So, with a little luck, your social network works, and you end up finding out a bit more about the company. You also end up putting your resume in through that person, instead of through Monster et al. So, what does this mean? It means that Monster.com did its job in alerting you to the availability of a position. But the "statistics" cited by Mr. Headhunter would show that you got your job through a personal referral.
Bad statistics lead to bad results.
Thalia
While I know lots of people are already aware of craigslist. I believe you ruin the usability if too many people starting using it. Just like earlier mentions of monster.com. It was good at first until everybody found out about it. Now for the downhill spiral of craigslist.
I agree with the comments about signal to noise ratio on these boards. It is hard sometimes to find what you want over all that noise; but if you have useful skills and a well-written resume, I think the boards are a good way to fish as see what comes to you.
I used these sites (monster and dice) in 2001 when I was thinking about leaving Razorfish as business development suddenly got difficult and we were shedding people by the hundreds. At this time I wanted to get out, but I was not in a rush, so I put my resume out there and searched on a fairly regular basis.
The searches were not terribly effective (signal to noise), but eventually some head hunters picked up on me and found a very good match based on my skill set. (The market was flooded with out of work Java programmers and perl jockeys; I was looking for some place to do plain old C programming).
Both the head hunter and my eventual employer remarked that my resume stood out because it was well-written and it looked like I wrote it myself rather than having been manhandled by a desperate head hunter.
Having also been on the hiring side for scores of hiring decisions throughout my career, I cannot over emphasize the importance of quality organization, writing, and formatting in your resume.
I know through "insiders" at a few companies that I applied to that they often posted jobs that they didn't have openings for. Apparently, they thought it made the companies look better to stockholders.
When the market is hot, these sites can be jumping becuase it was harder for companies to find candidates. Now with a slower job market, a company is more likely to have candidates at their door and they do not need to resort to online services. If I were hiring right now, I would look for folks who were actively coming to me. Shows a bit more ambition, IMHO. I know too many folks who have posted resumes on these sites and said that was how they were hunting for jobs. Then they sit around and bemoan that they don't have jobs while playing video games all day long.
When the job market is slow, a job board like that is not the best place to be hunting. Phone, mail and sneaker net beats them right now.
I think lists like smaller, public Craigslists are a much better option to places like Monster. As anyone who used it can tell you, any job listed on Monster will get flooded with resumes, 90% of whom are completely unqualified. Many companies (my current one included) have gone back to using headhunters and internal networking as a result; we just don't have time to sift through 1,500 resumes for each opening.
With small mailing lists, employers don't get deluged with resumes of people "job surfing". And, by the same token, most of the time the listings are placed by the person doing the hiring (not HR), so the applicant knows his resume is going to the right person.
During my most recent job search, I used Monster, Hotjobs, a headhunter, and a number of lists like Craigslist. I got the most, relevant interviews from the latter, though the headhunter was close. Even though I applied for ~300 jobs on Monster and Hotjobs, I didn't receive 1 interview. The job I ended up taking I found on a list for people who are interested in startups in my area. I think using resources like that (and networking) are a much better option than a bulk job listing site like Monster; for the hiring company and the candidate.
Mod this guy up! That has absolutely been the key for me (I am looking again after getting being forced into a, um, tolerable position). I took the time each day, first thing in the morning to update each online resume, even if it was only moving a space here or there. I consistently got calls. Mind you, many were recruiters that barely spoke english trying to get me to take incredibly short contract work, but it did end up with me getting a couple of solid offers (from HR people cruising the sites) that I am now negotiating between :-)
Knightfall
I disagree regarding craigslist's (or any good resource) eventual devolution into uselessness, such as that which has marked Monster -- mostly it is the quality of people (term used loosely) using the board: Monster is overrun by headhunter orgs posting not-quite false jobs to lure a constant feed for their body hoppers. This generates a situation where the board looses apparent functionality. Since many organizations post to craigslist directly, the effect of the typical strategies of "placement services" is diluted and may not lead to the degradation ThingOne predicts (my hope, anyways).
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
Their hiring policy was that any job posting HAD to be posted publicly for at least 48 hours, and they used Monster.com for this purpose. In that time period, they recieved about 90 resumes for my position.
How do I know this? It was my job to sort my boss's email and print them out.
There was absolutely no intention to read any of these resumes or invite anyone for an interview. I stopped taking online job searches seriously after this experience.
As an off-topic post-script:
Six months to the day after I was hired, I was laid off because my job was automated. Actually, it was at my six-month evaluation... after taking most of my work away from me, the new manager stated that I didn't seem to be "working out" the way they expected. I found out later from a coworker that they never intended to hire me in the first place, as they always intended on automating my position, but the "offshore" programmer that they hired to write the program that automated my job, took longer than they expected. If they kept me on beyond the six months, I would have to get severance pay!
These new automated reports were skimpy and full of errors, but only a handfull of people actually read them... so it really didn't matter to anyone.
I like to imagine that there was once a time where people weren't so disposable... but I'm sure that's not true.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
We tried it once. The number resume's we got was tremendous. The number of them from people with names we could pronounce was about 10. The number of those that we could understand was about 5. The number of those willing to relocate was about 3. The number of those with technical and communcation skills we considered mandatory was about 0.
My Tech Posts on Twitter
Here's a post from above from 'cshark':
"I indescriminantly send my resume to recruiter I can, if my skills match what they're looking for or not. I get a lot of calls from confused recruiters, but after about a month of doing it for six to ten hours a day, I usually end up getting my resume into the right hands, or hopefully several pairs of right hands. Works every time. Just takes a little patience. There's a lot of competition out there these days."
Combine that with "HR has to keep all resumes on file for $FOO years" and the only people who are happy are the document management and NAS salespeople.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
If all you're doing is posting your resume on a job-hutning site, and then going and playing video games, you probably don't want a job that bad. There are a lot more job-hunters than there are jobs, and I don't think I want to leave my future in the hands of keyword matching techniques. ;-)
I use job listing websites to harvest local company names. When it's time for me to job hunt, I'll actually go to the company's web site, and look at their most up-to-date job listings. Then, I'll make an ACTIVE effort to apply for jobs that are presented. If the company sounds particularly compelling, but doesn't have any openings listed, I'll contact them expressing interest anyway. Just because they don't have a particular job listed at this very moment doesn't mean you can't get it. They might realize, "Oh hey, we COULD use someone to do that."
Of course, I'm a grad student right now, so what do I know, right?
Really, at this point, this IS all guesswork on my part, but I like to think that I make sence *grin*. I'm interested in hearing about what other people have to say about the relation between job-hunting effort, and job-hunting success.
^o^
Even in remote areas I've found that most IT jobs are not even advertised unless the requirements are unbeleivable.
An example of the FEW IT jobs listed via online job-sites and print media:
1) C++ Programmer, 5+ years experience, BS degree in related field (all required - very clearly states do not apply if you don't have atleast the experience stated).
Payscale: $10 an hour! WTF! You can make TWICE that driving a FORKLIFT!
2) System admin, must have 10+ years experience in a 'large scale san architecture,' BS required
Languages required: C, VB, Java, Perl
Payscale: $45k/year + benefits
(Not _horrible_ - but for those skills and the level of responsibility - that's pathetic.)
3) Wireless Administrator, BS in related field required, 5+ years wireless administration experience, C/C++, VB
Payscale: 55k + benefits (Again, not horrible but for the experience required that is pathetic pay. As well, this company is the _ONLY_ wireless access provider within almost 400 miles. This job has been open and being ADVERTISED for OVER 7 months now. LoL. I'll bet they've spent 55k advertising it - it's in EVERY Sunday paper through FOUR publications - as well as on careerbuilder.com, hotjobs.com, dice.com, monster.com and probably others.)
Those are just about the only jobs posted within 100 miles of where I live... There have, however, been two oddball positions advertised just recently, both by FedEx;
1) Computer Operator - basically just requires some past experience in IT and a HSD.
Payscale: $45k / year + benefits
Very competative salary for the position in this area.
2) IT Director - BS +2 years management experience required, a few other little 'prefered' notes - etc...
Payscale - "up to" $135k/year + benefits "DOE"
An extremely competative wage for this area. Most executive officers in this area would envy that salary. The downfall, however, to this position -- is that it's located 60 miles in the middle of FREAKING NOWHERE! Literally 'in the mountains.' You would either drive 2 and 1/2 hours to get to work each day, from the 'closest [town],' or live deep in the mountains.
IMO, a great plus. But a major turnoff to many geeks.
All in all, as many here have already stated - it generally seems IT jobs are a behind the scenes deal. They are all being taken up by insiders, whether it be within the company or a friend of someone who works there.
Networking seems to be the way to discover these positions. Being that I just relocated to the area I am at, this is impossible for me -- as I simply do not know anyone here.
What I ended up doing was making a rolodex of HR managers to contact on a weekly basis - and scheduled out contact times to continue contact with a list of local companies until a position comes open. I have found this to be an extremely successfull method.
Relying strictly on traditional publications, staffing firms, and online job-sites -- in my experience -- will not produce results. The jobs that make it that far through the vicious IT cycle are trash jobs that no one wanted.
This, of course, is merely my opinion -- and is obviously reflective only of the area I live in.
My job for three weeks was to sort through the over 100 resumes I got a day
That's what I say to people that claim headhunters are going to die off. They serve a useful purpose: to weed out the morons.
Companies should ask themselves how much your time is worth going through all those resumes. Did you spend 2 hours a day for a week sorting through them? Did you just end up frustrated?
Course some of the headhunters charge ridiculous amounts, like 15% of the yearly salary. They should cut that rate down to $1k for a $50k a year job and make it up in volume. At that rate a headhunter has to place two people a week to make $100k for the company, which could support him.
Headhunters are a weird lot. First of all, they don't care a lick about the job seeker. They are after employers. Quite often a headhunter will get a lead on a job from an employer. When this happens they will then run around and try to find a list of candidates that will fit the job.
In this regard, posting your resume on a job board is not a bad thing. If you have a good clean resume with the right keywords, there is a chance that a headhunter with a legitimate job will find you. Anyway, having realised that headhunters work for employers and not for me, I've learned that they can provide a legitimate service.
If I was unemployed, I'd give monster & hunters a try, but would expect little out of them - your best bet by a mile is contacts.
These Websites are no different than the function served by the help wanted section of the newspaper up until just a few years ago. Companies have various legal and internal policy requirments to satisfy and the job websites satisfy these requirements just as listing in newpapers have in the past. In fact, it is considered high-tech that laws and corporate policy permits the use of the web for these purposes.
Unfortunately, the laws and corporate policies driving this segment of job listings has little to do with actual hiring. Instead, they are used to justify H1B hiring, selection of internal people for specific positions, elimination of positions, etc. In other words, there is good reason to treat most job listings on the web and in the help wanted section as suspect at best.
If you are serious about your job hunt, then you really do need to focus on the one proven technique that continues to work, even during the current depression in the software market. That technique, and this should be no surprise, is NETWORKING.
Use the websites as a contact point where you might make contact with someone with whom you can network. But, there are many other places that are effective for networking... and since many of them have a more personal element (voice on the phone, handshake in person), they tend to be more effective. This is not to say that you should not try the websites, only that they should be one part of a broader effort.
Was called into my bosses office recently asking me if I was "happy" with my current job. Had a few issues to talk to him about already, but come to find out, HR had found my resume on Monster and emailed it directly to my manager. Monster's blocking software either was not that effective for current employees OR my HR had actually used a different login to find me. (Sneaky bastards..).
Sig it.
I used to work for one of the job boards listed here. Worked there for 4+ years during the height of the dot com boom. My last days were at the end of the boom.
I heard from many of the recruiters that dealt with toward the end of the dot com boom that they received so many resumes by email thru all of the job boards that all they used to do is look for people they knew. Having access the resumes myself, I could see that some of these companies received 100+ resumes a day. No recruiter is going to sift thru that many resumes. Some of the other products that look for keywords, etc are useless too.
Set yourself apart from others, fax or snail mail your resume.
Some job postings dont give any clue as to the person or company whos job is listed, but with a little time and effort, you can find it.
Breakfast served all day!
One quote I found really interesting:
Hiring managers were asked what recruiting tool they found most effective. Echoing the job hunters of the previous year, managers said that "word of mouth referrals" were the best source of hires (62%). Meanwhile, the HR folks -- the people who buy online job ads -- said such personal contacts were the worst recruiting tool. So, who's right?
One of the job hints that one frequently sees is "try to bypass HR and go directly to who is in charge of the department where the position you want is" It seems that HR frequently is seen by managers and employees as a roadblock for hiring the best employees.
It seems true - and in my experience, interviews by people who are in the department where you would work are generally more comfortable, and more likely to ask you questions that seem relevant rather than "if you were an animal what type would you be" questions.
I work at a college where I used to be a student. I know that when another student was hired, his manager had to argue for his hiring, and was accused by HR of "trying to create a position for him" - despite the fact that he was filling a position for someone who had retired - and been working as a contractor in the postion for several months.
Dave Barry once parodied the old "avoid HR" job hunting quote by saying HR never wants to hire anyone because they just know they will be employees who never fill out their healthcare forms right
This all does make me wonder about the disconnect between how HR percieves itself compared to the negative light it seems to be seen in by employees, potential employees, and managers of other departments.
I have blog like everyone else
i feel a need to correct you. What you fail to take into account is the relative number of positions being offered in the different services. For instance, if only 5% of all jobs offered are listed on Monster, 3.5% or whatever would be fantastic. that would just mean that 70% of postings on job boards are filled. the fact that you're competing for only the 3.6% of all jobs that are available, and the fact that you are competing with however many millions of other users for those same 3.6% still remain. You also fail to address the fact that the services are more useful in certain industries, and almost completely useless in most industries. For instance, most fast food jobs are filled by word of mouth. So? That doesn't help Lockheed Martin find talented engineers. while true, this does not change the validity of his arguments. And the worst part is, you fail to remind the readers that your interests lie orthogonal to those of the job services. actually, he addressed that. Headhunters are middlemen. Job sites are an attempt at removing the middleman, allowing companies to ultimately get better candidates cheaper. Likewise, candidates get better and easier access to jobs. actually, job boards are attempting to be middlemen themselves. "removing the middleman" would be using your networking skills to find a job. like people have said.
When the job market improves back to where it was durring the dot com era? Improves? Do you seriously call that a good situation? Sure it was great to extort large sums of money for essentially transient skills for a time. But what was we had in '98 and '99 was a very sick economy indeed. The wise ones stashed money away but unless you won the IPO lottory at the right time you've got to be counting your blessings to have a stable job and a paycheck.
Seriously, I feel this jobless recovery is a reaction to the extreme sellers market and financial excesses of the gilded ages of the internet boom.
Some things are best left in our history.
--Shemnon
It amazes me that so many people with skills start their job search by looking for job openings.
I've used the same technique to get my last few jobs, and all were good and in my field:
Use the yellow pages.
1) Look for companies that do work in the field you're interested in, and find contact details
2) Call them all and find out who makes hiring decisions
3) Send resume with cover letter to that person, specifically comparing projects you've done with projects they've done if possible
4) Starting from best company to worst, go to the offices IN PERSON and talk to the decision maker. It's not an job interview, which means you're the only one they'll be talking to, but they're not the only one you're talking to. This means they're not in a position of authority over you, and you can command some respect from them.
5) Contact them again by phone the day after you've spoken to them to thank them and let them know that you're interested in working there, and call them back again to check up once you've covered every business in town.
You don't need to know anyone to use this technique, and the longest it's taken me to get a GOOD job this way is 2 months.
Bottom line is, ppl hate going through all the bullshit of advertising and interviewing. If you give them the opportunity to avoid doing so, they will take it.
Oh, and another good thing to do once you get a job is call every other person you spoke to and tell them thanks for speaking to you, but you're not looking any more. That will really make you stand out in their minds, and if they're still there next time you need a job, they'll remember you in a very positive way.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The right way to make these people go away is to call them back and tell them you're not interested. If someone calls you several times they might just assume their messages are getting lost in voice mail.
They might just assume that if you had made a decision, you'd do them the courtesy of returning their call, and your not doing so was because you were busy or something. Crazy, huh?
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga