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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?"
I was a Sr. Oracle DBA, working for contract electronics manufacturing firm (CEM). We specialized (unfortunately) in Telcom, and the group I was with was in fact outsourced from a large telecommunications company. With the industry turn down, a number of the CEM sites were force to close and ours in North Carolina was one of them.
I had posted my resume on Monster, Hotjobs and Dice at the time -- actually about 2 months earlier to sort of feel out the market. Didn't want to leave early, since there were serious incentives to stay through your scheduled termination date. About 2 weeks prior to my last day I was approached by a local recruiting agency with an opportunity for a DBA with OpenVMS skills. Interviewed and was hired and started with them about a month later. Talked with the recruiter and they indicated they had found my resume on jobs.com which is Monster.
So I guess I had a positive experience with them, but this was in March of 2002.The unfortunate thing is that I now get what I consider spam from hotjobs, havent' been able to get off their email lists, and I now just let Mozilla dump them automatically in the spam bucked.
True story.
:)
My first (and only) shot at Monster was in August of 2000. I was getting sick of my $13.50/hr sysadmin job, so I posted to Monster on a whim. I had a call from the recruiting department of a global consultancy within 20 minutes. They offered me 55 up front. I didn't even really negotiate. Moved 300 miles to take it.
The punchline? We all got laid off in January. The Company disolved in June.
Use at your own peril?
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
My employer hasn't posted to any of those boards for ages.
Unqualified people from all over the world would apply for jobs they were obviously not suitable for yet HR has to keep all resumes on file for $FOO years (I forget the number)
They went from being a good tool to something that generated more work & filing than they were worth.
(This from a casual conversation with one of our HR people)
Trolling is a art,
Craigslist worked for me on my recent job search. In less than two weeks I got 3 interviews and an offer (which I took) from the job section.
Add a extra period or space to your monster resume if its been stale awhile. It will flip a switch somewhere and youll get more inqueries.
My first job out of college was from a recruiter who found my resume on Monster. The job after that was from a company who found my resume on Monster. My most recent job was actually due to a recruiter finding an 8-month-old resume on Dice, then placing me at my current job.
I have had virtually no success in directly contacting potential employers from their listings on online sites. On the other hand, I have had great success at companies and recruiters contacting ME from my resume being posted.
If nothing else, it doesn't hurt to leave your resume up there (while you're actively looking). You never know who might stumble upon it. YMMV.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
Most of the jobs I've found on those are either posted by headhunters/recruiters or are jobs that you wouldn't want anyway.
A local job site has some crappy listings too, but they kick Monster.com's ass. They're recent, relevant and have more information.
On the other hand, the best jobs I've found/interviewed for were not posted on those sites. If you want the job, you're looking for them - not the other way around.
Many positions aren't posted to HR until they have someone ready to hire anyway. A few companies I recently dealt with were in the interview stages. Their HR depts were unaware that there was a job opening. That's because the manager didn't want to post an opening and then spend six months trying to fill it. It makes him look picky/incompetent or that people don't want to work for him. He found his guy and sent the resume, position description/job req. and employment contract to HR in one paperclip.
It was a great job, too.
I had used it briefly in the past and never had any success. I left it active during employment periods with no hits. After the department where I was a network security analyst for was dissolved in 2002, I re-wrote my resume, and reposted on Monster, and within two weeks I had a few bites, best of which was by a contractor for a large financial institution, in which I was hired on full time as an IT manager for their training department. The moral of the story is it can be a useful tool if used correctly and if your resume is done correctly. Id recommend using a professional resume writer and basing your online postings off that.
I found my current engineering job using Monster, so I'm biased. Be agressive though; I'm probably an exception. I got about 1 interview per 20 jobs I applied for.
One thing I noticed...when you upload your resume, the employers view them sorted by date. I noticed right after I would update it, I would get lots of hits. So I started adding/deleting a period or space every couple days and then saving it, so my resume would always be "current" and near the top of the list. It really increases your clicks.
Laid off one year ago.
Took about 2.5 mo.s to "find myself"
Started looking, registered with Monster.
Received 2 really good leads and I'm still working at the one I preferred. Both leads came the week I registered.
Continue to receive leads from Monster.
now the catch...
The lead I accepted was from a HeadHunter who found me on Monster. I would have likely never found the job (even though it's only a 55 minute commute away) otherwise.
With that said, I'd recommend Monster but understand that HHs are a reality even with Monster. and yes, HHs do leave you with that "used" feeling. I recommend showering twice after talking to them on the phone and NEVER meet with them in person....
I was in a position a couple years ago to hire somebody. I decided to do it the 'tech' way since it was a tech job and post the job on Monster and Dice. I would never, ever do that again. My job for three weeks was to sort through the over 100 resumes I got a day. Most of which were laughably unsuited. I kept a few of the emails I thought were really funny around for years.
Like the ones that were in all caps. If you're applying for a computer job, I think some mastery of the caps lock key might be a demosntrable asset. But those were the entertaining ones. Most of it was just depressing.
Since then whenever anybody I work with has to hire somebody, I recommend checking the posted resumes, talking to agencies, asking friends, posting on craigslist, but not posting on the commercial boards. It just hurts.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
I've found Craigslist borderline useless in SoCal. Dice has always gotten the best response for me, though their job search engine sucks. Yahoo's (HotJobs) job search engine is the best (allows such things as saving interesting jobs during search for later review and applications), but has almost as low a response rate as Monster for me.
Maybe it's the impacted market, or maybe it's the ease with which people can apply online with generic form letters and overstated resumes, but I suspect that a lot of employers aren't nearly as interested in the online sites as they once were.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I placed my resume on Monster.com a long time ago and got a relatively large number of companies e-mailing and calling me for interviews and such. My wife also did the same, and got nearly the same results.
Skipping to recently--I don't have a resume available anymore because I was getting too many screwy/shady/questionable "companies" calling and nearly harassing me. My wife was laid-off and she posted her resume, only to get these same people hounding her. Most of them were pyramid-scheme type compaines, or they wanted her to call everyone in the area to see if they could lower their interest rate on their mortgage if they refinanced. Urgh--what a mess. They still call.
I'm really not sure that good companies wouldn't use the online resume sites as a hiring tool. A lot of the problem could just be the economy and how many companies just aren't hiring yet. Once everything starts picking up (hopefully in a few months), I wouldn't be surprised to see my favorite companies even posting jobs to those sites. It's just hard to know where a good place to offer yourself up for employment is when many companies still have hiring freezes in effect. I guess that's where personal contacts become the most valuable asset.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
Most of these boards are nothing more than a haven for recruiters who want to get you for a little as possible.
Instead of removing the middleman as Monster is supposed to do, Recruiters are allowed to join for a fee and post the jobs that they are looking for people for. So instead of getting into direct contact with the hiring director, you usually end up talking to some no-nothing recruiter who doesn't know jack about IT and think he or she is your only conduit to getting a decent position.
A wonderful experience, bah!
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I was laid off back in June of last year when the company I worked for for 7 years decided to up and move to Chicago and I chose not to.
My experience during the 6 months of unemployment that followed was that headhunters and huge job websites were about equally useless.
The job sites kept sending me nothing but "work at home" jobs (probably stuffing envelopes or telemarketing or something else distasteful.) The headhunters (when I could get one to return my calls, that is) sent me nothing but low-paying entry-level jobs that didn't interest me at all.
What finally worked for me was aggressively working my personal network of IT people I had met over the years. After only about a month of that, I had two offers to choose from, both for jobs that had never been published in any newspaper or website.
Bottom line: while I wouldn't recommend discounting the websites and headhunters altogether, I certainly wouldn't rely on them.
Online job boards went steadily downhill from 2000.
For each _real_ client position, there were probably 10 recruiting firms pushing the same job listing, some with different wording, some with identical text.
Then in 2001 when the shit hit the fan in IT world, other interesting things started to happen. Client positions would be listed and relisted as if they were new, but in fact they were positions that had been vacant for a year. The client had created the position, but due to market or other reasons had just avoided filling it.
To make matters worse, the bubble burst destroyed consulting firms. Firms with 30+ people suddenly became 2-3 person operations. They started getting hundreds of resumes, and in my view they began to thrash. One headhunter couldn't handle that volume. In any event, there just weren't many jobs anyway.
Fast forward to now. The job boards are full of MLM bs. I glanced at monster a couple of days ago and was shocked to see what it had become. 3 of 5 listings supposedly related to the "java" keyword were for bogus "work from home" jobs.
So basically, it's all a crock. The one thing that has, and will always work, is human networking. Get to know people, lots of them. Then you'll have people to contact when you need a job. They may not have a job for you, but one of them may know someone who does.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
While indeed sites like monster and dice have been no help at all, having a resume online and making sure it can be found through search engines worked out well for me.
What I did was this: Put a version of my resume online. Not on one of the job-sites, but on my own website. Make it available in several formats: Word, HTML, plain text and maybe PDF. Then I submitted the url to a number of search-engines, including Google and the Open Directory Project.
What I found is that sites specializing in tech-resumes often copy the content of the ODP resume section. Many hits for my resume come from such sites.
The rest come from keyword search-engines, so it's a good idea to put the right keywords in your resume: Try to think of which terms a recruiter (NOT the tech-manager) would search for when looking for a candidate in your field. Remember, this is a non-technical person, so "buzz-words" (annoying as they are) tend to work best.
The result is that even 7 months after I found a job, my resume gets 50-60 hits a month and every once in a while I get an email from a serious recruiter.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
I would say that job boards make it even easier for headhunters to find people.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Many cites have local job boards. I found more real job offers and less "GET RICH NOW! BE YOUR OWN BOSS!" crap on the one for my city.
If you are not interested in relocating, this can help. As always though, networking thru friends/relations is best.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
C'mon, look at the context. The name of the site is asktheheadhunter.com. Whose interests do they have in mind?
Actually, I've been on his mailing list for about a year, and I've found his writings to be very insightful.
Common sense ought to tell you that when a decent job with decent pay pops up on a national job board, there's going to be a lot of competition. I know my own company's experience with FlipDog was that they were OVERWHELMED with responses, to the point that stopped using the service.
The ATH newsletter is all about circumventing the traditional job application process, getting your foot in the door at the company you want to work at BEFORE the job is posted, and making a strong impression instead of just being one resume in a stack of thousands. His suggestions will undoubtably push you to be more outgoing than what most job seekers are comfortable with, but that's what puts you ahead of everybody else in the game.
A great resource, IMO.
When I graduated and was looking for a job, I submitted my resume to some jobs I found on Monster and a few on my local newspaper's section at, IIRC, CareerBuilder. In total, about 20 positions over the course of 2 months.
I got 0 response. Zip, zilch, nada. Except for the confirmation email telling me my resume was submitted for that particular listing, I got nothing. No calls, no emails, nothing. And I was qualified for the job.
And I got my current job by knowing somebody who worked at the company. I knew somebody at another company too, called them, they checked, but they didn't have anything open for me at the time. But the guy said to get back in touch if I hadn't found anything in a few months.
Word of mouth, networking (not that kind, the kind where you *gasp* talk to people!), and having contacts in companies seem to be the best way to go, and I didn't even need to read a study to figure that out.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Even worse, how many IT jobs are even posted in the paper anymore. I keep an eye on the total of IT ads in the Indianapolis Star each Sunday, and for the last few months it has run from a low of 3 to a high around 10. I know Indy isn't exactly the Silicon Prairie, but it doesn't look like employers are using the newspapers anymore for tech hiring.
As for personal jobhunting experience, the last two times I placed my resume on boards (Headhunter.net) I was contacted by a recruiter who placed me in a good job. Of course, YMMV...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It's fairly well-known that personal networking is more effective than job boards and newspaper ads. That doesn't mean that job boards are useless -- in fact, I just got an interview off Monster. It does mean, however, the time you spend job hunting on Monster et. al. versus talking to people should be proportionate to your likelihood of success.
Most people I know who are looking for a job spend 90% of their job-hunting time looking online, even though the likelihood of finding a job that way is something like 2%. (Don't have exact stats handy.)
As for headhunters, your success partly depends on what kind of headhunter you have. If they are on retainer with the company (rare), then they get paid regardless of whether or not they find a specific candidate, so chances are they will spend more time recruiting good ones -- otherwise, a bad placement could cost them their retainer.
If they are contracted by the company to find a specific role (more common), than they don't get paid unless they get someone hired, so they're more likely to blanket-bomb the employer with resumes. Worse yet are those headhunters who were not solicited by the company, but are attempting to sell their services to the company anyway. Most companies try to avoid these guys, so you're not at all likely to find something that way.
But in any case, the headhunter does not work for you; your best interests are not their top priority.
I can spell. I just can't type.
While I've had success using the job boards (I still get calls about outdated resumes I left floating around from my job hunting days) to get a job you need to exploit your connections.
:)
I got my current job from someone bringing in my resume. I then submitted resumes for 8 of my acquaintances and 5 of them received job offers.
Keep in touch with former coworkers after you leave. An e-mail every few months just to say hi will do. You never know when you'll need a job or when your company will need an employee.
That being said, any programmers (US citizens only) needing a job near Balitmore just reply to this message with your e-mail address. See, the system works!
during my unemployed in 2001-2 I quickly discovered (and wrote about) the problems with these boards.
Here's the trick I learned. Don't bother applying to any of the jobs on monster! But be sure to put a profile on monster/yahoo with lots of keywords. HR and contractors are not interested in receiving lots of letters and resumes from people who are trying to fit their skills into a job description. More likely, they want to punch in a few keywords and then email 5 or so people who they think have that skill (and other things).
As far as the recommendation about whether to update your monster profile every day, that was true for about a year, and then afterwards the major job boards fixed that way to game the system.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
If it was just distasteful work that wouldn't be so bad. But if you get an "job offer" that refuses to clairify the nature of the work and is work at home, you can pretty much assume that it's a scam. Federal Trade Commission's warning on Work-at-Home schemes. Cockeyed.com investigated the Work-at-Home signs that often litter neighborhoods.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
What i find even more frusterating are the jobs listed on monster, hotjobs, etc that are headhunting companies attemtping to fill positions for other firms. i usually get a phone interview w/ some asshole that knows nothing about the actual specifics of the job other than a list of requirements.
They're constantly trying to talk you down on salary. The first communication he'll indicate the job is paying between $20 and $25 an hour based on relavant experience. By the next call, it's down to $20 to $22. By the third call it's $20, and if you make it even further you find out it's even less. "$18.65 an hour?!? I'm making more than that now! I thought you said $20! What do you mean up to $20.
I usually find the best leads are from friends, contacts, and former co-workers whose companies are hiring.
I wish I listened. I posted my resume and was innundated with MLM offers, "career counsuling" and resume writing services, and "opportunities" to become a "branch manager" with Citibank (!?), who was opening 50+ branches in my area (!?).
Beware: if you post your information on Monster or the other general job boards, you *will* get email that sounds like a request for an interview for a position but is careful constructed to *not* precisely say that it's really a high-priced Want Ad re-distribution scam. Oops. What a joke. Here's a sample:
I wrote back saying that a simple Google search on his company's name turned up numerous "Pxxxx-Txxxx is a SCAM!" web pages and, knowing the Internet is want to exaggerate grievances, could he answer back a short statement to easy my apprehension. No response. I guess my impressive credentials weren't impressive enough to warrant the effort...However, having been on the other side as an employer looking to fill a tech position I found Monster quite effective at producing skads of resumes for me to glean from. Wow. An entry level position with high bar qualifications garnered quite a number of resumes. However, this being the Internet, it is all too easy to click and send a resume/application for a job that you're not qualified for or that you're not truly interested in. I was not impressed with the candidates.
So, it's true: it's who you know. My best jobs, my best hires -- those I've had personal contact with.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
First, he calls these services ineffective because they only fill a few percent of the jobs nationwide. But that percentage jumped from 2.5% 2 years ago to 5% last year (total, for all job boards.) Given that rate, it'll be at 40% in a few years.
Second, he doesn't discuss what fraction of jobs are even posted on these boards. If only 20% of the jobs are posted on these boards, and 5% of them are filled from resumes on them, that's a pretty good percentage.
Last, recruiters use these boards as well, and they probably aren't included in the 5%. The hiring company wouldn't know where the recruiter found your resume.
Overall, I got quite a few hits from the job boards. Some of them were direct and some through recruiters. Not a bad route, especially for high-tech jobs, in my experience.
For what it's worth, I got one contract through the job boards, and then a full-time job through a referral last time I was looking.
The job before that I got through searching the web (altavista at the time) for my keywords. I found several possible companies that had ads on their site but not on the national job boards via google last time I was hunting as well...
SKG
The job sites kept sending me nothing but "work at home" jobs (probably stuffing envelopes or telemarketing or something else distasteful.) The headhunters (when I could get one to return my calls, that is) sent me nothing but low-paying entry-level jobs that didn't interest me at all.
Heheh... I got one off Monster or Hotjobs - can't remember which. They called me up and we arranged an interview in a rented hotel boardroom. They wouldn't tell me the name of the company citing secrecy (note that I've worked for defense contractors, so I've seen this before); just told me that it suited me based on my profile.
Well, I donned my best suit and tie and went to the interview.
Turned out they wanted me to be a cold-calling life insurance salesman, paid commission only. I started yelling right there in the meeting room about how they'd wasted my time. Made sure to tell the rest of the people who were waiting there with me that it was a scam. 4 other job-seekers left.
Man, was I furious.
Then, there's the horror story of the spam that comes from these places. Got one offer, just the other day, of a waiter position at Swiss Chalet (Canadian chicken joint). Apparently, they pulled my e-mail address from one of the sites and started hitting me with it. I've since dealt with the problem (sending a warning to Cara Operations which runs Swiss Chalet that their headhunters are spamming).
Another site to *avoid* is 2jobsearch.net. When I put my resume there in 2001, they looked like a real recruiter. Now, I get the daily "AIONetwork Newsletter" which is just spam for debt consolidation scams with domain names like biz-dot.net and places like that. Fortunately, their spam is easy to filter, even though their upstream provider (startdedicated.com) has received loads of spam complaints from me and apparently refuses to do anything.
Forget the job hunting websites, they're just crap. Pound the pavement yourself.
I'm a creative problem-solver. With each resume that I hand-delivered with properly-researched names on the cover letter, I attached a small can of WD-40. In the cover letter, I referred to it as a problem-solver, just like me. Indeed, it got my resume noticed, and I got a bunch of interviews and offers from it.
Just keep working at it.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
However it isn't a matter of just registering and waiting for the offers given the current market. I used the sites to find agencies, and actively applied to every single position that looked remotely interesting, sent mails to every employment agency that listed positions along the lines I was looking for, and updated my CV or "renewed it" (on Monster you can, or at least could, just click on a link to get to the top of the pile again) on the sites EVERY day to make sure my CV was looked at.
It got me several calls from recruiters, and a new job starting last summer at the same salary I had at my previous job, despite the general tenedency being that people in my type of positions took steep pay cuts to move into more secure positions last year. But the number of responses (including people telling me the position had been filled) I got was perhaps 1 in 50 - the rest just didn't bother answering at all.
Another thing to keep in mind, though, is that you MUST make sure you follow up the recruiters. They will NOT follow up you if you don't show interest. I got calls about a couple of positions that I wasn't too interested in, but that I told the recruiters to put me forward for anyway, to find out more, the ones where I wasn't on the phone to the recruiters daily never got back to me at all.
These people are still drowning in CV's and you can assume that when they call you they have probably already called 10 other people. Of anyone qualified they will hire one of the few that are actively spending time trying to understand what their clients want and helps them provide it.
The last thing to keep in mind is: Your CV MUST be keyword friendly to be successful on these sites. In my case, I'd originally not mentioned much about Microsoft products and kept to my core competencies, even though I have in the past used Office and even (I am ashamed to say) programmed Word macros. Many job specs will mention things like Office etc. even if they are completely peripheral to the job - the recruiters will put it into their searches anyway if they get to many results with more relevant keywords.
The other deficiency my CV originally had was that recruiters tend to search for the degree level the employer asks for, while many (most?) tech employers are relatively flexible (the main exception being banks that tend to be really anal about it) about your formal qualifications if you have relevant experience - in my case I quit uni to start my first company at 19. When I added (truthfully) that I am currently taking a MSc. as a correspondence course in my spare time (mostly to "get the paper" for future job hunts...) the level of interest suddenly increased a lot, including for positions where the employer had stated an MSc. as an "absolute requirement".
Do anything except lie to get the interviews - the recruiters often don't know the position well enough to judge whether you'd be suitable... :)
Two years ago, when I had been laid off for four months, an in-house recruiter at a company I was not interviewing with told me the following.
She said all recruiters post to the Internet job boards simply becuase they're supposed to as part of their job. They do not expect to find candidates from these boards. Furthermore, these boards are a hassle, since they make it so easy to apply for a job. They get volumes of resumes for each posting they send to the boards, and most of the candidates have no experience relevant to the job being posted.
So, they trash the resumes they receive, without even bothering to sort through them!
She advised me to use the old-fashioned way - networking. Hiring managers give more weight to resumes they receive from direct referrals. Also, most direct referrals bypass the in-house recruiters and go directly to the hiring manager, which guarantees your resume will get seen by someone with hiring authority.
I followed her advise, and received three offers within two months.
I agree that the better choice of the two would be a headhunter that found you. However, I would add one more thing: it's worth 10 minutes of your time to research who you're dealing with.
Don't let someone get you excited about a great position, and a great company, only to discover (perhaps in hindsight) that the 'headhunter' was neither experienced at their craft, nor interested in finding a good fit for the company or you. In those instances, the headhunter becomes more like a matchmaking aunt who just wants to marry off as many of her nephews as quickly as possible, make a few bucks, then move on to new town.
Fortuneately, until the job market improves back to where it was during the dot com era, this breed of 'budget headhunters' has died off or found work doing something else. But when the economy cycles back to where it's a job-hunter's market again, they will probably return with a great deal for you.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
A friend of mine came out to LA, and started job hunting, including through the job sites.
Her skills are in network and windows administration, with plenty of training and experience in high end phone systems (like enterprise sized Nortel stuff).
The first call she got was from Belkin, being an independant sales rep, only making commissions.
The second was from a major national insurance company, who asked her to come out for an interview. She verified that it was a computer job before she went. The interview itself was an hour outside of LA. We drove out, and they asked if I was interested in sitting in on the meeting too. Why? I'm not looking for a job. So, I go to the car, and start playing with my laptop. 10 minutes later, she comes out bitching. It's a multi-level marketing thing, where they had a room full of unemployed non-english speaking people to sell insurance (or ideally recruit new sales people) to people that can't afford it, and take the commissions.
WTF? computer job? Nowhere in that job required a computer. It required being able to con people into spending money they couldn't afford on life insurance they'd never see. You didn't even use a computer to file the applications, they were by paper.
{sigh}
Aparently they went throught Monster.com, took down all the names and titles, and contacted everyone they could, offering jobs in their field, only to find that it was this sales crap.
Computer Job != Insurance Salesman
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Not a bad idea for a site! And it seems to work well. Any plans to expand it to Canadian job sites as well? I'm in Vancouver, so all my searchs for "engineer" in "Vancouver" give me results for Vancouver, Washington.
BTW, to the AC who replied "loser" to this thread - Mark has a perfectly fine post. It's entirely on-topic, informative, and it just happens to benefit him as well.
Dave
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
When I look at hotjobs, I see Raytheon has posted another 100 jobs again today. Funny thing is, Raytheon isn't hiring. Another funny thing is, Raytheon is still looking for a "NT Systems Admin" that job has posted several times every week for years - and I can assure you that here in Denver there are - at least - a few hundred unemployed people who are easily qualified for that job.
Qwest does the same thing. There are also hundreds of jobs from the U.S. Navy.
Qwest, Raytheon, and the U.S. Navy account for about 80% of the jobs posted. The rest are from those recruiting companies.
Point is: I strongly suspect that 9 out 10 jobs posted are not for real. These people are just collecting resumes "just in case."
I don't know how this cr@p works, but it's obvious that it's a joke.
Monster is ineffective if your use of Monster sounds like the following:
1. Enter your resume, and then enter it again but using Monster's input boxes.
2. Search for a type of job or skill and find a list of jobs.
3. Come across an interesting-sounding job.
4. Press "Apply Now".
5. Wait for manna to fall from heaven.
However, these job boards are not without merit, but only as a means to see jobs, not as a means to apply to them.
Those who truly want a job will go the extra step of sending a personal email, with a custom cover letter, and possibly a tuned or custom resume. This method will be more effective than simply using the stock Apply Now method -- which employers now apparently routinely ignore.
Both of my jobs attained over the last two years have been gained via this method, since IT recruiting (my previous boom-time sure-fire method) fell through in early 2002.
(As a hiring manager at a small company, I'm finding it astonishing at how many people apply for positions with no cover letter, and nothing stating why they want or think they would do well in the position! I don't consider those applicants terribly seriously, because they clearly don't consider the position very seriously.)
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Skill keyword - internet
Location - 17046
first hit
INTERNET MARKETING, GUARANTEED FREE LEADS, NO INVESTMENT
Job Summary: INTERNET EMPLOYMENT, WORK ANY-TIME, ANY-PLACE,! GUARANTEED FREE LEADS EVERY MONTH*, NO INVESTMENT, NO KITS, NO MLM,100% INTERNET, AVAILABLE! WE ARE NOT AN "OPPORTUNITY" EMPLOYER, WE HAVE POSITIONS READILY AVAILABLE...
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
Thanks for the feedback and to the 446 people who visited the site, tried the search and some who filled out our survey. I've definitelly been inspired to work my butt off to deliver the best search results.
Dave, our goal is to get the search algo working perfectly, then to expand the search to all english speaking countries. Most notably, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
When I was last unemployed a little less then a year ago, I took full advantage of Monster and Dice. The key to these sites is using them properly. As much as one would like to believe, these sites generally can't find you a job. However, and this is the important part, you can find a job on these sites. The key is using them like a glorified(sp?) classified ad. Most offers on these sites do not want you to use the "submit your resume now" feature on the site, but forward your resume to a seperate (and listed) e-mail address. It's also important to make sure you read the description, and avoid vague job descriptions, just as you would do with any other job offer from any other source. Using these rules, I pulled a 3:1 ratio of Resumes submitted vs. Interviews granted. I never won any of the job offers I submitted, mainly because I was applying for jobs that I was underqualified for, and attempted to use the 'I know I can do this job, trust me' interviewing technique. I ended up settling for a job that was easier and paid less then I desired, for the sole purpose of building the experience needed to get the jobs I missed out on before. I am currently retooling my resume, and next week will begin using Monster and Dice to look for a new job, and I have full faith that I will find what I want using these sites.