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What Do You Want in a Job Website?
antifoidulus asks: "After reading some complaints about monster.com from both the perspectives of job seekers and employers it struck me as how, even in 2006, most job sites are incredibly poor at what they do. So I ask my fellow Slashdot readers, both job seekers and employers, what do you really want in a jobs web site? What features are totally lacking in the current crop? Also, what aspects of the current systems do you love/hate?"
Jobs not recruiters..
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Most sites ask you the geographic areas you want to work in, but the recruiters who troll the sites don't listen. I want a job site where when I check "Sacramento" I don't get called for jobs in San Jose or "the Bay Area". That's NOT Sacramento folks, learn to read! While you're at it, how about banning recruiters who aren't from the area they're hiring for? I hate it when some schmoe recruiter in North Carolina is trying to fill a job in California...
...naked recruiters!
For once, I hope I can see a site that allows me to fully customize my CV, but not through a standardized web form.
Mmmm. Free market research...
More jobs. If you aren't searching nationally (which most people aren't) or leaving the fields blank ; there aren't more than one or two matches. Even these are mostly fake jobs listed from headhunters and placement agencies looking to expand their pool of workers. I'd also like to see less competition between the job websites. I don't like checking 15 websites for a job every day.
PS: For Canadian bums like me that are looking for a job, check this site out.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
A job that pays me to tastes coffee and doughnuts with a good wage, benefits and an early retirement plan.
I'm sick of seeing "open" or "market" for salary ranges.
I'm sick of seeing job postings that want someone to be experts in Cisco, Windows administration, Exchange, AD, Linux, Solaris, Oracle, SAP, and perl scripting experts for $60k.
I'm sick of seeing job postings with technology contradictions, including requiring more years of experience with a technology than it's been around.
I'm sick of seeing job postings for jobs that don't exist -- find a way to penalize recruiters who post non-existant jobs for resume collection.
I'm sick of seeing job postings which misclassify jobs entirely. Find standardized ways of describing a position, like using SAGE's job descriptions -- http://www.sage.org/pubs/8_jobs/core.mm
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Entry level position, must have 5 years experience in .net 2.0, 4 years in perl 6, ....
and so on for an absurd laundry list of arbitrary skils which tell me that the people hiring are either clueless or insane.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The job descrptions should include the reviews/comments from current employee/s (could be anonymous) who is/are working in the same position as the seeking title. That would clearly tell the aplicant what to expect or how many years to stick with the company. Forget about the description of jobs posted by original head hunter. they dont know the field work, nor the results of the job. just some lazy ass manager sends them requirements & headhunters add some bells & whistles & post on sites/newspapers. we need honest comments from current employees.
... I really don't use job sites, but I've poked around a bit.
1) ban recruiters
2) manditory salary ranges
3) must include company name so I can do research
4) use a good set of standard tags (travel, COBOL, PMI, etc)
5) list when you're deciding to award the job
Places like Monster only allow you to pick metropolitan areas. I want to be able to stick in MY location and see all jobs that fit my criteria within a 45 minute commute.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
As in, things for a bright college student to do, without needing 10 years of experience in everything. I mean, I get the point, but I *know* that I'm capable of doing a few things here and there.
I want the jobs to come to me.
I already subscribe to a couple of job sites that offer feeds and have had great results using them. I wouldn't even consider manually searching for jobs at this point.
Monster seems to feel that a solution to the problem already exists -- you can turn off the ability for others to send you unsolicited offers. But I want people to be able to offer me jobs, provided it's a job that I'd have some chance of being interested in. What really needs to exist is an enhanced set of filters for the unsolicited offers. I should be able to filter people who don't provide a salary range, for example, or don't meet a minimum salary determined by me. I should be able to include in my summary conditions for that contact. Or filter by industry. Or job category. Or any of a dozen other factors that I should be able to control.
Then you need a feedback mechanism to rate the quality of the unsolicited offers -- both on a community level, perhaps like eBay ratings, and back to the job board, perhaps to notify them when someone has falsified information to evade filters.
Of course, the problem with all this is that the job posters pay the bills. Profitable job sites are going to limit the employers as little as possible so long as they can maintain some illusion of job seeker-focus.
Jobs, of course. Categorized and cross-indexed in any which way you could think of, so it's straightforward to narrow down to only those posts that actually are of interest. You want job listings for network management in east London, with at least such and such base salary, weekends and nights acceptable, at a small or medium-sized firm at least two years old, then that's what you should get. And it should optionally match your profile to explude listings that are not a fit for you (not enough experience, no bus drivers' licence, etc.).
The trick to a good service is to make the listings reliable and complete. If a company posts hugely inflated requirements (must have 200+ years experience coding Java) in the hope of attracting top people, you're going to miss valid openings since they'd be filtered (you only have 180 years on your resume). Likewise, no employer is happy wading through exaggerated, not-quite-lying resumes to find people that actually are qualified. Figure out how to make it _easy_ to be honest. Make all listings anonymous, would perhaps help? Not sure about that.
Also, make all listing open-ended. Don't have a set of checkboxes for what languages you know (or seek), for example - no matter how many you list, you will miss some, and people will wnat to qualify their answer more than a yes/no check. Let people write in the language, and a one-line comment about their ability (or needed ability). Make it open-ended, then do text searching for matching. Make any graded description, like skill level, very vivid and concrete. An abstract 1-5 scale can and does mean very different things, but if you make each point descriptive, with an example, it's easier to find a common level. Oh, and three levels is almost always sufficient for ability descriptions. Any finer graduation will be a matter for the full-size CV and interviews.
Ideally, there should be a comments section on each and every company, and each and every job seeker a'la Amazon, so you can evaluate the general desireability asa workplace or workmate. But of course, job seekers and small firms will not get enough comments to constitute a valid sample, and I'd imagine there'd be more than a few legal headaches providing a comments section as well.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Job sites need some means to prevent recruiters simply doing keyword searches through resumes, but never reading past your phone number.
Nothing is more annoying than some C-average H.R. major who didn't even bother to look at your name until the phone was ringing, say "So tell me what it is you do!"
I do not want such morons to "schedule some face time" with me, nor do I want them to "touch base" to "keep you up to speed."
-CR
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
I would love a job website that didn't have 100 US Navy and US Army ads mixed in. If someone were interested in a US Military career, I don't think they would be looking for java programming jobs on dice.com or monster.
The TOS of any good job site should make it clear to recruiters that they can only post for jobs that they can fill, not generic jobs just to get your resume. Also there needs to be a way to filter recruiters for agencies out.
Also don't make me sign up for the website to look at jobs or receive email notifications.
1. Their main revenue source these days seems to be from student loan refinance companies.
2. They allow bogus "professional training" companies to masquerade as employers.
3. They don't make it clear how much information others can learn about you (e.g., can a complete stranger find your name, address, phone number, etc.? Can your current employer see that you recently posted your resume?)
A good job website would work like this. Job seekers can post one or two resumes online for free. Employers can search all resumes for free. They can contact job seekers for a small fee. Job seekers should be able to choose which employers can see their contact info. Any "employer" offering job seekers anything other than a real job or internship should not be allowed to use the site. Predatory student loan refinancing companies should be completely excluded from the site.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
No I do NOT want to work from home giving away free satilite dishes. No I am NOT interested in medical billing nor do I think it is an exciting career. Yet both of these, along with many others like them, come up in a search for information technology jobs on Monster.
http://www.CelloFourteGroupie.net
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
They advertise here all the time: dice.com isn't bad from my perspective. Monster.com will send you email telling you "there are matches" for your agents, then you have to log in, go through the ads (even if you pay them), and look for the one or two jobs that is a possible match.
Dice.com sends you an email with all of the links, you don't have to log in, and the ads are unobtrusive. I didn't get my latest job through them, but I did get a couple of interviews. BTW, don't just "apply now"; see if you can figure out how to apply directly to the company offering the position, customize your cover letter, etc. Call them, send them a paper resume - whatever. Put in the extra effort, it's worth it.
I'll tell you what I'm fscking sick of. Every single book/pamphlet/magazine/website/list of job seeking suggestions threatens a job seeker with death if they don't format everything perfectly, spell everything perfectly, and make your cover letter and resume look like a shining diamond. Yet the job postings I see on every single job site, whether it's craigslist or somewhere really formal, are pieces of shit.
They're spelled incorrectly, they have horrible grammar. There are inconsistencies with the technology (four years of something that has only existed for 2). They're inconsistent with how they want you to contact them: the company wants a direct email, the job site wants you to go through their website, and the recruiter wants you to go through them.
I swear to god, companies need to get their shit together if they expect the same from us. When I'm looking for a job, that's really number one in my book, is the company even focused enough to create a coherent job post. Because there are plenty that are shit, and I'm just going to look right past you.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
1. I want to know if it's a recruiter or a direct job. I do not mind recruiters, but often they are just "fishing". And I do not want to waste my time.
... And a position for 12.35 an hour in a call center will just be wasting all of our times. Or a "guru" position at 130k .. You will get much closer applications if you place the low and high of what a position will pay. I don't like "negotiating" my job the way I would a used car. Although it seems that some recruiters and used car salespeople come from the same school.
.. You did it to your self.
2. I want to know where the position is. I don't want to waist my time with "Seattle area" When I live on the East side and a job in Tacoma would be a 2 hour commute each way.
3 I want to know how much they expect to pay for a position. I make over 60k a year in IT
The point is that if you low ball my salary sure you might be able to make more in your commission. But When I get the offer I was expecting from a competitor well
This is exactly what happened to me in my last 2 jobs. I accepted a "lowball" offer to get me out of the position I was in. After 4 months (and no promised review after 90 days that was supposed to come with the salary I should have gotten the whole time). I was recruited over to a great position I now have. I do not expect to be leaving any time soon.
Well it's just my opinion.
Nothing is more annoying than some C-average H.R. major who didn't even bother to look at your name until the phone was ringing, say "So tell me what it is you do!"
I think I spoke with that person recently. I emailed a resume in both pdf and opendocument format to an HR manager recently. I also included a link to my online, html format resume. Guess what the reply email that I recieved 3 weeks later said? "I couldn't open your resume, can you send it in word?". Shit!
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Indeed.com is a good step in the right direction. (disclaimer: I work there)
Indeed currently has 3.4 million jobs from the last 30 days. It lets you search jobs from thousands of sites in one place. And it has a cool job trends tool.
Oh yea, and it has a site for Canadian jobs, too.
I routinely get job offers for Southern California and the East Coast. Although I explicitly state everywhere else I'm looking for something in Silicon Valley/Santa Clara County. It got to the point that I would cut off a recruiter before they get into the sales pitch to ask them where first before wasting time for either one of us.
Even more annoying is trying to explain to some recruiters why I'm not going to drop my current contract job to run over for an interview in the middle of the day. I'm making money now. Why should I blow off money on the table for an interview that might turn into a job that pays. Some recruiters just don't get this.
I love the recruiters for Microsoft. At one time, I was considered for five different positions over a two month period that never panned out for one reason or another. Seems like some Microsoft managers need a prade of potential cadidates to be considered at the same time before they decide on anything else. So frustrating...
It just seems that the applicants I get are rarely suited for the position they're applying for. They seem to just fire resumes out of a shotgun. They don't have any experience in the specific field (database driven websites), or even in the general technologies (when to use a left join in SQL). At this point in the web's history, is it really too much to expect people who already know this stuff? And for them to be easy people to work with? The catches are just too few and far between.
.sig for heaven's sake!
It sounds from the other posts here that the would-be-employees have similar compaints from the other side. Too much noise, not enough signal. Recruiters annoy me too. What can these job sites do about it? Hell if I know. I'm too busy trying to hire people!
I've been relegated to including a link to my company's tech jobs page in my slashdot
Cheers.
There's nothing I hate more than having to go through some recruiter (who often turns out to be a scumbag). What I want in a jobsite is an actual connection between job seekers and employers, with no middlemen getting in the way. The recruiters are a problem in more ways than I can count.
AccountKiller
I counter with "valid canidates."
My mid-sized company uses monster. We have open positions that represent 10% of our workforce. We are in dire need for these positions to be filled.
The boolean mentality does not work for most "good" jobs. Sure, people like the system to pick out the one "perfect" job/canidate, and start on Monday. It doesn't work that way. Typically, a company has minimum requirements and maximum pay in mind, and they want the system to offer the best people within those constraints for further screening.
A better system would mimic a headhunter more than a classified ad, with an incentive for making the match rather than making the marketplace.
Sure, you don't want to move, but under what conditions would you reconsider? The salary might be lower, but the fringe benefits could make up for it. You might be hired for a posting below your skills, with the opportunity to advance quickly.
You really want the killer app? Create a shared database for recruiters like what exists for real-estate. Require screened canidates and offers.
I think the biggest problem is perception. I have never used a job-finding website, nor do I plan to. My impression of these services is that any worthwhile employer doesn't need to turn to the internet to find employees. Employers may very well feel the same way. If someone has to go online to find a job, then how valuable can he or she be? I suspect that these 'services' suffer from the same stigma as online dating services. That's the problem. Getting rid of that image would go a long ways. Gear the service towards finding obscure jobs. I'm sure there are many small companies out there that job-seekers don't even know exist. I'm an engineering student and am constantly amazed when I take a new road and come across a new engineering firm within 30 minutes of my home, and this is rural South Jersey! In large cities, the numbers are probably mind boggling. I would suggest networking. Touch base with smaller companies, startups, etc. and get them to use your service. Do away with the, "Anyone can sign up and recruit employees," model. Require an application with information on the company before allowing them an account. Quality control is KEY. On the job-seekers side, target schools. While you obviously wouldn't want to restrict yourself to graduating students, that should still be a primary target market. Either way, the biggest issue is getting past the 'dating service' preconception. Do that, and you're gold.
What state is that in?
Is that job sites are not designed to get employers and employee's together. Instead they are designed to keep them appart until one or both parties (depending on the site) cough up the necessary dough to "see" a little of what the other offers. More effort has gone into hiding one from the other than has gone into enabling one to see the other.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Job sites make it incredibly easy for clueless HR people to set up a filter for skills X, Y, and Z. Know a lot about X and Y but not much about Z? Well, you either have to lie about it or get filtered out by a computer!
My other beef with job sites is the lack of standardization for the application process. The job site should be able to collect the relevant information and pass it on to the hiring manager. When I click "apply now" I should not be taken to some other e-HR site to enter all my information AGAIN and submit my resume AGAIN. Just make it work!
Lastly, the blatantly bogus listings for the work-from-home scams or ads with insufficient details (like, say, the actual employer). Please.
Nathan
I know a few recruiter/head hunters have found me using some technology that searches the web for resumes. (Hint - Set up a web page and put your resume there.) I even got spammed by one. He had his introduction letter automated. It was even automated for replies I believe. After I received the same letter three times, I complained and they stopped coming.
A better technology than all the online job boards would be one that searches the internet for your resume. Maybe this would be a google resume search. If you have a useful website, your resume would probably be higher in the rankings. I don't know -- it's a start. In the mean time, I've just started applying to everything that's even remotely related to my skills.
1) universal coverage : I am listed on 7, count'em seven, different job sites. It is a royal pain having to check each of these every day. I want one site, an aggregator site perhaps, that really does list 95%+ of the jobs in my area. .pdf, give them a taste of thier own medicine. (municipal level jobs here are often listed as .pdf since they just use thier document management system to scan in the same piece of paper the tech handed to the HR dept, who in turn listed it on the sites and with the JobBank)
2)in-depth local coverage : the reason I belong to seven sites is because in my field and at my level, some of the best opportunities never get listed with the national level sites. There are good, industry or region specific websites that list jobs that Monster and the like will never see.
3) BAN the use of "company confidential" in want ads. I want to know who I am applying to. At bare minimum, professional standards suggest that I direct a personalized letter to the HR head honco, highlighting things not covered in the resume, or showing how my skills directly apply to that firm. Obviously, I can't do that if I have no friggin' clue who I am dealing with now can I?
4) Every company must have a blurb/profile of some kind listed on the site in order to post jobs.
5) Potential employees should be allowed to post feedback on these companies. (There is a tech recruiter in Oshawa, Ont. Canada that I would love to post a few harsh words about) E-bay and Amazon manage to do OK with that idea.
6) use industry standardized job descriptions. I believe that both Canadian and American federal gov'ts keep lists of jobs with thumbnail descriptions for just such a reason. Granted; in the tech sector, new jobs and descriptions often pop up very quickly, faster than a gov't agency can keep up with. However, it would be a starting point. For new descriptions, allow companies and registered potential employees to maintain a wiki of job related terms and job descriptions.
7) Allow the use of an *accurate*, relational boolean keyword search. I for one am tired of searching using the key terms network, administration and server and getting a handful of techie jobs buried in a pile of accounting, managerial and other jobs simply because *one* of my words happened to appear. Worse yet, NONE of my words appear anywhere in the ad, yet it gets included in the results anyway. (I'm looking at YOU jobshark.ca) My ex-girlfriends angelfire personal homepage has a Google search in it, why can't yours?
8) actually have a human being *read* support e-mails, not just have a 'bot skim through and send me the form letter du jour based on a few keywords, directing me to the FAQ's/self help pages (I'm *still* looking at you Jobshark!).
9) don't limit resumes to two pages, cover letters to 800 chars. These conventions are based on real people having to wade through real paper. Lets face the fact that the vast majority of companies are using 'bots to skim through the slew of applications a nation-wide posting can generate. These 'bots are comparing my resume to a stored meta-resume. If I get enough checkmarks, my resume gets passed on to a human. Given the wide range of degrees, certifications and so on, it makes sense to let me do a traditional one or two page resume, and then append a couple more pages stuffed full of keywords for the 'bots to flag. If websites can do it to boost their chances, why can't I?
I'll list a RCA or CCNA on the human pages and do the long forms : Red Hat Certified Administrator and Cisco Certified Network Administrator : on the 'bot pages. For that matter, let me post my resume as a
10) while I am dreaming here, gimmie an RSS feed option instead of e-mailed alerts. It would be slightly more useful to me than the e-mails, and to my mind way cooler besides.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Most job sites are companies seeking people that don't have to have any particular skill, just be "good enough" for a specific job. You'll often find decent jobs, with benefits, but you'll NEVER get rich looking for a job at such places, regardless of your skill level. It's a meat market, with very little fat left over for pickings.
The really good jobs are handed out by executives talking to executives. People who say, over lunch/dinner/golf something like "I'm looking for a NNN, do you know anybody?". If you can be whomever is named 10 seconds after such a question, you are looking at the dream job. At this point, being convenient and "good enough" so that they don't have to worry about it, is very good reason to hire you. Once they have to go thru the hassle of reading 27,000 resumes and interviewing 47 people, whoever they hire is going to start off on the wrong foot, simply because of the hassles involved in hiring.
Make sure to be damned good at what you do, and be just as good about letting everybody around you know that, without coming off like a prick or a primadonna. Make sure that, when you're looking for work or contracts, that those who know how good you are know that. And, leave your name/business cards everywhere you can.
That referral is golden - when you get it, you'll end up with customers/employers who don't mind paying you well, and offer you smiles, thanks, and appreciation you while they hand you your check.
But, once you get to the job site, there's nothing special about you, and it's soooo much more difficult to find the cream!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
still packed with headhunters though...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Until we get search engines that can determine meaning from context we are stuck as long as people keep naming their products in stupid ways.
We may joke about apple iXXX everything but at least it is easy to search for. MS is especially evil since it seems unable to name its products uniquely.
Oh and that is what I want in a job website. A search system that gets around it. After all the system knows the context, it is searching through jobs listings. Shouldn't be too hard to get people to list required skills in such a way that even current search technology can easily list only those that apply.
Of course that would only help if jobs didn't just list every skill they ever heard off.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't think that was the point. He doesn't want to have to use a Microsoft product. He's supplied three alternative sources, non of which comply to their REQUIREMENT of MS Word. And while I appreciate his position, I know that many recruiters and HR departments 1. don't want to have to go through a hundred resume's trying to figure out what program they need just to view each one, 2. sanitize the personal information like email address and phone number before passing it along to the hiring manager. I know what you're thinking for #1. But you've got to remember, HR people aren't educated in the million different ways to open a file. They're not going to just double click on a pdf document. They're going to open Word, then try to open resume.pdf, that's if they can find it.
Someone hates these cans.
Because that excludes people like me who are entirely self-taught. I know what you are talking about. I have more then once had to help people with diploma's coming out of there ears with the most basic stuff. Just last week I worked on a volunteer project that a couple of students had done where they had not done a single thing about security (putting get variables unchecked into an sql query, login over http). They stopped with the project because they had finished their internship and are now studiying for their exams.
They will probably pass. Despite the fact that their programming SUCKED!
I have seen this in commercial projects as well. That I a person who only learned by experimenting and reading knows more then the uni grad but is constantly slammed down in reviews for the lack of diploma's.
Last job I even lost because of it. I was the unofficial head of the web development department but when my manager left (head of the web business unit) it was decided to bring in someone new to be a proper IT manager. The guy had all the diploma's and could talk the talk but had no clue about how to actually run a website day to day. Yet I was supposed to work under him. I said thanks but no thanks. I am not going to earn less then a guy whose hand I am supposed to be holding. That wasn't the first time either.
Now don't get me wrong, I am no coding god. I just got a bit of common sense.
Sadly most bosses do not. I do not even respond anymore when a company asks for diploma X no matter how capable I might be of performing at that level.
Just ask for coding examples and look through them.
But hey it is easier to complain about employees then to question wether the problem perhaps lies with you. Of course I know where my own problem is. It is that I could not wait to get out of school and into real live.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As a recruiter I'm surprised that people are so negative against us. I know there are some scumbags out there, but from the large amount of responses in post I'd guess that most of the "scumbag" recruiters are hanging out on the jobsites. Your job is a huge part of your life - many of us spend more time in our jobs than with our families. Personally, I think that people who go about finding a wife/ husband online are inviting danger and heartbreak. Finding a job is pretty much just as an important life decision as finding a partner, so I would n't recommed going online. If you choose to go the online way, you are inviting the same risks. Most good recruiters also feel the same way about the jobsites - the quality of the candidates on there isn't good. Quality candidates don't use them - because they don't need to. Finding a good recruiter isn't that difficult, once you have - build a relationship. Ask friends and colleagues who they used - most good recruiters get most of the ir business from referalls and thus don't need to use job sites. Look up a good firm that is local to you. I think smaller boutique firms often give better service. When you meet with the recruiter ask the important questions. How long have you worked with this company? How many people have you placed in this company? Who do you interact with in the company - a good recruiter sends the resume straight to line managers. You should get an idea if they know what they are doing. A good recruiter may not be able to answer technical questions correctly, but they should be able to open doors for you in to their clients.
If you ban recruiters, you will lose out on some top jobs. So the thing to do is to go to SBC/Yahoo!, IBM, the federal government in all its departments, CitiGroup (or whatever it's called now), and all the other fortune 50-500 companies, tell them to re-hire their HR departments, and do their own damned work screening tech recruits, rather than hiring firms that specialize in having half a clue. Yeah. Right.
Which brings me to "firms that specialize in having half a clue" -- I worked for a recruiting firm that DID have half a clue. Their CTO worked Cisco equipment on a high scale (was a former contractor for the firm), the CEO was a database programmer, and on & on. When they read a job description and can do half of what they're looking for, much less hire for it, it's one thing.
Other places are entirely clueless. The recruiters have been to their GED classes and know how to power on a computer and that's about it. The jobs rolling across their desk are as indecipherable to them as sanskrit texts are to me. My partner has been getting calls -- he's an RF engineer. The job requirements are alphabet soup to the recruiters -- they are more-than-clueless. They wouldn't know RF from a refrigerator.
So the problem isn't to ban recruiters, lest you ban great jobs. The problem is banning clueless recruiters.
How about a recruiting firm rating system? Allow job applicants to rate recruiters, and post the recruiter ratings and comments. People sick of clueless recruiters can filter them out.
---- I'm out of your mind!
Here's an idea I hit upon a while back that I think could / would work very well and solve all our problems. This idea is a little UK centric at the moment but it would work everywhere. If you find yourself out of work in the UK you can sign on for the jod seekers allowance (as long as you jump through all the right hoops etc etc yadda yadda). To do this you have to go to the Job Centre. One of the conditions of getting job seekers allowance is that you apply for a certain number of jobs and generally that you spend time looking for jobs at the Job Centre. The problem is that "Job Centre" is all but a dirty phrase in the UK and no "professional" will go near the place. This means that there are _no_ professional jobs listed ever. If you want a professional job you are stuck with scouring the papers and numerous bad jobs websites populated by head hunters. As we all know this takes an age and often means good jobs get missed. I would like to see a new law brought in that _all_ jobs _must_ be advertised in the Job Centre regardless of what the job entails. An employer is free to advertise the job elsewhere as well and do whatever they please it simply must be listed at the Job Centre. There are a number of reasons why I would completely support this legislation 1)it completely insane that we fund Job Centres throughout the country that are not servicing the needs of a huge portion of the population 2)it would give everyone a place where they can find a job 3)it would simplify fnding a job and hopefully as a result this would cut down the number of unemployed or at least the time people spend unemployed 4)it would probably have the side effect of removing many of the fly by night head hunters. I am interested to hear people thoughts on this idea both positive and negative. I might pass it on to our local MP as well even though I don't like the guy.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
To all the employers / managers out there complaining about receiving CVs that don't have the required skills, I'll say this: It's because supply and demand aren't matching up.
A few years ago I was unemployed and desperately searching for a job. All I saw was advert after advert for jobs that required more skills than someone in my position (newly graduated) could possibly have. What was I meant to do? Naturally, I looked for the jobs that were the closest match and applied for them, whether or not I had all the 'required' skills.
If you employers are going to complain about the lack of suitably skilled people, you had better be taking on a few 'youngsters' for training. If you're so miserly that you won't train people, don't bloody expect them to train themselves! It's a matter of civic duty - if you don't "do you bit", the entire country's skill pool is going to decline.
Fortunately, I eventually got a job through a family contact and have since been developing code for an embedded control system.
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I want a "rating" system. I want to be able to see what my peers said about the person and the company. Think EBay. He wants a job, he's probably been to interviews. What can the interviewer say about him? Is his resume valid? Or is it padded? Or a fabrication?
.net experience. Especially not someone under 25. According to some requirements, you should've started to code (professional) no later than at 10 years of age. But still managed to make your MD in CS.
Same the other way 'round. Is the job offered really the job offered? Or did you get a "sorry, this position is filled but..." reply for a crappy job? Was it really a recruiter? And if so, is the recruiter legit or one of those that try to shovel people around for money?
Ratings is what I want!
And what I'd also love to see is realistic expectiations. You simply WILL NOT find someone with 10+ years of professional
Also, most employees are more than willing to learn. Yes, there are very few ABAP proggers with 5+ years of experience, and those that exist will charge you a fortune. I bet my rear that you will find a lot more people willing to sign any adhesion contracts binding them to you for years as long as you're willing to train them. For a LOT less than training them costs you.
But of course, all companies wait 'til the very last moment before hiring someone. I have not ONCE been hired when the roof wasn't on fire already. It's NOT really what I consider a dream job when you get like 2 days to familiarize yourself with a few megs of source before you're pressed into the schedule.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here's a short list:
;-)
Resumes must be submitted in MS Word format?
Granted, this requirement is almost always from some scum recruiter that can't handle more than 2 applications, mail & MS Word, (and should thus be an identifying clue). I *wish* the bloody recruiters would accept PDF, or even an HTML page which I can present myself better with; folks hiring me are hiring for a documentation specialist after all.
Yeah, I know. They want to remove identifying information. Again, refer to that above paragraph. Acquire a PDF, html, or God forbid a text editor.
Then of course it is nice when the recruiters that found me via a *search* actually read the context of the written resume to see if the yield was valid. Saves everyone time and energy, no?
Then there's the nothing bigger than ~150K upload rule.
Of course those that require completing a custom form w/ job history, etc.; as opposed to simply uploading the source-content resume file, well they just suck. Yes, I'm talking about you Monsterboard!
Why can't these recruiters/ HR sites 'search' various formats; and place the burden of 'quality' on the candidate? By allowing the candiate the possibility to single-source, the candidate might stand a chance in doing so.
Finally, I'd much prefer to see an aggregate that fed directly into the corporate HR sites themselves; bypassing those bloody agents. As it stands now, the best bet is to deal directly with the multitude of HR sites directly (bypassing both the job sites *and* agents); albeit the resourceful geek will find a way to automate this task.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
I just did a search for Sound Engineer for grins. Nothing close on the first page. Lots of matches for Engineer, but nothing related to the sound recording or broadcast industry.
Google does better. I did a search for Sound Engineer Job and had matches on the first page.
The truth shall set you free!
I've been hunting for a job a few years ago. And I was quite stunned when I saw the expectations. Years and years of experience, degrees, certificates and so on. At first, I didn't apply. I thought they wouldn't take me anyway, since I couldn't fulfill all those requirements (a few, a lot, almost all, but never all).
Until I realized that this doesn't matter at all. People just slap a ton of requirements on a page and actually it seems they expect that someone who applies can't even come close to them. Instead, I get the impression the requirements are used as a way to intimidate the applicant and try to convince him that a lower salary is quite acceptable, since he didn't really meet the requirements.
And as long as this prevails, you will get sub-par qualified people applying, simply because they think it doesn't matter anyway. When you expect the impossible, people will assume that you don't really expect anything at all and will apply.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unintuitive at best. You're filling a job, not hiring a broad skillset. You have a particular need and a known set of job-seeker-attributes. Candidates who vastly overfill that set are likely to become bored and dissatisfied. Candidates who match your needs-set closely should be given a clue as to how you value that set. Saves everyone, from the seeker to the recruiter or HR to the hiring manager a lot of effort and wasted time if this most basic datapoint is established.
I'm very interested in how this relates to your actual needs in hiring. I have some experience in this. I was always aware of the salary range we'd offer. We most often did not put this in advertisments though. Bluntly, it was generally perceived that we might over-pay and it was (their) effort to minimize up-front costs.
As a contractor working alot with recruiters, I found the best way is to keep track of who is good, and who is bogus. For this, I setup (shameless plug) Recruiter-Rater, as a way to find and rate tehcnical recruiters. Mostly I've done the posting, but other users have started to contribute their experiences. There really isn't another way to find out which gigs are SPAM, and which are valid, until you do some research, or compare with other people.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
You have a point that a degree, even from an Ivy League institution, does not automatically confer common sense, an ability to solve problems in the real world in real time, or even a guarantee that the person knows how to think well.
It is also sadly the case that many schools and so-called professors are a complete waste of time (and that is being generous).
I also think that most HR people and recruiters suck -- they don't really understand the real requirements, and just match lists of requirements and capabilities (and usually badly at that).
I have an Ivy degree, and was self taught in the computing field, so I know the value of both. In fact, I feel that being self-taught can be a distinct advantage, because one's thinking might not be as constrained as it would be with a formal education.
Yet, as an employer (running software companies), I always started my basic requirements for all positions, even front-office support type positions, with a requirement for a four-year degree or commensurate experience. I have occasionally used the "commensurate experience" exception, and was well rewarded with excellent employees, but the hurdle was high.
Requiring a degree gave me two things as an employer. First, I knew that the applicant had passed the admissions filter and had demonstrated some ability to think and complete work over a period of years. Yes, it is VERY imperfect, but it is something. Second, an education, especially a liberal arts education which we strongly preferred, can dramatically extend your ability to think in different ways; the student should have been systematically exposed to many more modes of thinking than are encountered in ordinary life. All too often this means nothing, and I must still evaluate each case, but my odds are much improved over the pool of the un-degreed.
The next thing I do with all applicants is to read their writing and resumes as a work product unto itself. How well are they doing the task at hand (of applying for a job)?
You, unfortunately, would have already failed this screening, even with a degree. Your third sentence jumped out and hit me over the head with the fact that you don't know the difference between possessive and plural, or between "there" and "their", and these are repeated errors. It is not merely being a 'grammar-nazi'. How you communicate matters -- do you expect the computer or someone else to debug your code? You are asking them to do it with your writing.
I would have to ask two questions: First, if you are this careless or uneducated with your primary language of communication, how careful or educated will you be with a computer language? Second, I will have to worry about every memo leaving your desk making my organization look questionable? Every good thinker I know uses English as a primary tool, does it well, and immediately recognizes the difference in those that do and do not.
Moreover, I would need to see more than just 'I'm so much better than Jack and Joe with their degrees'. I see good enthusiasm and 'get it done' attitude, but I'd need to see more evidence of precision, rigor and forethought in your work (not that it doesn't exist, but it is not evident here).
If you want to do well being hired by others, I'd suggest getting a good degree, and being absolutely ruthless with your instructors. Accept nothing less than clear, rigorous instruction. Seek out the instructors others call tough. You are paying for an education -- demand the best. Because, frankly, the degree itself isn't worth crap -- there are plenty of degreed people I wouldn't hire to sweep the floors.
Alternatively, start your own company. That way, you can hire yourself without a degree, and the people that hire you (your customers) will be more focused on what you can do for them now than what you did in the past. But again, be rigorous -- ask the question "would you hire yourself?", and do whatever it takes to answer that question "Yes" before you start.
Good luck in whatever path you choose.
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
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So the problem isn't to ban recruiters, lest you ban great jobs. The problem is banning clueless recruiters.
I'm sure there are great recruiters out their. I've talked to some not so bad ones. I'm also sure there's some great used car salesmen out their (And actually, I've talked to some very honest ones). The problem is that the industry has a deservedly bad reputation. Trying to find the needle in the haystack is really quite a difficult problem. Even good recruiters are still middlemen, and represent yet another barrier to what you actually want. Essentially the problem is more endemic that just bad recruiters. If recruiters actually worked like real-estate agents, rather than fishermen trolling a lake they might be usefull. But as it stands they're all fishermen putting out bait (job postings) trying to catch a fish (job seekers) and sell them on the open market.
You say the cost of losing the recruiters is some great jobs. I'm willing to pay that cost as I only need ONE job, not several. In essence the signal might go down a bit, but the noise is going to get cut down by a factor of at least 10. That's a win, and I'll take that any day of the week.
AccountKiller