For us the ONLY option are these big time job boards, as they give us the best chance of finding qualified candidates.
Spoken like a true personnel jockey. I know some very good HR folks who actually leave their desks from time to time, circulate in the professional community from which they recruit, meet new people, and find great hires through personal contacts. These HR folks are few and far between.
When a company's HR department selects a recruitment tool by comparing LOCAL ads to BIG BOARD ads, someone is asleep at the wheel.
This is not recruiting. This is sitting in your chair and waiting for flies to stick to the paper you hung out on the porch.
If anyone hunting for a job wonders why HR departments treat job hunters like dirt, read no further. You have seen the enemy.
It's pathetic.
Before a bunch of passive personnel junkies take me to task for advocating "going outside to meet people", consider this intelligent method for using the Net to find those highly specialized Symbian developers who have nothing better to do than hang around Monster. The details may be out of date, but the basic method is solid as a rock. Maybe they oughta teach this stuff in personnel school: http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/gv990602a.htm
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 the boards work for you, great. But I've got to point this out: good headhunters don't search job boards for candidates. Good headhunters rely on their contacts in a professional community to lead them to yet more good sources of good candidates. Otherwise, what would distinguish a good headhunter from some company's personnel jockey trawling the boards for resumes? And that's what I mean when I say 95% of "headhunters" aren't worth spit - or aren't headhunters. They're junkyard dogs dialing for dollars. In this case, keyboarding for dollars. Though I never met a dog who could keyboard. Sorry about the metaphor.
There's nothing weird about the fact that good headhunters focus on the client companies that pay them to fill jobs. Headhunters aren't paid to find anyone a job. That misconception is what gets job hunters so upset -- The headhunter won't return my call! If he did, that would be like you not calling back the salesman who's trying to pitch you a new accounting system that you have no time to hear about.
What makes matters worse is that "in house" recruiters (especially at "consulting firms") are routinely referred to as headhunters. They're not. A headhunter is independent and works on assignments for corporate clients. A good one is very respectful toward the community he or she recruits from, for a simple reason. No respect = no referrals. As a headhunter, I rely on good people in the field to lead me to the candidates I need. I return the favor when I can - but I demonstrate respect ALL the time. Judge a headhunter that way. But don't expect something that headhunters don't do. They don't find people jobs.
I appreciate the comments. My own approach to "experts" is simple: What are they saying, and does it make sense to me? If I try it, does it work enough of the time that I'm inclined to learn and try more? I'm a skeptic and sometimes too much of a cynic. I put my stuff out there for anyone to read who wants to - judge me by what you read and by how useful you find it.
Matter of fact, if anyone is interested in actually discussing job hunting or hiring topics of substance, I'd be glad to tackle some of them here on slashdot. No promises, but I'll do my best to offer ideas that I think might help. However, I have no idea exactly where or how on slashdot to do this -- I'll rely on anyone who's interested to point the way. Best thing to do is drop me an email at nick at asktheheadhunter.com.
Because I run my own board elsewhere, where I answer all Q's posted, I can't do the same here - I'll tackle whatever I can given the time I've got. But I love talking shop in good communities.
(For what it's worth, TechRepublic.com licensed my Ask The Headhunter features for almost 3 years, mostly Q&A - and I know the IT community pretty well. I don't pretend to be a tech-head myself. In the end, the perspective I take is that there's a handful of basic issues, no matter what field you're in. While some job-search and hiring challenges are very specific to a field and very technical, I think most need a good dose of common sense. Something that's been boiled out of our brains by the "employment industry".)
Awright, if somebody's going to praise me (thanks jdavidb) and somebody's going to question my headhunterness, and GoogleAlerts is going to tell me it's happening (man, that was quick), I'd like to set the record straight and maybe even say a few words about my article (Job Board Journalism), which apparently stimulated this thread.
I'm a headhunter (still active, but I'm selective about searches I do). I also run a publishing business called Ask The Headhunter, which has become a lot more fun and a much bigger part of my time. The web site is free. The book isn't. But my agent fleeced my publisher a long time ago for a big advance (that was her job - to get the royalties up front), so while I love to know the book is selling well, nothing I do is designed to sell books. I haven't done another book because it's much more profitable to license my ATH features to web sites, newspapers, periodicals, corporate clients, and the like - so you can read them for free. Those "subsidies" let me keep my own site and newsletter free. Hope that answers some questions about motivations and who I am.
What's more important is the subject of the thread. Some people sometimes find jobs via Monster, et al. But the only credible studies that have been done suggest that the boards are a lousy way to find or fill a job. Do you really think their success rates are decent? I don't. The strongest indication that I'm right: they don't publish their success rates. Never have. never will. Go ahead - ask them. They will never publish their results because they suck. So they talk about "30 million resumes online!". Yah. Ever hear the George Carlin line, "Suppose you could have everything in the world. Where would you put it?"
While I found out about this thread through GoogleAlerts, it was a spate of emails I got from slashdotters who read my article -- all the email so far is from people who think the boards suck, and who have had lousy experiences.
Some people love the boards. No skin off my nose. But if I needed a job, it's the last place I'd look.
Forget headhunters. Like jdavidb points out, headhunters don't find you jobs. We only work for employers, and we don't look for candidates on boards or solicit truckloads of resumes with want ads. The hacks who waste your time not headhunters. They're bottom-feeder recruiters who are dialing for dollars -- and they treat you accordingly if your keywords don't match their limited vocabularies.
One person on this thread said it well: all his/her jobs have come from personal contacts developed over time. Consistently, studies show that 40-70% of jobs are found and filled that way. The big boards seem to be responsible for about 1-3%. Niche boards produce better. Job listings on "professional" sites are better, too. Company sites are pretty good, too. But my casual polls (for about 10 years) of managers suggest that managers hire people they know first; people recommended by people they know second; and then it peters out dramatically. You want a job? Your best bet is to go hang out (literally or virtually) with people who do the work you want to do. That's your best bet -- others get to know you, see your value, and they recommend you to a manager. (Hey, I don't claim it's quick or easy. But it beats blasting out 10,000 resumes and waiting by your screen for an email announcing that you have qualified to be A Successful Telemarker if only you'll ring up your PayPal account for $95.
Speaking of fees: The latest racket on the Big Boards is charging you $79 for a Titanium Upgrade on your resume. That puts your resume "higher on the results list employers get when they do a search for people like you." Yep. 30 million resumes in the data base. Did you know that the "basic deal" on CareerBuilder allows an employer only 300 "results" each day? Lotsa luck getting your Titanium resume up ahead of all the others. More interesting: emloyers are doling out the same payola to get their job listings "played higher on the list". So everybody's paying the boards off for
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like a true personnel jockey. I know some very good HR folks who actually leave their desks from time to time, circulate in the professional community from which they recruit, meet new people, and find great hires through personal contacts. These HR folks are few and far between.
When a company's HR department selects a recruitment tool by comparing LOCAL ads to BIG BOARD ads, someone is asleep at the wheel.
This is not recruiting. This is sitting in your chair and waiting for flies to stick to the paper you hung out on the porch.
If anyone hunting for a job wonders why HR departments treat job hunters like dirt, read no further. You have seen the enemy.
It's pathetic.
Before a bunch of passive personnel junkies take me to task for advocating "going outside to meet people", consider this intelligent method for using the Net to find those highly specialized Symbian developers who have nothing better to do than hang around Monster. The details may be out of date, but the basic method is solid as a rock. Maybe they oughta teach this stuff in personnel school: http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/gv990602a.htm
Are you a genius? I dunno. But common sense is a rare coin nowadays. So is staying in touch with good people. My highest compliments.
If the boards work for you, great. But I've got to point this out: good headhunters don't search job boards for candidates. Good headhunters rely on their contacts in a professional community to lead them to yet more good sources of good candidates. Otherwise, what would distinguish a good headhunter from some company's personnel jockey trawling the boards for resumes? And that's what I mean when I say 95% of "headhunters" aren't worth spit - or aren't headhunters. They're junkyard dogs dialing for dollars. In this case, keyboarding for dollars. Though I never met a dog who could keyboard. Sorry about the metaphor.
There's nothing weird about the fact that good headhunters focus on the client companies that pay them to fill jobs. Headhunters aren't paid to find anyone a job. That misconception is what gets job hunters so upset -- The headhunter won't return my call! If he did, that would be like you not calling back the salesman who's trying to pitch you a new accounting system that you have no time to hear about.
What makes matters worse is that "in house" recruiters (especially at "consulting firms") are routinely referred to as headhunters. They're not. A headhunter is independent and works on assignments for corporate clients. A good one is very respectful toward the community he or she recruits from, for a simple reason. No respect = no referrals. As a headhunter, I rely on good people in the field to lead me to the candidates I need. I return the favor when I can - but I demonstrate respect ALL the time. Judge a headhunter that way. But don't expect something that headhunters don't do. They don't find people jobs.
Matter of fact, if anyone is interested in actually discussing job hunting or hiring topics of substance, I'd be glad to tackle some of them here on slashdot. No promises, but I'll do my best to offer ideas that I think might help. However, I have no idea exactly where or how on slashdot to do this -- I'll rely on anyone who's interested to point the way. Best thing to do is drop me an email at nick at asktheheadhunter.com.
Because I run my own board elsewhere, where I answer all Q's posted, I can't do the same here - I'll tackle whatever I can given the time I've got. But I love talking shop in good communities.
(For what it's worth, TechRepublic.com licensed my Ask The Headhunter features for almost 3 years, mostly Q&A - and I know the IT community pretty well. I don't pretend to be a tech-head myself. In the end, the perspective I take is that there's a handful of basic issues, no matter what field you're in. While some job-search and hiring challenges are very specific to a field and very technical, I think most need a good dose of common sense. Something that's been boiled out of our brains by the "employment industry".)
Cheers,
Nick Corcodilos
asktheheadhunter.com
I'm a headhunter (still active, but I'm selective about searches I do). I also run a publishing business called Ask The Headhunter, which has become a lot more fun and a much bigger part of my time. The web site is free. The book isn't. But my agent fleeced my publisher a long time ago for a big advance (that was her job - to get the royalties up front), so while I love to know the book is selling well, nothing I do is designed to sell books. I haven't done another book because it's much more profitable to license my ATH features to web sites, newspapers, periodicals, corporate clients, and the like - so you can read them for free. Those "subsidies" let me keep my own site and newsletter free. Hope that answers some questions about motivations and who I am.
What's more important is the subject of the thread. Some people sometimes find jobs via Monster, et al. But the only credible studies that have been done suggest that the boards are a lousy way to find or fill a job. Do you really think their success rates are decent? I don't. The strongest indication that I'm right: they don't publish their success rates. Never have. never will. Go ahead - ask them. They will never publish their results because they suck. So they talk about "30 million resumes online!". Yah. Ever hear the George Carlin line, "Suppose you could have everything in the world. Where would you put it?"
While I found out about this thread through GoogleAlerts, it was a spate of emails I got from slashdotters who read my article -- all the email so far is from people who think the boards suck, and who have had lousy experiences.
Some people love the boards. No skin off my nose. But if I needed a job, it's the last place I'd look.
Forget headhunters. Like jdavidb points out, headhunters don't find you jobs. We only work for employers, and we don't look for candidates on boards or solicit truckloads of resumes with want ads. The hacks who waste your time not headhunters. They're bottom-feeder recruiters who are dialing for dollars -- and they treat you accordingly if your keywords don't match their limited vocabularies.
One person on this thread said it well: all his/her jobs have come from personal contacts developed over time. Consistently, studies show that 40-70% of jobs are found and filled that way. The big boards seem to be responsible for about 1-3%. Niche boards produce better. Job listings on "professional" sites are better, too. Company sites are pretty good, too. But my casual polls (for about 10 years) of managers suggest that managers hire people they know first; people recommended by people they know second; and then it peters out dramatically. You want a job? Your best bet is to go hang out (literally or virtually) with people who do the work you want to do. That's your best bet -- others get to know you, see your value, and they recommend you to a manager. (Hey, I don't claim it's quick or easy. But it beats blasting out 10,000 resumes and waiting by your screen for an email announcing that you have qualified to be A Successful Telemarker if only you'll ring up your PayPal account for $95.
Speaking of fees: The latest racket on the Big Boards is charging you $79 for a Titanium Upgrade on your resume. That puts your resume "higher on the results list employers get when they do a search for people like you." Yep. 30 million resumes in the data base. Did you know that the "basic deal" on CareerBuilder allows an employer only 300 "results" each day? Lotsa luck getting your Titanium resume up ahead of all the others. More interesting: emloyers are doling out the same payola to get their job listings "played higher on the list". So everybody's paying the boards off for