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What Do You Want in a Job Website?
Posted by
Cliff
on Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:30 AM
from the how-would-you-improve-it dept.
from the how-would-you-improve-it dept.
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?"
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What Do You Want in a Job Website?
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To be blunt... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://o2kewl.net/)
Re:To be blunt... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To be blunt... (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 09 2005, @03:04AM)
Re:this is not a fault of the search engine (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://sydb.dyndns.org/ | Last Journal: Friday October 19 2001, @01:10PM)
FFS.
Of course the reason no-one does this is because it seems like too much effort. It's much easier, apparently, just to leave the skills matching to the initial phone call. For instance, I was called by a recruiter this morning who spent 30 minutes asking stupid questions 99% of which were covered in the CV (resume for yanks) I sent last night and to which she was responding. I had to bite my lip from saying "Did you even READ my CV? Do you actually know anything about the skills required in this job?" because she hadn't and she didn't. Yet she is in a position of power over my next pay cheque!! And she tried to make me feel that I might not be up to scratch for the job. She didn't even know what was involved in doing the job! That makes me angry.
I second that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I second that... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.sigsegv.cx/)
Re:To be blunt... (Score:5, Insightful)
On a related note, I wonder how long it'll be until the job recruiters are outsourcing their positions overseas so even THEY are barely involved. I hear capitalism works pretty well when jobs disappear and nobody can afford to buy anything.
Geographic Preferences Honored by Recruiters (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://sogeeky.net/)
More Real Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://godgab.org/)
PS: For Canadian bums like me that are looking for a job, check this site [jobbank.gc.ca] out.
Re:More Real Jobs (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.zeroslope.com/)
Indeed.com [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 [indeed.com] tool.
Oh yea, and it has a site for Canadian jobs [indeed.com], too.
I want... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I want... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://allenu.sdf1.org/hazuki/ProjectHazuki.html | Last Journal: Friday September 03 2004, @04:53PM)
Sanity checking? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ilikepuffynipples.com/)
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 [sage.org]
Cluefullness for job requirements (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 27, @10:19AM)
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.
Blunt reviews from current employees... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a contractor.. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://blueboxsw.com/)
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
Find and Rate Technical Recruiters (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.wifimaps.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday June 19 2004, @09:58PM)
Commute Range (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ringdev.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 08 2007, @01:50PM)
-Rick
Less experienced openings (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.therealtravisjohnson.com/)
RSS feeds (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Contact Control & Accountability (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://motobrief.com/)
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.
Well, jobs, obviously (Score:5, Informative)
(http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/)
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.
At Least Make the Recruiters Do Their Freak'n Jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
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
No Military Listings and No recruiters. (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://suppafly.livejournal.com/)
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.
Here's what I dislike about Monster (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Dump the work from home up to $10k a month scam (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.pittsburgh-living.net/)
My list (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.webcommons.biz/)
Poorly Formatted/Spelled Job Postings (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Pet Peeves... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
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...
As an actual employer... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.sophiafieldphotography.com/)
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.
I'm not yet convinced (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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
To all the people that say jobs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The problem IMHO (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://linuxrebel.org/)
Ditch the alphabet soup. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
a better way (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.signalsguru.net/)
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.
Don't bother (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Radical Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.crazysquirrel.com/index.jspx)
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.
Simple: Ratings (Score:3, Insightful)
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.