Internet Job Boards a Bunch of Hype? 538
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?"
My Personal Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
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! (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
HR people don't like them. (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Craigslist (Score:4, Interesting)
The wife (Score:2, Interesting)
gotta tickle the monster once in a while. (Score:5, Interesting)
my experience (Score:2, Interesting)
the only interviews i got without personal contacts were via the richmond times dispatch wanted adds. those didn't pan out.
I found all 3 of my jobs online (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:True story! (Score:5, Interesting)
March 14th of 2003 I was laid off from a company I had worked at for more than 2 years. Seeing as how the economy was still very shaky then, I settled in with the idea that I would be unemployed for a long time. I put my resume on Monster (among [many] other sites), and on April 14th, exactly one month later, I started a new job that I got through Monster. Lateral pay move, even. It worked for me!
These boards are only one source. (Score:2, Interesting)
It all depends (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
personal experience (Score:1, Interesting)
I've found jobs through friends, job fairs, having a client hire me, etc. but never one of these boards. I have had interviews though so theoretically I could have gotten a job if I hadn't taken another from a different source.
That's my personal experience for what it's worth.
Good Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Worked for me (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Monster worked for me... with a catch (Score:3, Interesting)
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....
From the other end... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:True story! (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in Montreal, in a company that, before being bought by a big US multi-national, was doing OK when one of our co-workers was lured at ZeroKnowledge. Remember them?
Months later, he had ZeroEmployment.
The company he feared was going down is now a multi-national and he's out of the loop.
Sometimes, your worse enemy is yourself.
Re:Craigslist (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Personal Experience (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
A haven for Recruiters (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Monster versus Insider (Score:4, Interesting)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Direct approach (Score:3, Interesting)
NOTHING! 500 resumes sent out, with research experience in college, experience in the medical field, adept at programming. I got around 50-70 "Thank you for sending us your resume...." letters. I got one interview, and it wasn't even for a programming job.
My experience is that if you dont have a lot of experience, like me at the time, one year out of college, you'll have a hard time finding a job no matter where you look. Especially if the economy is bad. Since I couldn't find anything in the NY area, I had to convince my fiance to not accept an job at the NYU medical center, just so i could stay in my current insurance job.
Of course AFTER i decide to stay, I've had requests for interviews. It's kind of painful to tell them "No.. I'm sorry, I can't interview for a biomedical research position working in my field of interest at Columbia University. Yeah, even if tuition for graduate school is included. And yes, even for that salary"
Keeping my wife happy is job enough, and definitely worth it. I now know to be patient until the economy is better. There's always a better chance of finding a job when there are more of them.
Nearly Worthless (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:HR people don't like them. (Score:2, Interesting)
I find the boards very useful and I only apply for jobs that I think I have the right qualifications for, but I have seen some people run a query on a general keyword (i.e. Developer, Programmer, Analyst,
Online resume (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [google.com] and the Open Directory Project [dmoz.org].
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.
Headhunters use job boards (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say that job boards make it even easier for headhunters to find people.
Local Job Boards (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are not interested in relocating, this can help. As always though, networking thru friends/relations is best.
If all your friends are laid off.... Yes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Craigslist (Score:3, Interesting)
Craigslist is IMHO an excellent resource not mentioned by the article. Perhaps it does not have the same pitfalls as Monster 'n' the other crappy job sites.
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:My Personal Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Just my experience.
Re: Job Boards Suck (Score:2, Interesting)
The only useful thing that came of it is recruiters who saw the resumes posted there and started looking for jobs for us. That got me some interviews, but no jobs.
I finally got a job through a friend of mine.
Next time I need to find a job, I'm going to post a resume on the boards, but I wont use them to go after any jobs. Recruiters work much better and friends, the best.
Everything in proportion (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Self inflicted spam. (Score:2, Interesting)
We've had much better luck posting ads on the bulletin boards of local user groups and professional associations.
I sort of agree (Score:2, Interesting)
My experience doing a lot of job searching was that some of the boards work and some (i.e. monster) are crap. I did get one job through dice.com. However, craigslist.org is still the best.
My results... (Score:2, Interesting)
The big internet job boards are worth doing, however I would caution anyone using them not to expect too much. You don't get anywhere near the same kind of per-resume or per-application results you will get with other venues, but sometimes they will pay off anyway. If you're desperately seeking work, you'd be a fool not to explore every avenue that even might help you find gainful employment in the field of your choice.
It's who you know... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
My experiences (Score:3, Interesting)
1.) Monster. Tons of ads--most are actually for legit jobs. Only a couple "Help Desk Internship" postings for training companies. Plus, the resume posting has gotten me attention from half-dozen different outfits.
2.) CareerBuilder. Used to be all headhunter crap, but now that they've partnered with 1,000,001 newspapers, you get real ads for real jobs from your local paper. There are occasionally ads for those "Earn $60,000 with 12 months training" places, though.
3.) Dice. Godawful. Almost 100% headhunter/fakeout-fraudster listings. I've never called somebody re: a job on Dice where the conversation didn't end with "Sorry, we've already filled that." And I don't think its because Dice is "so awesome" at getting people work. I think its because their ad-rates are uber-cheap so headhunters use them to collect a good pool of eligible applicants' resumes for when they have actual jobs to fill.
Overall, my online job site experiences have been mixed. Monster has gotten me three interviews, and about half-dozen inquiries in the last year, which is a pretty good "hits to interview" ratio. (Hits to interview ratio is my own made up, totally non-scientific statistic.) CareerBuilder has brought me one interview after inquiring with more than 50 employers, so not a very good ratio. Dice is garbage though. 100% of the time I've spent on Dice.com has been wasted. You'd do better to hire a crop duster to drop your "Resume folded as origami" from an airplane over the city than to spend your time searching Dice for jobs. Their new service where, for $50, they spam your resume to several thousand headhunters also looks rather scammy/worthless.
My advice? Network. Figure out what companies you're interested in, and find out where the employees hang out after work. Go there, meet a few of them, and make friends. Then drop an email a few weeks later mentioning your job-search. I've gotten a handful of interviews using this technique as well.
monster = good and bad (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ftc.gov]. Cockeyed.com investigated the Work-at-Home signs that often litter neighborhoods [cockeyed.com].
UK experience. (Score:3, Interesting)
The process seems a bit different to the US. Jobserve adverts come from recruitment agents. They are specialists who deal with the avalanche of inappropriate resumes in response to each advert and winnow it down to a manageable short list. These people also maintain their own resume databases, so a key part of job hunting is to get your resume on their databases. You do this by applying for jobs.
That said, it was a personal contact who got me my current job. Personal networks will always win in the job hunting game because hiring anyone is a risk, and knowing a prospective employee is the best way to reduce that risk. Thats why the inside candidate always wins, and there is nothing wrong with it.
not IT but (Score:2, Interesting)
As a side note, I was fired from the job I had until Jan 2002 because so many people were calling my employer looking for a reference, even though every place I had hooked into said not to do so.
I doubt that I would ever use any service like that again. There is just not enough control.
Reasons Why You Won't Have A Job (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
A friend of mine at Monster...really (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Headhunters will get squeezed.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Life Insurance Salesman (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
You must be active... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... :)
What an in-house recruiter told me (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
100% success rate (Score:3, Interesting)
I got my first civilian job thru OCC while I was still in Germany (I had to hop on a C141 MAC flight to DC for the interview, it was a blast!). I got my second civilian job thru monster. The first code I wrote for them was, check this out, an online jobs site!
My third job was thru Cybercoders. That one was really neat, I still remember the subject line from the recruiters email: "This is the mother of all web programming jobs
My current job was also thru monster. Job #3 was going thru layoff hell and around a Wednesday evening I got hinted that I would be laid off that same Friday. Sometime around 2 AM on Thursday I applied to 13 jobs thru monster. That day around noon I was contacted directly by the company, and we interviewed over the phone for close to two hours. Friday was judgement day: layoff meetings thru the day, and none of us knew who would get hit. I interviewed at 9:30 AM and spent the morning interviewing, doing proficiency tests for SQL, etc. I took the metro across town to my job not knowing if I still had a job there. I was called in and told that I had been spared at the last second but that I had to prove my loyalty because things were rough and the survivors were going to take a 20% pay cut. I said sure, count me in.
That happened Friday at 3 PM. Monday morning I had a technical interview over the phone, but it was b/s: at 3 or so in the afternoon I got my offer letter fedexed. I accepted it on the spot and gave my company a one-week notice as a way to repay them for cutting my salary 20%.
BTW, that Friday one of my best friends got laid off. He had taken the afternoon off to go interview elsewhere, and they called him on his cell to fire him! The bastard beat me. He got *his* offer fedexed to him at least 3 hours before I got mine.
Online recruiting works, just make sure you don't fall for predatory recruiters, who are worse than used car salesmen. Monster needs to do a better job keeping these bastards from canvassing the system, because there is nothing more frustrating than recruiters calling every 15 minutes saying you are totally qualified to do the job they are hunting for, but then ask you what you do and if you can send them a resume.
If they are real customers of Monster they already have your resume, and they should know what you do and if you are experienced. Anyone that calls you and asks for a resume and doesnt have a clue is cold calling you and you should hang up on the spot.
As another Small Business Owner (Score:1, Interesting)
It's true that you need to wade through the crop to find the cream but our secretary does that for us when she isn't answering the phones.
Another small business owner said that they couldn't afford the $500/mo for Monster or so, but for us, it's a lot cheaper and easier to get the National exposure we need to find actual qualified candidates.
I will say that if you are looking to get hired at a large corporation, their HR never posts to the job boards, all you'll find is headhunters posting for them. Your best bet is to find job postings on their corporate sites and apply that way, or use the newspaper.
If you are a consultant, however, I think that the job boards are the easiest way to find a job. Just don't wait for them to come to you, you have to actually do some looking on your own.
All that being said, absolutely nothing is better than working your own personal network.
Re:hrm, I disagree. (Score:1, Interesting)
> jobs listed on monster, hotjobs, etc that are
> headhunting companies
This is very true and if you don't like working with a headhunter, it's a problem. I generally avoid headhunters, but I got an interview very quickly after answering one of these headhunter-sponsored ads. It was for a high-level job at a startup, for a considerable boost in salary from where I was. I decided it wasn't my cup of tea, and got hired elsewhere (through personal contacts), but it wasn't a bad position. If you're an hourly contractor, though, I suspect things are different.
Local web-board did me good (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I posted my resume on Craigslist [craigslist.com] (mostly for San Francisco Bay Area), at 11pm, and less than 12 hours later, I had an offer to come in for an interview. I'm posting this from that employeer. Yes, they know I surf Slashdot.
Re:Life Insurance Salesman (Score:3, Interesting)
Do both. I got one job through the websites, after months of nothing. But it was actually kind of a decent job.
Headhunters that find you (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Job hunting nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Hiring Manager point of view (Score:1, Interesting)
Problem was, we posted a senior level position, and got a few good applicants. Unfortunately, we got such a flood of wannabees, no experience, way underqualified, I can't believe you even applied for this job types, that it took nearly 3 months to weed through all the resumes.
By the time we could do interviews, the few good ones had already found jobs.
As such, we won't be posting ANY jobs on these again soon.
Congratulations to everyone who needed an entry level job, cause they definitely cured us of posting them.
Re:We try to filter out work at home (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Here in Denver. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
let's be clear. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
Re:We try to filter out work at home (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Small Business Point Of View (Score:2, Interesting)
Having been a hiring manager of a small company, hiring a lot (30 or more) of tech people, the Internet job board saved money over recruiting fees most times. I found it paid to have one account at one of the top 3 boards, (I would have to say not Monster being the most expensive), would generate good leads. However, sifting through the 200 non-qualified people was a real pain to find the two or three you wanted to call back.
Anyway, I am now one of the unemployed and have tried all the job boards, even some pay ones, responded to about 50 different postings and 99% of them are black holes. No repsonse...
So to save my time I created a job meta-search engine and now I sell subscription to it for $6 bucks a month. I have a few hundred subscribers and sold it branded to a local college. Doesn't pay the bills yet, but keeps me from draining all my savings. The irony is I get a couple emails a week of people finding jobs with my product, but alas, I still have not...
If you want to check it out, please do... http://www.careerfish.com [careerfish.com]
w0lver
Re:Life Insurance Salesman (Score:4, Interesting)
my girlfriend hunts heads (Score:1, Interesting)
In fact, she spends countless hours scrolling through many, many resumes. My sense from watching her is that, if you want to post your resume online, and get it looked at, you need to make it sharp, focused, and easy to scan quickly. Get appropriate keywords on there. Give details where they matter, but don't drown the reader with verbage.
Just my sense of things. Your mileage may vary.
By the way, she does not "blanket-bomb" her client companies with resumes. She tries to provide a service, which partly involves doing the pre-screening for them. At the start of a new job, she might run a wide range of resumes past the hiring manager, to get a sense of who and what the company is looking for. But in general she treats the number of resumes she sends over before making a hire, to be a measure of her skill.
Again, your mileage with other recruiters may vary.
Re:We try to filter out work at home (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Online Job Listings (Score:1, Interesting)
The future of this market may be to really nail the local markets instead of trying to blanket the world. I do not want to hire somebody for my position who lives in Phoenix even if they are the most qualified person out there.
Based on the number of applications, it is easier for someone on the other side of the table to search a local market as well. Good for both sides and it saves me about $250.00 per posting.
I doubt I'm going to get a reply, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt I'm going to get a reply, but I'll reply anyway.
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.
This is the kind of logic that works in any industry. No one reads statistics, everyone reads expert ratings and listens to the commentary of friends. The availability heuristic is much more important to consumers than are actual statistics - something you seem to be intimately familiar with.
Being as this is the case: People listen to their friends about jobs, the boards operate by filling some of their customers with jobs and having those people tell friends about it. Just as you've pointed out that managers hire people with personal credibility and expert advice [30k to fill 100k job] first, people choose services based on personal credibility and expert advice first. Here's my question: What makes you think you can change that?
I mean, lets face it. Your post doesn't really make me want to go read your website [and, to be fair, I haven't]. It's intelligent, but it's the same kind of thing: ''I'm an expert, and being an expert, I shall loosely cite a few other "expert" sources which convince you I'm right, and then I shall give you expert advice: Don't trust big websites, trust me.''
My point is this: What advice can you offer than transcends that other other "experts" in the field? Why are you more qualified to offer advice? 9 years of personal testimonials are still personal testimonials, go read alexchiu.com for a brief survey of testimonial science.
Really, I'm genuinely curious. "Expert" referent power has always interested me. Please don't take this as angry sarcasm.
Headhunters, all of them. (Score:3, Interesting)
Incidentally, that's why most of the listings have bizzare combinations of tech skills and languages ("Seeking Certified Oracle DBA with 6+ yrs Java, Perl, C++, UNIX, PHP,
Re:headhunter.net and MLM guys (Score:2, Interesting)
Then I actually went to this company's site and saw the magic acronym in their press section -- MLM. That was what made me realize that this guy, and the other four-odd guys also looking to get in touch with me, were just looking for warm bodies for their downline. And they all found me from headhunter.net.
I imagine that headhunter.net is not alone in this phenomenon, and I don't doubt that other people have found fine jobs like TopShelf. I'm just saying, use a disposable address in general, but there for sure.
I hate to reiterate a commonly made point, but pretty much all the jobs I've had, worth having for a long time, came to me through friends or acquaintances. One or two I found on my own through obsessive research but later found out I got the job because a mutual friend gave me a thumbsup.
Re:I doubt I'm going to get a reply, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, as is so often posted in other threads here - RTFA! (Or in this case RTFW!
I used them "back in the day" (Score:2, Interesting)
It semed to me that sites like monster et al were useful, until they became over run by recuiters vs end employeers... I guess the recuiters paid better than the others.
Avoid the body shops/resume warehouses (Score:2, Interesting)
I dealt with one of those outfits back in 2001. First of all, the guy I talked to originally disappeared within a few weeks. One of the signs that you are talking to a body shop/resume warehouse is that the turnover of their "recruiting" staff is high. The second guy I talked to did manage to get me a real interview with an actual company that had a job available. Cool. Of course, after pressing when he tried to talk me down on salary requirements, I got him to admit that he had never personally placed anyone in my salary range. He was used to working $10-20K lower.
Remember, the wolves at those body shops get hungrier when the commissions start drying up. The reason they are trying to talk you down on salary is that they want to place you quickly. They aren't in it to find you the perfect job. In fact, they don't care whether they ever find you a job. They get their cut from the employers. The faster they can put a warm body in that seat, the faster they get paid.
The ones that are worth dealing with are the ones who would like to earn a commission off of you every few years for the next decade or two. I know a handful of them. I like them, trust them and call them first when I'm looking. You have to understand them. Don't be a pest, don't waste their time. Refer a couple of excellent people to them. Do a good job when they place you. If you can throw a contract their way when your employer is looking for more people, do it. It's all about the ones who want to have long term relationships with employers and employees. They survive when others don't because there are people who trust them and will take the time to talk to them.
Former employee (Score:1, Interesting)
The interesting thing is, we had instant and direct access to the entire database. But where did we go to find new employees? The headhunters. Why? Because the databases are chock full of crap. Finding a good, matching resume in the midsts of all that noise was a problem that we literally spent tens of millions of dollars trying to solve.
It was far easier to pay a headhunter.
The jobs were a lot of junk too. Most of them were filler streamed in from the newspapers and kept on file for months, just to bulk-up the database for marketing purposes.
That was all 5 years ago though. I'm sure things are different now. I quit, found a new job via a headhunter (actually a network of them that I collected while working at CareerPath) then got laid off a few months later in the dot-com meltdown, and never did find another job.
I ended up creating my own job for myself. Got my own little educational product company now. The most effective way I've found to get employees- newspaper ads. Really.
The on-line job boards have all been a waste of time to me.
Re:We try to filter out work at home (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Monster...ain't so bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Never had a problem with them (Score:1, Interesting)
Only thing is the usual case where the recruiter hasnt a bloody clue about IT tech and hasn't bothered to read my CV properly, but thats no fault of the sites.
The only way you could possibly get pissy about these sites is if you're expecting them to magically get you a job, they're simply points of contact between you and companies and should be treated as such.
Re:Life Insurance Salesman (Score:4, Interesting)
What irked me the most was the repetition of the jobs accross the sites. You'd see the same job with a different description on multiple places. This is a serious problem if you apply for both, as the different agencies will fight over the fees. Often in this scenario, both agencies and the employer will simply walk away from you as it's not worth the hassle.
When phoning them, they absolutely will not tell you the name of the company. Which is a huge factor in deciding if the role interests you or not! In the end I had a routine where I'd reel of a whole list of companies as my first question to avoid wasting time.
And the result from all this? Well, only got a few interviews, each of them from people I knew in the industry, already working in companies. Nothing from the agencies at all. And it's not as though I'm a muppet; I've got a good CV and was offered every job I interviewed for.
Like you, I believe that a lot of jobs on the sites are fakes. There were several that were a perfect match for my skill set that by all rights I should have at least had an interview for. Either the agencies are completely inept, or they are making it up. I suspect a bit of both.
Perhaps a new saying: Those who can, do. Those who can't, work for job agencies.