Saturday, August 30, 2003

TO MONSTER OR NOT TO MONSTER, THAT IS THE QUESTION There seems to be a misconception that all anyone has to do is list their resume on www.monster.com , www.hotjobs.com , www.careerbuilder.com , (formerly headhunter.com) or one of the thousands of niche job boards that liter the Internet landscape to find a job.  But, I come here to praise Caesar not to bury him.  The job boards can be very effective, especially if one has a well written resume that contains a lot of keywords listing skills that employers might be want (writing resumes for job boards will be discussed when we get around to resume writing).   Richard Bolles in WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? states that when using the Internet for a job hunt "the success rate turns out to be 4%".  I believe that 2 or 3 years ago that number was probably correct, but I would put the success rate closer to 10%, perhaps even higher, and I believe it will get even higher as niche job boards improve their offerings.  Five years ago many of the plastics industry candidates would complain to me (without being asked) that they had their resumes on Monster, Hotjobs or one of the other large job boards for months and no one had called.   I continued hearing this for about two years but I rarely get this complaint any longer (even though I have asked CAREERBUILDER to include Plastics as a skill set for the past 5 years and it still has not happened).  My main concern about job boards is over exposure.  One reason the success rate has increase is because most third party recruiters (HEADHUNTERS) are using the job boards and this has even created a new problem.  Many companies are unwilling to pay recruiter fees if the candidate is found on one of the job boards, or the company believes the candidate was found on a job board (we can argue the philosophical reasons for this ad nauseam but just accept it as a fact).  If several recruiters find you resumes on say Monster and send it to a company, very often the company will just throw the resume away instead of going through the hassle arguing with third party recruiters as to who presented the candidate to the company first, or who was the first recruiter to bring the candidate to the company's attention (the "but for" recruiting rule), etc.  Also, having your resume on too many job boards can make it look like you are desperate and believe me, this will lower your value in the marketplace, sometimes to zero.   IN SUMMARY, use job boards but use the judiciously.  The judicious use of job boards will be discussed in my next weblog. 4:15:59 PM    comment []