Tuesday, September 02, 2003

TORTOISE OR HARE? In this blog, I'll briefly discuss the judicious use of job boards in the job hunting process.  The easiest way to get on the job market quickly is to use job boards and the quickest way of doing that is to go to a service such as www.resumerabbit.com .  The cost for using resumerabbit is about $60.00 for a one time posting.  The newsletter newsletter@execs-direct.com states "You fill out one simple form and immediately you'll be posted on over 85 national career sites where you can be seen by over 1.5 million employers and recruiters daily!"  I do not doubt their claim, in fact that is the whole problem with using a service like resumerabbit.  Do you really want 1.5 million people seeing your resume daily, especially if you are still working?  I have tried to call many candidates off of job boards only to be told the telephone was disconnected.  When I finally found the individual, I was told they changed their telephone number because they could not handle all of the telephone calls they were getting from both company and third party recruiters.  Again, if you have some sellable skills, it is not in your best interest to take the shotgun approach to job hunting because it will eventually reduce your value in the job market if not your chances of getting a solid position.  Of course if you are looking for a truck driver, waitress, etc. position, placing your resume on as many job boards as possible is probably a good thing.  I was recruiting a Chinese gentleman in Canada today for a management position in China.  I asked him if  that did not work out could I add his information and resume the database belonging to the largest group of independent recruiters in the United States, Top Echelon (www.topechelon.com) so recruiters in our organization could look at his resume and possibly try to find a position for him?  To which he responded yes.    A couple hours later he emailed me and stated that he did not want to be placed on the Internet (obviously I did not explain how the Top Echelon recruiters network operates very well) because he has heard that many companies will not hire someone who has their resume on the Internet, so please do not put me on it.   It is this kind of backlash against the Internet that makes me recommend using the job boards judiciously.  In other words, I recommend using the tortoise approach over the hare approach when using the Internet for job hunting.  I also recommend using job boards that are skill specific such as healthcare job boards for nursing, IT job boards for individuals looking for Information Technology positions, etc. before posting your resume on the larger job boards.    10:27:40 PM    comment []