A few Things People Hate About Online Job Boards
Things are really getting out of control.
Anytime a recruiter, HR manager, or anyone else looking to fill a job position puts their job on to one of these "mega job boards" it's like spending $400 to be spammed half to death.
Tell me if this has ever happened to you:
You write up a stellar job ad designed only to attract highly qualified candidates.
You spend the $400 to post the ad and access the online resume database (if you're lucky), and nobody contacts you for 24-48 hours.
ALMOST WITHOUT FAIL the first email (or worse... phone call) you receive is from another job board promising BETTER TARGETED candidates for LESS MONEY!
Then, the resumes start coming in, and NONE of them meet your standards... like, can people not read?!
You've clocked over 20 hours spent on JUST getting resumes after weeding through spam, telemarketers, and poor resumes before FINALLY you find someone who MAY be qualified.
Sound familiar?
Listen, the more SuperBowl ads these guys put out, the more recruiters will have to weed through just to get face time with a small handful of decent candidates.
That means more money will have to be spent on staffing which can really hurt a company's bottom line.
And that's just the beginning of our problems....
Contents at a Glance
Identity Theft On Job Boards
Scaring away more qualified candidates...
This has been a problem for years.
With online job boards boasting about how many jobseekers they have in their system, scammers are attracted like magnets to access this information and steal people's identities by the thousands.
As more people become aware and concerned with the safety of their information, they are beginning to abandon job boards, or leave so much information out of their resumes and profiles, that it becomes a major struggle for recruiters to inittiate contact with these candidate, making the expensive task of hiring EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE!
Think I'm exaggerating? Here are a few stories, from 2003 to 2008, about cases where identity theft has affected hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting jobseekers:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078533/
http://idtheftsecrets.blogspot.com/2007/08/monster-identity-theft-impacts-16.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/02/28/monster.theft.ap/index.html
The solution comes from decentralizing your recruiting system and accessing resumes directly from the best candidates in other places beyond online job boards.
That's what companies like StaffLeads are doing. We find the jobseeker in their own online sectors where the trust level is higher and more secure.
I'll talk more about how we do that in the next squidoo.
Cost Of Job Boards Keeps Going Up!
No wonder VCs keep throwing money at new job boards...
It's not out of the ordinary for a staffing agency to spend $10,000 or more per month on job advertising alone.
With Job boards eating up over $100 per post....
THAT GETS EXPENSIVE!
What do you think that does to the salary of jobs with a higher turnover rate?
:-(
You guessed it, it lowers the salary because the cost to acquire the employee is so high, which could possibly (I'm not pointing any fingers...) contribute to the turnover percentage.
So, when you look at the primary function of the job boards, you see that the only value they add to your company is providing resumes.
Let's do some math:
Job Posting: $100
Resumes Per Ad: 30
Qualified Resumes Per 100: 5
Cost for 1 Qualified resume: $60
As you can see, the more staffing you do, the less you can pay the employees, because job boards are sucking up a huge part of your budget.
But, at the rate of $60 per resume, these job boards are killing it, and will keep doing so, until we start looking at ways to recruit without using them!
No More Job Boards
StaffLeads Says N-O To Online Job Boards... You Can Too!
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byWant To Chime In?
If you feel the way I do, let's hear your story.
The more recruiters and jobseekers work together, the eaier it will be to fill jobs... Leave some feedback!
John Woodland wrote
By John Woodland
mycarnync.net
Interconnectivity, the idea that an item like a gear is useless but when paired with other gears can run a clock or other functions is having a profound impact on Web 2.0 tools. No clearer is this technology being seen utilized then in the tools now available for those looking for a job or a new career. In this article we will examine five internet tools that should be added to your job search arsenal.
1) Aggregators and Vertical Search. Still logging into Monster, CareerBuilder or Yahoo HotJobs to check out new positions? That was useful back in say, 2003.Today you can see jobs from all over the internet from hundreds of sources right from a central location. Without question, the biggest change in how internet users apply the internet to a job search is the movement away from big job boards and the increased use of search engines specifically designed for looking for jobs. The pack leaders include indeed.com and simplyhired.com. Both work quite easy. You enter in your zip code or area of interest, type in a few keywords and these two engines return back results from not only Monster, CareerBuilder and Hotjobs but also from an employer's career webpage. That's a big deal because it introduces you to the employers corporate website where you may even find additional jobs not advertised on the individual sites you are looking at. Why look at a company from a keyhole view of a single silo style jobsite when aggregators now allow you to see everything! Job search engines level the playing field and makes a job search more democratic. It allows professional societies, companies large and small the possibility of exposure that only a few years ago was limited to big corporate advertising budgets. Isn't that the very essence of the internet? The proliferation of knowledge without barriers.
2) RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Often users just call them feeds and some of you may have experience using this technology by keeping up with your favorite blogs or media sites. RSS to the career search is generally the same concept. If new content has been added to an employer's website and they subscribe to RSS then you can add the site to your feed reader. Doing this keeps you up to date on any new positions made public on the site or any company news or trends that may be worth tracking. It is also a great way to keep yourself abreast of a firm as you prepare to interview. Not sure how to get started? First stop over at google.com/reader Other options exist but since goggles acquisition of Feedburner in 2007 Google is the dominant force in the RSS market.
3) Email alerts are pretty self explanatory but are often overlooked by job seekers and that is a major, major mistake. With so much going on in our lives it is easy for us to forget to check in with an employers website to see if those great positions opening up match our skills. With email alerts we don't have to remember. Email alerts, often referred to by employer websites as "save my search" or "job alerts" allows job seekers to stay connected with an employers career sections content long after a visit. Almost all employer career portals allow you to customize what type of content will be emailed to you and under what parameters an email should be sent. Don't forget to set up your email alerts with your job search engines that we talked about earlier. Indeed.com and simplyhired both have this feature and it is really a best practice to get those email alerts up and running.
4) LinkedIn. By now most have heard of the online networking community that some term the Facebook of business professionals.One important take away regarding LinkedIn is that it gives you a professional bio space for free on the internet. That in itself is a huge thing but what's really important is the sheer volume and scalability of information you can glean from this site. You can utilize linkedIn in to see who works at companies your applying to, track your friends or coworkers career progress, see if any restructuring have occurred in management or at worse see who filled your position when you left. The motto of LinkedIn is "Relationships Matter" and this tool allows you to link or follow your relationships to employers so you can target individuals who know you or know you through others. The objective is a link can "pitch" your resume or background. This in mind, some of the job search engine sites like indeed.com and simplyhired have strategic partnerships with LinkedIn so as you examine positions at employers website you can
also find out if your social network links to that employer.Another great way to use LinkedIn is as part of your research for your upcoming interview. A best practice in interview preparation is to research every name provided to you by your initial contact points. If your interviewers are members you can find out quite a bit about what's behind the name and that research really can go a long way in gathering intelligence and assist in determining your approach during the interview. The name is no longer an empty name.
5) Meetup. So far, the tools we discussed all are web centric and very career content driven. Not Meetup. Meetup is a giant network of local groups broken down by interest and zip code. Meetup is about getting connected by getting disconnected and creating relationships off line about topics, hobbies and interest that you have or want to learn about. Meetup has increased interest in local organizations and communities and is a great way of mixing new tech with traditional clubs and grassroots organizations. Best of all if you don't see a meetup group that you want to join, you can create one yourself!
In our next series we will look at the increase risk of identity theft when posting a resume to big job boards and why it is best to refrain posting your resume to job boards entirely.
-John Woodland of mycarync.net
Posted September 03, 2008
