9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken
100 years ago companies started putting job ads in newspapers. They still do, although much less.
That’s because they’re putting those same job ads online. The Internet took hold offering hundreds of places employers could post their job ads.
So what?
Compare a job ad from 100 years ago to a job ad today and they’ll look almost identical. The buzzwords have changed, but the format, style and general dullness have not.
Here are 9 signs the online job market is broken:
- Companies can’t differentiate themselves. Almost every online job ad looks the same. There’s a few reasons for that. Online job sites don’t offer any way for companies to stand out. And employers look at what everyone else is doing and do the same thing. Job ads are written by HR departments, which means they’re buzzword-laden and generic. “Unique offerings. World-class team. Fast paced. A leader in…” Oops, sorry about that. Did you fall asleep on me?
- Job sites like Monster.com are loaded with too much spam. When looking for work, the two best opportunities are through recruiters or anonymous companies on Monster.com. Right? Too much junk, too much spam and no way for a candidate to get through it all easily.
- Jobster.com now offers free job postings. They couldn’t figure out how to get people to pay for them, so they offered job postings for free. My take: They should be free. They’re largely worthless.
- Niche job boards don’t offer enough. Niche job boards are a response to the massive job sites out there. That’s a sign people realize the job market is broken. The problem is that niche job boards aren’t the answer. We’ve seen plenty of niche job boards spring up. At least they’re targeted, but the job ads are still the same, boring stuff.
And now, anyone can put up a job board on their site or blog. Companies like JobCoin and JobThread make it insanely easy. But so what? What’s the difference? Where’s the advantage?
- The best candidates aren’t surfing job sites looking for work. The top talent doesn’t spend time surfing job websites for fun. They’ve already got jobs. They’re busy. And even if they find themselves unemployed, you can be sure they don’t spend much time surfing for work. They know how to stand out, and they’re busy making that clear through referrals and their network of contacts.
- It’s too easy for candidates to apply. Technology is a wonderful thing. There are millions of examples of technology making our lives easier. When it comes to applying for a job, it’s now too easy. Someone can apply for hundreds of jobs with a few mouse clicks. Boilerplate cover letter, standard resume…click, click, click, click. And don’t forget, “references made available upon request.”
- It’s too hard for employers to assess talent. The result of everyone on the planet applying for every single job is that employers spend insane amounts of time filtering resumes. And in a global marketplace where you know nearly nothing about the educational institutions or companies in foreign countries, it’s almost impossible to pick out the best candidates. Employers do what they can to filter out the crap. And they’ll catch most of it, but not all of it. And they’ll lose some good ones in the process.
- Companies use the services because they’re there, not because they work. Job websites continue to make money because they’re there. Not because they work. Employers are at a loss for what to do. They’ll try anything. And they’ll keep trying it by default. It’s almost automatic. You’ve got a job opening, you go through the routine: post on the job websites, ask your friends, hit up a job fair or two, etc. You can just picture the HR people asking themselves, “We know the job sites don’t work, but what if, just this one time, we miss a killer candidate by not posting?”
- Lots of money and time is going into the online job market space. The job market is hot. SimplyHired. Jobster. itzBig. Indeed. CareerBuilder. In July 2006 it was announced that Jobster took $18 million more in financing (hitting around $50 million.) Lots of money, lots of energy.
And let’s not forget - people are talking about the problems in the online job market. Steve Poland wrote: Online Job Hunt 10 Years Later - Still Sucks.
Wait, I’m not finished. “We need 5 years experience in Java. 2 years experience in HTML. A university degree in something relevant.”
I love this: “The people that we continually seek are highly motivated, bright, and growth oriented.” As opposed to unmotivated, stupid and stunted?
My good friend, Austin Hill, is looking to hire people for his new startup company, dubbed “Project Ojibwe.” He’s looking for a Python Wrangler. Instead of just telling you what he wants (and boring you with the same job ad everyone else is writing), Austin filmed a video job ad. He’s trying to show you want he’s looking for.
I agree, the online job market (e.g. Monster.com etc) just doesn’t work. I haven’t tried many of these sites but the few I did just aren’t fine tuned enough or get fine tuned too much in the wrong areas. If I’m searching for a job I want the flexibility to select a location from as broad as a region (e.g. Northeast U.S.) or as specific as a town (e.g. Sometown, MA U.S.) but I don’t want to get forced into a specific location search unless I want that. After that I want to search based on a ranking of specific skill sets (e.g. Java programming most important skill, C++ programming next important etc). I don’t want to find jobs that “mention” Java when I want a Java programming job. Most of the job sites I’ve seen in the past just seem to lump all listings into a single bucket from which you search and get all matches regardless how appropriate.
The other reason I believe the online job market has failed has to do with the people behind the scenes reviewing a response to a listing: the Human Resource department. I have yet to find a company with a good HR department. They’re similar to that recruiter in the video: they just don’t understand. And these are the people on the first line of response review which means your chances of getting your resume in the hands of the hiring manager is a complete roll of the dice.
The current online job market has done nothing more than take the old fashioned printed job listing and put it to the web. That is soooooo Web 1.0.
[…] Instigator Blog: 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken […]
Well I just got a significant pay raise and responsibility bump through a job posting on dice.com.
I may have to relocate in the near future and I already have two offers in the area I am looking to move.
[…] 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken 07.02.26.18.59 The article is good, but I’m actually more interested in the video embedded at the end. […]
Good article on the whole. When I was doing the job search thing after college and then after law school I found the exact same thing: all the big job sites were worthless and filled with job spam, and temp agencies. The descriptions were meaningless and designed for people to self-select out, to artificially limit the number of resumes they would receive. The two most promising prospects (and the job I am currently working at) were posted on a headhunter’s site and on craigslist. I took the job on craigslist. Cragislist seemed to have the most “real” job postings as opposed to Monster which had the fewest. Most were just recruiters/temp agencies looking for suits to stock their stables. NOT what any real job-seeker is looking for. The job website paradigm is definitely broken. This would be a great realm for web2.0 services to intervene I think. Tagging jobs by candidates could really help to weed out the cruft I would imagine.
I “ninety-nine percent” agree with this. When I graduated from college, I began the job search with online job boards, including Craigslist. Most of the postings were simply awful. I felt like I was applying for the same thing over and over again, which I probably was.
Things were getting bad, until 2am on a Wednesday when I came across a job post that was obviously written by someone who loved their company and wanted a good person to join their team. The post was about three pages long.
I applied (along with about 100 other people) and ended up getting the job. However, I waded through six thousand tons of crap to get that one good listing.
My problem with the online job market isn’t just that. Say for the low income guy who needs to just get by on a job at the local shopping mart. Maybe a job as a cook or just something low income. I find it difficult to do this. You have to manually go through putting out your name,ssn,bd,etc.. Over and over and over again. Then worst of all. You have to fill out those stupid surveys. So do you know a friend who smokes pot ? Agree. Strong Agree,etc. Worst of all this seems to be more of the thing to do by employers as computers become their way of making you apply. The surveys are a waste of time and don’t accurately portray the person their hiring anyways because it’s a false sense of something your not. You have to give options based on forced answers that they give you to choose instead of allowing you the employee to voice your opinion. But worst of all is this same test is close to the same test ran by every other employer. Lets not forget that the reason more then likely we have to fill out application by application is because of that stupid little agreement to the company you make. Where you sign your name and read their rules. Thats all fine. But just give me those rules to all those companies in one paragraph. Very annoying and there just has to be a more stream lined way someone can make this work. Maybe I fill out one application agree to all these various companies bs. Then fill out one of their lame surveys. Which should however be changed to benefit the employee to his or her best answer choice. Not by their forced choices. I just want something simple. Fortunately I’m going off to drive truck. So though it’s a job with a learning curve. I don’t have to deal with the bs these low income places make you put up with.
That’s why business like Vurv Technology (http://www.vurv.com) and Taleo (http://www.taleo.com) are so important.
#1 They provide tools which better equip companies to identify top candidates (internal or external).
#2 The portals (at least with Vurv) are completely customizable allowing the company to truly express their personality in the layout and design.
Hi,
This article has very useful information, it will be helpful for many certification exam aspirants. Actually one of my friends first read this article and asked me to visit this page.
It’s really amazing to read this description of this article, Thanks for your efforts. Thank you so much for your help.
Thanks,
Steve
http://www.eplanetlabs.net
Your 9 reasons are good, and of course the real question you ask is, why even have job postings at all?
Free or not, job boards simply do not work.
Surely technology is good enough now to deliver a solution that can simply match the right people to the right openings without anyone having to post a wanted ad, search for jobs, or waste any time.
Most of the new generation ‘recruiting’ website we see today, seem to be designed as a popular online ‘trendy’ destination to capture lots of people, and then they try and ‘shoehorn’ recruiting in around them.
Lets face it, the problem of recruiting will only be resolved when someone first builds a solution to attack the problem or recruiting itself. Think in terms of both the job seekers and the employers, and resolve their recruiting problems.
So my job is simple:
1) To provide a way for working people to anonymously keep an eye out for their ideal job offer
2) To implement a technology that objectively measures every candidate equally, globally, for every search, and only connects both parties when there is a high level of mutual interest
3) To make this technology available to every employer, and make it so every employer can access, use and benefit from it to perform knowledgeable, fair and good recruits, without training or expertise
4) To change recruitment globally
QuietAgent.com
A) The Job Seeker sets their ideal job offer and enters a few basic details
B) The job seeker remains totally anonymous
C) The employer picks from thousands of search templates, or creates their own search criteria
D) The search returns a shortlist of anonymous people who are good matches for the job. It never shortlists a job seeker unless they would consider working for the employer
E) The employer invites one or more anonymous job seekers to talk
F) The employer pays a small fee for the job seekers that accepts their invite
There is a lot more to it in the background, but essentially, in this world of Web 2.0 and what we can now do with technology; there is no need for a job classified, a job board or a job search. Surly two parties can simply state what they desire, and be instantly connected if both the party’s needs are met.
Cheers,
Jason Kerr
CEO
QuietAgent.com
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You guys are good.
Wanna be in my movie?
I think the online job market is just a reflection of real life. You’ve got to work hard to find something that’s worth doing. And many high quality people use the internet as a job-searching tool!
I couldn’t agree more. I am currently looking for work in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and the Bay Area and all these jobs I’ve applied to online seem to be staffing agencies. I finally got my first call from a company in Virginia trying to fill a position in San Francisco. Talk about frustrating. The person on the other end only had about 4 questions about my familiarity with open source technologies, and when I expanded on my experience and knowledge she didn’t think I was qualified. Its a damn shame that the market has to be like this right now, and since sending my resume to what seems to be 8 million companies, I’m beginning to get very frustrated and am starting to go through my network to see if anyone can help me in my job search.
Personally, I think that all of the online job boards that have popped up all over the internet have created an entirely new market for staffing agencies. I think the best idea for a company looking for potential candidates would simply be on their web site in the “careers” section. This way people who are already interested in their products can potentially work for those very same companies.
Anyhow, great article, and again I couldn’t agree more.
Hopefully some employers out in San Francisco / Palo Alto come across my comment and feel like giving me a glance over
My resume can be found on my web site http://ChrisLLorca.com/resume
Thanks for the great read!
Chris
This is a great example of how Internet video can improve the future of job hunting. I’m really excited to see this. With Video On the Net coming in a few weeks to San Jose, California, it’s neat to see yet another way that video transported over the broadband Internet will impact our world.
I wholeheartedly agree. Is it just me or does every job board feel like a complete waste of time. Clicking a job link and then submitting your email to an endless blackhole, no thank you. Got something in the works though…=)
webpodge,
I literally spent every waking hour for 72 hours straight sifting through page after page of job opportunities, writing a personalized cover letter to each and every single one of them. After my eyes dried out I would finally pass out. My fiance said I woke her several times because I was literally typing in my sleep.
Oh yeah, and Yahoo!Hot Jobs has 45 pages of Google/Yahoo! job postings before you get to any other companies… and they add about 1000 jobs a day, which is nice, but it would be better if they would read my resume and maybe call once in a while.
-Chris
Broken job boards, and low-quality recruiters are some of the reasons that I started the Recruiter-Rater website (http://recruiter-rater.zhrodague.net). Monster.com sends out spam, HR people can’t articulate job requirements, and applicants are expected to type every detail into little boxes in a poorly-designed web-form. Rather than an online bitch session, this website is geared towards identifying jobboard spam, phishers, and other scams.
I’ve been applying for contract jobs online for 7 years now, and I have never secured a gig that way. I still get my jobs from people I know, or people who know of me. Good luck, jobseekers!
Great article. Flash forward N years to the next headline - “Video Job Ads Are Broken”.
Technology people love to try to use technology to solve problems - but not all of them can be solved that way. Personal networks are still the way most people get hired.
I run a niche engineering site, Engineering Central (http://www.engcen.com/) and I agree with many of the problems mentioned above about job boards, including ours. However, how do you fix the problem? For instance, the problem of recruiters or HR people not getting back to applicants - can the job board control that? The idea of job ad tagging would mean that if you were interested in a job everybody and his dog would apply for it too and you would have more competition and would have less chance of getting that good job you wanted.
The applicant screening programs many companies use are an attempt to cut down on the number of unqualified resumes they get. There is a real problem there, but I believe these programs are counter-productive since many of the more qualified candidates will not bother jumping through the hoops and also because the applicant screening program may actually filter out qualified candidates.
I would be interested in any ideas anyone might have for what a job board could do to improve the situation. Obviously, less advertising both on the web and via email would be one of them. I see the point of that, but you also have to remember that job boards are in business to make money, and that advertising may be a vital part of their income. That said, I think there needs to be a balance between the usability of the site for users and the potential income generated by advertising. For us, that means no pop-ups and no email about third-party products or services. However, we do have Google ads and ads for other services on our site.
Job search and recruiting are fundamentally broken. We’ve spent almost 2 years figuring out, systematically, practically, from the ground up, how to fix the process.
If there are any firebreathing software developers or Web designs in San Diego, Fort Collins or Denver interested in joining the cause, please send your resume and favorite quote to mbannen@yahoo.com (I’ll respond with my corporate email account).
There are certainly problems with the process of finding employment online. The comment that many of the best candidates don’t even post their resumés online is well-taken. This is where professional recruiters, who have extensive contacts within particular industries, and among job seekers and their own personal networks, can be invaluable.
However, I want to add that except for maybe web startups that exist in a utopia, video job postings and similar methods aren’t really going to work. I am a headhunter, and professional recruiters (both internal corporate types and headhunters) can post upwards of dozens of jobs per day, and also need to filter resumés/CVs, contact applicants, screen and interview, negotiate, etc. Few of them would have the time or equipment resources to make video job postings.
Having said that, I’m all for methods that allow job seekers and hiring managers to connect more quickly. In today’s working world, professional third-party recruiters are an effective recruitment solution, but I would never stand in the way of progress in this area. If my field becomes obsolete, I will absolutely move on.
Job seeking is hard; I wish more employers would give seekers more feedback; I think that would go a long way to making it more bearable.
For the small businesses out there, PowerHires offers powerful, easy to use applicant tracking so that you you don’t have to deal with the resume spam mentioned above and can easily prescreen applicants.
http://www.powerhires.com/solutions.php?s=instigator
And we make it easy to send those rejection notices so that your candidates know where they stand. It might seem odd, but they’ll thank you for the rejection.
[…] 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken This article is spot on with its description of the defects in the online job boards. (tags: Jobs) […]
[…] goes after the online job market. He’s mostly […]
[…] good friend Ben Yoskovitz wrote a great article about what is wrong with the online job market where he included our video job. Ben is a […]
The broken job web sites made me so irritated that right before reading this article I started thinking of making a free guerrilla website (or just web walking scripts) that filtered out all the “spam” listings from a major job website, i.e. all the recruiters and contract agencies. This because none of these sites let you do this and sometimes you would like just see how many “real” jobs there are out there.
A list of work at home jobs are available at
http://www.pcworkathome.net
This is very true, and it got me thinking about how the whole online job market could be improved. The problem is the flat structure for both employers and job-seekers. The job market should be more like Everquest than MySpace.
Hmmm. I think someone needs to bring some hard core science/technology to the problem…
Dave - thanks for the comment.
An Everquest job market eh? Well I imagine companies will get on Second Life eventually and hold virtual job fairs…
I don’t think it’s a technology issue per se, I think it’s an issue of the way people think. We’ve been hiring and getting hired the same way for so long, no one has stepped up and changed that.
I know there are companies that work on matching people with employers through technology but at the end of the day don’t we hire people because they’re a good fit, after we have a couple conversations with them? (or at least, shouldn’t we do it that way?)
I’ve build five companies on my own and spent the last ten years interviewing about 4000 people for one of the fastest growing companies on Wall Street. They are the biggest asset management firms in the world, called BlackRock, Inc. As the founders of BlackRock have said to me, how come you can discover the greatest talent that other’s can’t Ev? Its because I go beneath the surface.
The truly successful people are team players, driven by the desire for excellence, not by their ego or by the desire just be great…but to be of genuine value. Those that are driven by ego are pompous and become a cancer. 80% of the people looking for a job, generally have interpersonal skill problems…which means they haven’t done the necessary internal excavation.
The 20% that are looking are generally good talent in the wrong organization, on other words a bad fit. The truth is great talent isn’t looking.
Large search firms business models restrict their profitability goals from ever rendering excellent service….nor do they really know how! They call and say to the candidate, “hi, I have a job at so and so…” I know, they have called me years ago. That’s not recruiting. That’s stupidity.
Great employees are genuine and authentic in their generosity of human spirit. They are exceedingly passionate in their pursuit of excellence. That’s the true secret of greatness.
[…] online job market is broken and too many people don’t spend enough time hiring the right […]
[…] you’ve been reading our blogs, you may have noticed that we’ve brought up recruiting issues from time to time. Unfortunately we are not yet prepared to announce more than just a […]
[…] 9 signs online job market is broken […]
I’ve recently begun looking for a senior level position (VP/CIO) having moved to a new city. I posted on job boards, signed with placement firms like RH, Teksystems, etc. and nothing except idiot HR departments not understanding the value of a seasoned professional. I finally received the phone calls I wanted, but it took over two months of wasted time from recruiters and HR departments calling me asking if I would take a job for 90k. I would usually reply, “so this is part time, right?”
Recruiters are taking 20% and up for placement and they hardly do anything for that money other than clog the system. Meanwhile employers are starving for employees but don’t want to pay that silly premium. I have had placement firms send me resumes for developers with only 2 years professional experience asking for over 60 bucks an hour. I told them to get off the crack pipe, learn how to do their job, and find me real candidates.
We spend most of our time talking about resumes, how to interview, how candidates can separate themselves from one another, etc.
But the reality of it is that, as this post points out, the employers have probably less of a clue about the hiring process than the candidates. But, since they’re the ones with the money, we let that side of the equation atrophy.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above (except for part of #5 - there are plenty of great workers who have no idea how to find a job if they get surprised by a layoff).
The real question is what can really be done to fix the situation? Most employers don’t *want* to change, regardless of how much money it’s costing them.
There is a slow, below-the-surface revolution going on in the employment space right now. I’m waiting for the company that pops out with something that revolutionizes everything.
It hasn’t happened yet (mainly because people are still thinking too much about the old model), but it will.
It’s an exciting (and, perhaps, scary) time to be in the employment field!
Dan
Dan - thanks for the comment, very much appreciated.
Let’s hope Standout Jobs is the company you’re looking for!
I think employers will change once they’re given great alternatives to what they’re doing - stuff that’s interesting, effective, fun and low cost vs. reward.
@Darren
You ever use the Vurv product? Obviously not, on the outside talk it up good and the marketing is good but it is a waste of alot of time and alot of money from my experience. It is so hard to use you have to pay to get trained and pay more to upgrade and pay even more to convert your data into the system and pay to get it out if you want out. Do yourself a favor and stick with open web based systems.
[…] no longer effective, things like job fairs, newspaper ads etc… In an interesting article titled 9 signs the online job market is broken Ben Yoskovitz asserts: “Compare a job ad from 100 years ago to a job ad today and they’ll look […]
The job market has been messed up for a long time. The most qualified people don’t get the jobs, the extroverts who sell themselves get them. Us introverted people who have good skills but are a bit shy get left out in the cold and end up having to go through staffing companies. Maybe when we as a society start to realize that being extroverted and having sales skills do not necessarily equal being skilled in all things, maybe then the job market will actually work.
Great post Ben. Agree 100% with your 9 reasons. I’ve used Monster.com, TotalJobs and other big job boards and it is usually a very frustrating experience. Smaller ones that serve niches are usually much better.
sites de busca - did you use those sites as an employer or candidate or both?
Hi Ben,
I’ve used as a candidate. I believe that niche job boards can provide a more tailored service - consequently better on helping you finding a real potential job.
sites de busca - thanks for the input. I agree that niche job boards are better, but I still think they do very little to truly differentiate companies.
I definitely agree. I waste so much time posting jobs to monster, craigslist, facebook, etc and nothing works well. I still have the most success with recruiters who reduce the noise of terrible applicants. Its 2007-we don’t need a human 3rd party anymore!
@busybutlistening - Good recruiters can definitely reduce the noise but they’re also very expensive which can be prohibitive for a lot of companies, especially if they’re hiring quite a few people / growing quickly.
What’s your take on that aspect of the recruiting business?
I have become completely disenchanted with the online job recruiting boards. It becomes a full time job simply to avoid the spam and somehow make your own CV noticeable in a sea of spam. I’ve gone back to the old fashioned way of using the Yellow Pages and sending my CV out to everyone in my field.
[…] Austin Hill and Ben Yoskovitch, who would partner up to start a new job site that aims to break the stale old model of recruiting. Now Fred reports that the startup, StandoutJobs.com got $1.5 million in seed money […]
[…] 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken : Instigator Blog […]
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[…] Defensio next. They made first a bulletpoints on how the blogsphere is broken, much alike when Ben Yoskovitz wrote a post on why the online job market is broken, to introduce later standoutjobs. Defensio’s direct competitor is Akismet, and they are […]
your comments make sense, principal reason for both resume spam and job-swamp is technology: stupid search engines match people and jobs by search algorithms and thus can be fooled easily by both job seeker and employer.
People cannot be fooled so easily,they search & screen way better: referrals yield more than twice the number of hires than 40,000 job boards. (careerxroads.com survey)
Still thousands of people do find a job or a new hire through job boards, so they will not go away. The economics will get worse though with job posting becoming a commodity with facebook and Craigs list. Same for resume search. Monster revolutionized the world with thousands of people a day submitting resumes online as of 1999 - but look at facebook et al: 150,000 people a day join social networks, posting a public profile…
[…] 9 signs online job market is broken […]
[…] 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken […]
Online job boards are fine in their current state. My last two employers found me via monster. In regards to number six in the original post, the easier the better. Its a waste of time to craft a cover letter and resume for EVERY job you apply to. If you do that you are lucky to get four resumes out a day and in reality your hand crafted resume ends up in the pile at the HR office. Its pointless. Its all about volume. You get enough resumes out there, and you get a hit. You send out 20-30 a day and you will get something. Thats EXACTLY what I did and it worked every time. The only time I will write custom resumes is when I find a job I really might like, other than that its point and click. Job hunting is a pain as it is, so why not make is less of a pain.
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As far as any experience that I’ve had, online job postings rarely work. I’m in IT, and typically I will see a posting on a site, and go after it, just to not get the job. Often I will be registered with a staffing service, and will get the same job I couldn’t apply for directly 3 weeks later.
I’ve had the same job for the past 5 years, so fortunately, this hasn’t been a problem for a while.
I don’t think it’s that bad. In my opinion the major sites will survive for the very simple reason, lots of ppl get jobs through online job sites.
I don’t even bother responding to job ads online anymore. It’s going back to the old days. You gotta find a number and pick up the phone.
Thanks Emily, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I could bore you with a list of reasons why I didn’t learn many of the skills discussed here - networking, etc. - early on, but I didn’t. I am an introvert, sometimes strongly.
Now I have a good beginning educational background, having finished my Masters in February, and I am learning/catching up on these soft skills.
But I have been unemployed for a very long time too, even with the temporary agencies.
I am disenheartened reading most of these comments; it is nice to know that I am not alone.
Theresa, your comment brings up another point worth considering - are the job boards broken, or are there just so many applications on them that recruiters have a glut of resumes to go through? Maybe you’re the reason you can’t find a job, not the job board.
Quinn
I can see your point on your first question, especially around here, and would like more specifics on your second.
I am open for constructive suggestions, as mentioned above, I know I have much to learn (don’t we all); and when you stop learning is when you really start losing it.
Have a good weekend.
Theresa
Ben, this was a good summary of why the whole internet job market doesn’t work. It’s completely saturated and everyone looks the same.
Also, most employers, HR departments and candidates lack the skills to accurately describe what they want, so everything sort of runs together and differentiation is hopelessly missing.
I think this video was an excellent attempt at trying to stand out. But only because I actually watched it. This approach will work for a while, but once everyone is doing it, things will be worse than they were before.
Main reason is you can’t quickly scan through audio and video, so if they don’t get indexed accurately, no one will ever listen or view them.
The indexing will require folks to do what they can’t do anyway, which is describe what they want, so we’re back to where we started.
@Travel Guy: Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I don’t worry about “everyone doing it” because unlike text ads which are all the same, videos can be wildly different. Companies can take completely different approaches - be they longer, shorter, about a specific job, about the company, etc. So there’s plenty of variety.
As well, I don’t want candidates “quickly scanning” through anything - that’s what leads to them randomly applying for jobs that might be fits, without really evaluating whether they want to work at that company. I want candidates taking the time to look into a company, and decide whether that company has done enough to attract them…
I agree 110%,and have been urging the FTC to do something about some if not all of them.
I’ve never heard of anyone getting a job in this fashion.
I myself am seeking my last career as Iam 53,and I have found nothing but smoke and mirrors on these so called job search sites.
all the best
We started bonfirejobs.com as an attempt to correct some of the problems in online recruitment.
Employers can search the resume database free of charge and only pay (the **candidate**) upon receiving results from the candidate they contact within 24-hours.
It is our belief that job seekers who post their resumes on a website should be compensated for their time.
[…] most important post I wrote in early 2007 was 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken, primarily because it was a preview of things to come, with the eventual announcement of my new […]
[…] make your experience look“broad” to appeal to many different industries, etc.) is basically flawed: by making your résumé look “standard”, and by rounding off the edgesto try to be all things […]
[…] Resource Management Systems) will hold will overflow and even crawlers won’t be able to save them. When you have a million resumes, and a crawler finds certain keywords, there will still be too […]
The job market in general looks bleak. The best bet is to focus on developing your skills and education. There are professional career management companies you can consult so you can gain an extra competitive edge.
http://phetermine.zblog.ru/
Do people really want to post video resumes of themselves on the web. i have worked with some good developers who were too shy to muster more than a couple of sentences at an interview but were good coders. I know that is industry specific and in many cases they wouldn’t have got anywhere near an interview but it is the same for many people. It takes a lot more time and effort to put together a video resume of yourself than to do it on paper, and how are agencies going to search for your skills when they are in video format.
Web sites that tie your skills right in to you ronline profile will help agencies find the people faster and more effectively. Social Recruitment offers this and is as much the way forward as video resumes and video Ads will ever be.
@Dominic: I’m not a big fan of video resumes. I’ve said that before, and continue to say that because of the issues you bring up, and the legal issues as well. I DO think video job ads will become the norm for most companies. But video is just one tool, not THE tool that solves all recruiting problems.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Having played the Monster game (as an Employer) and failed miserably to get enquiries from the kind of people with the experience and skills I require I agree totally that they make the application process way to easy.
I’ve used career building to great success. I definitely see how spammy everything has gotten for online jobs but it’s still the best way in my mind to find a job without question.
I more than have my answer now as to why most internet job postings (especially those by recruiters) are WORTHLESS. I was beginning to suspect something when after a month of applying for jobs I was “spot on” qualified for as the Brits would say, my phone wasn’t ringing the next day, as it should have been.
These recruiters are really doing a disservice by scamming the public. Note to recruiters: If you advertise for a position and get a resume from someone doing exactly the same job AND they are a SUMMA CUM LAUDE graduate, RUN don’t WALK to the phone and get them in front of your client! You get what you pay for, and this caliber deserves a higher pay rate. It’s as simple as that. Want to impress your client ? Send them “top of the class” candidates.
If you can’t walk the walk, (i.e. follow through with your posting) don’t play games with people by wasting their time !!!