Comments on: Job Boards: The Broken System – from the Build the Career You Deserve ezine

By: John Crawford

John Crawford — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:22:04 +0000

Here is a real world example of an actual email i received in response to a posting on a subscription job board.

It really adds to Paul’s point on one of the problems companies and job seekers are facing: Obviously, names are changes to protect me…Read on:

“Thank you for your interest in “company X.” Unfortunately this position was filled quite some time ago. The “job board” has a long history of finding jobs on company web sites and then reposting them on their own site. Then they will repost them periodically to make them look new, even long after the company has long since filled and removed the original posting.

I apologize for any confusion this may have caused you. We don’t use the “job board” in our recruiting efforts and have repeatedly asked them to not post our jobs on their site, to no avail.

I will keep your resume on file should we have a similar opening and I wish you the best of luck in your job search.

Best regards,
“Real Employer HR leader”

By: Paul Paris

Paul Paris — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:46:53 +0000

Kevin biggest problem is Job Board Aggregators who have made it easy for someone to buy a database add some little bleeps here and there and the aggregator fills their boards with jobs. So jobseekers looking at different job boards think they are looking at different jobs when in the end they send most of the day applying for the same positions with different recruiting firms who are posted on these boards for the same jobs.
That is swhy the Direct Employer Association is looking to move away from these sites for the above reason and another reason is while they can blanket post a position they can not retract it and it remains open on these Job Boards long after the positions have been filled which is now causing companies problems and having to explain WHY!

By: admin

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:19:01 +0000

Richard,

I have seen it in a variety of places, but Richard Bolles’ “What Color is Your Parachute” is the most well known.

Best,

Kevin

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:37:01 +0000

I put a large part of the blame on recruiters who cross post the same job over and over again for the single purpose of harvesting resumes to put in a database.

IMHO, The job market is broken because of one major thing: laziness.

Similar to the banking fiasco, recruiters don’t get to know people anymore, they simply want a large database with keywords in the hopes of hitting a match on a few key buzzwords.

The problem is two fold: on the one hand recruiters want abbreviated resumes no longer than two pages yet in order to get a full breadth of skills and scope via buzzwords and key phrases, the resume would need to be as big as a dictionary.

It is perfectly understandable that a recruiter can’t personally get to know 500 people that submit a resume for a particular job but utilizing things like LinkedIn (and recommendations) goes a lot further than doing nothing.

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:59:48 +0000

Kevin,

Can you share the source of your stat about the hidden job market attributing to 80-85% of annual hires? That sounds about right, but I would love to know the source(s). Thank you in advance!

By: Mark Baird

Mark Baird — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:09:21 +0000

Kevin,

What you say, I know to be true. I wholeheartedly agree. My calling is to employ veterans. My unique One Day job board works very well. But my full time job board is failing the warriors I serve. And job fairs are now dead.

I work to do 3 things: 1) Make sure that combat veterans know that Americans appreciate their service. 2) Preserve their marriages and families. 3) To employ them as quickly as possible after separation. — This makes incidents of PTSD far less likely to occur and to adversely affect their lives.

How can we work together to make my assistance of veterans more effective?