80% of Job Openings Are Unadvertised

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I was recently quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that 80 percent of job openings are unadvertised. Several people have contacted me to ask where I got that number. Some believe that only 70 percent of job openings are unadvertised. So where did I get 80 percent from?

As well stated on the Jobfully blog, the number bounces around a bit year-to-year and even month-to-month depending upon the state of the labor market and is indirectly reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in their monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). The survey reports these numbers: Continue Reading

Video: How to Use a Job Board to Find Your Next Job

I was honored to be asked by Carlos Gil and Kevin Morris of JobsDirectUSA to participate in this year’s America Hires virtual job fair.

We kicked around a few ideas as to how I could best help the many, many people who are hunting for a new internship, entry-level job, or other career opportunity and we decided that I should record a short video in which I answer some of the most commonly asked questions about how to be use a job board. Kevin did a nice job of editing to drop in the questions before each of my answers.

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Employers: Tell Candidates What You Think in This Survey

Dr. Phil Gardner of Michigan State University asked if CollegeRecruiter.com could help him (and the college recruiting community) collect some information from employers of college students and recent graduates for his annual survey. I strongly encourage all employers, whether they’re clients or CollegeRecruiter.com or not yet client of CollegeRecruiter.com (wink, wink), to complete this survey. If you do, he’ll be happy to send a copy of the compiled results to you.
Here is the message from Dr. Gardner:

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Ask the Experts: Answering Great Questions from Job Seekers

One of the pleasures of managing a team of talented, dedicated employees is seeing one of their ideas take root and flourish. Case in point: content coordinator Candice Arnold recommended that we resurrect our Ask the Experts questions and answers feature using our blogging software and integrating it with our customer relationship management software, Salesforce.com.
Candice’s vision was quite an upgrade over how we used to do it: email the questions to the couple of dozen experts, receive their answers back in the bodies of their emails and sometimes attachments, copy and paste their answers into html templates, and upload the web pages. The entire process took hours for our staff and the experts. The new process has saved everyone a ton of time and led to a ton of great answers by the experts who choose to address the questions being asked by students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, alumni, and employers.
Each week, Candice sends out an email through Salesforce to the experts who have agreed to answer questions. None answer all of them. Some answer a lot and others answer a few. The choice is theirs. Here’s the email that Candice sent earlier today:

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How to Effectively Use Job Boards

I enjoyed the opportunity to speak with Kenrick Chatman on his Career Catalyst radio show about how college students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, and experienced candidates searching for higher level positions should use job boards such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, Jobing, and CollegeRecruiter.com.
Interested? Listen to the conversation and many excellent questions asked by Kenrick’s listeners.

Is That a Fact? Or Is That a FAQ?

We’ve been receiving a steady diet of questions from college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities since we re-launched CollegeRecruiter.com five weeks ago. The number of questions haven’t been overwhelming but many are the same or very, very similar. Time to get more efficient.
We just added a short Frequently Asked Questions section to our Contact Us page. Now rather than the candidates having to wait hours or perhaps even a day or two to get an answer back about some issue, they will normally be able to have their question answered even before they ask it of us. That’s better for us and better for them.

What Job Seekers Want From Job Boards

There are approximately 50,000 job boards in the United States and about the same elsewhere in the world. Many are essentially cookie cutter boards with little to no traffic and little to no unique job posting or article content. But all serve employers and job seekers and to survive and thrive all must therefore listen to those visitors to understand what features, functionality and services they like best on today’s job boards.
Fortunately, the industry has the International Association of Employment Web Sites to help us out with keeping up-to-date on issues like this. The executive director, Peter Weddle, conducted a survey between April, 2007 and April, 2008 and generated over 15,700 responses. The results were:

• 19.4% The caliber of the job postings on a site;
• 19.1% The number of job postings on a site;
• 16.7% Ease of access to employment opportunities on the site;
• 16.2% The job search tools and information provided on a site;
• 16.1% The fact that access to employment opportunities is free; and
• 12.5% The ability to network with others on the site.

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Why Should I Intern for Your Company?

I recently received a resume from a student who was applying to our unpaid writing internship. He had virtually no experience listed in his resume, but his academic credentials looked good so I offered the position to him. He thanked me but asked why should he intern for no pay. I told him that he will need experience to land a great job that also offers great pay and that internships, paid or unpaid, will provide him with that experience.
He seemed convinced, yet I haven’t heard back from him. Is his apparent lack of interest due to the lack of pay for the internship? Or is he a horse that can be led to water but can’t be forced to drink?

Explaining a Gap in Your Resume

Question from Candidate:
After 3.5 years working right after college, I decided to quit my job. Some people call it gap year, career break, sabbatical but I call it a sweet dream. In any sweet dream, one do have to wake up to reality. I was backpacking around Europe and also studied Chinese in China. But now, I have a problem trying to explain 3 years gap in my resume. Please help and give me some ideas how to…thanks

Choosing a School

Question from Candidate:
I have an enormous problem in choosing my place of higher education because of my desired fields. First off, my anticipated majors are sports medicine (hopefully pre-med.), international business, or history. I have been accepted to the University of Illinois and United States Military Academy. At West Point I am limited to only business and history major due to the absence of courses offered. My decision lies in which will further my job placement upon graduation. Incidentally, I do not plan to attend the University of Illinois for all four years but hope to study abroad or transfer out east. At West Point, I have the obligation of five year upon my graduation. So in essence, my question is what will look better on my resume? Any sort of guidance would help. Thank you.