Are Recruiters Listening?
Job Boards Are Obsolete
To those who use job boards, whether as a recruiter or job seeker, the statement that job boards are obsolete should not come as a surprise.
To their credit, sites like Monster and CareerBuilder revolutionized the process of bringing candidates and employers together. Downstream, they spawned entire new industries and businesses. At their inception, the concept of Internet-based recruiting and job searching was, to say the least, earth-moving.
Some of us here grudgingly admit being around before these sites were hatched. Before the Internet was a reality and personal computers were mass-produced (and affordable), we vividly remember TYPING resumes (on an IBM Selectric or word processor), and bringing them to print shops for volume copying on heavy-weight, wheat-colored paper. And no, we didn’t forget the matching envelopes!
Each day, we would search the NEWSPAPERS (yes, dear readers, hard copy) for job listings and circle the ones for which we wished to apply. The last part of the “application” process was TYPING a cover letter for each application, getting it in the (snail) mail, and waiting for a call to come in. One important distinction, though, was that each resume was sent to a REAL PERSON. After a few days, a job seeker actually had the ability to CALL and SPEAK to that person to follow up on the resume.
What a concept.
Imagine a world today where you see a job, apply for it, and make contact with a real person. Back then, in the space of a few days, a job seeker knew the outcome of a job application. Today…well, they never really know, do they?
So why, compared with last year, is Monster.com down 3.5% for unique site visitors compared to last year?
And why is CareerBuilder.com down 23.8% for unique site visitors? (Source: www.compete.com)
Visits are down because job boards, as we know them, are bursting at the seams with job postings that, quite frankly, read like any other. Other than a glitzy posting or link to a company’s career site, there is no longer anything innovative or helpful for an employer. Lots of static, no signal. As a result, they have become highly ineffective–for both parties.
It’s no secret that job seekers are fed up with a cumbersome application process that leads no where (or, as we call it, the black hole). They know all too well what happens to their resumes after applying for a job through one of these sites: to infinity…and beyond!!. The amount of spam mail they receive is a different story altogether.
And recruiters know what happens when they post a job. The daily deluge of resumes arriving in their inbox is, at best, overwhelming. These days, an average of 500 resumes–or more–is received for each posting. So this makes recruiters unable–or unwilling–to deal with the onslaught and wind up overlooking potentially-qualified candidates.
In fact, as recruiters know, only 12% of their hires come from the boards.
And, 60% of corporate recruiting budgets are spent in online job advertising. (Source: CareerXroads 2009 8th Annual Source of Hire Study). According to IDC, HR has invested billions of dollars in their resume data base ($1.3 billion in 2006!).
Yet, each year, companies continue to dole out billions of dollars to Monster, Hotjobs, Careerbuilder, and many niche or specialty sites, and get the same result: bloated databases filled with thousands of resumes they may never see–or know they even have.
The candidate? Disgusted, frustrated, and out of ideas.
Your reputation as an ’employer of choice’? Totally shot.
So why is this black hole scenario played out over and over, each and every day, with the same non-results? How is the ROI justified? Because, recruiters lament, other than ‘social networking’, there is no other solution. And job seekers, unfortunately, have no other means to break through the static.
Article by Lorraine Russo
Courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities, and posted on I-Careersearch.
