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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Headhunter Punks CareerBuilder

I get a newsletter published by AskTheHeadhunter. His latest issue is a slam on CareerBuilder and I must say, I tend to agree with him.

Responding to a readers question asking if CareerBuilder was more useful he says "CareerBuilder is for dopes" and offers the following proof direct from the company's mission statement;

"We are changing the way companies around the world recruit their most important asset: their people. Our mission is to be the global leader in online recruitment advertising by being an employee-driven, customer-focused organization that provides the best rate of return to our shareholders."
No where does it say CareerBuilder exists to help people find jobs. They're all about fulfilling shareholders pockets. He goes on to say;
"CareerBuilder is not in the business of matching people with jobs. It is a marketing and advertising company that uses trivial data base methods to make money from naive job hunters and employers. And it succeeds: corporate America and job hunters fork over millions of dollars each year to play on this weighted roulette wheel."
The bigger job boards value to job seekers is no doubt shrinking. All the stats are proving that to be true. The new push is niche and local sites like the one I run. Headhunter agrees;
"But the main reason you'd be wasting your time with CareerBuilder is that it doesn't work well. None of the big job boards publish (or claim to track) success rates -- that is, your odds of finding or filling a job by using them"
He also says CareerBuilder takes advantage of job seekers by "upgrading" their resume for fees ranging from $100-$150 which will give your resume more visibility. To this he says;

There are over 20 million resumes in our database... how will you be noticed?" Just how high up in that massive data base is $150 going to get you?
If you're going to use job boards, go local he says;

If you're going to use job ads, look at the small independent newspapers and at local and niche web sites....the good ones focus on local jobs and also provide relevant business articles that can give you an edge as you research and select good target companies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not only is Career Builder virtually worthless for the serious job seeker, it is a haven for scam artists who pass themselves off on the site as employers. They have access to all kinds of info on thousands of people seeking jobs. In my case, I was bombarded with phone calls from foreign employment agencies, who insisted that I send my S.S.number, bank account info, and so on. Then, I would be ELIGIBLE for all the "great" positions they had access to. I had to delete my resume and start again. This time I'm not posting any phone numbers.

Anonymous said...

Beleive what you will about careerbuilder but it is a private company, so there are no stockholders to speak to. They just have to report to the companies that own them.

Anonn said...

There is actually a lot wrong with the statements that are made. What makes you think that corporations (notorious bottom-liners) are going to drop millions on a useless service. I would think that they use Careerbuilder because they get a lot of candidates. Now, here's a dirty little four-letter word: Math. 100 people apply for a job, 1 person gets it. 99 people saying Careerbuilder doesn't work, 1 person saying that it does. It's funny that when Careerbuilder does exactly what it is supposed to, the overridding impression is that it doesn't do what it's supposed to. They you said they don't track how many people get a job through them. How would they know? They just post the jobs. The classified ads in the newspaper doens't track their numbers, but you don't bash them for it. I know that you want to walk up to a window and say "One job please" but unless you live in a magical cloud city, you're going to have to stand out from the competition like everyone else. (oh, and that "Upgrade" that you can put on your resume goes for as low as $20, not the $100 you quoted).