What is the best website to find a job? Before you go there, here are some things you should know.
First, collecting your personal information in the form of your resume is big business. For many website aggregators, the money is not in finding you a job, it’s in amassing the most data. Once they have this data they can (and do) sell it to other search firms and web sites. They also sell advertising in and around your personal information. Your resume provides the keywords, which prompt certain advertising, which attracts more users who willingly help these aggregators with their SEO. Having a large website is NOT an indicator of a reputable company.
Job boards
Companies like monster.com and careerbuilder.com have become the tried, true, and reputable go to web sites for most people’s job search. These companies are job boards in the truest sense.
How does monster.com work? Monster has a vast network of partners. Their partners include newspapers, major corporations, and large staffing organizations. If you as a company advertise a help wanted in the career section of your local hometown newspaper, for example the Buffalo News. Buffalo News has entered into a partnership with monster to promote your listing automatically. Additionally you may think you are navigating the career section of a major corporation and in reality your data is being handled by Monster.
I think of Careerbuilder.com as the serious big brother. I don’t know if they are any better than monster, but as a user of both services I would say that careerbuilder takes a more methodical and structured approach. Their partners are mostly the corporations and they seem to have fairly tight controls. If it’s any consolation to the job seeker, when careerbuilder sells access to its database, they do not compromise on price.
Job boards make most of their money by selling traditional job posts and by selling access to their resumes.
Website Aggregators
Aggregators make their money primarily by selling advertising driven by the key words in the job posts that they skim from other websites.
Indeed.com appears to have gotten its start this way but has gained significant credibility over the years. All websites need SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the ability to show up in search results based on keywords. Indeed appears to get its keywords in two ways. First, they index other legitimate job boards such as monster and post the jobs on their own site. Nothing they are doing is bad. As a matter of fact, all parties seem to benefit from the relationship. Monster gets better rankings and if you click on the apply link in indeed it will actually take the user back to the originating post. Last month I posted an ad on monster.com and most of my online activity came from indeed.com.
Indeed also sells keywords. If I as an agency want to pay indeed for each click that the user does on my post, they will feature my corporate posts on their sites
Most websites are just downright unscrupulous. Their sole purpose is to mine your data. Beware. Read the fine print. There is a school of thought that says that the more your resume is out there, the better you shot at finding the job you want. YOU CAN NEVER GET YOUR DATA BACK.
Local Recruiting agencies
Construction Personnel Group, Inc. is a local recruiting agency so of course I am a big fan of using companies such as ours. But still, don’t take agencies at face value. Read the reviews, check references, gain a certain comfort level before you tell people where you live.
What to do
Stay with the tried and true. Job boards appear to be here to stay and perhaps they are a necessary evil. Stick with who you know and limit yourself to one, maybe two companies. When it comes to spamming companies with your resume it is possible to reach the point of diminishing returns by losing track of who has your data.