I am exploring employment options. It has been a number of years since I have done this, but I returned to my trusty Monster account to start.
WTF have they done to Monster? Everytime you click, submit or search, (well almost everytime) you have to click through some offer for a mortgage or student loan programs or some second rate college. Some of these are deceptively designed so the non-initiated may think filling out the form is required by Monster.
The controls and navigation are still intuitive, but cluttered with too many options. I really just wanna search for jobs and post my resume. To get the most out of the complex offerings on Monster you would have to commit alot of time to learning the interface. I would prefer to be finding prospective employers instead.
Which brings me to another point. When I click on “submit”, I just want my resume to go for consideration at the company offering employment. Over 50% of the jobs require you to go to the companies website, creat a log-in, then complete an online resume. WTF? Just roll with the program and take my Monster resume. If you like it, call me. If not, move on. But I don’t have time to complete my entire resume on each website each time I want to apply. And I ceratainly don’t want to create an account at each company to which I apply.
I long for the Monster of old. Create a resume. Creat a job search agent. Send your resume to companies who have posted jobs that pique your interest… If I ever become proficient with Monster as it is now, it will be because Monster didn’t help me get a job very quickly.
I bet you would have much better luck if you signed up with some of those optional services! The University of Phoenix will drastically expand your career options! And, we can help you get student loans! It’s great! Let Monster love you.
Job hunting doesn’t really work like that any more. Other than government jobs, or a few very old fashioned jobs, the various companies hire experts to troll through Monster and then they offer you the job. I have heard of several occasions where an applicant posted their resume on Monster, and then apllied for a job through a link on Monster- to be told "thanks but no thanks- then later was head-hunted by that very same company for that very same job through his Monster resume.
In order for the trolling to find you, you do have to have the right KEYwords in your resume. This is where hiring an expert to look over your resume might be a good idea.
Monster wants to turn itself into an Amazon-clone. I can see them offering on-line shopping next. One question i always had; MONSTER seems to post a HUGE number of jobs-which NEVER seem to get filled! When i was looking, i would see the same job descriptions appear, disappear, and reappear-months later. i assume it had something to do with free posting policies.
I started getting recently some spam via my Monster.com-only email account. So I went to Monster.com to see what was what.
The spam increased tremendously! So I quickly switched off the old email account, set up a new one, made that private, etc. But they don’t give the option of hiding just the email address. Either all contact information is public or it isn’t. (So you could list your name inside your resume I guess.)
Noticed the click-thru ads. Look, I am a “little too old” to have college loans that need to be consolidated or elgible for joining the US Army. This is completely ridiculous. Morons.
When cleaning out the spam from the old account, noticed one wasn’t actual spam. It was from a Well Known Web Company. I’m now set for my 2nd phone interview. Weird. All I had done was log in and check on what I had listed. Nothing updated in a long while.
I am considering doing a “real update” for my account, but it is so crazy using the system that I am in more-important-things-to-do mode.
It’s another one of those Zen-Internet things. You don’t find jobs, the jobs find you.
When I first signed up to Monster, I just kept on getting shit from pyramid schemes, dolled up as “marketing executive” jobs.
However, in the last six months or so I have been contacted by genuine headhunters about three times. It just takes time, I suppose, which isn’t much help when you’re desperate for work.
A lot of companies constantly have ads out for the same position to build up a stock of resumes so when their position comes open again they already have a huge list of people who might work for the position. Some companies have really high turnover and need to replace the employees that wouldn’t stay with the company.
I have gotten my last couple of jobs from monster.com so it must work the way they want it to sometimes. The first job I got from them was for a mortgage company that lied to me about what job they hired me for and would change my schedule around without telling me. The next job, which is where I am now, is the best job I have ever had. They are fantastic and treat me really well. It is a crapshoot with monster just like the sunday want ads. I called a couple of the people in the sunday paper and they were no better than many of the ads online. One of the companies advertised for a “customer service” position that was actually a job assembling vacuum cleaners.
I have had only good things to report about Monster dot com.
I got some very interesting job interviews, and currently I am teaching at a college nearby that hired me off Monster dot com. Great job, great staff; I’m happy they found me!
Sure, lots of crap comes through, and I had no idea that every insurance company on earth is looking for people to make telemarketing calls, but if you sort through the junk spam, you might find a few interesting, real job offers sneaking in every once in awhile.
I still get my daily emails from Monster (I have two posting for two different job directions) and to be honest, about twice a week I see something interesting and am keeping my options open.)
Keeping a passive resume on Monster is a good thing if you have the right keywords. I’ve never sent my resume in to anyone and gotten a job from monster, but I got some lucrative temp assignments from headhunters who sought out my resume.
One thing that seems to work well is to update your resume & resubmit pretty often. Apparently one of the search pages for employers will list potential hires by their submit date, and if you haven’t submitted your resume recently, you’ll be at the bottom of the list.
It seemed to work for me- once I heard about that, and started doing it, I started getting many more calls than I previously had.