What do you think of Monster.com and similar job sites?

I first posted my resume on Monster.com about 4 years ago. Within the last 2-3 years I have also posted on CareerBuilder and Hotjobs.

Not content to merely post my resume, I signed up for the weekly job alert emails, actively searched the sites, and wrote tailored cover letters to potential employers. It’s safe to say that I have applied to 100-200 jobs online, especially since I’ve been effectively unemployed over the last year.

These jobs break down thusly:

5% are “dream jobs” for which I have a snowball’s chance in hell, but I have a good general CV and an interesting background, why not throw my hat into the ring? Most of these are positions that I have the skills for, but not necessarily the direct industry experience.

20-25% are "reach jobs. " I’m pretty sure they aren’t gonna call me (it’s too far away, they’ll go with local candidates first; it’s in a very competitive field, etc.) but the job is interesting and cool and I can sell myself really well for the position. Maybe the hiring manager went to the same university as me or something.

60% are jobs where I should have a really good shot. The position description asks for this? I’ve got this, and some of that too. They need a person with x? I’ve got x[sup]2+y+z.[/sup] These have been scarcer in recent months.

10-15% are jobs that I don’t even necessarily want, but I’m decently qualified, I’m local, and I need a #%@ job.
100-200 jobs. Two years. Zero telephone calls. In no case have I just hit the “submit” button. I always tailor a cover letter, do research on the company. I write resumes for people on a freelance basis, and I KNOW that mine is clear, well-written, and sells my skills and education well. I just got one of my best friends into business school. FYI, I also scan local papers, have joined several area professional organizations to network, have hit up my school’s alumni network…I’m not relying solely on the Internet.

Yesterday I got a reminder from Monster.com that I need to update my resume or it will expire. And my reaction was “Great commercials, but what have you done for me lately?”

Whew, thanks for listening. Anyway, my questions/opinions for the Teeming Millions:

  1. Have any of you had any luck with Internet job boards such as Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder? How did it work for you?

  2. My theory is that these boards are a good informational resource for job seekers - with salary info, who is hiring where - but that companies generally don’t hire people they find on-line. In fact, they advertise on Monster only when they are desperate.

Is this different in other parts of the country? For example, Silicon Valley vs. New York City?

  1. Job applications received through the web are a low priority for hiring managers and recruiters. And because they think you put little effort into contacting them, they will no longer contact you to say “we received your resume, thank you - we have filled the position, but we’ll be hiring some people early next year. Contact us again in January.” (I used to get calls like this all the time in D.C., and would do the same when I was recruiting).

  2. So, in fact, I’d say on-line job services have made it harder to find jobs. Recruiters get inundated with 10,000 shite resumes for every good one. There is a greater chance you will get lost in the masses. Job seekers put energy into internet searches instead of the old-fashioned method of making contacts and shaking hands. The resume format sucks, and turns everyone into a cookie cutter.
    Comments? Is there any validity to this or am I just feeling bitter today at my $13/hour temp job? Has everyone else always known that these sites are useless and I was just a naive sucker for their cool commercials and the hype surrounding it? Do all of you have great jobs you found on-line?

[Edited by TVeblen on 11-19-2001 at 09:03 PM]

From personal experience about 2 years ago i put up my CV zero results , my sister on the other hand managed to get a job but it was a temp job and she moved elsewhere for another job after a few weeks. But I’m cynical about it and think my sister got rather lucky since jobs are asking for gurus these days who can do anything and everything , but thats probably because i fall into the lower middle bracket
of jobs.

Ha, I’ve had the same problem looking from the other end of the telescope, so to speak. Many moons ago I had a regular office job, needed to hire sales people, and shelled out for an ad on Monster (this was the UK division). Very nice people to deal with and all that, but we found the quality of the responses to be dreadfully, unbelievably poor. The conclusion we came to was that the people worth recruiting didn’t need to peruse Monster to get work, and the people responding to Monster ads were the ones not worth recruiting.

I offer the above observation with no disrespect to magdalene, who sounds very switched on and worth recruiting. Obviously there are exceptions to every generalisation, and besides this was here in the UK where finding anyone worth hiring at all is the ultimate nightmare, thanks to our [hollow laugh] educational system [/hollow laugh].

I did talk to my counterparts in other companies, but none of them expressed any great enthuisiasm about using Monster to find people. Still, some companies must like using the service or else they wouldn’t still be in business.

All in all it seems Monster is v. good at letting down both ends of the see-saw. The recruiters can’t find the people they want, and job-hunters can’t find the jobs they want.

Thanks for the answers so far. VERY sorry for the coding- I’ve emailed TVeblen. Time to take “attention to detail” off the old resume. :wink:

My husband has responded to hundreds of listing in Monster and a couple other places. Zero responses. He’s depressed about it. I found it difficult to believe that it was him - this kinda makes me feel better on that level. Maybe he just needs to contact a headhunter.

Note: preview is your friend. :slight_smile:

I think the online job-search sites mirror real life: if you’re in demand, you’ll get a lot of responses. If not, you won’t. It all depends on what field you’re looking to work in, where you’re looking to work, and what experience you have.

Last year I thought my employer might go out of business, so I started a preemptive job search. I posted my resume on dice.com and was almost instantly inundated with countless calls from recruiters and companies desperate to talk to me. I’m a computer geek (programmer, network admin, system admin, etc.) and I have quite a few years of experience, but this was several months after the bottom fell out of the tech market and dot-coms were tanking left and right. I still get e-mails even though I un-listed my resume over a year ago. As it turns out, my current employer survived and I still work for them, but there’s no doubt I could have been re-employed in a week if I needed it. And all I had to do was post my resume once.

mags – first of all, good luck with the job search. Being in the middle of one right now, I feel your pain.

I’ve had some luck with Internet job postings myself. The responses are few and far between, but they do happen. Over the last six months of having a resume posted online, I’ve received half a dozen calls. Most of them have been from recruiters, but one or two were from companies. (Something like monster.com or hotjobs.com has to be recruiter’s dream… how did they ever recruit people before the Internet?)

As for responding to jobs posted on those sites, I’ve had mixed results. For a while there, I was getting callbacks from every company I had submitted a resume to, but especially over the last couple of months – nada. Zip. And even for jobs for which I’d be eminently qualified (from the online description) too, dammit! I think lately, a lot of it has to do with the economy and lack of hiring, but that’s relatively recent (the last six months or so).

In short, good luck again in finding something you’re qualified for and enjoy - I’d keep the resume online and keep posting for interesting jobs. When that right one comes along, it’ll happen. :slight_smile:

I’ve posted my resume on Monster.com, HotJobs, and other such sites. I’ve also browsed their listings and submitted resumes to them.

Results? Mixed, at best. I’ve gotten one or two responses to the resume postings themselves, from folks who saw my resume and wondered if I was available. I also got a lot of responses from my hunt-and-submit efforts, but about 70% of those were from “placement professionals” (headhunters) who wanted me to join their service so they could place me somewhere. The really big firms tend to be the ones who get your resume directly, and whether or not they reply depends on a zillion factors. Since I work in computer technologies and software development, I tend to get more hits than the “average” job hunter – these services are definitely geared towards technology-oriented folks.

Still, if and when I need to find another job, I’ll probably go use them again. It is rather convenient.

I got my current job through an online service–Flipdog, if you’re interested. Of course, I was listed on seven seperate sites for nearly a year before I got the call. Most of the responses were from headhunters. Got some good leads, but most were by resume keywords rather than anything I wanted to do. I think it’s easier for IT people to get results with the online stuff–I used to pick up the HR director’s faxes and the resumes were for shit for the admin positions.

Emailed Mag back first but apologies to all for the delay in housecleaning. Went outta town and offline for a few days on IRL family stuff.
BTW, “attention to detail” points off? Piffle. The resume is the finished product. You’re just working on the process to produce it.
(I’d call it brainstorming but anyone who promotes biz-jargon inanities merits a dawn firing squad–with nonsmokers forced to puff down a ceremonious “last” cig just because.)

Veb

I have a pretty good resume, with tons of industry experience. When I decided to get back into the software development field, I first put my resume on Monster.com. It did me no good whatsoever. Their job alerts never seemed to match any jobs I’d want, and I never received a single contact from having my resume online.

I went to a local headhunting firm and filed my resume with them, and within a week had four different interviews, one of which resulted in an excellent job with General Electric.

I’m surprised that Monster.com still survives. This is yet another Dotcom with an iffy business model and poor execution. I don’t know how much capital they have, but unless they do something much different soon, they’re doomed.

I’ll have to differ with the prevailing on Monster. I sent a resume into its ether last November and got the best position I’ve ever had in two days.

Of course, I’ve gotten absolutely nothing out of it for the past six months, but I haven’t gotten anything at all out of /anything/ until very recently.

I put up my resume on Monster, and didn’t get any responses from the positions I applied to except for two recruiters who, it was obvious, didn’t give more than a cursory glance at my resume.

I wanted an IT job, and I found that IT-specific job sites got much better results. After posting my resume on JobCircle (an ugly but tech-only job site) the hiring manager contacted me about a position and I got it.

      • As one starting out in IT, I notice that there are very few starter positions listed on these places. Most offers want a BS and at least a few years experience, often requiring it in the (indu$trial-level) software they are already using. That could be due to the condition of the economy- I don’t know as I didn’t look previous to about six months ago, but where I am the way to a first job seems to be through an internship that is completed during the last semester of an associate’s degree.
  • I got the feeling that Monster was kind of leaning on hard times when they began offering the special “resume highlighting service”, that applicants pay for. -It is kinda cool to be able to easily search for jobs in other markets (who among us hasn’t searched for a job in their field in Hawaii?) but it’s usually not real necessary. - DougC

What gets me is Monster.com’s commercial. “Get me this Ted, who’s this Ted, let’s hire this Ted!” And there’s Ted, with fruit baskets and flower bouquets crowding his desk and surrounding work area, because everybody wants him. Shyeah.

My resume’s been on Monster for two years. I’m unemployed. Someday, when I’m free to move to the part of the country where I’m employable, I’ll have a job again. So I guess I can’t expect Monster to work miracles, but that commerical really gets my goat.

My wife, who is an IT manager, found her last two jobs through Monster.com in a matter of a few weeks each. It might have helped that we lived in Montgomery, Alabama and that the supply of qualified IT managers wasn’t the same as say, Silicon Valley.

I found my new job here in Denver via Monster.com. I quit my last job (Big 5 consulting - which is on my resume, and helps it come up in searches) back in April of 2001. I immediately put my resume up on Monster, HotJobs, Careerbuilder, and Headhunter.net. I received two calls on the basis of someone seeing my resume on HotJobs (I think it was HotJobs anyway) but turned the interviews down due to the location of the jobs.

As for applying for jobs - I was unemployed for 4 months, and in that time probably applied to 50 jobs online. I only applied to jobs that appealed to me, were in a location I would like, and at which I thought I could contribute and excel. I honestly think the enthusiasm shows in a cover letter and on the phone. Of those 50 applications, I received perhaps 10 calls - resulting in 5 interviews - and 2 offers, one of which I accepted. All but one of the calls were from jobs I found on Monster.com - the other was for one I found on HotJobs. In the end, I got a nice pay raise, a relocation package, and a signing bonus, so I’m quite happy with the Monster! :slight_smile:

My tip for Monster.com - DO NOT use their apply on-line function unless you must. The resume format they send to the employer is all bunched up and impossible to make sense out of - I have no idea why, since they have this resume format on the website, that it isn’t sent to the employer nicely formatted as well. If the employer provides a contact name and e-mail, USE IT - and if you have a name, you can find a phone number, so follow-up the next week to ensure they got it and to express interest in the jobs. Don’t expect the job to come to you.

Other general tips (for USA folks) - customize the cover letter to the job and your unique qualifications, focus on achievements and not duties in your resume (a common mistake I see in helping people with their resumes), get rid of the “objective” in your resume and replace it with a summary of qualifications, and provide information relevant to the job (no employer really cares that your hobby is collecting antique cat skins).

Anything I missed?

Thanks for the feedback, Super_head. I’ve been following all of your advice (no sucky resume format or “apply online”, no “objective” or cheesy crap on my cv, etc) except for calling the companies. Maybe I just need to be more aggressive.

I am not an IT manager, unfortunately. 4 years experience in project management, proposal writing, lots of overseas travel for work. About a year’s worth of public relations and advertising work. Then a year of temping and freelance crap at the top. :frowning:

Thanks again, everyone. I could really use some encouragement with job search in general. I thought I really had the knack but I guess I don’t.

Ah, don’t give up - most of my successes came in the fourth month when I was starting to wonder what was wrong with me. :slight_smile: If you want a look at my resume, or me yours, for some constructive feedback, let me know - I’ve got one other Doper’s to look at soon hopefully.

Oh, with the search engines, what kind of keyword searches are you doing? I sat down and composed a list of 10-15 different ways to describe what I “do” and then searched on those.

Actually, yes. The job I’m at now, in fact - the recruiting manager found me on one of the internet job boards (not Monster). However, I’d been searching for 4 months.

2 years ago, 18 months ago, I could put my resume up in the morning, and come home to multiple requests for more information/phone calls/interviews… I miss those days. I’d say its partially the medium, and partially the market.

I have had pretty good success with monster and computerjobs.com. About a year and a half ago I was still in school with no experience. I put up a resume online just for the heck of it, without any real-world experience or even a degree. Within a week I had already gotten 10 or so emails from interested companies and also 4-5 phone calls. After two weeks I was starting at the job I still currently have.

My field is IT/programming so it was definitely a better market last year but I still occassionally get e-mails and phone calls (I have kept my resume active because I want to remain up-to-date on the market). One thing that I believe helps is that you should update your online resumes frequently. When you search for a job you most likely are only going to search for positions that were posted within the last few weeks. I think that employers do the same thing. Whenever I update my resume I always notice a significant increase in responses over the next week or so.

I have a feeling that the online job sites work alot better for online-type(IT) positions so that may also be a big factor.