Oh how productive it feels. Applying for jobs on Monster or Dice or any of the plethora of job boards. When asked “how’s your job search going?” it’s great to be able to answer “well, I sent out 50 resumes today”. Of course, what is happening simultaneously is that hundreds if not thousands are applying for those same 50 positions. Technology just makes it way too easy. And as been the case since the dawning of technology, simply speeding up or automating an existing process at first looks great. But it rarely makes for better results. The process must be looked at in light of the technology and modified to make the best use of that technology. So while automating the application process makes things fast and easy for the job seeker, at the same time employers are being inundated with poorly qualified candidates. And the chance that they’ll find that ‘perfect’ resume in the bunch can be quite slim. Add to that the desire of many organizations to find ‘passive’, or currently employed, candidates. And, well, we have recruiters telling us that they just don’t rely on the job boards any longer. No, they still use the boards, but not as their first choice for finding a source of potential candidates.
So are job boards a thing of the past? No. In fact, niche boards that specialize in specific industries and skill sets have remedied a bit of the problem. And tech blogs are finding some purchase, as their blog-reading-audience may be more specialized and focused. But now you have a new issue, in that each recruiter has to have access (often fee based) into a multitude of individual job boards. Focused sites like tech blogs are building job boards, with the idea that their reading audience is likely to be more focused. But that still creates islands of job postings. Techcrunch is advocating aggregating their jobs with others to provide a bigger and easier to search window into qualified candidates.
I’m in on this one. From the individual’s perspective, just how many ‘resumes’ or ‘portfolios’ do you want to maintain online? And from the recruiter’s perspective, how many silos must they post to or search within?
Posted by chris fogarty
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