According to Media Post Publications, a very reliable source, Monster leads all career advertisers in June for the most overall traffic. Monster garnered more than 82% of the overall impressions, totaling close to 400,000 unique impressions. That is no mean feat.
This is while Monster is second in overall audience and reach. Career Builder, the leader, has an audience of 7.5 million and a reach 5.42 percent. Monster’s unique audience is just under 5 million with a reach of about 3.5 %. But in June more job seekers clicked on Monster than anyone else.
While impressed by these numbers, I have to wonder is it worth it? Are job seekers doing wasting their time with these countless submissions, or worse doing themselves a disservice by distributing their resumes to these job sites? Some head hunters I have spoken to claim that yes they are.
In fact, only about two percent of the job seeking population ever land a job through one of the job sites. That ain’t much. At the height of the dot.com era it was a mighty four percent. But now it is half, some say. Coupled with that, recruiters tell me you dilute your efforts. Why? Because most recruiters will not touch anyone whose resume is all over the Internet. This, they say, creates too many obstacles and works against their efforts. An employer can claim that they are already in receipt of a candidate’s resume and nullify the submission. This doesn’t serve to motivate recruiters, knowing they may never be awarded their commissions.
Recruiters tell me that the main purpose of the employment recruitment sites is to sell their services to the employers so the websites in turn can sell advertising. Advertising is their main source of revenue. Whether job seekers are hired or not is relevant only in the most peripheral of manners. If too many get wise to the paucity of success, then the resumes will stop coming forward and revenues may fall.
And what of all the resumes submitted for a job? Well, most never past the first review and find their way to the round file. In some cases the response is so overwhelming that very few resumes at all are even read by the human resource managers. There are just too few HR people and too little time.
As a background checking company we at Corra find this most curious. And having been one of those souls who hopefully submitted resumes to everywhere but Iraq, we recognize the frustration and even the desperation in those who are unemployed. It is tough going.
Anymore than it is more of a ruse for the poor employment candidate to conduct a background check on themselves, as encouraged by many of these job sites. The logic is that you as a candidate will be pre-approved and cleared of any messy history, criminal checks or otherwise. Sorry, but this just isn’t the case. Any employer worth his salt will have its own pre-employment screening program in line and won’t be accepting your self conducted background check. It’s just a waste of money. A waste of money at a time when you are out of work and can probably use the extra cash.
So keep this in mind the next time you start feeling like the rat in a psych lab, banging down on the service bar, as you blast your resumes in hope someone will respond. Sometimes they do. I had people respond to me. A few. Out of countless submissions. So maybe there is something better you can do with your time. Keep plugging.
Check them out before you hire.
