The Lure of the Job Boards

Ready for a busy day of job searching? Just boot up that computer and get started on the online job boards. After all, there are several hundred jobs to search in your industry and you can crank out those applications until about noon when you decide to take a well-deserved break for lunch. I'm sure there's someone at the other end just waiting for your resume to grace their inbox!

OK, by now you've sensed my sarcasm. I've written about this topic before, but I continue to meet people who are lured by the leads on the job boards and convinced that if they just continue to scroll down the list, their dream job will appear. If only it were that easy!

I'm convinced that people are enticed by the boards for one of these reasons:

1. Using the boards makes them feel like they are productively searching.
2. The boards give them some level of control over their search and don't force them to step outside their comfort zone.
3. People are eternal optimists and are confident that with all those jobs, there must be something that is right for them.

The truth is that less than 5% of people in search find their jobs from the job boards and you can check out Nick Corcodilos' article on the reality of the boards and the abysmal sourcing statistics for some of the big boards.

Job search is sometimes uncomfortable and even messy, but it can also represent an enormous period of personal and professional growth. But to be successful, you have to be willing to dip your toe in the water, take some risks, and most importantly, take some responsibility for your own career management.

So step away from the computer and get out and meet people through affinity groups such as professional organizations, alumni groups, community events, and places of worship. The chances of building relationships with people you know or new people you meet through others and then leveraging those relationships to find job leads is far greater than the odds of finding your next job through the boards.

The Truth Behind the Open Job Market

Most job seekers rely on the open job market which includes job posting boards and help wanted advertisements in local newspapers to source job leads. While it appears on the surface that these search vehicles have an abundant number of job leads, the reality is that very few people secure their positions through these methods of search. Only about 5-10% of people in search find their jobs using these two methods combined.

One of the main reasons it is so difficult to land a job through a job board is that the job seeker is faced with insurmountable competition and limited means to differentiate their candidacy. It’s not unusual for a hiring manager to receive over 500 resumes for one open position. With no personal relationship with the hiring authority, the job seeker is forced to rely on technology and hope that the resume they submitted for an online opportunity contains enough keywords and consistency with the job spec to garner an acknowledgement from the hiring manager.

The sad truth is that the number of companies that even acknowledge receipt of the resume is under 25% and the percentage of companies that offer candidates any additional information regarding their candidacy is in the single digits.

So what’s a job seeker to do? Send their resume out into cyberspace, cross their fingers, and hope for the best? Absolutely not. Far too many people waste valuable hours of search time sending their resumes into a virtual black hole. If an unemployed job seeker considers their full-time job to be finding a job and an employed job seeker considers their search to be a part-time job, no more than two hours of each week should be dedicated to posting for jobs online.

Candidates should be frugal with the amount of time they spend online and take advantage of time saving online search methods such as using aggregate boards such as SimplyHired, Indeed, and Jobster which cull information from numerous online boards or setting up job email alerts on several large or niche board sites.

What has your experience been with online job boards? Check back tomorrow to learn more about how to leverage your network to create a more successful job search campaign.

To Niche or Not to Niche

Over on the Itzbig Blog there's a post about the value of niche job boards. The post references a recent Career Journal article that reports recruiters find that the niche boards offer better quality candidates.

I've been thinking about this from the job seeker's perspective. The success rates around landing a job sourced off the big boards are abysmal, partly because hiring authorities are overwhelmed with candidates and partly because the candidate pool on these boards is so diverse that hiring authorities have a hard time finding suitable candidates.

Niche boards offer the possibility of beating the odds when it comes to being found by a hiring authority on-line. It's easier to be a big fish in a small pond. Here are a few niche boards that I like:

Finance
Technology
Human Resources
Healthcare
Non-Profit
Telecommunications
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