Monster, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs – Are they obsolete?
The recruiting-specific publications won’t let me mention “Monster” or “Hotjobs” by name due to the fact these companies provide most of the sponsorship to most state, regional, and national recruiting conferences and trade shows.
But that’s what my little “Corner” is for … speaking up on that which others won’t allow me to speak up on.
These sites, in particular monster.com – have become mind-numbingly frustrating to use. If you really want to experience waterboarding-like torture – try posting an ad on Monster! Read on learn why these sites risk being extinct.
ONLINE JOB SITES
Are they becoming obsolete?
Just a two Saturdays ago I realized that web-based job advertising boards are sorely falling behind compared to the incessant advancement of other technologies.
When I spent two full hours just to place four ads, two of which were carbon copies of the first pair! With only titles and geographic location changes for the second two … I knew that something was wrong.
Not only was it too time-consuming … but the drop-down menus rarely worked and the built-in editor destroyed fonts I had set as well as usurping and resetting all my formatting when the final ad appeared with three sets of incompatible fonts! Two of which I NEVER even used in the original AD !!!
Why did it take so long?
Why does the active server pages (ASP) design slow down each entry to a crawl?
Back around 1998 it took me … and I type sixty-five words per minute (faster than most recruiters) … around 20 minutes for one single one-page ad.
I could easily knock out three well-written ads with poetic flourish in one hour or less. It was no problem to do so while including editing, proofing, and spell-checking. And I could drink my coffee and eat a corn muffin at the same time while answering the phones!
Fast forward eleven years and the top three major job seem to have gotten worse than they originally were in terms of a user (employer, job-ad-poster) experience.
As the sites cram more elaborate, time consuming, and resource-craving and bandwidth guzzling gunk into their pages – the slower the experience becomes to the end user: Me.
As for customer service? It’s abysmal. Despite the fact we pay tens of thousands per year combined for national accounts on some of these sites. I could have put a down payment on a nice car instead and have much less “agita”.
With active server pages, php, and more “advanced” technology crammed into the website I was using (Monster – there I said it) I experienced crashing then restarting (of the ad) and cumbersome dropdown boxes and dialog boxes that stalled the process to a head-banging and hair-pulling crawl.
This didn’t happen once. But it happens every single time whether I use my laptop, desktop, wi-fi connection, or whether I’m on T1 or cable broadband. So I know its not just me.
Here are just a few of the specific annoying, time-consuming and mind-numbing experiences I went through with one of the national job sites during the last few months:
Entire ad crashed just as I was about to click “continue” to select geographic areas and categories
Geographic areas have to be manually scrolled through. No automated way (hint: using keystrokes) of finding cities or sections of cities (Example there are about four or five choices for Boston, but first you must scroll down to fifty states (after selecting U.S.) “Massachusetts” then manually choose from hundreds of city choices “Boston” before zooming in on your city sector)
Categories are a mess. If I click “Insurance” it should automatically open up categories relating to insurance. Yet it did not even provide “underwriting” as a choice. I had to hack the system and fool it to be able to move on. It insisted underwriting was related to accounting.
NY Times Ad Option crashed – For $85.00 I could place an ad in the New York Times on Sunday. Great. I clicked yes, typed in my four line ad – and poof! It disappeared just after I had it set up to my idea of tasteful perfection!
Customer Disservice – Calls to customer service resulted in rude responses. In two instances one of our team associates was hung up. Escalating the process to the national sales manager for the staffing vertical didn’t help either. It turned out he was just as frustrated of all the complaints and wishes more staffing members (a.k.a. staffing recruiters) complained (hint to any of you executive recruiters also having such experiences).
Candidate Torture – While not related to our employer user experience, professional applicants have shared “I don’t put my resume on Monster.com because I know it messes up the look and I don’t want my resume looking like **** (rhymes with spit).”
Not only are they antagonizing the clients they are supposed to serve, but these websites are putting their candidates through a similar Gitmo-like process. You would think an online job site would invest in its core functionality?
Namely, the user experience of placing the actual ads the site is built upon?
Forget about Kaplan, ECPI, and University of Phoenix ads that dance across my PC screen for attention like a matador’s red cloak. Why torture an executive search firm owner? Why torment any recruiter like this paying multiples of thousands of dollars for an annual account?
These job sites better get on the stick … and do so FAST.
Sites like LinkedIn are a breeze to get in and out of (for now anyway … that too may change). Even though linkedin is also a dynamic database-driven website. Somehow their software and coding engineers figured out how to design it better. And while it has bugs the bugs don’t gum up the main core functions … yet.
I can search for specific titles and find “resumes” (in the form of profiles) within seconds without feeling like I’m being flogged and crucified by M.I.T. technicians in New England that have no clue what its like for a recruiter to want to get in – post an ad – and get out with lightning-fast speed.
It is starting to become evident online career sites have had their decade and are now at risk of fading into the twilight unless they transform themselves to something more than an electronic version of a nineteenth-century classified ad section.
How can you spend millions of dollars on television NFL ads, and abandon your employers and staffing firm core clientele and job site functionality?
The Way It Should (and could) Be
Being as we are now in the year 2010, I envision a state-of-the art career site to offer the following as standard:
About Me – Web Recording
- Ability for every candidate to post a webcam video of 60 seconds
- This should have the option to be linked to their resume/bio
- And would pop open in a new window for employers to watch/hear
- Could augment the black and white sterility of text based resumes now hundreds of years old
Instant Interviews
- A function offering a “click here” to arrange an instant video interview with the recruiter
- Instant Chat with the recruiter could also be provided (would save days going back and forth by email)
- A radio button designation “who’s online now” so we could start prescreening candidates readily available
Audio or Sound Clips
- For those not needing or feeling comfortable with the video aspect, but possessing great knowledge or skill … this could provide an option to voice record an “About Me” clip for employers to hear (minus the video aspect)
Image Upload Option
- Similar to how profiles are created in Facebook or LinkedIn
- Add a personalized touch for those willing to participate
Instant Chat
- If while reviewing resumes some candidate happens to be online a button or alert should designate that
- The recruiter/employer can opt to “instant chat” with the candidate
- You can schedule a web conference or determine the next step instantaneously
While there may be federal and Department of Labor issues to overcome with some of these ideas these sites are going to be best positioned to start taking advantage of the technology already being used on Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other gathering spots.
Surely there is someway to enhance, advance, and modernize the connection between employer/recruiter and candidate while complying with legal regulations. Surely a company earning hundreds of millions of dollars would be able to figure this out?
If these websites fail to upgrade their technology … and remain simply a web-based platform for the same type of stagnant, text-based classified ad used by Ben Franklin in the eighteenth century … they will eventually fall by the wayside and become technological road kill on the information superhighway.
The inevitable new technology will come along (its already here) and knock this sorely outdated format off its pedestal.
It’s no longer enough to be an internet based help-wanted site. Regardless of how much foot traffic you can get there.
To succeed these websites must take things to the next level and work with government agencies to improve their services.
Frank Risalvato
Executive Recruiter at www.iresinc.com
Telephone: 704-243-2110 Email: fris@iresinc.com
Twitter: @iresfrank Linkedin. www.linkedin.com/in/recruiterexecutive
facebook: www.facebook.com/frisalvato
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