Stop Registering With Job Sites

If you have been utilizing the internet to locate a job, you have probably noticed that nearly everyone is interested in you registering with their job site in order to search jobs, see job search results, or apply for a job. The arguments may appear quite compelling. We have 928 local jobs in your area that are a match, we will expertly match you to jobs and employers in your field, you will be exposed to jobs no one else has, blah blah blah. I do not need to tell you if you have gone the register with everyone route, that the results are less than stellar. Basically, and please excuse my cynicism on the topic, the primary purpose for trying to get you to register is so you possible return to the site, which ultimately revolves around advertisements.

In order to understand job sites, and every other media, let's step back for a moment to around the time Al Gore first conceptualized the Internet. If you have not noticed, TV, movies, magazines, newspapers, and now the Internet are all in business for one thing, to sell ads. Sure, you can find segments of each that do not have ads, but what do you get? Not much, usually. The good part of ads is that it incentivizes every form of media to produce better content that brings in visitors, so they can show high traffic number, which leads to an increase in ad revenue. The bad part of ads is that it also incentivizes people to use manipulative or obnoxious means to generate ad revenue.

Selling advertisements is an honorable capitalist revenue generating avenue in a free market. People are free to develop a program, write an article, or build a website to sell ads, and you are free to seek out ways to avoid them if you choose. If you do not want to sit through a 30 minute TV show because 11 minutes of it are ads, well then you can do something else like read a book or go for a walk. If you do not want to be subjected to onscreen TV logos that hog 25% of the TV screen, well then you can head elsewhere. You have options.

How this relates to job boards is that like any other form of media, they are continually thinking of ways to get you to come back. They know that your shelf-life in the job market is limited, since hopefully you will find a job, so they would like you to visit more than once in order for you to view or click ads. They also want to show traffic numbers to employers so they can hopefully generate a job posting or a new sign-up for a resume database. With excellent free sources of job postings with job aggregators, which is part of what we offer, paying for overly expensive job postings is becoming a thing of the past.

Job sites basically do everything they can to make you believe that by signing up with them that you are actually job searching and helping your cause. I actually cannot find one legitimate reason for signing up for a job site. If fact, I believe I could manage a successful job search without every stepping foot on a job site.  For most, job sites should be part of a new job search strategy, but signing up for them is never necessary. It is my opinion after years of working in the area of HR, recruiting, and job sites that it is a mistake to think you are job searching by belonging to every job board you come accross.

Here is my advice...

1. Do not sign up for a job board in order to apply for a job. You only apply to companies directly. If the site does not provide a direct link to the company for sign up purposes, go to the employer's site directly.

2. If a job site's homepage is a sign up page that you must complete in order to continue, do not waste your time. None of these sites have an employer that is exclusively utilizing them to post jobs. You are not going to miss something by not joining them.

3. If a site says they want to do the work for you, like magically matching you to employers and jobs, do not waste your time. There is no formula for magically uncovering jobs for you. So you are in retail and they show you retail jobs, big deal. Do your own proactive job matching if you want to get results.

4. If you show up and search on a WHAT and WHERE or SEARCH and LOCATION site that ends up showing you a page asking you for your information in order to see job search results, do not waste your time. They are just going to get you embroiled in a nightmare of advertisements that will eventually lead nowhere.

5. If you post your resume do not place too much faith in the seemingly endless questions some sites have that are trying to make you think they understand you by nailing down your exact experience and goals. Recruiters, real recruiters, that utilize resume databases look at your actual resume only. They do not look at or rely all of the information that you entered. If they are efficient, they quickly glance at your resume, formulate an overall perception of you as a candidate, verify your location, look at you objective, and then look at your most recent experience. If there is enough to go on, they will save it and look at it more thoroughly later.

Basically, there is no easy quick fix that any job site is going to provide you for finding a job. You need to work at it and use job sites as a resource to access information. Job sites, like pretty much every other site, are in business to make money, which usually means getting you to view or click ads. This is okay, because hopefully in-between the ads, you will find useful content that can help you obtain your goals. Magazines, for example, seem to be three quarters ads, but every so often there may be some form of useful or interesting article that makes the advertisements semi-bearable.