Wow. Monster.com replaced by the Dollar store.

What does that even say about where our country is going?

Monster has been worthless for job searches for quite some time.

Employers can say that they listed a job. People looking for unemployment can say that they applied for a job. Meh.

I do it the old fashioned way. I mail my resume through the USPS.

On the other hand, I still don't have a job ;)

SpinStopper: Monster has been worthless for job searches for quite some time.

Employers can say that they listed a job. And then lobby for an H1B increase. People looking for unemployment can say that they applied for a job. Meh.

I do it the old fashioned way. I mail my resume through the USPS.

On the other hand, I still don't have a job ;)

rubi_con_man: What does that even say about where our country is going?

Not much considering it's Monster.com. That site has been beyond useless for years and I can't imagine who was still using it anyway. I'll admit I've only ever looked at tech listings since that's my field, but half the postings were full of grammatical catastrophes and typos and the other half asked for insane things that made virtually no sense. I can't remember anything in particular, but as a reasonable hypothetical, it wasn't unusual to see a job posted for $45k a year asking for five years of experience in .NET, Perl, MySQL, Oracle, plus a master's in aerospace engineering and a current veterinary certification.

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I know I stopped using it because it was far too common to find completely unreasonable experience and educational requests or incredibly bizarre combinations of skill sets that virtually nobody on the planet would have.

Monster.com has pretty much become the site to go to cross a company off your list unless you're horrifyingly desperate for any work at all.

Monster has become more and more bloated with advertisements over the years. I'm sorry, but at some point a website, especially a job search website becomes less credible as the advertisements grow.

As an aside: I was unemployed for about two months (started the new job mid last month, YAY!)...I am amazed on how much education and or work experience has become needed for "entry level" jobs. I could not believe how many entry level business development and inside sales jobs required not only a college degree (with a minimum GPA) but also required 2-4+ years of relevant work experience. I don't know what planet these goofy HR folk/hiring managers live on, but that is not entry level...the pay may be, but the requirements are not. The only thought that came to mind with this is how are recent college grads supposed to find work if they only meet 50% of the requirements of a majority of job postings?

I used Monster to get the job I currently have. It really is a pretty good service. I probably had 3 in person interviews and about 5 phone interviews. Some companies do use it, but it sure takes a long time to finally land a job off of there.


The problem is that companies have the upper hand from the get go on the site.

Big Cheese Make Hair Go Boom: I don't know what planet these goofy HR folk/hiring managers live on, but that is not entry level.

They're not stupid, they know exactly what they're doing. They're exploiting the unemployed work force to get experienced workers at entry level wages because they know in an economy like this people are going to jump on even that shiat-pie of an offer. Going six months without a job after getting laid off is practically the kiss of death in some sectors these days.

Some of them, though, are going to suffer. I've tried to dissuade our HR department from filling our open roles that way because I'm more interested in having a long term worker with real skills who can offer us real value than a cheap, exploited labor force that's only here because they have no other choice.

That said, the opposite is true of one of my comrades who hires for our help desk. He figures - and probably rightly so - that if he can get an ex-sysadmin at the price of a help desk tech he might as well. The guy's probably going to be much more capable while he's here, and when he re-employs in a sysadmin position elsewhere it's not like there's likely to be a shortage of actual helpdesk techs so he doesn't lose anything in the long run and in the short term he gets a higher skill work force for a low price.

Was laid off at the end of 2009. Monster.com isn't completely useless. Got a few decent contacts with some headhunters off it.

Monster kept spamming my inbox. I changed my email address on their site. They started spamming both email addresses.

I posted my resume on Monster in Jan 2008. Two days later I got a call, got interviewed and hired the next day. What I did instead of just listing my job title, I listed all my skills so a company that scanned for key words would pick it up. I am still working there.

Splinshints: That said, the opposite is true of one of my comrades who hires for our help desk. He figures - and probably rightly so - that if he can get an ex-sysadmin at the price of a help desk tech he might as well. The guy's probably going to be much more capable while he's here, and when he re-employs in a sysadmin position elsewhere it's not like there's likely to be a shortage of actual helpdesk techs so he doesn't lose anything in the long run and in the short term he gets a higher skill work force for a low price.

Is he the type to bemoan "lazy" youngsters' lack of bootstraps?
My FiL's architecture company needed a graphic designer. Being as such, asked him to forward me the application. Turns out they didn't want a graphic designer. They wanted someone with an architecture degree AND a graphic designer degree AND experience, presumably in both, The FiL knows this and sees nothing wrong with it, yet he'll biatch and moan at the top of his lungs about how the lazy youth won't go out and get jobs.

Splinshints:

Monster.com has pretty much become the site to go to cross a company off your list unless you're horrifyingly desperate for any work at all.

Awesome. Please list the job search sites that you feel are credible.

rubi_con_man: Awesome. Please list the job search sites that you feel are credible.

Craigslist.

rubi_con_man: Splinshints:

Monster.com has pretty much become the site to go to cross a company off your list unless you're horrifyingly desperate for any work at all.

Awesome. Please list the job search sites that you feel are credible.

Careerbuilder.com has gotten me my last 2. Monster has a shiat design, spammers, and MLM.

Sergeant Grumbles: The FiL knows this and sees nothing wrong with it, yet he'll biatch and moan at the top of his lungs about how the lazy youth won't go out and get jobs.

This guy just has a realistically cynical view of help desk staff. He knows that 9 times out of 10 you're eventually going to lose your help desk hire to a junior admin position or somebody paying a buck more an hour anyway, so he figures he might as well exploit some out-of-work sysadmin that's going to require less spin-up time than some fresh-faced college kid. He figures it doesn't really make any difference if he loses the college kid to regular attrition or the sysadmin to an admin job so he might as well take advantage.

And, actually, he's not all that bad. He doesn't hold his people back from moving up. One of our two PBX techs actually came off of help desk because the manager let him help out with a massive phone system upgrade and then released him to work in the IT department when the tech job came open.

So his attitude is a double-edged sort of thing. On the one hand, he's "meh" about exploiting people on the assumption he'll lose them to attrition anyway, but he takes pretty much the same attitude to losing them to career advancement.

rubi_con_man: Awesome. Please list the job search sites that you feel are credible.

I didn't say monster wasn't "credible", I said it was full of crappy jobs and listings written by people who have no idea what the hell they're hiring for. At least for tech stuff. Monster.com is the default site for every pinhead HR staffer who was asked to hire for a job that requires actual skills, so, more often than not, their job listings for tech stuff are just a laundry list of context-free acronyms and generic descriptions of everyday IT life.

If you want a really good job, no job site is going to work that well. For that, you still need good, old-fashioned kiss-ass contacts.

Maybe it's just because I'm old and I feel like I'm at a point in my career where I don't have to kiss anybody's boots to change jobs, but my attitude is this: if you drag me into a job interview and throw a laundry list of acronyms in my face, I'm going to throw an avalanche back at you just to mock you. Frankly, if I get the impression that you're unclear on exactly what job you're interviewing me for, and you've wasted my time, I'm going to take the opportunity to amuse myself at your expense because I probably don't want to work for you anyway and I certainly don't need to. So when I read the typical Monster job listing and see just that, it's an immediate turn-off.

/ dice.com still has decent tech job listings, but they, too, are being overwhelmed by shiatty write-ups and last time I was there you had to dig through some crap to find decent listings

In CommieWeedGayCanoeLand, the go-to site these days is the HRDC job bank.

Maybe if they put some more ad pages in between every user action, did they try that?

SDRR: SpinStopper: Monster has been worthless for job searches for quite some time.

Employers can say that they listed a job. And then lobby for an H1B increase. People looking for unemployment can say that they applied for a job. Meh.

I do it the old fashioned way. I mail my resume through the USPS.

On the other hand, I still don't have a job ;)

You mean like this.

Video of a How to not hire an american seminar for businesses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Guidette Frankentits: Monster kept spamming my inbox. I changed my email address on their site. They started spamming both email addresses.

????

So.... Your first email address was getting spammed and yet you thought somehow that would change by using a different email address???

Let me guess... The letters "AOL" appear somewhere in your email addresses, right?

Splinshints: / dice.com still has decent tech job listings,

Not really.

It's hard to have decent tech job listings when those jobs just aren't there anymore.


Offshoring making Computer Science graduates the largest unemployed group

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2010/09/is-off s horing-making-computer-science-graduates-the-largest-unemployed-group. html

clip - information technology has turned into one of the biggest job-growth disappointments of all time.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39/b4002001.htm

I haven't looked in years, but isn't most of the entries on Monster stuff for the military and work at home scams?

FullMetalPanda: I haven't looked in years, but isn't most of the entries on Monster stuff for the military and work at home scams?

Well, sprinkled in among the full page ads.

Bob16: It's hard to have decent tech job listings when those jobs just aren't there anymore.

Remember back in the good old days of the 90's, pre-bubble burst, when everyone was proclaiming that there would not be enough qualified people to fill all of the tech jobs in the coming decades and if you were an IT guy you could pretty much write your own ticket?

About that...

/grateful to be one of the ones still around when most of the people around me were let go as they ramped up the India work force
//not grateful to be doing the work of 3 people
///Monster is useless for tech jobs searches

I don't know about the skills of those posting about not being able to find tech jobs. My skills are current. I quit my job in July and took a week to vacation. After that, I posted my resume on Career Builder. In three weeks I had 2 job offers and 5 pending interviews. I ended up getting a 40K pay raise.

/No I do not have to be at the gym in 23 min.

I was laid off in 08 and the only thing Monster had then was work from home scams and professional survey takers.

fortheloveofgod: Bob16: It's hard to have decent tech job listings when those jobs just aren't there anymore.

Remember back in the good old days of the 90's, pre-bubble burst, when everyone was proclaiming that there would not be enough qualified people to fill all of the tech jobs in the coming decades and if you were an IT guy you could pretty much write your own ticket?

About that...

/grateful to be one of the ones still around when most of the people around me were let go as they ramped up the India work force
//not grateful to be doing the work of 3 people
///Monster is useless for tech jobs searches

Yeah i remember that. I'm still in contact with some of the people that got axed back in 2001. The vast majority never worked in the industry again.

What i find really encouraging is that almost without exception they were big believers in market economics and capitalism and they hated unions.

They sure ain't believers any more. Good luck dude. I hope you hang in there.

snow9999: I don't know about the skills of those posting about not being able to find tech jobs. My skills are current. I quit my job in July and took a week to vacation. After that, I posted my resume on Career Builder. In three weeks I had 2 job offers and 5 pending interviews. I ended up getting a 40K pay raise.

/No I do not have to be at the gym in 23 min.

Thats not all you don't know. The plural of anecdote is not data.

You're in demand and you don't know something as simple as that ? I smell BS.

You mean job seekers want more out of a job search than to see the same 5 anonymized, undesirable listings from 3 different placement agencies each for six months in a row...?

I Am The Egg Matt Drudge Smears Upon His Body: So.... Your first email address was getting spammed and yet you thought somehow that would change by using a different email address???

Getting spammed by them, not by others
And no it was webtv.com

Monster.com is important for companies to maintain their EOE status...

Even though they already know they're going to get the boss' niece/nephew to come do the work for stupidly cheap, they need to post listings so they can say they advertised the job openings.

I've long suspected that most of the jobs posted on Monster are by recruiters hoping to get a ton of resumes that they can then submit for a legitimate position somewhere, landing them a nice payday if one of theirs is chosen.

Dealing with recruiters is absolutely awful, but oftentimes a necessary evil in order to get hired. For every 1000 recruiters you speak to, 999 of them are beyond useless, but it's that one good one who gets you work that you need to find.

Looking for a job is absolutely the worst thing in the world. In a down economy, doubly so.

Why Would I Read the Article: I've long suspected that most of the jobs posted on Monster are by recruiters hoping to get a ton of resumes that they can then submit for a legitimate position somewhere, landing them a nice payday if one of theirs is chosen.

Pretty much. I put my resume up there recently because hey, why not? I'd like a new job. I have been getting some of the most inane emails from recruiters who call themselves "Mike" but are somewhere in Bangalore (or worse, Ohio), on top of outright spam. It's been quite a while since I used the site, so I'm a little taken aback by just how seedy and desperate it is these days.


/anyone need a tech writer?
//I'm not cheap, but I am awesome