isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?
October 24th, 2006
In light of Chief Jobster Jason Goldberg’s recent comments about Monster being a “crap site,” a mystery reader forwarded this current job posting for Jobster on Monster.
In response, Goldberg says:
Have we run our own tests on Monster to determine candidate quality? Yes. As we do with many boards and other sources.
Is Monster a decent source of candidates? Sometimes, yes, often no. Is it the only source? Absolutely not! And have they purposely done things recently (such as interstitial ad pages) which make the jobseeker experience worse vs. better? Undeniably yes.
The greater point is that any online recruiting strategy which starts and stops with monsters and monkeys is missing the boat and not targeting the best candidates where they are. These two companies capture the vast majority of online recruiting spend. It would be hard to argue that they provide the vast majority of online recruiting customer value.
Yep, like rain on your wedding day.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Execellent post Joel.
Monster gets about as much love in the recruiting business as Microsoft gets in the software business. It’s lonely at the top.
Bob :-)
October 25th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Maybe a better example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing…or was FRS (”Flexible Recruiting Solutions”) told to put this job on Monster? All the way at the bottom of the posting there’s a link all “FRS” jobs…
October 25th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I watched the recording of Jason yesterday (thanks for posting those, btw, they are a great resource) and was impressed with his passion, knowledge of the industry, etc. I can see his point that you quote… I’d guess (if I worked at monster and was a cynic) that he was doing competitive intelligence research, or perhaps fishing for professionals that USE Monster and would have great experience from whatever their profession is combined with being a monster user. But he is right, just as a job seeker needs to have a multi-faceted strategy in their job search, they need to have a multi-faceted approach in their hiring (not sure that they’d only want to hire Jobster-only users)…
October 26th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I am tired of the Monster bashing. Of course there are things that I don’t particularyly like about the site 1) costs are high (but I think the Monster & Careerbuilder cost models will be forced to change in the next few years) if Recruitment professionals utilize other sources and measure hire source effectiveness accordingly 2) I personally don’t like the ads (aka University of Phoenix) that Monster makes us view before navigating to the job list but I must say Monster is an excellent starting point to get your sourcing kicked off in many cases. If recruiters use it correctly (not just the post and wait to see who applies strategy) but actively source using their huge database it is an extremely useful tool that still attracts lots of candidates (granted alot of leg work is involved). I do respect the fact that they (Monster) have built a brand in the mind of the job seekers and there is merit/value in the brand to attract talent like it or not. I have personally participated in market research and have personally witnessed the recall levels of job sites and the results clearly demonstrate where job seekers think to go when looking.
All of us in Recruitment have to remember that we are much more intimately familiar with the new, cool recruitment sites/tools (thanks to people like Joel and the like) but to people that live in world outside of Recruitment these sites are not “top of mind” to talented workers that one day decide its time to look. I think those workers strategies mostly include personal networking (possbile incluidng a favorite headhunter contact) and visiting a top of mind job site. Possibly if they are more strategic and know what companies they want to work for they go directly to the companies web site to apply. I think the social networking sites are fabulous and I utilize them at every turn but I think there is still alot more growth required for those sites to penetrate more fully the entire talent market…and that means awarness levels need to be forced up even if it is by the inorganic marketing $$.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
I totally agree with Catherine about the bashing on Monster or any ‘traditional’ online job board for that matter.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending Monster at all, I agree that the advertising side of the business has lowered its quality and has made Monster less and less desirable for the jobseeker (you spent half of your time there saying ¨no thank you¨!).
But the Jobster model is not better than Linkedin and from the recruiter point of view I don’t like the idea of paying a website and at the same time do the marketing for them. And that is exactly what some of the Jobster tools do… I pay for a service and then I invite people to join? No, thank you, I can have a good network service somewhere else.
And from the jobseeker point of view you are never exclusive to one site. I may decide not to post my resume in Monster but then I will post it in CareerBuilder (as I want to use at least one of the big boys) and then I will probably post my resume also TalentZoo and LatPro (niche boards related to my experience and background) and then I may use a networking site like Linkedin to take a look around and see what´s going on among my contacts. AND I will for sure contact my closest network not using any site but just a plain, old, simple and personal email.
So, yes Monster is not the panacea. In fact there is no job board that is great for everyone. What everyone seems to forget when they criticize one specific job board is that results tend to depend A LOT of what you are looking for: Position, Location, Salary and Benefits will affect results –always.
Now, if you prefer to measure results just by quantity –thousands of resumes receieved or thousands of contacts in your network, no matter the quality of both, that is another story.