A recent story in the Boston Globe about a new job site launched by Rainmaker Recruiting Group drew several opinions from job seekers, some of whom called the site “a waste of money.”
Topjobleads.com, which launched on Jan. 10, asks job seekers to upload a resume to the site, select three industries in which to search for a job, and pay for forthcoming job leads. If 10 leads are purchased at once, the job seeker pays about $9.99 for each.
After the purchase, a recruiter phones the job seeker to solicit more information and then conducts a Google search to find openings. Then the recruiter accesses Rainmaker Recruiting Group’s network to obtain the hiring manager’s contact information, which is sent along to the job seeker.
According to the Boston Globe article, many HR specialists and customers are lashing out at job listing and advisory services by filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau. The number of complaints filed have doubled in the past four years, totaling 386 nationwide in 2008.
Experts in the field have said that job search resources can be accessed for free on the Internet or at your local unemployment office. And odds are that at least one person in your network of friends or colleagues has experience with resume writing or job search that can supplement your own efforts.
Rick Probstein, CEO of the Rainmaker Recruiting Group and Topjobleads.com, acknowledged that some of the leads his recruiters send out provide only the company’s main line, something that can be found by performing a simple Google search.
While a couple of job seekers were pleased with the initial leads they received, a few commentators thought the job site was a scam.
“I’m currently unemployed, and none of the info here is news to me,” One person said. “In fact, I’m capable of researching and finding hiring managers and heads of HR.”
“A waste of money,” Another added.
The article, which also mentions TheLadders as an optional source for job seekers willing to pay for leads, drew criticism from seekers who sampled the offerings on the site and were less than pleased with the results.
“The Ladders sent me the name of a recruiter for whom they said they would provide contact information if I upgraded to a paid service,” One person said. “I searched for the name on Google, found it, called the recruiter who told me there was no point in paying The Ladders, particularly since she had no jobs in my category. I do not see the benefit of such middlemen. If you want to find a hiring manager, LinkedIn.com is a good place to look. Even if you can’t find the hiring manager, you can often find someone who knows them and is willing to share information. You can often schedule informational interviews with people you find. The point here is that your own diligence is worth infinitely more than a paid service which takes your money and then does even less than you would do if you were incredibly lazy.”
What do you think? Is paying for advisory and job listing services a waste of time or money well-spent?
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February 2nd, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to pay for job leads because it’s relatively affordable and gives you that extra edge above the competition. I actually had a friend from Dallas that used the site and she was extremely happy with the speedy service and how well the lead matched what she wanted to do (Marketing).
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Different people are going to have different successes whether they pay for leads or find the HR contact themselves. I have posted here several times how I job sites take advantage of unemployed people with promises that, in the long run, aren’t really made. I have not gone to any job site that charges to give me an edge on the competition because I don’t believe any of the sites can actually give you anything but less money in your pocket. So, yeah, it’s a waste of money.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Interesting – sad thing is, they could use ZoomInfo (yup – I’m the Recruiting Manager for same), LinkedIn, etc, and gain the same information. No need to pay somebody else to type on a keyboard for you.
The Ladders is beginning to irritate me, as somebody on the hiring side. I don’t post with them, they crawl our career site and pull jobs and then repost them – then, they charge job seekers to look at them. I think there’s a service that does that for free, what’s it called… oh, yeah! Indeed. SimplyHired. Hell, Google, if you don’t mind digging through some irrelevant results.
What really bothers me about The Ladders is that they repost/ refresh jobs that I’ve filled & pulled months ago. I’ve been getting hit today about a Director of eComm job we were looking to fill in January. Tons of calls, emails that came in over the weekend – even an e-mail from a guy who was the second runner-up for the job, who thought we’d reposted it. Thing is, the candidate we hired started today, the job’s nowhere on our site, etc. This poor guy thought we’d lied to him about having a better fit, and he was – understandably – a bit ticked.
All I can imagine is that the folks at The Ladders have a dearth of real jobs to show to candidates – who they get their revenue from – so they’re showing jobs that don’t even exist, in order to lure these folks in. Dirty pool, in other words.
April 7th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I think it’s a horrible scam. You are paying for something you can easily get by yourself.
The whole thing makes no sense. They say that they are no longer recruiting but are doing this business now. So then, how do they have the job requirements? If they have the actual job requirements, then they would be busy filling them.
I don’t see how they have anything to offer other than a lookup service.
I see this as a waste of time for the job seeker, and deception as well, and a waste of money. It is absolutely Disgusting to do this to an unemployed person.
Another thing I find wierd is that, how do you know that the hiring manager wants you to bypass the HR? I am referring to the applicant.
I mean, perhaps they do, but companies have policies and procedures.
Who in their right mind would do something weird like that and potentially ruin their chances? So this service, is also misguided.
Who says that the gatekeepers are bad people and must be avoided? Is he saying that HR does not do anything all day long?