Martin Burns, a recruiting manager for ZoomInfo, has a few choice words for TheLadders regarding a posting he claims they scraped from his site without authorization.
Burns warns about this on a recruiting blog:
Guys, girls, don’t hand over your hard-earned $$$ to them. They make a number of claims to exclusive postings, only $100k+ jobs, etc. From what I can tell (from my experience as a hiring authority), those claims are false. They may have some exclusives, and some of their jobs may pay over $100k, but in general not so much. You’ll find the same jobs using Indeed or SimplyHired (both free) and then looking for the right contact via ZoomInfo, or LinkedIn. The Ladders smells scammy to me.
So what prompted this rant? Apparently Burns posted a need for a Director of Interactive and eCommerce on a couple of job boards, including Craigslist and LinkedIn, but says he never put it on TheLadders, a job board that charges job seekers a fee to apply for $100K+ positions.
In a letter to TheLadders asking them to pull the job, Burns says the role was filled weeks ago, yet he continues to field calls and emails from people landing on TheLadders. Not only is this practice unfair to the candidates he already screened who are finding the job listed as open on TheLadders, but it is also unfair to the job seekers who are shelling out cash for “exclusive listings.”
Burns said, “You claim it’s hand-screened (as you claim all all your roles are) to pay over $100k, and yet I never heard from one of your ‘experts’ to verify that. You had no idea what the job paid, since you never asked. So, you misled people.”
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March 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Vanessa,
Great post. This doesn’t surprise me. I have noticed the same jobs from TheLadders also on Indeed and other job boards/search engines. I personally still don’t get the business model, why would I want to pay to apply for a job when a.) there are already so many free resources out there and b.) In a six-figure salary role, you typically get a position through networking.
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
You’re not alone, we’ve had the same problem with the Ladders. They posted one of our jobs that was 4-5 months old and already closed. It continues to cause problems for us. The job was not 100k+, nor would they have any way to verify that. Furthermore, it was a very difficult process to get the posting removed. We had a similar problem with EmploymentCrossing and they went so far as to repost the job on Craiglist as well as their site.
-Kameron
March 4th, 2009 at 5:55 am
Looks like Martin’s post was taken down – pressure from TheLadders or did Martin jump the gun?
It can still be viewed through Google’s cache:
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:EVFusEhnX1IJ:recruiter.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/uggh-the-ladders-dont-fall-for-it/+uggh-the-ladders-dont-fall-for-it&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a