Advertising jobs in a low unemployment cycle is a decent way to get the word out….but it’s not going to bring out the so-called passive job seekers. These days, everyone is looking.

As I mentioned in “What Do Job Boards And T-Rex Have In Common?”, the boards are dead. Right now, unemployed folks are looking everywhere, including the boards, and still hold out hope they will get a response.

There was a time when job boards had their usefulness. From the employer’s perspective, they are overpriced dinosaurs. And, only 12% of their hires come through the boards, so why do they continue to pay for the ‘privilege’ of posting on the boards??

For job seekers, the boards give them the opportunity to apply for jobs that everyone else on the planet has for. Only spammers and identify theives seem to like them.

You mentioned that “It’s not as if we’re all applying for jobs every minute of every day”. This is so true and to take it a step further, on average only 20% of workers are taking active steps to find a new job (maybe a little more these days) which leaves a market of 80% that nobody has a built a solution for. Those people know a lot of people and if motivated properly a huge portion would probably be good for referrals from within that 80% population of passive candidates, and the best part is they can activate themselves.

Which leads me to your other point about “There are clearly tens of thousands of different jobs out there ranging from seaweed collector to CEO of a multi-national company”. If you could compartmentalize your networks on one social network site and post just seaweed collector jobs to that network, people are more likely to know people who do what they do.

I never plug what I do in my articles as a matter of principle. It’s up to the Cheezhead editors as to whether they publish an article, not me.

I have a new idea for an article about anonymous blogging that adds no value. Perhaps I’ll call it “Pointing out the bloggingly obvious”.

Glad you’ve read all my articles on Cheezhead to date.

We should not stop advertising jobs, but we should provide full information about the company. A job applicant should make it a policy of NOT responding to job ads that do not have information about the company that is hiring, such as a website, phone number, and/or email address.

Everybody talks about that a job candidate should research a company that they are interested in working for. How can one do that when the job ads don’t provide this information? No wonder companies complain that job applicants don’t know anything about the company.

On Craigslist, I personally started responding to ads in the gigs section by stating “if this job posting is REAL, I am interested.” This is because there are so many fake job ads that are posted anonymously without any contact information. Those job ads that provide a phone number appear to be the most legit job postings.

You also say, “Most job descriptions never describe the challenge – just the responsibilities.”…right again….lazy HR departments and greedy recruitment agents have a lot to answer for here I think.