Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

In the past, job boards might have sent out surveys or tapped focus groups to gather feedback from their users. Traffic numbers were gauged to determine which job site was really ‘getting it right.’ But now a faster and more obtrusive vehicle for feedback has emerged: the Twitter Suggestion Box. And job seekers haven’t been the least bit shy about dumping their suggestions and complaints for job board personnel into the world’s biggest real-time search engine.

The generalist job boards, specifically Monster, CareerBuilder, and Hotjobs, enjoy heavy traffic surges throughout the year, but now, thanks to Twitter, they’re also getting an influx of more brazen advice and complaints than they could ever imagine.

One hundred and forty characters is proving to be plenty of space for job seekers to remark on usability, job descriptions, irrelevant position matches, and functionality. Sometimes the tweet is quick and to the point, like this one:

Sometimes the job seekers tweet a blog post they wrote detailing their user experience, like Steven Scotten of San Francisco, who tweeted:

The blog post was about a piece of spam Scotten received that was disguised as an interview offer. Feeling betrayed by a site that afforded him more harm than good, he suggests this at the end of his rant:

If Careerbuilder cannot do a better job of weeding out «employers» who are looking not for workers but for marks, then they shouldn’t be getting the business of individuals with actual skills who are seeking to make themselves available to be employed.

Sometimes job seekers vent about the usability aspects of a particular site.

And sometimes they’re just plain mean.

So are the job boards listening? CareerBuilder has a very active presence on Twitter, and it appears they do make a point to respond to tweets that reference their job site. Case in point:

Despite these complaints, one thing is certain: job seekers need job boards, especially now, and nowhere is that more evident than on Twitter. Social media sites may be supersaturated with gripes, but they’re also chock-full of endorsements and rave reviews. Although free social sites are becoming the norm in a job seeker’s arsenal, it’s also clear that because of their pervasiveness, widespread usage, and acceptance, job boards aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Need more proof? Take a look at these recent tweets.

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