I don’t like to bash on y’all publicly. I’d much prefer to do it behind your back. But today? I’m frustrated and confused.
So, imagine this. I’m looking at a batch of resumes the other week for some VP/SVP level slots I’m recruiting for. And I begin to notice something very strange… lots of out-of-towner addresses… and then for all of the out-of-towners, their cover letters all seemed to reference seeing my job posted on The Ladders. And I was stumped because I didn’t post anything on there… but folks were seeing the opening through their job board?
Then just last week, I started receiving all sorts of emails from
candidates saying they saw my job – actually five different jobs, at least – on Doostang. The site is vaguely familiar to me, but I don’t hold an account with them. I’ve never posted a job there.
And because I’m sometimes a little slow… it took me doing a little digging to finally put the dots together. These sites are posting jobs from my company on their job boards… and after digesting that little bitty, I started wondering if I really love this.
First, it’s nice to get the word out about positions I’m recruiting for – without any effort. You want to aggregate jobs on your site and spread the word with your community and audience? Cool. I like how Indeed aggregates jobs, for example. And there are some blogs who cater to a very specific DC/politico crowd and re-post some of my company’s positions. I get good returns from them. Fab. But does the adage hold true of all PR being good PR in the case of job postings? I’m not quite sure.
Maybe I’m a control freak – but I feel the need to have a little bit of an issue not having control over our brand and message. You’re going to re-post one of my jobs? I’m going to pray that you use language from our site verbatim. And I’m going to hope you link them to our Facebook page and Twitter feed. So there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I care about our image as an employer, and truthfully, there are some sites I don’t want to be affiliated with at all. And I worry about the taint. Have one of our jobs re-posted on The Ladders? Thanks for the exposure… but I don’t like that job seekers have to PAY to apply to jobs through your site. I liken it to being no different from the Barbizon modeling agencies of the world. The talent shouldn’t have to pay to play. And I’d hate for a job seeker to think that we buy into that business model by our jobs being posted on their site.
With Doostang, I also was pretttttty surprised to find emails and resumes coming directly into my email inbox. Sure, my email address is plastered all over the web. I’m totally open to candidates contacting me directly. Just Google “APCO” and “Jessica Lee” and you can find me. But I need applicants to ultimately flow through my website. So while I thank you for pulling my jobs into your site for your community, could you have at least asked me first if I wanted resumes to flow directly to me? Come on!
And with any of these sites, what’s going to happen when you’ve re-posted a job of mine and it’s no longer available? What if we’ve closed the req and the position is filled? I then have applicants reaching out to me saying they found my job on such and such site and are really interested in applying – and then I have to let them down. The position has been filled. Sorry, Charlie!
It’s a tricky situation. I love the extra exposure. I like that you’re getting the word out about my positions to a broader audience… but there’s gotta be a better way to work together, for the sake of job seekers at least.
Great post.
I think going forward, into the new digital age where all content can be shared and re-distributed, the control issue is a really important point.
Controlling how your content is shared by sites like this is really important to your business not just for hiring talent, but for your image and digital deployment agenda.
Lets hope the people are reading this and can re-think their strategies.
Most of those services do check positions daily, but double check with their customer services, most of them will also block/remove content (Gosh how nice!) if you ask them.
Back in the day, we used to call this kind of tactic SPAM. Now a day it’s aggregate content value.
Good points on managing the candidate process/application flow.
Hey,
I had a problem with this too. Not naming them directly, but one “sly” “fox” of a jobboard was taking my job postings from my company career site AND luring people to apply online. Theses people would fill out their info on this resume/job board and then told to enter $$ to get exposure.
These people were never directed to my career web page, BUT the Sly Fox Job-board used my company name and jobs to populate their resumes database.
I posted it a while ago on my (Glennlist) site called The Sly Job Board.
Someone needs to crack down on them. Very misleading to the candidate and unethical way of populating resumes.
Totally agreed on your post. I often get “lingering” traffic from postings that have closed long ago, but are still up on the sites that grab the jobs.
Any ideas from anyone out there on how to prevent or combat this? (beyond calling each site, and having them kindly tell you that you essential authorized the stealing when you posted on the other X.com site in their lovely 5000 word disclaimer)?
Hey Jessica – noticed this post and thought I’d comment.
This new world that has arisen since the decline of the newspapers’ help-wanted ad is frightening, bewildering and confusing to the typical professional looking for a job. (I’ve written extensively on the topic here: http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/2010/01/history_of_job_search.html ) I understand that you think job-seeker pays is a bad business model, but from my point of view, I find it absolutely unbelievable that there wasn’t an industry to help $100K+ job-seekers find their next job before I started TheLadders.
The decision about where to work for the next 4-5 years is worth almost $1 million to the typical TheLadders.com subscriber. Now if you’re making a $1 mm investment, or a $1 million home purchase, or a $1 million Will & Last Testament, there are plenty of people who will give you advice, for a fee, on how to spend your money. And those are fine, important professions.
Is it really fair to say that in this unbelievably important and frustrating process, it is wrong for the job-seeker to seek and pay for outside advice? Is it really in the job-seeker’s best interest that when they do their job search every four years, they should start over, from scratch?
That’s why I started TheLadders.com and that’s why job seekers hire us. Job-seekers pay us $35 / month or $180 / year to help in their job search. We make their job search easier for them by collecting jobs all in one place, pre-screening jobs and recruiters to make sure they are appropriate for $100k+ job-seekers, providing them over 1,000 articles on just the $100K+ job search, making their resumes available to the high-end recruiters that use our site, etc.
As part of that, in addition to getting jobs directly posted by employers, we go out and search the web to find $100K+ jobs our job-seekers might be interested in and provide links to those jobs on our site. There’s a lot more detail about how the underpinnings work (we scan daily to ensure jobs are still posted, provide links directly to the hiring site, etc.), but that’s the basics. We do think it’s a great win for our subscribers to see your jobs and give your company free exposure to a high quality talent pool. However, just like Google, if you would prefer us to not index or list your jobs, we can drop you out of our database at your request. Just please let me know.
OK, thanks for the chance to comment and I appreciate all you’re doing for advancing recruitment on the internet!
Marc
TLC
Jessica,
I completely agree with your post as a fellow hiring manager, and that is why I created Come Recommended.
I think it’s very important for candidates and employers to know as much about each other as possible from firsthand information. Come Recommended and even our recruiting service, GoodieRecruit, puts a heavy emphasis on the employer getting to know as much about the candidate’s personality and skills as possible, as well as the candidate getting to know the employer’s corporate culture and expectations before the interview.
As hiring managers, we need to spend less time reviewing unqualified candidates, and job candidates want to spend less time applying to jobs they’ll never hear from. Job openings being posted without the employer’s knowledge creates all kinds of issues, such as the one you mentioned: candidates not knowing when a position has been filled.
Anyway, as a fellow hiring manager, I just wanted to say thank you for ranting today — it put a smile on my face!
Heather
Hi Marc,
I don’t use TheLadders, so I can’t say much about your company. However I disagree with how some job-banks use my jobs to lure people to apply and NEVER direct them to MY career page.
Hi Jessica -
Great post as always. I actually have had this happen to me as well. And though I do love the exposure and not having to pay for a job add, some of the positions were a couple of years old. I am not sure how they found them, but it yielded me a couple of unhappy candidates that thought I was not advertising “real” jobs! I would love if the firm would just reach out to make sure the information was current and accurate!
Best -
Chernee
Marc – I am a TheLadders.com client. I find it extremely useful, big time ROI, love my account team, I’m a fan, etc… I am a little confused by this strategy, figured I would weigh in…
I was under the impression your goal was to provide a more “passive” 100k candidate to us employers, right?
When I purchase a job posting through TheLadders or conduct a resume search – I expect less candidates, high quality. It’s a time saver – it’s what a high volume recruiter at a fast-paced, dynamic company thirsts for. At least from my perspective – a candidate willing to apply to a scraped job most often isn’t very passive.
I do see your point and understand there is some value for me here, but I think you are very good at providing high quality candidates and would never want to see that suffer for higher quantity.
Cheers
@Dkrecruit
The Ladders is a huge scam, regardless. Nick Corcodilos has written a lot of great stuff about how they rip off their subscribers (really nice to rip off job-seekers who are already generally struggling for money):
http://corcodilos.com/blog/1390/theladders-job-board-salary-fraud“>http://corcodilos.com/blog/1390/theladders-job-board-salary-fraud>http://corcodilos.com/blog/1390/theladders-job-board-salary-fraud
I strongly recommend reading what Nick has written on them.
@m glenn – i have no clue what sly job board you are talking about. hmmmmm…
@marc – thanks for swinging by and i appreciate your willingness to engage in this conversation.
you’re right. it’s not unreasonable for a job seeker to pay for help with their job search. but the service they pay for better be pretty darn accurate and on target and value added. your jobs that you post aren’t exclusive by any means, are they? job seekers can find those jobs on other sites that don’t charge anything, right? and as for media and articles… i just really feel like info like that should be free. there are tons of executive recruiters out there blogging and providing thought leadership and i’d rather get insight and tips straight from those horses mouths.
so back to those $100K jobs on your site that you provide job seekers access to, i don’t understand how you know whether a job is a $100K job. is it based on job title? responsibilities listed? for jobs of mine that were re-posted on your site, no one ever reached out to me to see whether they met the $100k mark. for job seekers sake, i would just hope there’s something to back up the guarantee you make.
by the way… in my personal experience with the ladders, i found that the job seekers you sent my way were nowhere near the right background so i’m not sure if what’s under the hood is really on target and working as you would have hoped.
i think it’s fantastic that you’re willing to address your critics. it’s a good dialog to have. and if you ever want to do something interactive like an episode of FOTv or a podcast with our crew, let me know! happy to engage in a more interactive conversation.
@chernee – tough spot to be in as a recruiter! i wish they would reach out but i can’t even imagine the logistical nightmare involved in that on the ladder’s end… yikes!
@Dkrecruit – interesting to hear from someone who is a client and fan. thanks for swinging by… appreciate you being open about your perspective and critical in your thinking!
@ask a manager – i definitely respect nick so thanks for sharing that post. looks like he’s done a good job digging into what’s going on with the ladders.
Marc, when you troll the job boards looking for job descriptions to rip down and justify the $$$ you charge job seekers each month, how about making sure that you’re pilfering down jobs that actually pay $100k?
I mean, Marc, come on – I don’t post jobs anymore, but when I did, TheLadders came down and put them up on your site, thereby misrepresenting them as $100k jobs.
During conversations with candidates, they’d just assume the job paid $100k. Know what that means? Simple: It means we’re wasting each other’s time. Sure, you’re getting $35/mth and we’re losing at least that much in wasted productivity. In a way, you’re not creating value, you’re reducing and displacing it. Is that why you charge the job seeker and not the hiring organization?
Also, consider the fallout issues that arise from misrepresenting jobs as paying $100k+. Have you ever tried to close a candidate whose market value is, say, $80k, but they want $100k+ because they “saw the same job at TheLadders.com”?
So unless you’re willing to cover the difference between what employers are willing to pay, compared to the $100k+ that you personally think they should be paying, your brand is going to continue to circle the drain, regardless of all the $$$ you’re dumping into mass-marketing television commercials.
Just my $0.02. Welcome to FistfulofTalent, where the truth shall set you free
Great post Jessica. I agree 100%. We find it very difficult to protect our brand when sites like these mentioned summarize our posting and then incorrectly recategorize the job or our firm. Not sure how to rectify it but it looks like many of us can sympathize with you!
“I love the extra exposure”: Think that pretty much sums up the editorial agenda of this piece…
Joshua hit the nail on the head. Your initial exposure to a potential recruit is key- first impressions and all that. To have someone apply because they saw the job on Ladders when you didn’t post it there is confusing and misleading. And when your job pays $90k, the candidate has a hard time understanding why it was on TLC in the first place. As do I.
@Marc – Why do some companies like have to pay $500 per individual posting, but you will give other companies free exposure? I know that if I was buying ads from you and knew that someone else was getting theirs for free, I’d be ticked.
So The Ladders business model is to take jobs that are listed free on the web, “vet them” – whatever that means and then charge candidates for access to them. Doostang advertises these jobs as premium jobs “hand-picked, high-quality jobs that come directly from preferred employers and partners”?
For job seekers these services give the impression that the jobs are exclusive to them and so job seekers need to sign up/pay or be left out (and who wants that?)! We don’t agree with this practice and believe the job seeker needs to take control of their search. Online services for job seekers need to break with the job board model and do more to help rather than hinder the job seeker.
Thanks for the great topic!
Jessica,
Unfortunately your story has played out for a lot of employers who post positions on their own websites, only to incur the overhead costs of dealing with applicants who:
1. Are upset with the employer because TheLadders misrepresented a job that pays less than $100k as a $100k+ job.
2. Continue to flood the employer with resumes and e-mail long after the job has been filled or otherwise closed.
3. Come to an interview with the understanding that it’s a $100k job when the employer never suggested it was.
4. Are angry with the employer because they paid to access the job listing, only to find it’s long closed.
5. Circulate complaints about the employer in the community from which it recruits because TheLadders or one of its ilk misrepresented the employer.
Examples of these stories in the words of those who feel they have been scammed: http://corcodilos.com/blog/1390/theladders-job-board-salary-fraud
Your ire is justified. You are a public relations firm and you understand how the bad behavior of one company can stigmatize many others – and cost them a lot of money.
The only thing worse than your experience, and the costs you have incurred as a result, is the ludicrous “explanation” and marketing pitch TheLadders’ CEO Marc Cenedella posted in response to your column.
Today the PR profession is too often busy helping an errant client learn to apologize publicly for bad behavior. Glaringly missing from Cenedella’s comment is an apology for the problems he has caused you.
This business will unfortunately continue until such time that one or both of the supporting communities (candidates and paying companies) decide to STOP PAYING FOR INFORMATION THAT’S AVAILABLE FOR FREE! Sheesh! These sites represent the epitome of the W. C. Fields business model…one born every minute.
These people were never directed to my career web page, BUT the Sly Fox Job-board used my company name and jobs to populate their resumes database.For job seekers these services give the impression that the jobs are exclusive to them and so job seekers need to sign up/pay or be left out & We don’t agree with this practice and believe the job seeker needs to take control of their search.I agree that the PR profession is too often busy helping an errant client learn to apologise publicly for bad behaviour.
Rumor has it that WC Fields and PT Barnum actually collaborated on the very first job board. They also shared quotes
Thanks, Jessica, for an eye-opening discussion. I’ve subscribed to The Ladders off and on for several years now (even though I was employed during most of that time) just to keep up to date on the jobs out there. I actually got my last position through The Ladders. A corporate recruiter found me there and contacted me directly.
Since the recession hit, however, fewer recruiters are paying to list their jobs, and the exclusivity of The Ladders has suffered. It’s a rare day when The Ladders has an exclusive listing.
So I’m starting to feel like a dupe for giving The Ladders another dime. Unless Marc can convince me he’s providing some value-add, I’m saying goodbye.
The Ladders has picked up a few of my job postings in the past six months – none of which were 100K+ jobs. Which made me wonder how they can stand by their claim that they vet every single job so that their members don’t have to waste time chasing jobs that don’t pay the 6-figure salary they are seeking (no one from The Ladders EVER called me to “vet” my job posting). And then I wondered if I should bother contacting the candidates who indicated that they saw my job posted on The Ladders since I knew the job wouldn’t meet their salary expectations. Then it made me wonder if some of the other people who applied had seen the job posted on The Ladders, but just didn’t mention it in their application materials. Sigh. I have to agree with other posters here that this kind of recycling of job postings creates some problems. If you want to post my stuff for free, why not just call me and ask permission (of course, after you “vet” the job posting to make sure it’s appropriate for your audience)?