How useful or successful is Monster.com in job placement?

Hi luciano1234,

Thank you for your question.

ASK THE HEADHUNTER® the insider's edge on job search & hiring?
http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/newsletter/OE20030617.htm

"Once again, troubling facts are slipping out about the "job boards"
that suggest serious conflicts of interest are interfering with your
ability to find a job. For a long time, these boards -- Monster.com,
CareerBuilder, Headhunter.net, Hotjobs, among others -- were propped
up mainly by corporate human resources departments that spent huge
sums of money to post jobs online. (Example: In 2001, Lockheed Martin
spent $1.8 million on the boards."

"Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, discounted Monster's poor
performance this way: "I feel pretty good about the way the system
matches up skills with openings and will continue to improve it."

[edit]

"Those pesky success rates reported by CareerXroads remind us that the
ultra-high-traffic Monster.com generated only 3.6% of hires by
employers."

[edit]

"Now we get to the conflict of interest: job-board journalism. The
evolution of Monster.com seems simple compared to that of
CareerBuilder. More than just a job board, Monster now manages the
jobs pages of many employers. In other words, you go to an employer's
site, click the Company Jobs link, and view job listings that are all
managed by Monster. As part of these outsourcing deals, Monster also
provides career articles ("advice"), which encourage job hunters to
spend ever more time on Monster's job board. On Monster's own site,
the motivation behind such self-serving advice is obvious. On a
corporate site whose jobs area is managed by Monster, it's
questionable. But, you certainly wouldn't expect to find
Monster-written editorial content in a newspaper, would you? Of course
not. Editorial integrity at big newspapers is sacrosanct."

[edit]

The dirty secret is that these job boards don't use relevant metrics
or report their performance, and they are totally indifferent to the
metrics produced by independent watchdogs. They have no interest in
hiring success rates. What that editor was really saying to me was,
Metrics? We don't need no stinkin' metrics. All we need is recruitment
advertising revenue and lots of job hunters -- and we've got both.

The naked truth
Perhaps a big-budget HR department isn't worried about wasting a few
million bucks here, or a few million there. (Want to talk metrics with
an HR executive? Ask how much it costs to sort and process the masses
of inexpensive resumes he gets from the job boards.) Jobs eventually
get filled. But an individual job hunter -- that poor sucker who needs
one job sooner rather than later -- is profoundly affected by misuse
of her precious job-hunting time. She deserves to know a company is
going to roast snowballs in hell before it hires her through the jobs
board she has labored on day after day. The articles she reads about
the importance of posting resumes online should have the same
editorial integrity as a story on the front page of The Wall Street
Journal. She deserves the frank admission that 1.5% is a tiny number.
She deserves full disclosure, and less job-board journalism.

Is it a fraud? You decide. Devote an hour each day -- about 12% of
your working time -- surfing one of the many CareerBuilder or
Monster.com sites, or DirectEmployers.com, or CareerJournal.com. Scan
the job postings. Read the advice. Update your resume daily. Your
challenge is to justify your investment. Then consider that somewhere
between 40% and 70% of jobs are found and filled through personal
referrals."

=========

ReachCustomersOnline.com
http://www.reachcustomersonline.com/content/2004/08/17/09.51.01/index.php

Job-Board Journalism: Selling out the American Job Hunter

"The problem lies not just in the piss-poor success of these [resume
posting] services at getting you hired, but in their directing you to
devote inordinate amounts of precious time and resources to a job
hunting method that isn't at all likely to land you a job. The problem
lies in a perceived conflict of interest; in the implied editorial
integrity of newspapers you trust; and in a job board's failure to
disclose the truth about the advice and service it is providing. The
problem lies in winking at the statistics about success rates. The
problem lies in turning a blind editorial eye to the naked truth: the
job boards are a lousy way to hire or to get hired."

An expose of the true hiring rates of job boards like Monster.com and
the inherent conflicts of interest between CareerBuilder.com and
CareerJournal.com and their newspaper parent companies; these papers
publish articles encouraging job hunters to post resumes at their job
sites while hiding how poorly those sites are at matching job hunters
with employers.

Apparently, Monster.com does best but only 3.6% of jobs posted on
their service are filled through them."

=========

Monster.com's usefullness can be found at: Consumer Search - Job Sites Reviews

Job Sites Ratings
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/internet/job-site-reviews/reviews.html

"There are seventeen job sites discussed here. Monster.com is the top
choice with a "database [of] more than 41 million resumes." There are
many extra features like the Monster Learning channel that helps you
to train for a new job. There is also Monster Networking that "will
hook up compatriots in the same field for potential leads."

=========

Veterans Today - Which Job Boards Have Good Hiring Success Rates? by Randall Scasny
http://www.veteranstoday.com/article637.html

"Sometimes you have to ask an expert which ones are considered the
best. ConsumerSearch.com reviewed many job websites and rated the
following as the best: HotJobs.com, Monster.com, FlipDog.com and
Careerbuilder.com.

I read their reviews and found that they based their "best in the
class" ratings on usability of the site's software, number of job
listings, number of unique visitors, and special features like
Monster.com's Networking."

[edit]

"For example, Monster.com reported in a recent press release
(http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=131001&p=irol-overview)

that it receives over 4.4 million unique visitors per month. 

Going back to the U.S. Department of Labor economy summary for June
2005, it stated that 146,000 jobs (including the Government jobs) were
created that month. If we give Monster.com com the benefit of the
doubt (as well) and assume all of these jobs were from Monster.com,
then we can calculate for the June 2005, that for every job filled, 30
people visited Monster.com (4.4million/146,000 = 30)

If one job was filled for every 30 visitors then in June 2005,
Monster's com's hiring success rate would be only 3 percent.)

These hiring success percentages are in line with the historical
numbers. In a 2002 study by author Richard N. Bolles, What Color is
Your Parachute?, he stated the success rate for jobs sites was about
4%.

In 2002, CareerXroads asked employers what percentage of their new
hires came from the four leading online career sites. The percentage
of hires made through Monster were 1.4%; Hotjobs 0.39%; CareerBuilder:
0.29%; and Headhunter.net: .27%."

=========

keyword search:

Monster.com success rate statistics
monster.com usefullness

=========

Best regards,
tlspiegel

Overall I don't know. However, a good friend got a job in his field
paying $60k yearly with bonuses of about $3k yearly in the LA Metro
area off monster. Took some work to get the job, but in his case it
worked.

I've had a resumé posted on Monster for more than a few years. The Web
site is helpful and easy to use, but I've never received any
responses. Other people that I know who are job-searching are also
silent about it. I have not known anyone, so far, who has attained
employment through Monster, although its reputation seems to suggest
that anyone can find work using it. The most successful sites for
placement seem to be the other listings on the Internet. I am curious
about Monster's actual numbers.

Why people pay to post a job??? Go and get free job listings, there
are a lot of them, here is some of the list:
<a href="http://www.thejobspider.com">http://www.thejobspider.com</a>
<a href="http://www.jobabob.com">http://www.jobabob.com</a>
<a href="http://www.usajobs.org">http://www.usajobs.org</a>

How useful or successful is Monster.com in job placement?

This question arises frequently in the minds of job searchers who are
not obtaining the employer interest, job interviews or offers they
believe they deserve. They begin thinking, "<i>Do these job boards
really work or am I wasting my time.</i>"
<p>
But why limit our discussion to Monster.com. Why not the other big
boards--Careerbuilder.com, HotJobs.com, DirectEmployers.com,
USAJobs.com? How successful are these big, corporate-financed and
highly trafficked job boards, who garner monthly visitor traffic in
the millions, in job placement?
<p>
Clearly, Monster.com is always the first target in these kinds of
discussions? Why? Well, it boasts of the largest resume data bank. And
it is perhaps the oldest job board as well. It is definitely the most
promoted, popular or "branded" of all the job boards. And, in my
experience, it has the most published jobs.
<p>
But in the 4 years of helping individuals use online job boards to get
hired, I have never had one of them report to me: I got a job through
Monster or any of the others.
<p>
What I am told by clients boils down to this line:
<p>
<i>I got an interview from Monster. The employer said I was selected
from 600 resumes. But I wasn't hired.</i>
<p>
So, what is going on? Why do millions of visitors flock to
Monster.com, et al, yet the only success stories are the ones you hear
published and promoted by Monster.com's marketing department?
<p>
I think the answer lies not in "picking on" Monster.com or any of the
other popular job boards.
<p>
Rather, it is by taking a step back and looking at the vehicle or tool
of the online job board genre and how it functions in job placement
and how people use job boards and what are the ideal and realistic
efficiencies (hiring success rates) that an individual job hunter can
expect from a job board.
<p>
A job board's hiring success rate is based solely on one factor: the
strength of its resume "data" bank.
p>
I want to emphasize the word "data." Job hunters need to smarten up about this. 
<p>
Resumes are hard copy documents that a read or screener holds to read
to learn about an individual job hunter.
<p>
But on a job board, your resume is simply split apart into separate
fields of a database and your career data is melded into the entire
data bank of this global, online database.
<p>
The data is what job board operators have to offer employers. If the
data bank is strong: deep, detailed and broad skilled based, employers
know that job hunters are visiting the site, registering their
resumes. Thus, employers are more than likely going to advertise jobs
on a particular board. Hence, the job board operator generates income
and can stay in business.
<p>
So, resume data determines not only employer advertising but also
employer search behavior.
<p>
If a job board's data bank is fat, rich and strong, the employer can
do deep searches, that is, multi keyword searches. These keywords act
as filters, that is, filtering out the last competitive job hunters
from the most competitive.
<p>
But to get a strong data bank--data that can support employer deep
searches and still return candidates requires a ton of data.
<p>
Let's go through a simple example to illustrate this point:
<p>
Let's say you have 100 people in a room. And you want to hire someone
who was born in the Month of May.
<p>
Well, statistically, there is a 1 in 12 chance that in any group,
someone will be born in May (our skill for the example).
<p>
That means in a group of 100, statistically, only 8 people would be
found to have this requirement. 92 PEOPLE WOULD NOT HAVE THIS
REQUIREMENT.
<P>
In other words, we needed those 92 other people to ensure we could
find 8 people to interview with our requirement. If we only had a
group of 25, then statistically, we would only get 2 returned, etc.
Not enough to see what talent is out there.
<p>
Now let's apply our example to a job board. 
<p>
Let's say you were looking for someone who has a degree in computer
science. There are plenty of those. Now let's search for someone who
has a degree in computer science, can program in Java, lives in
Illinois, and has worked with HealthCare provider BlueCross/Blue
Shield!  We could also add that the person must be bi lingual-speak
Spanish.
<p>
Are you getting the picture?
<p>
To find someone on a job board who matches these deep requirements
would require millions of resumes! And this is the problem with job
boards. Most people's resumes are never viewed because they never
survive employer searches.
<p>
Now let's look at the efficiency of job boards. That is, if a job
board were placing all the jobs possible, how many people or percent
of people would be getting jobs through the job board?
<p>
To understand the "ideal" job placement efficiency of a job board, we
need to examine 2 factors:
<p>
1. Monthly unique visitor traffic of a job board<br>
2. total monthly hiring events (= new jobs created + job churn +
hidden market hirings)<br>
<p>
Let's use Monster.com for our example.
<p>
Monster publishes that it receives about 4 million unique visitors per
month. That's simple.
<p>
Now total monthly hiring is composed of hiring due to the creation of
new jobs, job churn hiring (where people with a job quit the job and
immediately take another job) and hidden market (unpublished) hiring.
<p>
The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)
reports new job creation. And it's been essentially 150,000 per month.
<p>
Job Churn and Hidden Market hiring is less than that. So, if we are
generous, and we double the new job creation amount, we have a good
estimate of total monthly hiring in a given month over the past year.
<p>
Now let's put it altogether.
<p>
If every job were placed through Monster.com, then its "ideal"
efficiency or success rate would be:
<p>
300,00/4 million or about 7 percent.
<p>
Thus the "maximum Monster or really any job board could be placing is
7 percent.  That means, 93 percent are not getting a job. But their
data is being "used" to find that 7 percent!
<p>
What about "real" job board hiring success rates? 
<p>
Well, if you assume that half of all hiring is through personal
contacts and family, then 7 percent/2  equals 3.5 percent.
<p.
Bingo!
<p>
The 3 percent figure is repeated over and over again by industry
experts or watchers as the "real" hiring done through job boards.
Again, it means 97 percent of job board users are not getting hired.
<p>
Is this surprising? 
<p>
If you think it is surprising then you have false expectations about job boards.
<p>
A job board is a tool to efficiently filter out non-competitive job
candidates. And the amoubt that is filtered out depends on database
quality and strength as well as employer search habits.
<p>
What does this discussion mean to you, an individual job hunter?
<p>
It means that if you are not in the top 3 percent of your industry or
profession, you should NOT be using an online job board as the
"central" strategy of your job search campaign.
<p>
Job boards are designed to match highly competitive professionals to employers.
<p>
If you cannot garner interest from a headhunter or recruiter, who
makes his or her money by pushing candidates through an employer's
hiring system, what makes you think then that an employer will find
you in a database of millions of bits of resume data?
<p>
Take a look at your competitiveness. If you are at the top of your
game, go ahead focus on the job boards.
<p>
You are not the top of your profession, use job boards peripherally.
Focus instead on building contacts. Spend 20 hours per week hunting
for a job and another 20 working a part time job (employed people on
any level have more market value than the unemployed) or doing
volunteer work at "national" volunteer groups such as the Rotary Club,
Lions International, etc.
<p>
Good Luck In Your Job Search.
<p>
If you have questions, email me at director@militaryjobhunts.com

it is useful