Apparently not. Or at least, not well. Here’s a very interesting article from “Ask the Headhunter” about how effective some of the major job boards (Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder) are at helping you find employment. The bottom line: they aren’t very effective at all.
Do Job Boards Work?
February 23, 2004 by
I was in a “career transition” seminar last week where the lecturer flat out said, “You will never find a job by simply tweaking your resume for each online post you see…” He says only 5-10% of people get their jobs through online job postings. In most other cases, people got their jobs by knowing someone.
In my own experience, that has been pretty much true; Nearly every job I’ve landed has been through a referral or an agent. (I probably wouldn’t have even been hired at UCS if you weren’t on my list of references.) 🙂
After my recent job shakeup I made a point of telling everyone I ran into, “Hey I lost my job – do you know of any openings.” That proved to be more effective in getting me interviews than e-mailing my resume through Monster – which resulted in non-responses.
It’s all about “networking” (gulp.)