should you post your resume on online job boards?

by Alison Green on March 15, 2017

A reader writes:

I have a job I really enjoy, but the salary is low and turnover is very high. We’re constantly hiring as people cycle out — mostly through school job sites, but also largely through one particular recruiter, though she’s become less responsive as the turnover has stayed so high. I’m learning a ton so I want to stay awhile longer. However, mine is a really burgeoning field, so I’d also love to keep my ears open for other opportunities.

How does it work from the manager side when people post resumes on the big online job boards? I want to post my resume so I can be visible to recruiters and bigger firms, but is this effective? Do you recommend that passive job seekers post resumes on job search sites? Is “passive” job seeking a figment of my imagination? I just want to make sure to jump on every opportunity to make sure I can be recruited next!

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

You may also like:
{ 95 comments }

{ 95 comments… read them below }

    1. NoMoreMrFixit*

      LinkedIn is the only place I post my resume. Anywhere else and you will regret it due to the flood of junk hitting your inbox. Plus unethical recruiters will start submitting your resume for positions then call you claiming to have job offers. BTDT and learned it the hard way. Selective targeting of potential future employers is far better both short and long term.

  2. baseballfan*

    I agree with all this. Years ago I posted my resume online without knowing better – and OMG the spam. Recruiters cold calling me who knew nothing about me or my experience – it was obvious they didn’t even read the resume. Never again.

    My last job search was very targeted and strategic. While it took a lot of time and effort and interviews, and in the end, the job I ended up with was one I was offered via networking, I felt good about how I approached the process.

    1. Wendy Darling*

      I have a work background in automated speech recognition. On the basis of the word “speech” being on my resume I get spam for speech therapist jobs, which require an advanced degree I don’t have.

  3. Whoopsy*

    I did post my resume on Monster a few years ago, back when I was truly desperate. The only replies I *ever* got were from insurance sales, which unfortunately I did not know better than to fall for (I actually got some help from Alison during that, which was nice).

    1. Alton*

      Same here, though I was an entry-level person fresh out of college, so I don’t know if I would have had any better luck if I were more experienced and had a niche.

      I didn’t realize how easily viewable my resume was, actually, and I had my phone number on it. So not only did I get emails, but I was getting phone calls, too. It took a bit for me to realize and accept that it was all spam. I felt guilty for ignoring or refusing interview offers at first. Also, a lot of the companies were very misleading. They’d call and leave voicemails specifically saying they were responding to an application I’d submitted, and I’d panic and think I forgot about applying with them. Then I’d realize that no, I never responded to any ads of theirs.

    2. Manager in CA*

      This is exactly what my wife is going through right now. Nothing but insurance sales offers!

    3. Tuesday*

      Yes, what’s with that? I put mine on CareerBuilder and Glassdoor somewhat recently but ended up taking them down or making them private because I was getting insurance sales job recruiters. I guess they must be commission-only jobs? I can’t figure out why else that would be such an indiscriminate niche of employment.

      I’d used an email address that is already visible to the public on my own website, so I figured I wouldn’t be opening myself up to any more spam than usual, but yeah, I hadn’t counted on the recruiters (or pseudo-recruiters, whatever they are.)

    1. Not a Real Giraffe*

      Can you give us more information on your success story? Anecdotal data is more helpful when put into context.

      1. Detective Amy Santiago*

        Sure! I was unemployed for about 8 months after being let go from a very toxic job. I passively job searched for the first part of that time with no success though I did update my resume on Monster. When I started actively job searching (mostly for positions I was vastly overqualified for), I did get some interviews, but nothing terribly exciting.

        Randomly got a call one day from the owner of this company (it’s a small business) and she had found my resume on Monster. I had previous experience in the industry and live less than 2 miles from the office. It was an industry I wasn’t necessarily looking to return to, but after my stint in corporate America, I knew I wanted to get back to smaller companies and I liked the owner a lot when I met with her. Been here about 8 months now and it’s a great fit. I can learn some new skills that will make me more marketable in the future and there may be an opportunity for advancement if the company grows.

    2. Oh It's That Girl*

      Same here! I had it posted on Indeed.com and got a call from an outside recruiter for this position. I did do 3 months as a temp-to-hire but got hired on permanently in January.

    3. Nallomy*

      I had my resume on a field-specific job site during my last job hunt and did have one legit employer reach out to me that way. However, I also applied to well over 50 jobs on that site, so waiting to be contacted without actively looking probably wouldn’t have been a great strategy given that I was truly trying to leave my job. (I also had already accepted another position by that point and just hadn’t updated my resume or taken it down entirely, so it didn’t really matter.)

      I did get my current job by applying to a “talent pool” for my very large employer. I’m not sure how common this is in other fields, but larger employers in my area sometimes collect resumes/applications for anticipated vacancies a few weeks before our major hiring season begins so that they can get a head start on identifying good candidates for positions once they officially become vacant (especially for harder to fill jobs). This did still require me to take the first step in applying with this employer, though.

  5. Alex "Barney" Barnaby*

    The problem with a passive job search is that you run the risk of being approached for jobs (or submitted for jobs) that are related to, but different from, your chosen career field. (Hence, passive.)

    I once had a (bad) recruiter submit me for a paralegal role at a company I very much wanted to work for. Except, being quite a few years out of law school, barred, and with attorney experience, “paralegal” is not what I wanted to do, and honestly felt that taking the role would be a terrible decision given where I wanted my career to go. (There are some very talented attorneys who work as paralegals for a variety of reasons, and I have nothing but respect for that decision, but it was a bad decision *for me.*)

    The end result is that you’re either turning down the interview at the company you really want, or being stuck going through the motions for a job you really do not want – and then maybe looking flaky when you apply for the one you really want two months later.

    1. Alton*

      It’s also tough if you are trying to find a different type of job. I don’t think the insurance sales jobs that contacted me were all that discerning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they honed in on my resume partly because my longest job was in sales and maybe they picked up on keywords. But I didn’t want to be in sales! I was terrible at it and only did that job because it was flexible when I was in college!

  6. MollyG*

    The “recruiter clusterfudge” makes no sense to me. If a company does not use recruiters, then they would not have a contract with the recruiter, and if a recruiter just takes a resume that has been posted and submits it, then they don’t have a contract with the cannidate either. Without a contact, the recruiter has no “rights” to your candidacy is not owed squat. There must be something I am missing here.

    P.S. I anticipate that some may comment that a recruiter will make payment demands and even threaten legal action without basis and that alone will scare away employers, but if that is true then that is fraud and represents a much bigger problem.

    1. LawCat*

      The application of this will, I assume, vary state-by-state, but where I am, I’d think the recruiter could pursue a claim for unjust enrichment if the company then reaches out to and hires the candidate. I don’t think it would apply if the applicant, without any prompting from the company, applied independently. But as a company, I probably wouldn’t want to deal with potential litigation from this and just rule out the applicant on that basis.

    2. Detective Amy Santiago*

      I don’t understand this either. Why would a recruiter be submitting resumes to a company they don’t have a contract with? And why would they submit the resume of someone they have never spoken with?

    3. Feo Takahari*

      It sounds almost like patent trolling, only with humans. “If you want the rights to this otherwise easily obtainable [idea/employee], you’d better pay me or else.”

    4. Allison*

      At one of my old jobs, my (very seasoned) manager actually put in all our job descriptions a message to agency recruiters, basically telling them that any unsolicited resumes they send us will be considered free leads, because he had no interest in playing those stupid games with the agencies.

  7. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

    As usual, I have nothing worthwhile to add; I just like to post on every thread.

    1. fposte*

      Is this really you, PCBH, or is somebody mocking you by impersonating you to make a completely untrue statement about your useful contributions?

        1. fposte*

          I’m glad you checked–it was so completely untrue that I couldn’t believe somebody so perceptive in her comments would think that about her contributions! (I’m also glad there’s nobody that mean posting, too.)

  8. Anonymous Educator*

    I know one person who posted her résumé to Indeed and got a job through it (employer found her), but it’s only one person (not many), and it’s very possible she might have been able to get the job if she’d just applied to it directly.

    In addition to all the great reasons Alison listed, I would think it could be awkward with your current employer, if she spotted an up-to-date version of your résumé posted up on multiple sites. An up-to-date LinkedIn profile looks far less suspicious.

    1. Audiophile*

      Yes, this. My last employer posted the job directly on Indeed and eschewed all other sites. I applied there directly and they contacted me quickly, because I’d interviewed previously. When they posted the job previously, they posted it on Idealist, which was then picked up by Indeed.

      I’ve found many employers will post on Indeed (directly), Idealist, and their website (if their website has a careers section).

      I wouldn’t put my resume online, certainly not if I wasn’t having an open conversation with my employer about looking for another job. There’s too much risk involved with getting caught.

  9. NEW YEAR, NEW ME*

    I’ve had insurance companies calling to recruit me from posting my resume on Monster and Careerbuilder. If you do it, only list your email as a contact. I think Indeed is more helpful.

  10. MH*

    So my husband likely has his resume posted on CareerBuilder and maybe Monster – for years! I’m sure he doesn’t realize that recruiters are “claiming” him, which in turn may hurt his prospects. My question is how does he get his resume removed from the job search engines to stop the spam and non-productive recruiting calls?

    1. Audiophile*

      If he posted it, you should be able to find a “forgot password/login” under the account sign in section. He’ll be able to see there if he has any resumes currently posted and searchable by recruiters. Once you remove it, it will take a bit of time for the calls to stop.

      I got one a few months ago, based on a resume that was from ’08-’10. I couldn’t find any trace of a resume I had posted that was still searchable.

  11. Dislike Names*

    There’s actually a burgeoning issue with the spam resulting from posting your resume – I was getting phone calls at all times of the day and night from “recruiters” that claimed to be sourcing for jobs. I had been job searching for a while, so I happened to know that a particular job wasn’t using any additional recruiters, so I looked up the “firm” and it’s basically nonexistent. I didn’t work out the full story of the borderline scam that was going on, but I did yank my profile/resume from pretty much everywhere, or at least made it private. The spam then stopped.

    I’m talking 15 calls from the same number in 2 weeks’ time, not usually leaving a message but if a message was left, it was very canned and seemed off, and calls as early as 6am and as late as 10pm.

  12. Nan*

    I have a piggyback question. At my previous employer, if they were looking for candidates and found your resume posted up somewhere, they would contact you, and tell you take it down. If you didn’t, they would term you. I am in at-will state, so I will assume it’s legal.

    But do other places do that? That’s totally schmucky. If someone’s resume is out there, they may not be actively, seriously looking. Maybe just dangling to see what bites.

    1. Sibley*

      Never heard of that, and it’s pretty crappy. Plenty of people have really old accounts floating out there. Including me!

    2. Alton*

      Yeah, that’s ridiculously unfair. Even if someone is looking, I think it creates ill will to penalize that. And yeah, someone’s resume being visible on a site isn’t even indicative of much. I didn’t even know how viewable my resume was on Monster until I started getting spam.

  13. MissGirl*

    I want to speak to the “passive” job seeking. I, too, had a job I loved and was getting great experience. I knew my time there wasn’t forever due to lack of advancement and pay opportunities so I occasionally looked through job postings but figured something would come along when I was ready. Fast forward ten years and I regret being so passive. I stayed at the job five years longer than I should have. It’s alright to stay now because you decide it’s worth it but devote a few hours a month to long-term plans. Figure out what your next spot should look like, what you want out of a company, and send out a few resumes here and there.

    Someone may call you in for an interview and you may decided you’re not ready to leave or you may realize you are. Either way take passiveness out of your career goals. Be strategic about staying or going.

    1. Elizabeth West*

      This is what I should have done my third year at Exjob–I should have thought more about where the job would go. My old boss would have totally supported me. Instead, I ended up being bounced and then having to job hunt without being employed.

      I’m still mad that NewBoss couldn’t even be arsed to fire me herself. She made someone else do it.

  14. Landshark*

    I had a public resume on Monster during my last job hunt and it was nothing but garbage spam and jobs that looked sketchy at best that contacted me. Upload a resume to something like Indeed, keep it private, and apply it to only the jobs you want. Your inbox will thank you.

  15. Nancie*

    This is weird, inc.com is insisting that I create an account to read the post. For the record, I’m in the US, I’ve read Alison’s posts at inc.com before, and I double-checked that adblock is disabled.

      2. RB*

        Ditto. I tried a couple things to get around it but they didn’t work and I didn’t feel like creating an account.

    2. fposte*

      Yeah, I had the same thing on Firefox and on Chrome with all the recent Inc articles; Safari let me in.

    3. Alice*

      Right click over the link and select the “Open in an incognito window” option. That pretty much always works.

    4. Trig*

      I think they give you a certain number of articles a month. Nothing to do with adblock! As someone else mentioned, using an icognito window can help.

  16. Scarlott*

    I got a few legitimate e-mail inquiries for jobs through my public linkedin resume, and a few of those “too good to be true” work from home and make 1500$ a week part time type jobs. But ultimately it’s never really led anywhere. Never really had a spam problem, but I guess that varies.

  17. nnn*

    My question: if employers are disinclined to hire people who post their resumes on job boards, how do they know that a candidate posted a resume on a job board in the first place? Are they actively going through and looking for people they don’t want to hire?

    1. ArtK*

      That’s the point. They won’t even bother looking on the job board for resumes and so, posting your resume cuts out a lot of potential employers. Posting the resume is a waste of time.

  18. KR*

    I agree with the fact that most of these job boards are all spam. I signed up for one and they just sent me the same 4 job listings every day in individual emails with a big ol ad in each one. This is a nice reminder to go remove my resume from the few sites I did try now that I have a job offer.

  19. Naruto*

    The job market is still so favorable to employers, why would an employer be looking for resumes on Monster when they can just post a job an get way more applications than they need?

  20. Emi.*

    I never knew that about recruiters, so thank you!

    I feel like when recruiters come up here, it’s usually in a negative light. Are they generally a problem? I realize that everything is skewed negatively when people are bringing in their problems, but recruiters seem more strongly skewed than other hiring roles to me.

    1. Jady*

      There are some good ones. My husband has found most of his good jobs from recruiters.

      There are a few big negatives though. Recruiters can be the type to ‘throw anything to the wall to get something to stick’ type. They are paid when the company hires someone, so they don’t always have the best intentions of finding the right match. There’s also recruitment companies where you work for them, and they contract you out to the company – which leads to less benefits, less pay than the role actually pays because the company is paying the recruiters your salary and you just get a ‘cut’, and job instability. They can tend to be really pushy at times too.

    2. ArtK*

      I’ve had great experiences with recruiters and I’ve had bad experiences. That probably applies to everyone who has used them.

      Great: Approached me and took the time to understand me. Didn’t have a position at the time that matched, but kept in regular touch. When they did have a position that matched, managed a great deal of the process.

      Bad: Had one recruiter who had seen my resume. Early in my career, I worked “Customer Support” (software.) I had since moved on from that. Every six months she’d call me and say “I understand you do Customer Support.” My repeated response was “I did, but was unhappy doing that. Although I interact with customers, I don’t do day-to-day support and won’t go back to that.” Somehow, she never bothered to make a note in her files. I’ve had approaches from people who didn’t even pick up on major keywords in my resume. I’ve been spammed by recruiters. One of my favorites was a guy who obviously scraped job postings off of the internet and then “matched” them with his magical algorithm with people, probably via LinkedIn profiles. His matching was awful. Plus, one of the listings he sent me had the company’s jobs e-mail right there in the ad. Since he hadn’t put me forth as a candidate to them, he wouldn’t own anything if I went directly to them.

    3. Recruit-o-rama*

      There a few different types of recruiters.

      First, there are the recruiters who work for big recruitment firms and their job is mostly sales. They call and email companies looking for business. These kinds of firms generally have databases of candidates which they fill in various ways (one of which might be cold calling resumes off of job boards) A lot of their clients are companies with high turnover, like insurance companies. The bar for getting hired as a “recruiter” with one of these firms is pretty low and they themselves typically have high turnover. They are usually paid a very very low base salary with commissions for placements made into the new business accounts they bring in. They typically get very desperate and use high presssure tactics because their salary is so low and their cut of the commission is also pretty low.

      There are contingency recruiters who specialize in a field (like healthcare or IT or accounting, etc…). They are either boutique firms or an individual. These recruiters are a mixed bag of professionalism and experience and effectiveness. Sometimes they do sneaky and unethical things because they are typically 100% commission. On the other hand, if they are good at their job and have a good network of both candidates and businesses, it’s very lucrative. It’s important to work transparently if you are in this position because it’s easy to develop a bad reputation. But, like I said, mixed bag, it’s still a sales position at the end of the day, which means most people will not be good at it.

      There are also corporate recruiters. You will typically find higher levels of experience and a more HR oriented group of people in this role. They work directly for the company as an employee in the HR department. Typically they are paid a salary rather than commission so there is less of a desperate salesy kind of personality. In my position as a corporate recruiter, I rarely call resumes off of a job board, not NEVER, but rarely. I use our access to databases to look for candidates who are referred to me by other employees at my company, for example. It’s just another sourcing tool, among many that we have, but certainly not the most effective.

      I have also found a negative “feeling” around here when recruiters come up. While I certainly understand that, I do find it frustrating. I have worked as a corporate recruiter for a very long time, but I also worked as a contingency recruiter for several years, so I have experienced both sides. I prefer my current role and have been with my company for a long time, I have other HR related tasks as part of my overall job responsibilities.

      Hope that helps!

      1. ArtK*

        For many of us, when we hear “recruiter,” we think of the first two kinds. I’ve never had an interaction with a corporate recruiter. It’s unfortunate that you get tarred with the bigger brush. I’ll try to be more specific next time!

      3. Bonky*

        Thanks for a very helpful clarification! My company outsources to a freelance corporate recruiter, who works as part of our HR team when required. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an applicant from a job board through him (in part because I like to ask applicants to include a cover letter and, where appropriate, a portfolio; if they can’t follow those simple instructions I don’t want to interview them, because they won’t follow instructions on the job either). It’s also important to me that candidates have a genuine interest in what we do: getting them to apply actively makes a lot of sense to me.

    4. KR*

      One vote for Recruiters Can Be Good! The company I just accepted an offer for uses a recruiting service. She called me to talk about the job the day after I applied, talked through my experiences, and coached me through the whole application and on boarding process. Of course, the company employs them so I don’t owe her a dime.

    5. Elizabeth West*

      I’ve had a couple of experiences with company recruiters and they were mostly positive. They basically called me after I applied to something and did the phone screen, kind of like HR. I don’t know if they were contracted or actually worked for the companies–they said they were with whatever it was. I know I mentioned this before but that one guy had the smoothest voice ever. He should be doing voice-over work, not recruiting for an accounting firm.

      The only other thing was a relative who used to work for a recruiting firm, who told me to inflate a job title on my resume. Um, NO. She said her friends did that all the time, along with lying about their credentials, and got jobs and then faked it until they figured it out! I can’t decide whether that’s what they actually taught her to do, or if she was conflating applying for stretch jobs with actual lying. She also told me once (after this) that she had to fire a writer who did the same thing. So there’s enough cognitive dissonance there that I take most of her career advice with a grain of salt.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Meant to add, I opened up my LI profile to them, so we’ll see what happens. I changed my headline to be more in line with jobs I want to get rather than jobs I’ve had. If I get any hilarious or omg stories, I’ll share them here, but I doubt anyone will even see my profile.

    1. Not a Real Giraffe*

      It did at first, but then I closed the window and tried again. Was able to read with no problem on my second try.

  22. Jady*

    Can confirm the spam! It is insane.

    I have a question though for LinkedIn. I’m very hesitant to use it because a recruiter once contacted me *at work* by looking me up in our company directory. This was a couple years ago. It seemed like a massive inappropriate overstep. My cell number was in there, there was no reason for them to do that. It made me really nervous about what else recruiters could do from that information alone (like contact the wrong people for impromptu references and get me fired for job hunting!).

    I closed and deleted all my linkedin stuff.

    Has this happened to anyone else? Did I just get an insane recruiter? Or is this some new crazy reality?

    1. Allison*

      Recruiters shouldn’t be using your work phone or work e-mail to contact you, because it puts people in a really awkward position. It’s like showing up at your significant other’s house to ask you out.

        1. Jady*

          Thanks, glad to at least know it happens at least. I was freaked out, I’d never heard of it.

    2. MegaMoose, Esq*

      This has happened to my spouse before (he is not job searching, but keeping an up-to-date LinkedIn profile is common in the legal community) – it’s obnoxious, but I wouldn’t worry about it. He gets recruiter calls off his company bio, too. I wouldn’t think that a reasonable employer would hold cold calls like that against you.

    3. Bad Candidate*

      This happened to me a very long time ago. Before LinkedIn was a thing. I worked in a call center at the time and had my resume posted on something, a staffing agency found it and called the company’s 800 number and specifically asked for me. Calls are frequently monitored by management for training/QA purposes. I was very lucky that they didn’t decide to listen to that specific call. I told them I couldn’t talk right then and would call them back on my break.

    4. voluptuousfire*

      Also some people use their work email for their personal LI profile, which is a mistake.

  23. Allison*

    Part of my job, I’d say actually a very big part, is going to online job boards and looking for candidates that are qualified for our hard-to-fill jobs. Of course, most of the time, the reason a job is hard to fill is because there aren’t many people with the skillset we want, in the location of the job, so it’s rare to find a resume of someone who’s a) a good fit for the job and b) an active job seeker (many times the resume is old and the person was snapped up quickly). Most of my time is spent on LinkedIn where people are more likely to keep their profiles up to date even when they’re not actually looking. AngelList was also good for that, but it’s only for startups. I only find Monster and CareerBuilder worth the time if I’m looking for administrative professionals, and even then, it’s not great. I have used Dice for technical roles.

    Speaking of “recruiter clusterfudge,” some recruiters will create fake resumes and post them to job boards to lure in potential employers. Or a recruiter will post resumes to these sites on behalf of the candidates, with no personal contact information, and if an employer wants to hire that person, they have to do it through the agency. Agency recruiters can be snakes.

    And to be clear, I’m employed directly with the company I source for. Not everyone in the recruiting business is at an agency. There are a lot of nice people at agencies, I’m sure, but all in all, it can be a slimy industry.

    I only posted my resume on Monster and CareerBuilder in my early days, when I was fresh out of school and didn’t have a lot of work experience. I wasn’t even looking to work in the corporate world and, big surprise, government agencies and nonprofits don’t use those websites. You need to keep in mind that companies pay for access to these resume databases, and they’re only willing to pay if they think it’s going to be useful. I only ever got spam, and I’m sure some scams as well.

    Right now, you can indicate to recruiters that you’re open to new positions on LinkedIn. They need to be looking at your profile with a “recruiter” account to see that, but most recruiters have that nowadays, because it’s worth the money. It may also be worth posting to AngelList.

  25. Chickaletta*

    I have mine posted right now and I do get lots of spam, especially for selling insurance and that kind of thing. But the recruiter problem is something I hadn’t heard of before. Off I go to delete, delete…

  26. Red Reader*

    Success story: I ended up at my company because a recruiter picked my resume out of Monster or Careerbuilder or some such. It wasn’t actually even updated, but he was looking for someone with medical admin experience in an area without much of same, to fill a short-term contract, and cold-called me based on it. The first day of my temp assignment, I walked up to the building half afraid that I’d given all my personal info to a scammer and nobody at this company actually knew I was coming, because I had done nothing proactive in my job hunt at all, nor did I ever actually meet the recruiter who placed me. (Like, never, at all during the entire duration of my employment through his agency.) I temped for six months, was hired on permanently and have been promoted into lower-tier management since then, going on three years with the organization since my actual hire date.

  27. AJ*

    Our company posts and looks for resumes on Indeed. We hire scientific staff and are a small company, so we often are looking for something specific and aren’t getting it in the applications we receive. So I will search for resumes too. Some people are interested and some never reply, but we use it the way its supposed to. Good luck.

  28. Mephyle*

    Was this letter from a time before LinkedIn was a thing? The letter writer says, “I want to post my résumé so I can be visible to recruiters and bigger firms,” but these days LinkedIn (for all its drawbacks) fulfills that function.

  29. voluptuousfire*

    I personally don’t recommend doing that at least on Monster or Careerbuilder. Lots and lots of spam. That’s why I ended up creating a Google Voice number for my resume–so many spam calls, at least I can filter it to voicemail if needed.

    Most were recruiters who wanted to add me to their stable of resumes and I had one direct employer email me after finding me on there. That ended up being a clusterfudge in that the recruiter for the role cold called me and when she asked if I had any time, I said yes, then she launched into interview mode, asking why I had applied to the job. Hello, you cold called me about it? When I said to her “I haven’t applied, I just heard of this opening from you a few minutes ago” she didn’t care for that. The call went south from there. It was odd since it was during the recession and considering how many people were out of work, it seemed a bit silly to do sourcing for a role that they easily could have found a candidate for via applications alone. Turns out the company was a terrible place to work, according to Glassdoor

  30. Philomath*

    I am a software engineer, and when I was moving to a new city, I put my resume on Dice.com as a first step in my job search. And that is all I did. I got three calls a day from recruiters until the day I took down the resume (and I still get emails to this day), and while many of the job postings were a bit off base in the requirements or not at the right city, many were on point. I got exactly the kind of job I was looking for and am still there today (2+ years).

  31. Newlywed*

    I don’t know if anyone else has posted about this yet, but if you haven’t done this already: SEO your linkedin profile with key words and phrases. I did this with my profile when I was job hunting, learning how to use key words and phrases that recruiters were looking for, for the type of job I wanted, got the new job, and a year and half later I still get hits from recruiters for jobs in my field a couple of times a month at least who contact me directly about job openings. It’s a great way to passively job search. You may need to do the premium account for a month (I think it’s 30 bucks) in order to compare your profile with the top hits in your field and see what keywords they are using. (I think it goes without saying, but of course be ethical, don’t put keywords for skills you don’t have). You can run the top seen profiles for people who have similar job titles in your area through a key word analyzer (google it, there are tons of free ones) and see what the top keywords are on the profiles of the most viewed candidates and then add them to your page. Yes, it is some up front work, but like I said, you get the kinds of hits you are actually wanting from recruiters for jobs that are relevant to you and your skills instead of getting spammy hits from job board websites.

  32. Wendy Darling*

    I accidentally made my resume searchable on Dice.com about 6 months ago. It was searchable for less than a week. I’m still trying to climb out from under all the spam, and I’ve never gotten contacted about a job I was actually enthusiastic about. I have, however, been lied to by temp agencies so many times that the list of ones I’ll deal with is shorter than the list of ones I won’t touch with a long pole. :/

  33. JessaB*

    I think it might depend. I know that when I was on unemployment the state required that I register, remain registered and prove up that I was in order to collect aid. That might be true of other aid streams as well.

  34. LuvzALaugh*

    Post on a job board, but be ready for calls I would sum up to junk mail. A lot of recruiters these days (actually some recruiting agencies whose employees I would consider call center sales people). The emails you get usually tell you a lot about the recruiter. (That info could fill an entire post)

    Back to your question. Yes, it is worth posting. I have gotten 150 hum hum yawn resumes for jobs I have posted and love the ability to find bonafide (have the quals and experience) candidates on job boards. At least if I see your resume on a job board, I know you may be interested in hearing about the opportunity. LinkedIn is so filled with “cold calling” I know what they do, I just don’t know if they looking.

  35. Not the office dementor*

    Just don’t do what one guy did and accidentally put someone else’s mobile number on your resume.

    I work for a charity. Boy was I surprised when someone rang to offer me a job as a sheet metal worker.

  36. PhillyPretzel*

    Interesting. I’ll add another success story here — I didn’t realize they were so rare.

    I had my resume posted on Monster when I was looking for my first full-time job straight out of college (about 10 years ago). I had double majored in two liberal arts fields and had plenty of work experience in part-time jobs, though no office experience. Initially, I got contacted by a large financial firm and interviewed for a position with them. I didn’t get it, though I guess I left a positive impression as they contacted me later about another position. By that time, I was already in a job that I got through a recruiter who had found my resume. It was a good job with a desirable company, and I stayed in it about a year.

    So, just some anecdotal evidence! I’m sure this could be atypical, or hiring standards are just different now.

  37. Professional Merchandiser*

    RE posting on sites; I think it depends on what kind of positions you are applying for. From my user name it’s obvious what I do, and almost every job I’ve had I got through a website. I only registered on one; NARMS National Association of Retail Merchandisers. (Which I don’t think is even active anymore) but they were great. They would send emails telling you about positions in your area, and if you didn’t respond, or declined it was no big deal. They would catch you on the next one. Occasionally I would get calls from managers for different companies and they would always say, “I saw your resume on NARMS and thought you might be interested in…” Same thing. If you were not interested they would go on the next one. Of course, merchandising is its own weird category. I never got any spam. Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe whoever ran this website made sure this didn’t happen.

  38. Tealeaves*

    What is your opinion of LinkedIn? Does it count as a “large public jobs board”? I’m wondering how much information you should post publically there, even if your account is set to direct connections only. I get connection requests from random recruiters (the new form of cold calling).

  39. Cheese Sticks and Pretzels*

    I just removed mine from Indeed. All I got was calls from recruiters who do not speak English as their first language.

  40. Al who is that Al*

    I’m in the UK and have applied for jobs via various websites like Monster and have to say I have not had much spam at all, saying that I do have a very niche job.
    What I would advise people to do is to set up a alias email and put that on your CV and don’t put a phone number on there. Then you just get one folder on your email with all the junk in it.

  41. Elizabeth West*

    I’ve only ever put my resume on Careerbuilder, and it wasn’t long before I took it back down again. Tons and tons of spam email, mostly for jobs I was pretty sure didn’t exist. You don’t need to have a resume up to search their listings, so I deleted it as fast as possible after that. I’ve had to apply through ZipRecruiter to some jobs on Indeed, and I redirected all their emails to my spam box because even without the resume up, they did gather my email. I check them before I delete and none of them have been anything worth saving.

  42. Lynn Edwards*

    I have always used Careerbuilder with tremendous results until recently when my current employer contacted me after hours at my home to ask me why my resume was open (meaning viewable) on Careerbuilder. No employer has ever questioned me in this soft peddled threat way before. I am somewhat alarmed that an employer representative would do such a thing as it gives the appearance of personal harassment. I am not in management. I’m a first line employee and hourly at that. The idea of it reminds me of the early 1900s when there were no labor laws. The idea that an employer should expect loyalty from employees when they are certainly not loyal to them is preposterous. We no longer get any real benefits; we can be let go with no reason; and what little benefits we have can be taken away without notice. I am not a union worker. I don’t have a contract. What I did get for accepting a position was a sack of lies when the promises made to get me to accept the job were not kept. The reason any employer would like to hang the axe over your head for posting on Careerbuilder would be that they think they own you. Some call us “assets”; not the good kind but an asset you own like a copier or a desk or an item that they can give a value in their annual report. If we were that valuable we would be compensated as such, but that kind of compensation only comes with a high level executive who has the ability to negotiate a contract. The hourly wage earner and even a salaried supervisor and low level manager has nothing more then they can do but sell their talents on job-boards. No company interviews on the hourly level by meeting with walk in or by setting up an interview by phone. Perhaps those who believe in this ridiculous loyalty concept are at the level of employment that they can be hired by word of mouth. Sadly, that really isn’t really for most of us. What should us hourly and 1st level managers do? Pass out flyers?

  43. Dana J*

    My experience has been really good with posting my resume on the job boards. It is true that I get lots of emails for jobs that I may not be qualified for, but I also get emails from head hunters for jobs that I am qualified for. I’v been working as a contractor in IT for 10 years. This has been the only way that I do seek jobs. I post my resume and I let them find me. If it something I’m interested in, I ask them what the rate is for this position. For example, they may say, “the rate is $35/hr”. My response is, “My current rate is $45/hr.” We usually end up at $40/hr. Next, they submit my resume and I get interviewed, and land the job. It usually takes me about a month from the time I submit my resume to land something else. As I mentioned, this is how I’ve gotten gigs for the past 10 years. Just wanted to share and let you know that IT WORKS- IF YOU WORK IT :)

Comments are closed.