When most of us envision a web based job search, we think of the large job search engines like Monster or Careerbuilder. And with good reason, these websites are the undisputed heavyweight of on-line job searches. They’re well known, have extremely high visibility worldwide, and also have a immense quantity and diversity of job postings. On top of that, many have supplementary job and career tools such as sample resumes, job boards, and company investigation. All of this is also cost free! Really good reasons why you should make use of these sites as part of your job search.
Wow – sounds great. If these big job search websites are so fantastic why would we ever go anywhere else? Great question. The truth is, loads of people don’t go elsewhere. Many a job-seeker will solely pound the big search sites daily attempting to find matching (or somewhat matching?) jobs. Their entire job search is 15 minutes each morning on Monster.com. The benefit to this approach is it’s very, very easy. The downside to this approach is that it’s very, very easy.
There are millions of jobs posted on these websites and probably even some matching jobs for your targeted search. Nonetheless, if you only look at one or two websites you could be likely missing large number of very good jobs that may be the ideal match for you. Here’s why: Employers characteristically need to pay to publish an opportunity. The likelihood of an employer posting all their positions at Monster or Careerbuilder is tiny – the truth is it not occuring. Rather, they could post a portion of their high-profile or high-need openings. So, if your ‘perfect’ job isn’t among them, you wouldn’t see it and could agree to a job that’s not ideal and be seeking once more within a year.
An additional problem with the this method is that because of their popularity, some employers settle to not (directly) publish their openings on these sites. Why is that? Well, think about how challenging it is to post for an open position online. It’s very easy. There’s no resume or cover letter to print and no stamp to buy. In fact, it’s close to cost free (depending if you want to include the cost of getting on-line – which could be free at school or a library – or even work). Due to this, it’s not difficult to apply for jobs you’re a great match for, yet it’s just as easy to apply for jobs that you’re somewhat a match for, and just as easy to apply for positions that you truly have no business trying to get. So a company can be crushed with hundreds or even thousands of candidates and has to sift through the resumes to look for the correct matching candidates.
One of the answers to this is that rather then posting the opening on their own an employer would work via a personnel agency. The downside to the employer in this method is that they need to pay the agency. The difficulty to the job-seeker is that you’ll possibly not know the actual employer for the open position – rather it may be posted with the agency name. The other difficulty is that, because the employer has to pay yet again, they very likely won’t be sharing all their openings.
So let’s take a look at some examples. Let’s go with a couple of employers in the Minneapolis Area and we will use Monster for our particular tests. We’re going to go under the assumption that the most suitable indication of the true quantity of jobs they have open can be situated on their own company website. We perceive this is valid for the reason that there’s little cost to them submitting all their open opportunities on their own site.
The very first employer we’ll investigate is General Mills. They’re a very familiar Fortune 500 Employer headquartered in Minneapolis. On the web Online On their website, we searched for all open positions in Minneapolis and we returned 26 positions. Afterwards we went to Monster and searched for the same company in Minneapolis and we found 7 posted jobs.
Let’s check out a bit smaller sized company – Plato Learning. They develop education software and are located in Bloomington, MN. On their website they have 5 postings in their Bloomington HQ. The same search on Monster gives back simply one of the openings.
Still not convinced? OK, let’s investigate a significantly smaller sized employer – The Minnesota Historical Society. They are a not-for-profit organization that operates a number of museums and historical sites in Minnesota, many in the Twin Cities Area. On the web, they have 6 open positions. Monster has none of them. Just a few cases, but they identify the possible blunders solely making use of big search engines.
The bottom line is that these sites are undoubtedly still an excellent resource for your search. Think about it – their aim is that you can make use of their site to get yourself a job! If their not successful at this what are the reasons employers post jobs with them to begin with? The caution is to still use them however you must also expand your search to add in newspapers, employer websites, other search engines, and networking. Sure – this will likely take a lot more work on your part. Having said that, a top quality, complete job search should require some effort!
If you want to learn more about Minnesota Job Banks or jobs in Minnesota go to the Minnesota Job Bank HQ.