This blog or article (if in fact you could call it an article) is a moan and a compliant about the frustrations of hunting for jobs online, and my experiences so far dealing with job agency websites:

In today’s modern world, with information available at our fingertips, you would expect finding reliable job information should be relatively easy? Unfortunately, it’s not! Having moved to the United States I am now in a position, having successfully obtained my work permit, to find employment. My first port of call was the biggest job website around, monster.com. I completed a profile, uploaded my resume and signed up for email alerts. At this point I was unable to locate an RSS feed for my search criteria.

I sat back and waited for some responses. They never came. I began to receive daily emails from monster. The job details where not even in the location I specified. After a few days I went back to monster.com and stopped the email notifications as they were pointless. One month later, I’m still receiving irrelevant emails from monster. I began conducting manual searches on monster. After week of doing this it struck me the same jobs on monster were being regurgitation and marketed as a new jobs. In my experience to date, this doesn’t only happen at monster, there are lots of other sites that do this. Eventually, I figured out that monster does have a RSS feed for your specific search criteria; however, this was only available in their old basic search function. Having now added this RSS feed to Google Reader, I am now receiving 1 or 2 new jobs per week, which meet my search criteria. For some reason (and I am thankful for it), the RSS feed only provides new job positions and not the same jobs regurgitated over and over again.

Simultaneously, I also subscribed to less known job sites, which not only provided the same information as monster, but many many more opportunities that met my search criteria. I am not sure why monster.com performs poorly against smaller, less known websites, but they certainly need to improve their services if they wish to stay top dog.

Having finally got to a place, where I can actually find the positions that I am interested in, comes the next stage of the hair pulling, painfull frustration, and mind boggling ridiculousness.

Receiving job positions from multiple sources involves multiple processes for applying for a position. These include:

1. Faxing your resume.
2. Emailing your resume.
3. Applying online through the job agency website.
4. Applying online through the employers website.
5. Calling the job agency.
6. Calling the employer directly.
7. Attending a job fair.
8. Attending the employers premises.
9. Completing a paper application form and mailing it to the employer.
10. Sending smoke signals to the employer or agency.
11. Using telepathy to the employer or agency.

1. Faxing your resume: In today’s modern world, I wasn’t aware that tech companies and job agencies still use fax machines. I don’t have access to a fax machine, and I certainly don’t have a fax modem that I could attached to a computer to send a fax from. This is an absolute ridiculous notion, that a company or job agency can only accept applications for jobs via a fax machine.

2. Emailing your resume: Emailing is paperless, efficient, instant and my preferred method of communication. I can attach my resume and craft a cover letter/email to the company expressing my interest in the position advertised.

3. Applying online through the job agency website: Whenever I’ve had to do this, I grimmest before I have even started. The nightmare begins depending on which job agency website you have seen the job advertised on. At the bottom of most of the job descriptions is an ‘apply’ button. Clicking on the button sends you into the realms and depths of your darkest nightmare. More often than not the ‘apply’ button sends you off to a completely different website, where the same job information is presented and normally with further instructions on how to apply for the position. To date, the highest number of website jumping I’ve been sent on to get to the source of applying for a position was 5 different websites. Finally, you can apply. But first you have to register, complete another profile and sign up for email alerts before you can even apply for the position. Most websites give you the opportunity to upload your resume and then you have the joy of duplicate the information contained within your resume on their online forms. Pointless? Of course, so why ask for my resume if you are going to require me to fill out the same information anyway? Who knows!!

4. Applying online through the employers website: There have been positions that I have been interested in applying where I’ve been taken to the employers website. More often than not you have to registered, create a profile, and sign up for email alerts before you can apply. Again, duplication of uploading a resume vs. the online forms applies here too. In some cases I have had to undertake an online job selection process that has included situational questions, personality questions, and ‘what would you do if’ questions. All of which can take between 30-60 minutes to complete. In most cases there isn’t any notification that it will take 30-60 minutes.

5. Calling the job agency: These are very few and far between because no one wants to talk to you personally as that would involve employing staff to be on the end of phone. I have only ever spoken to one job agency on the phone, and the phone call was generated by me, and the person I spoke with directed me to their website. What’s the point of advertising a phone number to call if you don’t want to speak to a potential client?

6. Calling the employer directly: As yet I’ve never seen an employer publish their telephone number on an agency website. In fact, most job agencies don’t even tell you who the position is with, as you don’t have to be rocket scientist to track down the employer and contact them directly.

7. Attending a job fair: I’ve only even seen this advertised once, whereby you are requested to attend an event or job fair to apply for a position advertised. Completely ridiculous!  At the time I doubted whether there was in fact a job, and thought it was a marketing ploy to get people to attend.

8. Attending the employers premises: As yet, I have never seen this advertised for obvious reasons; however, I’ve added it to my list out of pure frustration when there have been times when I thought it would be easier to simply go to the employers premise and ask to speak to someone from HR.

9. Complete a paper application form and mailing it to the employer: To date I’ve only had to do this once for which I am eternally great full for. It’s time consuming, non-efficient and non-environmentally friendly. The postal system is unreliable and whether your application ever gets there is in the hands of the gods.

10 & 11: I’ve added both these as there have been occasions when I have seen jobs advertised with no means what so ever of being able to apply for the position. No ‘apply’ button, no email address, no telephone number, no fax number, and no address. Completely pointless, frustrating and a waste of everyone’s time.

Okay, having gotten through the trauma of applying for a position through one of the above processes, what happens next? Where does your application go after hitting the ‘send’, ‘finish’, ‘complete’, or ‘submit’ buttons? As far as I can tell the following happens:

1. Abyss.

2. Spam folder.

3. Deleted folder.

4. Black hole.

15% of all the online positions I’ve applied for have resulted in an email acknowledgement, thanking me for applying, with a footnote at the bottom of the email which states something along the lines of: “A company representative will contact you directly if your qualifications or experience match the requirements of the position.” What this means, if you are deem as not meeting the required requirements, you will not be contact at all. Furthermore, they are making it clear they will not be prepared to provide any feedback as to why you were not successful.

In some cases, after not hearing anything for a couple of weeks, I have sent an email chasing up my application. In every case these have gone unanswered. I find it diabolical that job agencies are being paid rather large sum of cash to advertise a job, receive applications, paper sift these applications and offer no form of communication to the applicant.

Most of these job agencies websites have a privacy policy. Usually, you need to have a magnifying glass to find the link and if you can find it and you do read it, they clearly state that your personal information provided will be kept securely and not forwarded or sold onto third parties. Why is it, since applying for jobs online, my gmail spam folder is currently capturing approximately 200 spam emails a day? Prior to this process, it was roughly 10 a day!

As time has progressed I have very little faith in online job websites. To summarize:

1) They are cumbersome.

2) Unregulated.

3) There is no standard process.

4) You cannot speak to an individual.

5) Applications are sent into an abyss.

6) There is no communication.

7) Chase ups go unanswered.

Your email account receives a 200% increase in spam.

9) Who knows how secure your personal information is.

10) Do the jobs advertised actually exist?

I am 100% sure I am not the only person to experience the above. Let me know your experiences and leave a comment below.