published October 5, 2013

By Andrew Ostler

Pros and Cons of Job Posting in the Technology Age


 
Pros and Cons of Job Posting in the Technology Age

As a veteran job coach in the Chicago land market AND an employer, I see the pros and cons of online job posts from both sides of the fence. Recently I posted an Admin position (for my company) on a few business-related websites. One of the pros of posting online is that most of these sites are free, so you are able to promote your job to a broad, diverse group of job seekers. However, a lot of smaller sites scour these larger sites, and re-post your job to their site. The downside of this is that it's difficult to track which sites are generating the best candidates. Plus, these smaller sites often edit the job posting, so I noticed that when a candidate came from one of these smaller sites, they didn't have all of the application directions that were clearly spelled out on the original site.

The other downside is that once the position is filled, I can go back to the original sites and remove my post, but because I don't know all the sites that list it, I still get candidates long after the new person has settled in to her role.

Lauren Milligan
Chicago
 

I run an online writing service, we are 100% virtual and have hired over a hundred writers in the past 3 years. When you are posting a job online you have to be very specific about your needs.

If you leave things like telecommuting or location open, you might get picked up by those aggregate job sites like virtualvocations.com. So if you are only hiring in a specific location, be sure to say that over and over.

Also, if you are hiring for a virtual position you have to be extra careful about your candidate. I once hired a writer out of India who provided a W-9 complete with a fake US address and SSN. I had multiple phone conversations with him before I realized he was actually from another country. Trust but verify!

Amie Marse, Founder & Managing Partner
Content Equals Money
 

The experience of posting a job for most employers and most job roles is that they receive dozens or hundreds or applicants with 95-100% of them not qualified or adequately skilled for the job. However it does depend on the type of role. For lower level positions a job posting can be effective.

Pro: It's easy and takes little effort to post a job
Con: The majority of applicants are likely to be not qualified or the right fit for the role
Con: It takes a large amount of time to wade through poorly qualified applicants

Rob Rawson
Chief of Staff
Staff.com
 

Online job search has been around for quite some time now and people are now very comfortable posting their resumes and searching for new opportunities online. Many job seekers seem to think that once they've uploaded their details, the jobs will come to them. That really isn't the case. This is only the start of the process. Job seekers need to be active on social networks and establish their personal brand across the "interwebs". Networking has become a vital part of establishing your presence online. Once your profiles are all in perfect shape, then connect to the right people - hiring managers in companies you'd like to work at, recruiters specializing in your industry, etc. Candidates need to be active and consistent in developing their networks. Link to these profiles in your resume. Especially if you're older, establishing quickly that you're comfortable with all this newfangled tech is really worthwhile. (You can also leave dates off your education, too, and only go back over the past ten years or so of your work history, if applicable.)

Many hiring managers refuse to look at job boards and only want passive candidates like those found on LinkedIn or other niche social networks. They don't know how to write a proper job description, identifying behaviors and traits that make a successful employee in the position. They may require that the person come from only Ivy League schools, or require 5 years of experience in a technology that's only been available for the past 3. Trying to make sense of these job postings, for the job seeker, can be difficult and good candidates may never apply simply because they don't match requirements that aren't really necessary to do the work. HR departments in many companies now use Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) to track applicants. They do simple searches to match the requirements provided by the hiring manager. If you are a qualified applicant, but used different terms than what's being searched for, you will never be found. If you're dealing with companies who have outsourced their entire management of HR, they may use Vendor Management Systems (VMS), that post jobs to a private portal and recruiting companies have very limited time to find candidates and submit them before competing recruiters do. It then becomes a quantity vs. quality thing for some recruiters - if I only have 8 hours to submit all my candidates, my odds of getting interviews are very slim if I submit two when another company submits 20.

While the tech seems to have modernized the process, the actual process has never changed, just the access. There are few options for the hiring manager. They can rely on their HR department to match their requirements and shortlist a set of candidates for them to review and interview. They can outsource this to a professional recruiting firm which typically takes 20% of the first year's annual salary as their fee. They can post to job boards like Monster or Careerbuilder and pay $350 - $400 per job listing. If the company is too small to have an HR department, they may have to review hundreds of resumes before finding one or two to interview. It takes too much time and too much effort.

There is one very new option for hiring managers. iPlace Connect (www.iplaceconnect.com) just launched in July. It's a candidate sourcing service ideal for small and medium-sized businesses. Submit your job order, pay just $59, and we send you 12 qualified, local resumes typically by the next business day. We don't accept resumes from individual job seekers. We use numerous public and proprietary databases to seek out active candidates that have recently updated their profiles and are located usually within 10 miles of your business. You could say that I am very excited about this opportunity, because all this tech has left small business owners behind.

Jeanne-Elise M. Heydecker
Senior Vice President
iPlace USA
 

Given the technology available today business owners can do the following without a lawyer:
  1. Prepare and file Articles of Organization for a corporation, LLC or LLP.
  2. Prepare and file annual reports (Corp or LLC).
  3. Annual minutes (Corp) and updating any LLC, or shareholder's agreements.
  4. Prepare and file income tax returns and handle IRS audits.
  5. Writing a business plan and By Laws.
  6. Creating contracts for use with customers or vendors.
Ramsey A. Bahrawy, Esq.
BAHRAWY LAW OFFICES
North Andover, MA
 

Social media platforms offer an opportunity to job seekers to cast a large net over thousands of applicants. Sorting the job posting responses, in hopes of finding the best applicant, can be a nightmare.

Jobs by Wynbi is the first platform to match job postings with job seekers by an exact percentage based on skills and experience from a uniform database. Users, aka job seekers, can click a single button to see exactly how well they match to jobs they care about based on their skills, education and experience. Employers can also quickly see who out of all their candidates are the best qualified for open positions. This means that Employers quickly identify the best candidates, and applicants can quickly identify and apply to jobs where they have the best chance of being hired. Jobs by Wynbi is also the first application in this space to seamlessly include a company's current employees in this process.

The exact percentage works by matching certain criteria on a resume to a job posting. This criteria includes job history (category, industry, skills, tasks, tools and technology), education, and can also include specific projects along with the duration that skills and experience are needed, if applicable. We have completely solved the issue of non-uniform data so candidates know they will never be passed over for a position for not having the right keywords in their resume. This also means that Jobs by Wynbi can be used to hire employees at all ends of the spectrum, not just professional.

Wynbi's function of exact percentage match is a clear advantage for both employers and job seekers over other job boards. Jobs by Wynbi saves time, money, offers greater privacy and more effectively matches available job positions with the best candidates.

Brooke B. Summers
 

When I started placing job ads for a university HR dept in 2003, most staff positions were advertised with print ads in newspapers, and most faculty positions were advertised with print ads in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Adding online advertising to print ads was an option, but it wasn't very common.

By the time I left HR in 2011, online advertising was becoming the norm, and the number of print ads had really declined. In fact, federal labor law had been changed so that a print ad was no longer required for faculty positions (this was a big deal!). Also, because of the internet, there are more places to advertise than ever before.

PROS:

*Online advertising is less expensive than print, so companies/departments are saving money on advertising.
*Companies/departments have many more advertising options than ever before.
*There is a shorter turnaround time and longer posting time for online ads, so ads appear sooner and stay posted longer than print ads.

CONS:

*More online ads most likely means lost print revenue for newspapers and journals.
*More options makes the job of the person placing the ads more complicated (i.e., each web site has its own set of publication rules).
*More options means applicants don't always know the best place to look for jobs. Just checking the newspaper is no longer the smart thing to do.

Jessi Stanley
 

Pros

Syndication Options: When using an applicant tracking system, like gatherDocs, companies are provided with the option to syndicate job postings as opposed to manually posting a job opening on each job board site individually. With this technology, the HR team is given a more seamless tool that still has the same reach as manually uploading a job posting to each site individually.

Variety of Channels: As most individuals own a smart phone or tablet, many job boards have developed mobile versions of their website to allow for individuals to apply and look for jobs via their smart phone device. This greatly expands the applicant pool and gives candidates the option to use whichever device is easiest for them. For example, when gatherDocs was developing our solution, we wanted to make sure its technology was optimized for mobile devices.

Ease of Tracking: In using an applicant tracking system, like gatherDocs, HR departments are provided with an easy way to implement work flows. This allows the HR team to review the status of a candidate's application and also reference his/her pre-hiring status. For example, technology can make it possible for the HR department to see if the candidate has applied to the company before, if he/she moved on to the interview stage, and if he/she was eventually offered a job. This in turn provides one location for the HR team to find all of this information out, as opposed to needing to search through files to find it.

Cons

Email Overload: When using a job board, HR departments provide an email address for all of the job postings to be sent to, and if they are using multiple job boards, which often happens, the person monitoring the emails will be receiving a large quantity of emails and resumes to sift through. As such, there is a strong chance that a resume may be missed and the company will then miss out on a potentially great candidate. In addition, there is always a possibility that the email may go into a spam folder, also resulting in a potential missed candidate.

Irrelevant Candidate Matching: When using an online job board, employers are urged to provide as much detail as possible for the position they are looking to fill. However, if the employer is not specific in the job posting, they can receive many resumes that are not a fit for the position, which can result in a lengthier hiring process.

Decrease in Verbal Communications: Prior to using online job boards, many applicants would apply in person at a company. When doing so, the employer would probably ask a few pre-interview questions to help determine if the candidate would be a match, before delving into his/her background experience. This would also allow the employer to see some of the nonverbal communication from the candidate. With the increase in technology, this initial face-to-face communication has been taken away and will likely not occur until the candidate's resume and application has been reviewed. As such, employers who prefer to meet the candidate before reviewing his/her resume and who are more comfortable in a face-to-face setting, may not be able to rely as heavily on technology.

Alex King
CEO of gatherDocs
 
 

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