I will say that before passerby said it, I was wondering how so many people chimed in just to say nick is the greatest person ever. Not knowing anyone on this thread, can’t help but feel like there are some manufactured comments. However, no way to know.

Your post is full of typos and you’re taking on a pro about this issue. Quit while you’re behind, would you? Nick, you rock, as always. Thank you!

:-) Yeah, I know: but what can I do about it? I’m not their shill (for what it’s worth — which isn’t much, I understand).

> What HR spends on job boards
HR doesn’t spend anyting; companies do. That was an aside. Now back to you…

> doesn’t make any difference to my revenue because headhunters
>are responsible for only about 3% of all hires made.
You mean there’s enough for both of you? Also, 3% sounds unintuitive… Where does this figure come from? I’d think most hires are made thought headhunters. If not, how most hires are made? And separately, so if recruiting money isn’t the reason, why do you then have this strangely rabid attitude toward the boards? I read your book, your articles online, your emails, and still I can see no reason for you to hate them so much. They’re like the rest of humanity: some good, some bad, mostly ho-hum — worthy neither of great love, nor great hate.

>My point is that HR could be spending that money on intelligent
>recruiting done by humans.
Well. Um… I said above that I’ve known two decent men in the recruiting profession. Now, I have known no decent humans in the HR profession. “Decent”, perhaps, is a wrong word; I don’t mean they’re indecent, so let us say ‘intelligent’. They truly should stick to paperwork and organizing the New Year party. Everything you’ve ever said about HR is right on the money.

>I feel sorry for managers who sit without hires while HR is
>playing footsie with the big boards.
In my experience, it was these managers who actually worked the boards. No, really, there’s absolutely no board-specific harm coming from these boards. I was contracting for about two decades, beginning before there were any boards, and in fact the internet itself wasn’t around yet. I mean I saw them from their beginnings to whatever they became later and I don’t remember having any evil experiences with them. Most work I found w/o either the boards or live recruiters, but boards have been somewhat instrumental overall (+, like I said, my best two jobs came from Monster.com).

> Go spend some time on discussion forums like slashdot,
Oh c’mon, slashdot ;-) ;-) . I won’t believe you read slashdot. A bunch of attitudinising low-brow dweebs, most of them probably underage. I couldn’t care less what slashdoters “think” and wouldn’t be caught dead in this sort of company. I hope you have better info sources to use to form your opinions, really.

The 3 reasons you list to explain my problems with job boards are (1) inaccurate, because I discuss my reasons at length in my writing, (2) true, but it’s only one reason, (3) this has nothing to do with job boards per se; I was criticizing TheLadders’ resume business.

In your subsequent post you hit the nail on the head. My main problem is with the amount of money the boards suck out of corporate coffers via HR. If you read my writing, you know that while I believe 95% of HR isn’t worth spit, I say the same of headhunters and recruiters. I repeatedly advise job hunters and employers to “do it without a headhunter.” What HR spends on job boards doesn’t make any difference to my revenue because headhunters are responsible for only about 3% of all hires made. My point is that HR could be spending that money on intelligent recruiting done by humans. I feel sorry for managers who sit without hires while HR is playing footsie with the big boards.

There is “nothing wrong with online boards”? Go spend some time on discussion forums like slashdot, where you’ll find loads of comments about job boards.

Careful — You’re starting to sound a lot like an employee (or PR flak) of a job board now. :-)

My real point is larger; it’s not based only on this particular blog entry of yours — it’s based on your book, and other posts and emails and what not; it’s somewhat synthetic.

It’s obvious that you’re hostile towards online job boards. I have used them myself and think they are quite all right. Not all, not always, but then nothing is all and always. I’ve got a number of very decent projects from Monster.com for example, and my experience with online outfits spreads over a decade at least.

I’m not saying there’s no crap there: there _is_, for sure. But it’s not _only_ crap (like I’ve already said), and they’re not unique in having lotsa crap to offer. In fact, my worst work-search related interactions were always with non-virtual recruiters, believe it or not. Now, recruiting industry: _that_ is a veritable cesspool, cheap lying lowlives galore. Moreover, there’s no clear separation, for many times the online lead leads to a recruiter. Buyer beware applies everywhere, always.

But to make the long story short: in my opinion, your hatred of online job boards is baseless, and since you keep banging on this particular drum, you must have some kind of hidden agenda that is the real driver of your aggressivity here. You will disbelieve it of course (or pretend to do so), but my best two jobs of the last decade came from Monster. My worst job of the last 20 years came from a physical guy; fairly numerous interactions that left me choking of hatred and with a violent desire to pump my interlocutor full of bullets if I could, or maybe even to rip him to pieces with my bare hands were with physical recruiters. In about twenty years I’ve known exactly two decent guys in this profession — and got no work out of them (just so happened; I’m not saying decent guys are useless by definition). This whole profession is dominated by human garbage who recruit during the day and probably pimp or sell drugs at night. And btw, online boards — among other things — allow me to avoid them altogether.

Your arguments against them, as far as I can see, are:

1. Nothing specific expressed with a lot of disparaging epithets.
(No substance; nothing to refute)

2. They’re dangerous in terms of privacy.
Refutation: everything online is; never put your exact demographics in online forms anywhere. Works like a charm: no one needs your name and SSN to determine if you may be a right specialist for the job. Register as “Johnny Blah” an dlet them contact you; then you’ll see how it goes, continuing in a specific and non-virtual situation.

3. They make spelling errors (larger meaning: they’re illiterate, low-life scum)
Refutation: correct, but so are non-virtual recruiters; in addition to whatever else, online boards allow you to avoid dealing with recruiters altogether (because a lot of ads there are actually direct and a lot of searches are actually done by companies directly).

I’d stop attacking the big online job boards if, as you say, they were a dead horse. But corporate HR departments continue to waste massive amounts of money just to diddle job hunters. That dead horses is drinking the trough dry. In many companies, there are precious few funds left to do real recruiting after HR writes that check to Monster, CareerBuilder and Ladders.