I couldn’t make this stuff up. A sales director with over 20 years’ experience managing sales teams pays MyJobHunter.com $50 to send out 500 job applications on his behalf. The guy’s wife’s beauty salon receives the resume and calls him for an interview. He didn’t know it, but his “job hunting agent” also submitted him for jobs [...]

In the July 12, 2011 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a job hunter questions whether it’s prudent — or even possible, when forced to use an online form — to say NO to an employer that demands your salary history: I read your article “Keep Your Salary Under Wraps.” While I found it to be an [...]

TheLadders just keeps rooting around in its pen for scraps of executive job-board revenue. But this looks like a death rattle. There’s all the posturing: The “executive resume” appetizer business (with a side of free critique) didn’t exactly take off. The promises of “$100k+” jobs that turned into… NOT. CEO Marc Cenedella’s e-mails to his list — which it [...]

In the May 17, 2011 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a reader asks whether what we post on the Net can hurt us. Now that I’m job hunting, I’m taking stock of things I’ve posted around the Net. I wonder if my online writing could hurt my chances of getting hired. I suppose a diligent background [...]

“The ladders is a scam, plain and simple. A class action lawsuit sounds like a good idea.” – TheLadders (former) subscriber Robin Lynn “I’d love to charge them for the amount of my time they wasted.” – Employer Claire Peat, not a customer TheLadders continues to discredit itself while suffering renewed attacks from its own paying [...]

Any good company will tell you that it loses business sometimes, to unscrupulous competitors who make promises to customers that they can’t keep, and who will quote artificially low prices to win business. The honest company loses money immediately, but it takes time for the naive customer to realize that the promised product at the lower [...]

In the March 29, 2011 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a reader complains that employers’ demands are very inappropriate. She says she’s applying for a job — not a loan. What’s up with consent forms to access personal credit records and other private information? I had a good phone interview for a job that seems interesting. I’m visiting them [...]

In the February 22, 2011 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a reader worries about employers that bury little bombs in job offers that might get the new employee fired… I read about an employee who sued after her company fired her for refusal to sign its new two-year non-compete agreement. She was fired for “non-compliance with company policy.” [...]

Beleaguered and battered by the press, by career industry pundits and — mainly — by its own customers, TheLadders recently convened a war council to round up industry “leaders” to defend its flagging reputation. But this little event quickly blew up in TheLadders’ face, and now it’s leaving egg all over TheLadders’ leading apologists, who are beginning to look like paid [...]

One of my favorite job-advice pundits is The Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas, who calls ‘em as she sees ‘em. In her current post, Job Interview or Bake-Off?, she deals with the subject of employers who tease job hunters with interviews… if only they will do some free work first. Say what? It happens more [...]