Online job postings ruin the market

[Riddil]

I just saw Scopulus Argentarius' post, and off of some of the advice in the thread it really got me thinking (b/c I've been considering hopping careers as well)...

Online job sites are actually the worst thing you could do for the industry.

First, think about the way that job-searching worked in the past... you either checked the want-ads, or you walked into a business and asked if they had any openings. For any single position you'd be up against maybe 10-20 people at best. All you have to do is be one of the top 2-4 applicants, and you'll get a shot at the job.

But now since everyone has a clear view of every job posting, you're no longer competing against 10-20 other people. You're competing against 1000 other applicants.

Now that's *great* for the business. They'll be able to search through 1000 resume's and pick out the top 5-10 for follow-up interviews. In the "good old days" you only had to worry about being in the 'top-of-the-class' out of a few people. Given enough time searching the market you would be guaranteed to land a position at some point just b/c eventually you're bound to fall in the top of the applicant class.

But with 1000 people applying... even if you're in the top 10%... you're still only #100 out of 1000. The chances of being the top of your applicant class is much, much smaller.

And besides, the true top resume's are likely going to be from the people are over-qualified for the position, but they're applying for it simply b/c they've reached a point where they need a job, any job, even if they're over-qualified.

So now you're not just going up against your peers... but against people much more qualified than you. So after a few weeks/months of fruitless searching, what do you do? You start to search jobs that you are over-qualified for, and now you're just keeping the cycle alive by sniping jobs out from under other people, even though it's not a fitting job for you.

The end result? You spend weeks or months of frustration finding to try a job that actually fits you, but end up accepting a job that is far beneath your abilities.

Yeah. Great system.

(Of course, the system does work for highly specialized job postings where they are looking for an extreme niche... they may only receive 2-5 resume's from the whole nation, in which case the system works as it should)

Anyhow, the whole thing really pisses me off. It's not progress. We're actually going backwards.