Always when I first speak to a new job seeker, they are set on action that they think will result in them getting employed quickly. Most often their first action - after dusting off an old CV - is to upload it to a jobs board. Often they have heard of a friend who got employed quickly by just uploading their CV to a jobs board, so they think: why don't I do the same, but to more jobs boards?
As a recruiter and CV Writer, I just want to give you an insight as to why you just lengthened your job search, and how by using free available tools - including your own professional society and LinkedIn - that you can get employed quicker.
Job Boards are a business
Jobs boards as I have written before seem like the modern day panacea to the job seeker. Simply you upload your CV in the morning, and by that afternoon you have a new job. Oh, I wish it were that simple! The average job application via a job board stands between an 8% and 12% success ratio. Further, once you have uploaded your CV/resume, the job boards owner make it very difficult for your to remove. The reason for this is that simply you have upload an asset for them that they can sell to the recruiters.
On average, when a jobs boards comes up for sale, the jobs board as a business is worth about half its turnover as a sell-on price, while additionally each CV/resume in the database is worth at least £1/$1 up to to £10/$15, depending o the age of the database and the market that the jobs board addressed.
Secondly, the job board owners uses upload CV/resume numbers as a way to sell the need for employers and recruiters to place their adverts on that jobs board. While we have 10,000 CV/resume was the mid-market, that's now small when even the local systems in the UK brag of a million candidate CV databases.
The Recruiting business
When I ask job seekers how they think that the recruiting and head hunting business works, most do not have a clue. When you consider still that at least a third to possibly a half of all jobs are dealt with via recruiters, that's not going to speed your job search success.
Recruiters from the mid-market and below, only make money when they make a placement. The employer customer may well pay up to a one third fee retainer to a head hunter, but most recruiters work via a no win (placement)/no fee contract arrangement. That means that each six to eight week brief is in effect a gamble: can you find the right candidate quicker than your competitors, which include the internal HR team. Secondly, although you may find that right candidate, what guarantee's that only you find that job seeker? If another recruiter or the internal HR team have that CV on their existing database, then your fee could be halved at best.
Why recruiters and employers like LinkedIn
The problem with Jobs Boards is that they only list the same job seekers that as an employer or a recruiter you have probably seen at least twice or more already. For an employer, if you have rejected them already, why bother paying to see them again? For a recruiter, why go where your competition is going? Plus there's always the "registered with three recruiters = rejected" rule, which rejects anyone who looks like a desperate job seeker.
Head hunters and retained recruiters hence often use contacts and systems of the professional societies, knowing that they give them access to the whole of the work force in that sector. The problem in gaining access to such databases is that rightly they are well protected legally and ethically, and hence only the top five percent of candidates are likely to be found that way, through their demonstrated expertise in writing articles and guidance in the publicly accessible professional publications.
Using social media sites, and particularly sites like LinkedIn and Doostang, means that you access not only active job seekers, but also the other two thirds of the work force, who could have better skills and not be listed everywhere your competition is looking. While Doostang is not accessible to Google, the use of boolean search strings in the past few years now allow recruiters to whittle down 100million business person database of LinkedIn to just a few suitable job applicants. Even using LinkedIn's own search facility allows the best optimised LinkedIn profiles to dominate the subsequent search results.
LinkedIn also comes with an added bonus: demonstration of skills. Although you may be found through you profile, the fact that you have demonstratable recommendations from your piers and have answered professional questions through Answers shows a greater depth of capability that someone who just uploaded a CV/resume to a jobs board, and whom you now have to find such demonstration of capability elsewhere.
If you understand the basics of how the jobs board business works, and how recruiters earn their money, then it is easy to understand why improving your profile at LinkedIn will get you employed quicker than uploading your CV/resume to even one jobs board. While the job seeking phase of any job search is about activity, never since the invention of the village notice board has it been more important where your post your CV/resume, and how your demonstrate your proven value, in relationship to how quickly you are employed in the age of the internet.
