Why Job Boards Aren't the End All-Be All for Job Seekers

Except for the purpose of research (yes, I wrote a toolkit about that purpose), I've disdained and largely decried online job boards for years. But somehow, until last night, stumbling across Nick Corcodilos' 2013 CMO.com article "Fired! Job Boards Get Their Walking Papers," I hadn't really pieced together that online job boards are basically glorified job ads in the back pages of newspapers.

I'll admit that the last time I replied to a newspaper job ad was as a 17-year-old applying for a bank teller job in 1987.

Job ads in the back of the newspaper died in the late 90s, giving way to the promise of online job ads. Monster was among the first and biggest, but even as a recruiter in New York more than a decade ago, we eschewed the monster. We used niche job boards, and we had pretty good results.

Later, as a retained search recruiter in San Francisco, we didn't even advertise jobs. Our role was to research, identify, and convince the right people that the jobs we were recruiting were right for them.

In fact, we basically ignored inbound résumés because the résumé submitted by a person actively looking for work might mean there was something wrong. And retained search doesn't play with fire. Retained search plays with certainty. So it was far better to pursue than to be pursued. 

If you're thinking about uploading your résumé to a job board, don't. For oh-so-many reasons. If you're relying entirely on job boards, don't. If you want to know why, read Nick Corcodilos' insightful and convincing article. It's as good today as it was when it was uploaded in 2013.