X-SciTech

Online Job Sites Questioned

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 2, 2002 / 10:05 AM EST / CBS

It's hard enough to find a job these days, but those relying on the online job sites are saying they're not effective.

According to the Wall Street Journal, postings are often outdated, inquiries are often not acknowledged, and jobs are often not found.

"I don't know if they're even getting my resume," complains Grace
Dubois of Connersville, Indiana. "You don't know where your resume is going. There's no acknowledgement. The Internet has made a lot of people lazy."

She also said she receives many e-mail messages about irrelevant openings. "They keep sending me engineering jobs, which I don't even ask for," said the health-care administration/nutrition consultant.

A surprising small number of jobs are filled online, reports the Journal: Just 6 percent of management-level jobs are filled through any Internet site, versus 61 percent through networking, according to a study by Drake Beam Morin, an outplacement counseling service.

A study by CareerXroads found that corporate Web sites do better than the job boards. The New Jersey consulting company found that 16 percent of the 62,000 total hires at nine big public companies were initiated that way, compared to 1.4 percent for Monster.com, 0.39 percent for Hotjobs.com, 0.29 percent for CareerBuilder and 0.27 percent for HeadHunter.net.

Mark Mehler of CareerXroads recommends using the Internet primarily to find information. "In the majority of corporations in America, employee referrals are the No. 1 source of how people get hired," he said.

Job board executives say job seekers are not as patient as they used to be, and it's more a function of the weakened economy than a problem with the sites.