Truth In Advertising

I get this lovely email from Job.com today. “617 headhunters want your resume”

Yeah, right.  What it means is Job.com wants your $49.99 (minimum) to buy a pig in a poke.

Or you can get automatic redistribution in 30 days for another $29.00 (the $49.99 only covers sending out your resume once), a confidential email box for $19.00, a list of the companies your resume is sent to for $19.00, and a platinum resume (this moves you to the top of the list, and it costs $25.00 for one month).

The really irritating thing is that the email doesn’t mention prices at all.  You only get that information when clicking a link in the email, and they prepopulate the invoice with all your job fields and your locations (if I hadn’t deleted 2 of the job fields, my basic distribution would have cost $69.99)

A minor irritation is that the location for the resume distribution (and the jobs shown to me on the site) is not closely targeted.

In my case, its the entire state of Oregon……hmmmm, I do believe I told this site when I signed up that I was not interested in relocating yet most of the jobs shown to me are not in the central Oregon area.

The site states the jobs I am being matched to are in central Oregon but 9 out of 10 results are outside the true central Oregon area (Bend, Sisters, La Pine, Redmond, Prineville, Madras).

Somebody at Job.com needs to look at a map of Oregon and figure out where these places they say are central Oregon are truly located.

So the logical assumption is that I would be spending $50.00 to send my resume to employers in Portland, Eugene, Salem, Springfield, Jacksonville, Ashland, Oakland, La Grande, Pendleton, Baker City, Klamath Falls, Medford, Burns, Hood River, The Dalles, and so on and so forth.  That would be a complete and total waste of money on my part, since again I am not interested in relocating to any of these areas.

Its a real pity that Job.com feels the need to soak at least some of their customers for a totally useless service, as this has colored my opinion of their entire site (and not in a favorable way).

I’d also suggest that perhaps they should consider the fact that not all of their members are dumb enough to cough up a minimum of $50.00 without researching what their money (a reasonable chunk of change in this economy)  actually gets them.

1) resumes sent but to whom (you have to pay another $19.00 to find that out).

What happens if your resume gets sent to a headhunter for the company you currently work for?

What happens if your resume gets sent to a headhunter for a company you left (willingly or unwillingly)?

What happens if your resume gets sent to a headhunter for a company you don’t want to work for in the first place?

2) resumes sent to employers that aren’t even in your desired geographical location (you can’t even target to a specific location, only to a specific state)

Even if I had the money, $50.00 for the basic distribution would pay for a whole lot of postage to mail my resume to people who might actually hire me.

That $50.00 would also pay for a lot of copies of my resumes to be made at any copy shop in central Oregon, never mind the fact that I apply for 9 out of 10 given jobs online, by fax machine, or by email.

Am I impressed with Job.com? I DON’T THINK SO!!