Jobsearch Revisited

I am still looking! Lately, I have been searching though area corporation's websites, site by site, because I feel the job postings on these sites may be more authentic. Fellow job searchers will certainly understand for it is getting increasingly harder to tell which postings on the major job boards (i.e. Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs) or aggregators (i.e Indeed, SimplyHired) are valid.

Like aging house listings, many job posts are removed and re-listed so as to appear new even though they have been out there for a while. Many of these are just fishing expeditions, have to be, because there is no other explanation for how a company can fail to find suitable candidates after many months especially when a listing is for a fairly standard position. Obviously, if they are looking for a highly skilled specialist then we can understand they are looking for a needle in a haystack. But, if they keep posting certain jobs for which we know applicants abound, then what is up with that? Not to mention that there is so much repetition as multiple headhunters/recruiters post the same listings looking for heads.

Employment recruiters must have really taken off during the boom years that even in this distressed job market, there still are so many. How can we pledge allegiance to any one recruiter with so much cutthroat competition? We all know that all recruiters are not built alike. We want to be talking to the agency that has a solid relationship with the hiring manager at a prospective employer.

But then again, a recruiter is a negative if you can apply for a job directly through an employer's website and have just as much a chance as making a connection as they do. Besides, many of these employer sites expressly state their unwillingness to work with third parties. Unless, of course, you are working with the employer-sanctioned recruiter in which case you know you have a good lead in. The bottom line is recruiters cost a company money and how many of them would be willing to pay when there are so many job seekers?

As we all know by now, the big buzzwords have been network, network, network. Well, I know a lot of people who really have been exercising that option and they are no further along than I am. The job picture is just as certain as Caterpillar's announcement today that they will be hiring and firing; re-hiring 550 previously separated workers but firing 2,500 others. Alas...