Regards the Mystery Companies, I have some extra point for you here. Yes you are right one of the reasons is for fear that you’ll just apply directly to that company. Second reason is the recruiter did sign confidentially agreement with the client. The client requested the search to be kept confidential due to several reasons: 1. they are looking for some one to replace the existing staff. 2. They are doing search for the talent available in the market. 3. They are looking for key person in the company and this is highly confidentially. Third reason is the client would like the recruiter to manage the candidate and less hassle for them. What is your right then? If you are comfortable with the recruiter and you trust him / her. You may request your resume send to the “Mystery Companies” as blind resume. You may also tell recruiter directly that you are not keen to be approach for position based in company A, B, C and etc.

They don’t give out client names b/c a candidate can go around the recruiter and apply online after talking to the recruiter. Typically, recruiters screen candidates and get them to the hiring manager. Hiring managers just look at these resumes, then check to see if that person has been in contact with the company before. If they see that the candidate applied after the recruiter sent the resume, there is a conflict of interest. Sometimes they will not pursue a candidate b/c of a contract. I know personally of several lawsuits that have been won by agencies when a client hired someone on these terms.

Markups are typically 20% for direct hire, not 30%. Contract is more complicated as the contractor is on the employment agency’s insurance.

Companies ask you to apply on their website, because they have some software vendor that sold them some kind of staffing database program that is supposed to make their life easier. Instead of manually entering your information themselves, they would rather you do it.

We are just as lazy as you.

BTW, the deal with asking for “desired salary” has nothing to do with one’s personal financial wish list. What they’re really asking for is your self-assessment of your career development level, based on your own experience, as well as salary level reference sites. The supposition is that the level you’ve been paid at recently is somewhat indicative of your overall career level. The prospective employer also uses that information to make sure the prospective employee fits into their current budget profile.

When they announced they were upgrading their site I thought to myself “great”. Well, this new site SUCKS as well!! On the monster.com homepage there is a box to enter in the city that you are looking for – I can’t even type in the city. After typing one letter I have to click back into the box to type the second letter, then click back in to type the third letter, then the 4th…….I live in Indianapolis, so as you can imagine this takes for ever……DOES ANYONE EVER TEST THESE SITES BEFORE THEY GO LIVE??? This is absolutely ridiculous! FIX YOUR SITE MONSTER!!!!!!!

I realize this post is very outdated but I came across your comments while conducting research for my new site http://www.hireflyer.com. I’ve been a recruiter for the past 15 years and have been on both sides of the job board fence as a job poster and job seeker. Trust me when I tell you this, it’s just as frustrating as a job poster to utilize a job boards posting application. We’ve known this for quite some time, yet it’s only been recently that companies have started to simplify the process for both users. I spent 6 months gathering data and collecting marketing surveys from recruiters and job seekers and the number one complaint from both sides is the fact that most job boards are too complicated and non-user friendly. So what did I do with this info? I spent months going through old notebooks, scrapes of paper and sketches on used napkins of my “ideal” job board; A job board developed by a recruiter with years of experience as a user on both sides. I wrote a business plan, found Private Equity Investors and am now launching HireFlyer.com in April ’09. HireFlyer is the simplest web-based job board – for passive and active job seekers and recruiters- on the internet. No pop-up ads, no resumes hosted, no nonsense. Just jobs! Please feel free to visit our pre-beta “coming soon” site at http://www.hireflyer.com. I hope you were successful in finding another position and are well and gainfully employed doing what you love.

Bob Davis
HireFlyer.com

I’ve always had the best luck on Craigslist. There’s surprisingly not much spam and the recruiters that have contacted me through CL have actually been pretty helpful.

Thing interesting consultant on staff, I know some people get when they rejected a company or directly to the same or a better offer if they have a personal agent.

I believe people download resumes off monster.com and use them to pitch for different jobs as in head hunters using resumes to try to find the right person. The idea is good specially for a person on job but the ones already on job can often do get really annoyed!

Be sure to set your resume to Private, so that the only people who see it are the people you sent it too. Also, create and use a dummy yahoo or gmail account that you can just delete or forget about once you have found a new job.

It’s not the greatest source for job listings, but it’s easy to use. Most of the spammy emails have little or nothing to do with Monster.com. Lots of times they say they found your resume on “the internet” or “a job board” or even “the job board”… when actually they’re just on a fishing expedition. They merely Googled you and found your resume somewhere… and sometimes they didn’t even go to that much trouble first.

Also, there are some recruiters who are hired just to establish that no one is in fact qualified for the job (so they can bring in a H-1 visa holder, for example.) These folks are indeed paying Monster.com subscribers, but they are not using the service in the way it was intended.

Monster.com isn’t all that terrible. Even if the vast majority of the listings are duds, the site does give you some ideas about what jobs exist in your area. It’s pretty easy to use and once in a while an actual contact will result. (I even got a solid unsolicited contact from a regular hiring manager once: my monster.com posting said I used to work at “Toys R Us” and that I knew Spanish. Toys R Us needed someone with past Toys R Us experience who spoke Portugese, for complicated reasons I don’t need to go into… there was no way to filter for Portugese speakers, but they could do so for Spanish speakers.)