I recently attended the International Association of Employment Websites (IAEWS) Annual Congress in San Diego.  Yes – there is a professional association of all the job boards in the World….some 10,0000 of them.  And we meet 1-2x per year to discuss issues and opportunities facing our industry. 

At the conference there was a lot of buzz about Social Resumes.  So, what the heck is a social resume?  I asked the same question.  How is it different than a standard resume?  What makes it social?  Does this cross privacy lines? 

The answers I heard were…a resume that not only focuses on experience and education, but also on hobbies, philanthropic interests, blog posts, social interests/networks, etc.  Supposedly many more employers are adapting the whole work-live concept and want to know the social networks that their future employees run in.  I find this very interesting and will continue to blog on it as I discover more.  Reality is, employers are discovering a lot of this as they research candidates on Facebook.  A social resume will just expect the candidate to be more transparent.

Scammers and con artists are everywhere.  They prey upon job boards as they know that most collect a rich amount of data on their jobseekers.  Imagine what an identity thief can accomplish with someones resume.  They have their entire history including past employment, education and references.

Now imagine what that data thief can do with all of that information AND a social security number.  Pretty scary.  Well, Aetna Insurance in Connecticut was the victim of another security breach.  Someone broke into their Applicant Tracking System and extracted full profiles on 450,000 job applicants, 65,000 of which had social security numbers attached. 

Unfortunately Aetna was recently sued for this security breach and is mitigating their risk by providing free credit monitoring to the 65,000 folks who had entrusted the applicant tracking system with their social security number.

When economies soften and marketplaces change, it is intriguing to watch business models shift. 

In the ‘recruitment advertising space’ – there are only two parties involved in the transaction:  the jobseeker and the employer.  As unemployment levels rise, the revenues made from employers decrease as the employers do not need to advertise as much.  In turn, many advertising outlets shift some focus to making money from the jobseeker. 

A recent example is JobFox.  Cheezhead recently blogged on Jobfox’s certification offering. It is an interesting read.

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RecruitingNevada.com is one of the only job boards that does not sell resume database access.  Why?  For a few reasons:

• We do not feel it is our information to sell.  If the jobseeker wants an employer to have their information, they can provide it.
• We do not want to encourage unnecessary turnover.  Third party recruiter prey upon resume databases.
• We want to protect our jobseekers from identity theft.  Yes – there are scam artists on the Internet

A great blog post by Vanessa Dennis of Cheezhead.com, titled ex-con uncovers vulnerable job seekers, paints the picture.  This experiment was a simple phishing expedition using a fake job posting to get job seekers to apply for a job. 

Now, imagine if an identity thief just bought unlimited resume database access?

Most successful businesses build relationships based around trust.  In the job-board world, there is an inherent trust between the employment website and the employer, as well as the employment website and the jobseeker.  

Violate that trust and problems arise.

Well, a locally operated job-board, lasvegasjobs.com, recently changed its’ policy on resume database access.  The resume database was once protected and private, a policy I helped establish for them back in the 1990s.  Today, the database is now For Sale to anyone willing to pay for it.  This recent policy change was made without permission of the jobseeker or the employer. 

As a matter of fact, lasvegasjobs.com still markets the resume posting process as being ‘confidential’ for the jobseeker.   I imagine new advertisers are being told about resume database access (as it is being sold) but I would bet that past advertisers were never notified. 

With lasvegasjobs’ new product of “resume database access,” candidate information will be sold to anyone willing to pay for it. This move is being made at a time where most leaders in the industry are eliminating resume databases all together. 

This decision is bad for both jobseekers and employers. 

• The jobseeker who submitted his/her resume in confidence (thinking that they were in control of their private information) will now be exposed to data thieves, ruthless third party recruiters and unsolicited spam caused by the unrestricted exposure. 
• The employers (especially past advertisers) will have all of their past job applicants accessible to anyone who buys access.

Let me share a real example:

St. Rose Dominican Hospitals and Nevada Cancer Institute were once advertisers on lasvegasjobs.com.  One of the features that was appealing to the two health care companies was the fact that no one could access the resume database.  This assured them that their great jobs,could attract great candidates - and their competitors would not have access to them by purchasing resume database access. 

It is common practice for a shrewd recruiter to only post a single job to gain access to the entire resume database.  Lasvegasjobs.com touts the ability to search by criteria.  That would include past employers.  So if a recruiter was looking for past registered nurses who had PICU experience at a particular hospital, they could easily search that criteria.  This would not be possible without access. 

In the marketing piece below, lasvegasjobs promotes the fact that they have 9,000 nurse resumes.  These, more than likely, are the applicants of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals and Nevada Cancer Institute .  These resumes would not have been uploaded to the website if these two great employers did not trust lasvegasjobs.com and their promise not to sell resume database access.  But, now that both are no longer advertisers, lasvegasjobs.com is selling all of their applicants information to anyone who wants to purchase access. 

Unethical?  I would say so.  Immoral?  Absolutely. 

(Click On Below Image to View Larger)

I forgot that I had written “Part II” to a post back in March 2008.  After I wrote yesterday’s post on CollegeRecruiter.com eliminating resume database access, I discovered this:  (Caution:  Sarcasm follows.  Enjoy)  

Where do we find talent many times?  In the resume databases that sell access. Here are some examples:

Career Builder
Post your ad to attract more resumes and search the resumes of all your competitors applicants all for one low price of $988.  What a bargain.  Until you realize you are just driving up the overall ‘cost of labor.’

Monster
Not much different than Career Builder, but get 2 weeks to search all the resumes within 100 miles of your business to make sure you only effect your competitor, who will ultimately come back to offer a higher wage and probably a sign-on bonus to steal your talent.

HotJobs 
A little more discreet.  They don’t openly market this service, but they also have an unfair advantage because they also aggregate jobs from multiple sites (including ours) to be able to deliver more jobs….to collect more resumes…. to sell more access.

All of their business models of selling resume database access make your job postings even more attractive. Without your jobs, there are not candidates.  Without candidates, there are no resumes to sell.

The business model for resume searching is transparent:

• You pay an average of $300-400 to post your job.
• Your job posting attracts new candidates to leave their resume behind.
• The job board sells those resumes to your competitor.

When did an advertising outlet assume the rights to own the data (resume) of your applicants?  What happened to the “purpose” of an advertising outlet to just ‘introduce’ jobseekers to employers and vice-versa.  In the past when a jobseeker saw an ad, opted in and either emailed or faxed his or her resume to an employer, that advertising outlet fulfilled their job.

Today it is different, the job boards feel they should ‘own’ the jobseeker.  The sad part is, they can only ‘own’ those candidates by your great jobs.  After that great candidate creates an account, uploading a resume, to apply to your job….. the job board can then make more money selling that resume many times over. 

It doesn’t sound right, does it? 

Another job board joined the “Socially Responsible Recruiting” ranks and have killed resume searches.

My friend Steven Rothberg, president of CollegeRecruiter.com, recently stopped allowing resume database access.  Great decision Steven!!  ERE even did a nice story on the decision.

Most know that Recruiting Nevada put a policy in place against resume search back in 1996 when the Internet was just getting started.  It was just a gut decision but, but one that I do not regret making now.  As publishers, we should not own the jobseeker’s information.  Media outlets should simply be an advertising tool to introduce jobseekers to employers.  And only if a jobseeker ‘opts in’ and expresses interest to an employer, should their information (or resume) be shared.   

Most know that I am not a fan of resume database access.  It violates job-seeker privacy.  Most job boards continue to sell it today.  And many make more money from selling access to the database than they do from selling job postings. 

I register on as many job boards as possible (as a job seeker) so I can:

1. Get the entire job seeker experience offered. This helps us become better.
2. See the quality of jobs posted on that job board, and;
3. See if that job boards sell my information, and;
4. To whom that job board sells my information to.

The below is an email I just received.  The sender got my email address from one of the job boards I registered for (I won’t disclose which).  Whether the job board sold my data in the form of a list, or sold access to their resume database, allowing the spammer to grab my email address from my resume - this access is clearly wrong. 

(Click to enlarge)

I did not wish to be solicited by some company with a fraudulent job offer, who clearly does not have any control of the English language.  Thanks for interrupting my day and violating my privacy.  If I were a real job seeker, I would not trust this job board again. 

Wow…. I am a big fan of Seth Godin but his most recent blog post is sure to cause some controversy in the recruiting world. 

Seth even acknowledges it with this line:

This is controversial, but here goes: I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.

I don’t think I can agree with Seth on this.  Although I do not put too much emphasis on resumes, they are usually what opens up the conversation. 

Let me know your thoughts. 

Doug

doug@recruitingnevada123.com  (remove the 123 – this is here to block spammers)

Today, many job boards make more money from selling resume database access than they do fulfilling their primary business role ….posting jobs.   As much as resume database access may make sense in established markets, it does not make sense for Nevada. 

Why do I say this?  Nevada has been the fastest growing state for 20 years now. 

We do not have the established, skilled and deep talent pools of mature markets.  Therefore, we must recruit talent to our area, rather than recruit talent from our neighbors.  

If we recruit talent from our neighbors, they in turn, must react to fill their newly created vacancies.  They typically do so by recruiting talent from another neighbor, who in turn duplicates the same action (or reaction).  You see where this is going……..

Wages go up.  Sign-on bonuses become more prevalent.  Retention levels suffer.  And ultimately it hurts the entire industry and has a long term impact on the cost of labor. All along the way deteriorating the service we are delivering our customers.

And at the end of the day, the problem still exists.  There is still a shortage.  And employers are then paying higher wages while creating an even fiercer competitive landscape based on wages – not loyalty.

Access to local resume databases instigates this problem.  Why?  Because ABC company can go in and search for all resumes with DEF Company experience, just to offer them $.50 more per hour.  And then DEF does the same, and so forth. 

And how do those resumes get entered into the database to begin with?  From applicants responding to paid job postings from ABC and DEF Companies.  In essence, employers are paying to create the resume databases their neighbors are feeding from.