How to find a job when career Web sites fail users

Career Web sites are horrible. That’s pretty much what the analyst firm Forrester discovered when it examined major career sites like Monster and Dice.com.

Twelve career sites included in a new study were plagued by “missing content and functions, flawed navigation flows, illegible text and poor use of space, as well as poor error handling and missing privacy and security policies,” Network World's Denise Dubie reported in April.

That last bit – missing privacy and security policies – should be of concern to IT pros looking for work, says Deborah Walker of Alpha Advantage, which helps job seekers write resumes and find employment.

One of Walker’s clients was fired after his employers saw his resume on Monster, she said. “If a person’s trying to conduct a job search and they’re already employed, it’s really hard to maintain confidentiality,” Walker says.

Anonymous resume posting isn’t a common feature, so Walker advises clients to simply avoid posting their resumes online if they fear reprisal at work.

While that solves the problem of privacy policies that are unfavorable to job seekers, it doesn’t get to the main issue IT workers care about: finding bigger and better jobs. Employers have the upper hand in today’s economy because job seekers are more numerous than available jobs. Bad career Web sites only add to the difficulty of not only finding an appropriate job but differentiating oneself from the myriad of other applicants a job seeker is competing against, she says.

Walker has several pieces of advice for IT job seekers and other technology workers, whom she says have trouble presenting themselves in a positive light.

IT workers generally view their accomplishments “in a vacuum, without being able to relate them to what the company was trying to accomplish,” and it shows in their resumes, she says.

The mistake is viewing resumes as strictly a work history. While they certainly are that, a good resume is also an advertisement. “I think that’s where IT people really have a problem,” Walker says.