Overview of Monster.com:
Monster is one of the big two of Job Boards (CareerBuilder is the other). It is truly a full service job board, in that it not only allows you to search jobs on it, it also gives you tools for organizing your activities. Some of their most useful features include advice, training, salary data and even discussion groups and forums. Monster serves not only the United States, but all of the major developed countries. Monster used to boast that they had over 5 million job listings, but they have retracted that claim probably because of the poor economy.
How to Join:
Monster is free to browse, and then free to join. Once you sign up, it is easy to navigate and figure out where things are. Upon joining, you get an opportunity to post your personal profile, up to five resumes for the various job categories you intend to apply for, and even cover letters. You can also sign up for weekly updates, which we recommend you do. You can customize your degree of privacy, which could be important if you are currently employed.
The Good:
Monster’s basic services are completely free to the job seeker. These include excellent job search organizing and tracking tools. While they sell premium services such as resume writing, most of their income is derived from advertising, fees for job posting and recruiters. This eliminates the need for those annoying pop-ups urging you to upgrade your membership or buy services or seminars that you really don’t need. Once you sign up, you can get a weekly email alert of jobs that Monster says are good matches for your profile. Your profile and resume are visible to many thousands of recruiters and hiring managers, so you will get emails from recruiters inquiring about your availability for a position they are looking to fill. You can personalize everything to a high degree, giving you the flexibility to define the amount of visibility you desire.
The Not So Good:
The biggest issue we have with Monster, is, we don’t know anyone who ever found a job by simply responding directly to a posting on this Board. We do know a number people who have been contacted by recruiters who found them through Monster, and have found work that way. The emails that you get from recruiters are usually mass emails, sent to thousands of people, whose profiles have similar keywords to yours, so the quality of the matches can vary greatly. We also find it very annoying when receive a posting that looks interesting in the weekly updates, and after clicking on it to learn more, you have to navigate through pages that try to sell you training or other services. Finding the next button to continue through to the job posting is deliberately designed to be a challenge. The organizing and tracking tools they offer are great, but they are only usable for your job search activities while you are on Monster, and therefore they are not sufficient for organizing your entire job search.
OEC Ratings of Monster.com:
Cost: 4
- It’s free for job seekers, lots of good tools
Quality of Listings: 1
- Most real job openings do not appear on Monster
Ease of Use: 5
- It is intuitive and easy to use
Friendliness to Mature Workers: 3
- While it offers no special features for mature, experienced workers, it doesn’t have anything that would discourage mature workers from using it, either
Return on Investment: 2
- Although it is free, there are much better ways to spend your job search time
Overall: 3.0 out of 5
Our Final Thoughts on Monster.com:
We whole-heartedly recommend that you post a profile and resume(s) on Monster, especially if you are currently out of work. It will not hurt. You will get weekly job posting updates. The email contacts from recruiters may lead to something. More importantly though, is that you should not make the mistake of spending all your time looking at Monster and all the other large job boards, because while you may think you are looking for work, the likelihood of success with this job search strategy is very small.