Monster Measures

What did I learn from my 4 hour oblivion on Monster?   The obvious – there are TOO MANY JOBS!

A few more insights:

The good…

• While it was not what I was looking for, the search turned up a really good list of the companies that were hiring compliance people and IT Auditors. 
• It also gave an ad hoc look at recruiters, and types of companies.   For example, one 15 item page of jobs had 5 banks, 2 insurance companies, and three others – the women’s apparel and beauty appliance requests for compliance jobs were a surprise. 
• There were ‘search tips’ available.   They were pretty standard, but there were some interesting Venn diagrams for the search impaired.

The bad…..

• There are two types of searches – Standard and New.   While the standard went off the meter at 1000+ jobs, the ‘new’ search came in at 145.   Does Monster tell you why you should use one or the other?   Not that I could tell.   My question:  What jobs am I missing with the new search?  

• The search wasn’t consistent.  The numbers that came up with the same search keys were not always the same.   It was not off by a few (which I expected),  but sometimes by significant amounts.

• Monster will trim the number of jobs per page to your request.   The number on the page does NOT include the ‘Featured Jobs’ nor the straight out ads for other things – like training classes. 

A comment on the ‘Featured Jobs’:   I found my keyword ‘compliance’  could mean a whole host of things!  I saw a number of ‘Featured Jobs’ that were NOT what I was looking for (An Avon lady?)  

The ugly….

• Monster has annoying ads.  My pet peeve – a bar ad across the bottom that pops up just when you want to read the job at the bottom of the page.   Yes, I know that is how Monster pays for its keep.   You can’t even blow them away…makes me want to boycott the advertiser.

• Second there was the little pop-up window that kept telling me I couldn’t use ‘this feature’ unless I signed in.  I didn’t.  The search still worked.   After a while it gave up and this disappeared.

Next steps when and if I come back to Monster:

• Can I get a search (probably based on posting date) that will send jobs automatically to my email without blowing it totally away because the numbers are astronomical?

• Take another look at the two types of searches.