The Bouncing URL

The bouncing URL gets worse as you look at recruiting and company sites, so I went back to check exactly what WAS out there on each of the major job boards I looked at so far.

Here’s the lowdown…

On Monster, Career Builder and DICE the URL says that you stay on their board at least while you’re looking at the initial listing.  Note: I’m pretty sure that if a company wanted to they could fake the URL, but I doubt that they’ll take the time to do it.

So you’ll remain on Monster etc. and not fly away to places unknown - at least up to the point where you are just looking at the listing.   What happens when you hit the ‘apply’ button is another story.

On each of these boards companies seem to have the option of filling in various summary items.  They vary.   Some are standard – location, type of employment and some ID to identify the job.  The other options vary from board to board – education, salary, travel requirements.   While the format is often similar within a board, companies seem to have the option of using as many or as few of the options as they choose to fill in.  (Should I be suspicious of a salary range that says zero?)  

DICE exhibits its ‘tech’ basis with one very nice feature – your search keyword is highlighted in the job listing.   So you can see if your favorite key is a ‘job must’ or just mentioned in passing. 

Indeed is the odd man out.  As an ‘accumulator’ when you select a job from Indeed you ARE whisked away.   In this case another window opens and voila!..you are on the company website or on another board.   This is a place where URL watching is not only interesting,  but necessary.  It’s probable that you’ll pick up an Indeed listing, bounce to another for the listing and bounce again if you hit apply. 

I’m worn out just thinking about it!