Hi all, here is a topic that I have wanted to write about for ages and I know that others will be in the same position as me. Sometimes moral support is the name of these blogs, and I know that others will understand what I mean when they read on.
So, just briefly, I run a small business that employs about thirty staff. For one reason or another there seems to be a reasonably high turnover of staff. That is not really my issue here. The type of work is transient anyway, and the turnover is to be expected.
Does this sound like your business: A staff member leaves because his grandmother’s pet hamster dies. Now what are my choices in gathering new staff? The Australian Job network, Seek, My Career, Career One, or any number of employment websites that allow me to advertise my vacancy. Is that how you would approach this?
Before I spend a cent I will ask around within my labour force to see if anyone knows anyone and try and work my own internal network. In the past I have even gone as far as calling my competitors to see if they had applicants on their books that they didn’t need. I call mates and beg, borrow, and even thought about stealing another company’s staff! (Never did though!)
Sometimes this networking is positive, but more often than not it turns up with nothing at all. Here is where I feel ripped off: Off I go to Seek.com, Here I reluctantly write my job ad in the hope that someone decent will respond. I so hate being dictated too by the people that respond to these ads, I never feel I have a choice and it seems that often I pick the worst of a bad bunch just to fill the position.
I place my ad. For some reason, after happily taking my money, sometimes lots of it, my ad stays at the top of the list for what seems like 25 seconds. What a joke. They take my money because the monopoly that they have in the market limits my choice. I run with the biggest because I want a result. I have tried others, but they really don’t seem to be much different; in fact, they seem to be worse!
In one category of seek.com I see almost 16,000 positions advertised. Apparently your ad stays in their system for 30 days. Well, if I want to see my ranking after 19 days where am I on this colossal list? Somewhere between 13387 – 15123. Sounds like the Price is Right when it comes to searching for where I am: higher, lower, higher, lower, and when I do finally see where my ad is amongst all of this, I get to play for the showcase showdown of applicants that don’t turn up for interviews, lie on their CV’s, are not properly qualified, or are just plain hopeless time wasters.
I’m not looking for solutions because I know there are a million ways to skin this thing. I was just looking to see if there were others out there that found the same things were happening to them when it came to these employment websites?
