The truth about resume databanks and resume blasting services

Losing your job can be a very frightening proposition. This is an event that I truly wish no one ever had to experience. But, like other unpleasant things in life, it happens. If you found yourself unemployed, your first instinct may be to sign up for one of the many resume blasting services or upload your resume to one of the massive resume databanks. As a fellow rat in the rat race I would suggest you reconsider these options. Here's why:

Resume blasting services - These services charge you a fee to blast your resume to thousands of headhunters and recruiters. They give you the impression that yours is the only resume being broadcasted. The fact is, they broadcast thousands of resumes just like yours. Nowadays, these recruiters are forced fed resumes on a daily basis. Now think to your-self, how many of these resumes do they actually have time to review? If your resume does not appear at the top of the blasting list, chances are the next batch will arrive in the recruiter's inbox before he or she even gets to it.

Resume Databanks - These sites are simply interested in stockpiling as many resumes as they possibly can in their database. The more resumes they have the more they can charge headhunters and corporate recruiters for the privilege of accessing this information. Service to you, the individual, is an afterthought. Sure they offer resume enhancement and other services to pull that additional $19-$30 per month out of your bank account, but this is not a wise investment when your resume is still lost amongst the millions of other resumes vying for attention.

On-Line career services play both sides of the coin to their advantage: Let's go back about ten years.

Coin side #1: Dot Com start-ups and other businesses needing skilled employees paid a fee to access the resume databanks.

During the big Internet boom of the early 90's there was a severe shortage of Information Technology workers. Dot Com businesses were popping up everywhere and devouring all the IT resources. IT professionals, who, in some instances, were coming out of college earning six-figure incomes with nominal experience. These Dot Com companies could not find enough skilled workers. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to create a searchable resume repository that talent-starving Dot Com start-ups and corporations would subscribe to and search for talent. This started the on-line career service movement. A resume was worth much more than its weight in gold back then. How did the databanks get these IT professionals to deposit their resumes (gold) into their banks? By telling them that they could earn 10-30K more per year. These high paying jobs where also all over the classifieds. Many rushed to post their resume. It was like the California gold rush all over again. There were stories of resumes being posted and the owner receiving 5 to 10 calls within hours of posting. People's emails were flooded with contacts from recruiters and headhunters. Many professionals were looking for that additional 10K per year. It was truly a job seekers market.

Fast-forward seven years.

Highflying Dot Com companies have folded, one after another, leaving thousands of IT professionals out of work. Now the corporations and even government agencies, who just few short years before couldn't even hope to recruit top IT talent, are being flooded with so many resumes that they had to create special systems to process them all. Now all of the sudden there is an over-abundance of IT skills flooding the market. There were basically no more Dot Com start-ups around to search the databanks. The corporations and government agencies were receiving more resumes than they could handle and had no real need to search these databanks anymore. This started the decline of the resume databanks as an effective job search tool. Moving forward several more years to the present.

As the corporations and government agencies began to absorb some of these displaced IT workers, the unthinkable happened. The economy began to tank. Budgets were being cut and jobs were being lost. Another interesting phenomena occurred about the same time that further exacerbated an already bad job situation. In an effort to remain globally competitive [so they claimed], corporations began using companies overseas that had access to a pool of very-low wage technology and customer service workers. Welcome in the outsourcing phenomena. This time IT professionals were not the only casualties. Financial services and customer service professionals were hit very hard by this latest upheaval in the job market. Now we have other Americans out of work due to outsourcing along with the IT professionals.

Here is the third and final phenomenon that we are currently observing. Back in the early 90's headhunters and recruiters signed up by the droves to access these massive resume databanks in search of professionals. Do you think this information was discarded after the dot com bubble burst? The pendulum simply swung in the other direction. Now, instead of resumes being the gold, it is now the list of corporate recruiters and headhunters. Of course the big players in this whole On-line careers services game came up with the perfect way to exploit this. They knew that most of these out-of-work professionals would pay a small premium to be able to send their resume to as many headhunters and recruiters as possible, so they created the resume blasting service. The headline reads, "Put Your Resume In Front of Thousands of Recruiters With a Single Click!" They knew that this type of service wouldn't be effective for the majority of job seekers. Their thinking is that they are offering the job seeker something [no matter how ineffective], and something is better than nothing. Once again they were right and they hit pay dirt. Just like the headhunters and recruiters in the early 90's, unemployed professionals by the droves are paying for these blasting services today, expecting their phones to ring off the hook for interviews. Of course these phone calls, in most cases, never materialized.

Coin side #2: The individual job hunters seeking to have their resumes delivered to headhunters and recruiters are paying a small premium for the resume blasting service.

As you can see, both of these shifts in the job market have been a win-win situation for the big players in the on-line career services industry. I'm not going to sit here and paint a utopic scene of the job market. The fact is that there are jobs out there. The only difference is that there are more candidates competing for the same jobs. I give this advice to today's job seeker. Do not follow the crowd, for your financial sake. Do not follow the crowd. Take it upon yourself to take control of your job search efforts. Many unemployed professionals make the big mistake of allowing themselves to be lumped together with hundreds of other candidates, only to be weeded through and eliminated by recruiters and managers like bad apples until the final ones have been chosen. Remember, you're a professional and companies need your skills. They have to see your resume and at the same time see you, the person behind the resume.

No matter how badly some may want to believe that these resume databanks and blasting services is the answer to their unemployment, the fact still remains that these over used services produce marginal results, if any, for the majority of people that use them.

Not just a resume strategy - approach a job opportunity as a person and not just a resume. Too often, job seekers let their resume arrive at a job opportunity without them. This is the scenario when they use the resume databanks and resume blasting services. You and your resume are a team and should arrive at an opportunity together. It's easy for a recruiter or headhunter to discard resumes from a list that they receive every day. It's not nearly as easy to turn away an actual person who's reaching out to you. Did you know that recruiters and headhunters receive so many resumes that they actually look for reasons to reject them: resume heading not in bold, no e-mail address, no references listed, or any other criteria they decide to set for that day. As I said in the heading for this paragraph, approach a job opportunity as a person and not just a resume.

Arriving with your resume means personally sending the recruiter your resume and making follow-up phone calls to establish a rapport. How can you make a follow-up call when a resume databank won't tell you who viewed your resume or a resume blasting service won't tell you to whom they blasted your resume?

Quoting a line from one of my favorite movies, "Forrest

Gump": And that's all I got to say about thaat.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Reginald Wheat is a software architect. He has successfully launched an Internet service to specifically help individuals take control of their job search efforts and easily implement the above "Not Just a Resume" employment search strategy. Find out more by visiting