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Why CareerBuilder.com Sucks Sucks Sucks

Filed under rants

Jul 23

Odd that I noticed that my bruise is nearly the same color as my ipod.

OK. I admit it. I wrote the title of this post JUST for search engines to possibly find. I swore I wouldn’t take them into consideration so much, but well, some things I can’t let die.

Why does CareerBuilder Suck?

I uploaded my resume to CareerBuilder.com yesterday and was pleased to find a load of emails in my box today. I was pissed when most of them started like this

Dear Heather,

I am a District Manager for XYZ Company looking for a successful, business-minded individual with a strong desire for personal growth, career fulfillment, and financial success. Based on my initial review of your resume, I believe you may be an excellent fit for our Career Opportunity in sales with XYZ Company.

Some business marketing fluff here …

Income Potential:
Currently, each of our team members owns his or her own business and is very successful. The top team member earns over $350,000 and the average income for the team of 30 agents is over $125,000. You control your own destiny with XYZ Company. Your earning potential is unlimited!

Qualifications:
We require highly motivated individuals willing to invest their time and energy into creating a profitable and rewarding business. You must have a desire to succeed, have an independent spirit and strong work ethic.

Bla bla bla. Here’s another one:

Business Opportunity
ARE YOU READY FOR A CHANGE? DO YOU OWN YOUR LIFE?

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to “Own Your Life?”
This is what we think it means to “Own Your Life:”
When you subtract out the sleeping time, commuting time, working time and things you have to do each and every day of your life, most people don’t have more than one to two hours a day to do what they would like to do; and then, would you have the money to do it?

*sigh*

I also received a phone call this morning that went something like this

Me: “This is Heather.”

Super Happy Voice: “Hi, we are with ABC Financial Company and we found your resume on Career builder and we were super interested in your qualifications. We were wondering if you’re be interested in an interview tomorrow.”

Me: “Um, OK.”

S.H.V.: “GREAT! We have one interview spot left at 9AM tomorrow.”

Me: “One ~spot~ left? Can you tell me if the position is for Internet Marketing Manager or is it just Search Engine Optimization, or what is it?”

S.H.V.: *Puzzled silence*

Me:”Hello?”

S.H.V.: “I’m not sure what you’re asking, but we’re looking for highly motivated individuals willing to invest their time and energy into creating a profitable and rewarding business.”

Me: *sigh* “So…did you even *read* my resume? Do you know what Search Engine Marketing is?

S.H.V. (who is not so happy now, and actually a little irritated.) “Well, we have one interview position left tomorrow morning at 9AM. Can you be here?”

Me: “No. I’ve got a prior appointment.”

S.H.V. “Fine.” *Phone goes dead.*

Basically, from what I can figure out, CareerBuilder sells everyone’s email and phone number in giant lists to ‘cattle call sales type’ ventures who then spam your box with crap and waste your cell phone minutes.

No thank you.

God only knows how much more spam I will receive from this.

*The following is old school spam just for search engines. It will do absolutely nothing to the ranking of Careerbuilder, and won’t even rank for ‘Careerbuilder sucks’ but it will at least make me feel like I’m doing something to go up against ‘the man’. And, old school stuff like this is just a laugh.*

Careerbuilder sucks
Careerbuilder sucks
Careerbuilder sucks
Careerbuilder sucks

27 Comments

27 Responses to “Why CareerBuilder.com Sucks Sucks Sucks”

BillMan said on July 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm

I despise S.H.V’s. Having worked in call centers, I can tell you that they never last. They usually get escorted from the building by the nice young men in the clean white coats. Someimes, they get a new jacket of their own.
I have gotten those job offers claiming the had seen my résumé on Career Builder, HotJobs and Monster. However, I have gotten contract work that way, so I try to be careful which ones I mark as SPAM. It’s not usually too hard.
Excuse me, I need to go answer an e-mail from the Finance Minister of Outer Slobovia, who says my e-mail was chosen to receive $10 million Slobovian dollars out of the goodness of their hearts. That, with my share of Bill Gates’ splitting up his fortune, and I may not NEED that 2nd million!!
Heather said on July 24th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

I looked at my login information for CareerBuilder and noticed that I was auto opted in to “Send me every bit of spam crap from 3rd parties you can.” I thought about just leaving my resume and profile on the site, but I’m so disgusted that I deleted everything.
robert mellon said on July 20th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Career builder does suck, but so does everything else nowdays as far as the American way of hiring, trust me I know i’ve been living it for a couple years now. I spent close to 30 years building up a technical background with skills that are very hard to come by and the hardest part is getting your resume on the desk of an actual person who is the one responsabile for hiring for the position. I got so disgusted and jaded that I decided to do an experiment and post a reume for George Kastanza and see what kind of reponse he got. George basically gets the same thing I get, spam, and CareerBuilder come ons for improving your “chances” by upgrading to this or that.
D said on August 16th, 2009 at 5:51 pm

They are a horrible site because they sell your information. I hope these fake employers don’t start calling me on the phone, the spam email is bad enough. I can’t delete my account, they don’t allow it no matter how much I try. WHY hasn’t this site been shut down? They are as bad as Snopes.
Heather said on August 16th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

It is unbelievable isn’t it? But I suppose there is so much money in selling the names and information that it’ll stay up forever…
Dax said on December 24th, 2009 at 12:14 am

I can relate to all of this! But in the end, I have to say thank you to all those rude bastards because they got me to move to Sweden, meet the man of my dreams, have a fulfilling career and lead a fairytale existence.
Heather said on December 28th, 2009 at 5:09 pm

Rock on Dax. Honestly this post reminded me that you need to find the good in all situations. Thanks.
Brian said on February 22nd, 2010 at 9:28 am

I just searched through 24 (935) pages of supposed jobs in my area and I would have to say that 95% are US nationwide BS jobs that have no relevance to me or my search criteria. GET PAID $800/Day processing Dish Network Orders…..Yeah and I am the king of England. That is why I don’t go there and I took my info off.
Heather said on February 23rd, 2010 at 5:48 pm

It is amazing CareerBuilder can stay in business. Sure, they might charge to allow “companies” — and I use that term loosely — to post “jobs” but if they are pissing everyone off, they won’t have anyone to show those jobs to.
Luke said on March 8th, 2010 at 1:41 pm

Yeah, CareerBuilder is AWFUL. The emails I get for matches have nothing to do with my field. It’s a useless site.
Heather said on March 8th, 2010 at 1:49 pm

And the thing is…I hate writing that a company sucks. I really do. But CareerBuilder.com really does suck. They have such a potential to do well and they just p*ss it away.

Thanks for writing in Luke. I feel your pain.
t_man said on March 19th, 2010 at 2:04 pm

I would just like to agree with everything everyone has already said. How did people get jobs before the internet? News papers and employment agencies? seems antiquated but until a real job search site exists that’s how I’ll search.
Heather said on March 19th, 2010 at 2:23 pm

@T_man: I will say that Monster.com has been very good with my private information. I’ve been on there for years and not had any issues. You might want to check them out. (Beware the forms that are already filled out…make sure you check tiny little “No Thanks” link below the message.)
MrHacks said on May 25th, 2010 at 10:09 am

Three years later, and a recession later (Thank’s President Bush, Wall Street Bankers, and every selfish sonavabitch on the planet. DIAF!), still unemployed. Still getting offers from POLAND and from every deposed Nigerian prince. Still unemployed.

With all the other businesses that liked that were in my area, that went out of business, or moved away before I could ever gain enough experience to work for them, Why oh why isn’t CareerBuilder out of business?

I can’t trust Monster.com since they’re security sucks. Dice.com has been ineffective even though it is focused on my field of interest, and HotJobs links your Yahoo! profile to any resume you post…and let’s not forget how much Yahoo! is interested in saving your mail on their computer or any old websites that you had hosted on GeoCities to promote your work.

There needs to be a new site for jobs. I bet if Google ran a job website, I would be employeed by now. If they can program Pac-Man into JavaScript and HTML5, then they can help people find jobs without going to crappy sites like CareerBuilder.
Heather said on May 26th, 2010 at 9:07 am

Holy Wow, Mr. Hacks. Three years is a long time to be out of work. I’ve not had many issues with Monster.com security…Have you tried computerjobs.com? I’ve had some luck with them in the past.

If you’re a tech professional — and from your nick I’m guessing programming? — maybe you could work for yourself.

Unfortunately, you’d have to compete with all the Indians who charge only half what you would, but there are so many places who have been burned by Indian programmers, that you might have some luck…
Festus Haggen said on June 21st, 2010 at 12:23 am

The reason I think Careerbuilder.com sucks is because their saved searches are not selective and their is no way to contact anyone to tell them to limit my search to within 50 miles of home. If you don’t have a job in my field that is within commutable distance fine, I can deal with that. Just post a note saying \No Jobs Found\. Don’t send me a listing of all similar job titles from here to timbucktoo which I have to scroll through and then delete the e-mail everyday. I was a database analyst. It’s not that hard to create a simple query. Who’s asleep at the wheel and driving the bus? Who you gonna call?
Heather said on July 7th, 2010 at 12:46 pm

It is amazing to me that many executives don’t understand that making a site *useful* will cause people to come back to it. It seems their thinking is that if they post “No Jobs Found” they will lose out on potential traffic, when in actuality, the opposite is true.
jimbo said on July 26th, 2010 at 7:40 pm

Searching for a job didn’t used to be this way.

The first position I ever held after school (albeit a poor one) was through careerpath.com, a terrific little site that archived the daily employment sections of newspapers all over the nation. Unfortunately, there is no careerpath.com anymore (guess the parent company), and newspaper employment ads have become a joke. Careerbuilder (ineffectualizer).com monopolized a majority of the job search industry, making the search a cattle call at best and an inundation with page after page of bogus postings at worst. To be fair, it’s not just careerbuilder; indeed.com and simplyhired.com are basically in the same vein (although I actually landed a temp position advertised on indeed.com in 2007 before it became what it is today). I’ve found the most legitimate on-line postings are on company websites.
Heather said on July 27th, 2010 at 3:34 am

While I agree most legitimate jobs are on company sites, I’ve had good luck with Monster.com and Computerjobs.com. Thanks for the comment Jimbo!
mark said on July 29th, 2010 at 11:21 am

Thanks Heather, for expressing the same level of frustration as I did when I found my inbox filled with spam (which prompted me to deactivate my resume). Piss poor business practices.
Heather said on July 29th, 2010 at 11:54 am

Thanks for your comment, Mark. I’m glad I’m not the only one. This post was the only way I felt I could protest. *shakes fist in the general direction of ‘the man’.*
Joe Blow said on July 30th, 2010 at 3:12 am

Okay, to get rid of you Careerbuilder account do these steps:
1. Delete all your uploaded crap you have in MyCareebuilder (as it asks you to do.)

2. LOG OUT (Carrer builder apparently only updates all your changes, including deleted files and info changes, AFTER you log out. Morons!)

3. Log back in and click Remove your Registration. (you should be able to completely remove yourself from that fucked up site)

4. For fun, call the number and give your sign info, saying you need access to your account. Pretend it still exist. Why? To see if they really freakin deleted your account or are saving your info so they can sell your ass to the highest bidder. Oh, record the conversation. If they still have your info, call the BBB, then get a lawyer and sue their ass.
Heather said on July 30th, 2010 at 9:39 am

Wow Joe, I feel your anger. I didn’t know about having to log out for them to delete your stuff…that’s a great thing to know. Thanks for the tip..
JMT said on July 31st, 2010 at 11:41 am

Has anyone tried Realmatch.com, I just posted my resume there and hopefully I get some positive results.

Careerbuilder, Monster, Dice, Net-temps, hot jobs REALLY REALLY suck.

They are all spam, even monster…
Heather said on July 31st, 2010 at 1:10 pm

Honestly, JMT, I’ve never heard of RealMatch. But I do have to say, I like the “non clutter” look of their site. I wish there were links to the articles that BusinessWeek and Entrepreneur said about them.

I’m also impressed they have a decent set of skills for my niche job. Tell us if you have any luck: I’d be interested to know.
Matthew said on August 5th, 2010 at 12:34 pm

“and won’t even rank for ‘Careerbuilder sucks’” you say? Are you kidding? I found this page by searching Google for “careerbuilder sucks”. It was the first match! Congratulations!
Heather said on August 5th, 2010 at 4:51 pm

HAHA! Oh WOW! You’re right! I do rank for ‘Careerbuilder sucks’.