Post that resume. The collective wisdom is that networking is statistically the best way to get an interview. However, it’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket. Even though the odds of success are less, the use of job boards is still a viable means to the end. 

In talking with various people who are job hunting I was interested to hear that many refuse to post their resume on job boards. This surprised me so I wanted to learn why they took this position. Well, it turns out there were several factors. One is that they did not want to open themselves to lots of email spam. Another, was they wanted to be in more control of where their resume went and who it was shown to. And a third is that they want to pick and choose the jobs they are interested in applying to.

I understand the reluctance to post your resume if you are conducting a “stealth” search. For example if you are currently still employed and are looking for your next job but don’t want your current company to be aware of this. In this case I agree that it’s best not to post a resume. However in other cases I don’t think withholding your resume from posting is such a good strategy.

Let’s first take a look at the 3 reasons people gave me for not posting their resume.

This is true. If you post a resume on a major job board it will attract SPAM. You’ll get SPAM from companies who want many thousands of dollars to “market” you. You’ll get it from “work at home” schemes selling everything you can imagine. You’ll get mail from schools touting their academic programs and much more. However there is an easy fix for this. Create a separate email address that you ONLY use for job hunting activities and use this address on the job boards and as the address listed on your resume. This is where the spam will go. Yes you’ll have to wade through it, but once you land a job, just kill this email account or add a filter to automatically move all inbound mail to your junk folder. Another advantage of this account is that people won’t be able as easily to tie back to your face book or twitter pages from your posted resume using the email address as the link. In fact, this will actually give you the opportunity to create a professional oriented Facebook or Twitter account using the new email address that doesn’t have “those” pictures posted in it or some of your more “interesting” text posts.

OK, but why? The purpose of a resume is to advertise yourself in order to get an interview. The more people that see an advertisement the greater the odds of someone buying the product. Your resume should not contain anything damaging to you or controversial. So I’m not clear what harm there is to having it visible. However, you do need to take care not to agree to it being sent out in an email blast to hundreds or thousands of people as some companies do. I have had my resume posted on and off since resume posting was first offered and have never had it blasted out without my consent (which I never gave), but you do need to be aware of this.

Let’s get real. If you wind up landing a good job that matches your skills does it really matter who found who as long as you got together? It’s true there are some recruiters who run automated scans of posted resumes looking for specific keywords and then blast emails to those people with a job opening without first reading the resume. And in 99% of these cases the posted position is way off the mark. In my posted resumes I make it 100% clear that I am not interested in consulting opportunities and will only consider local positions with less than 20% travel. Yet, I still get offers for consulting jobs on the opposite side of the country. Obviously the recruiter did not read my material on the job board.   On the other hand, there are also many recruiters that will not post a job opening due to the massive number of resumes they will get and instead fill positions by finding resumes posted on the job boards. In other words, they find you rather than you find them. Recently the direction has changed. Of candidates selected for interviews using job boards, it used to be the majority were candidates who found a posting for the job on the job board and submitted an application using the “apply for this job” button. Now, it seems the flow is the other way where the majority are selected by the recruiter searching for posted resumes and contacting the candidate without ever posting the job itself on the job board.

So, here’s my bottom line in terms of job board use. As a strategy you need to keep both the “you find them” as well as the “they find you” avenue’s open. “You find them” by searching the list of posted openings (typically letting a “job agent” containing your search criteria run with it every day). “They find you” by their searching of resumes which people like yourself have posted online. Excluding either of these methods is only limiting the chances of making the right connection.