With this central importance in mind, employers are going to invest a great deal of time, energy, and money in recruiting the right people, so your task is to ensure that you utilize the best recruiting resources and tools to ensure you locate opportunities which are accurate and current.
The Internet has delivered a powerful set of tools for matching employers with job seekers, but there are plenty of pitfalls to avoid as well, though this really boils down to exercising some common sense and a degree of caution.
When you are looking at signing up on a recruiting site offering international human resource jobs or see an online classified ad offering the best human resource management jobs, take some time to ask yourself some questions and check out the bona fides of what you are being told.
Identity Theft
There is a booming trade in identity theft and acquiring personal and private information on complete strangers who are then innocently victimized by the unscrupulous and criminal actions of others.
Your resume is a goldmine of private information, including your social security number, date of birth, home address, and a complete breakdown of your employment history and educational background.
Before you post your resume to someone you have never met, whether it be a potential employer, a recruiter, or an anonymous website, think about what you are sending out and confirm that the recipients are going to protect your personal information.
Being Charged a Fee
Many recruiters and websites will not charge you any fees for using their services and instead make their money by charging employers to market their vacancies or third party advertising.
Some agencies and websites will charge a fee to individual job seekers but not to employers, while still others will charge both sides or neither one.
Consider this before you commit to paying or using free-of-charge resources. You are looking for the next step in your career, and if, for example, you are specifically looking for an opportunity in the hotel sector, there will be a large number of sites offering the best hotel human resource jobs or the most comprehensive human resource management jobs, and so on.
How do you know these claims are true?
The honest answer is you don't, but you can deduce certain things from the set up. A recruiter or website that is charging employers for marketing vacancies is not going to attract every employer and persuade them to part with a check to that particular site. By definition they are not going to be comprehensive; instead they will be simply selective and restricted to those employers prepared to pay them for marketing a vacancy.
Now consider a recruiter or website that charges individual job seekers for accessing a database of vacancies which are compiled at no cost to the employers. There will obviously be more vacancies listed, which will provide a more comprehensive database from which a job seeker can short-list vacancies.
What if no fees are charged at all?
Unless there is a huge amount of paid advertising going on, which is going to interfere with your job search, how can the research into and collection of employment opportunities be performed? Nothing is free in this case.
Ease of Use: Getting the Job Done
Establishing a website is simply a matter of parting with a few dollars (as little as $10 in some cases) and spending an hour or so using a template from any of the major hosting providers.
Anyone can establish a web presence on any subject very quickly, and you will be forgiven for being misled.
You should look for a wealth of search features that allow you, as the job seeker or employer, to manipulate the database as you see fit. For instance, the ability to create and store your resume securely and use multiple versions which are tweaked and amended for use by differing classes of employer is something a decent portal will provide.
The ability to separate out employers offering a vacancy directly from those who are acting as an agent (such as another recruiting company) is another useful feature. You may wish to use a recruiting agent, but frequently you will wish to simply deal direct with the employer and bypass the middlemen.
The Human Touch
Many web-based services are anonymous and the job hunter is left to his or her own devices when it comes to getting the most out of the resources provided.
Reputable recruiters and websites are going to have a landline contact telephone number providing a range of customer services and a physical address. Simply looking at the contact section of a website will tell you whether they have these simple pieces of business information.
Being able to access resources and information or, indeed, the ability to bounce an idea off an experienced human practitioner is a great benefit, but check before you enroll exactly what you are going to be getting. Indeed, look at a trial before you commit yourself, your time, and your money to any web-based resource, whether it is free or charging you a fee.
