Ah, the good old resume database. How I hate thee. Might sound a little harsh but having worked at job boards in a sales capacity for 6 years I think I have every right to say they are fundamentally floored in today’s market. You see if I had a $ for every time I had a client say “It’s a waste of money, all the candidates are old or not relevant” I’d be a millionaire.

The major problem with the Resume Database as we know it, is that it is WAY to simple for a candidate to put the resume up there and do nothing else with it. This causes many problems. Often they sit there for years and more often then not they classify themselves in the wrong way. So how can job boards take the resume database forward and socialise this aspect of their sites.

I have one word for you, “Community”. The Resume database on most job boards is a formant sleeping giant. The candidates are asleep and the Employers/Recruiters are getting lost in the maze. Where is the interaction and engagement, what’s the point of having 300,000 people on a database if talking to them is near impossible. Greater engagement would mean greater value, not only to the job board in terms of revenue but to the candidate and employer in terms of faster matches.

So rather then candidates simply uploading a word doc, here is what it perhaps should look like.

1. Candidates creates Profile similar to Visualcv.com with added fields to create competencies that show specific situations of soft skill usage ie Leadership, Organisation, Decision making etc. Provide examples.
2. All Fields are searchable and the candidate has the ability to keep any fields “Private” as to avoid current Employer finding them.
3. Employers have their Company Profiles integrated in to the Community to enable candidates to shop around, search jobs, leave messages for HR or line managers.
4. Candidates and Employers can engage via SM tools such as chat, video messages, twitter feed, Forum engagement, connecting with like skilled candidates (similar to connecting on LI or Facebook)
5. Candidates can communicate with each other about current job searching issues or experiences and Employers have the ability to see this and react.
5. Employer talks/finds candidate they like. Candidate and Employer can organise “Virtual” interview via video next time they are both on line.
6. Candidate and Employer meet face to face and candidate is hired.

And this is just a start…….

Not only will the whole process be more transparent, but the interaction and engagement will be far more beneficial for both sides. And I’m sure far easier to justify the price of the database “Community”, then it is now.

Katherine Robinson wrote a great blog this week that focused on the front end for the advertisers. I totally agree with her comments.

Perhaps we are both barking mad, but I seriously think job boards will need to adapt and move with the times in order to maintain their value. The Greg Savage “Post and Pray” methd is simply not effective, and allowing candidates to just “spray” their CV’s off also needs reviewing. Something does need to change.

Job boards may not die, but they certainly will if they don’t move with the times.

And don’t get me started on ATS platforms, grrrr, but that’s for another blog.