ALT-2 Website Reviews Monstercom
Monster.com (at least in the United States) is the big dog of job-search web-sites, the applicant Coca-Cola if you will. Because of its large reach and immense client base, Monster has some distinct advantages over other web-search engines. Also symptomatic of other biggest kid on the block companies, it suffers some lack of compassion for its end users and glosses over some qualities that many job-seekers desire.
However, any real job-seeker needs to have Monster.com as part of their arsenal. Too many great opportunities are listed there and on no other site, largely because of the cost (quite expensive for the employer listings). Also just about every major company lists on Monster because of the overwhelming number of applicants who search there. This is an advantage and a disadvantage, because every ad that you see as an applicant, tens of thousands of other potential applicants are seeing as well. Often applying through Monster.com is futile, because the employer rarely even responds to the large majority of their applicants. This can be frustrating, as a job you know would be a perfect fit you never get to interview for.
In addition, Monster.com is not particularly friendly to the applicants. The resume download process is crude at best, and it is quite difficult to put a stand-out resume into the text-only file. A way around this is to get the source material from Monster and then send the resume yourself as an attachment via e-mail or by snail mail, but this is quite often impossible, as Monster has far more "Company Confidential" job listings than any other site. These sites you must apply through a down-loaded resume and cover letter, whose options are very limited when you want to get noticed past the sea of resumes the employer will be receiving. In nearly every case where you submit a resume through Monster, the hiring manager will need a doc attachment, as what the employer gets from Monster is often gibberish.
Also the detail of their listings is often sparse or nearly non-existent. Job descriptions are hazy, salary ranges are rare, and often even the type of company is not listed. Applicants are forced to either disregard a lot of listings or apply blind and then possibly be contacted and waste time with a job they might never consider if the information was presented up front. Some editing or reviewing by Monster would be a great help, certainly to the applicants and probably to the employers as well!
The development services for employees are quite good, and there are literally hundreds of choices for resumes, self-analysis tools, salary range estimators, etc. Unfortunately all of these are over-prices and quite a few are essentially complete duplicates of each other. If you want to utilize any of these tools, it is highly recommended using only one tool of each kind, or you are bound to be disappointed with replicated results.
One strong advantage of Monster is their Search Agents. Some other sites have these, but they are of limited use and range. The Monster Search Agent can be very finely detailed with a bit of work, and will constantly send you a nice chunk of jobs via e-mail that you will not have to search through, based on location, industry, descriptions, whatever you desire. Admittedly a lot of these jobs are not exact matches, but if you consistently want potential opportunities to look through, Monster Search Agent is an excellent hassle-free tool.
Overall, any serious job-seeker must use Monster as the heavy hitter of their search line-up. While you may have other sites that provide more solid leads or better tools, no site will provide you the sheer mass of listings that Monster will, and in the end having the most potential opportunities can do nothing more than help the aggressive applicant. Good luck!
