Beyond.com Review: What A Waste

5.18.2010

So I have been looking for a job for some time, actually for a much longer time than I wish to admit. This would be the third time that I have used job posting websites, and you want to talk about a bastardization of websites, job web sites are a good example of that.

First you have the common known ones:
Monster.com
CareerBuilder.com
Yahoo! Hot Jobs (now own by Monster)
craigslist
LinkedIn?

Then you have the children, or clones of websites. These websites are nothing more than the above websites with different titles. For instance, OC Register now uses monster to handle their internet jobs.

Then you have the bastards. Anyone who have ever posted their resume know of these websites, because you get some random "job opportunity" where you click to apply, only to find that you have to sign up for some random job site, like closers.net, cybercoders, resumespider, or some other site. It is pretty mischievous, if not more mischievous than all those Farmer's insurance "career opportunities" you get. All it is a cheap attempt to get more users to make more sales via marketing.

So where does Beyond.com stand? Not too sure, I came across that website from reading a blog review on.. well... job posting sites, and the site oddly rated it #1. Hell if I remember what site it was, but I decided to give it a go.

Now what was good about it? Well, it allowed you to create kind of a 'resume snapshot' that you can give out to people to see, with a picture, your resume, and what you're looking for. But with LinkedIn, it seems irrelevant, especially considering that you had to pay Beyond to put up more information than just your resume and a picture.

But what about the searching? listings? and job alerts? Confusing and useless. The first time I signed up for that, I somehow was getting job postings in neighboring states, actually I was getting duplicate alerts as well. Yet, that was mostly my fault. So after I got that all sorted, I was getting my alerts for my 'area', which consisted of 90% of the listings in Los Angeles. That is with the exception of a few in Orange County. Seems reasonable right? sure, the first time around. But guess what? They NEVER CHANGED, every job alert was practically identical to the last. In fact the jobs were listed in the email as "New Job Opportunities" but they practically had the same jobs as the last alert I received.

I would kind of chuckle each time I got a job alert because "Financial Analyst - Analyze Global Sales Costa Mesa, CA" was always at the top of the list.

Now what about about other features? They also match up jobs and send you new postings that match your profile. But then again, these are the same damn jobs you have seen over and over in your job alerts. Yes, I got the "Analyze Global Sales" posting numerous times. They must have a really low retention rate! :p

How about contacts or resume visibility? I didn't get a single notice that wasn't some sort of bastardized job site or marketing email. Hell, I didn't even get a Farmers email. At least with CareerBuilder I know that my resume is visible because I get constant emails and calls from Farmers (not like that's a good thing), but beyond, I haven't heard one opportunity mention that site yet.

After using the website for some time, I decided to read up on it. You know, type in "beyond.com" in Google to see what I get, and I got NOTHING, not even that blog site from however long ago. I got a lot of sites, though, referring beyond.com as a software retailer. So I guess they are still fairly new. Doing some more digging, I found one article on Mashable, dated September 2007, describing the website as I know of it now. Translation? it hasn't changed in 2.5 years, thus, it isn't a good place to post your resume.

Of course, who knows, maybe I am in the wrong market and beyond.com is more for the IT side, but then it's still pointless because those type of websites have a smaller reach. So I decided to close my account, and sure enough...

Canceling?