Recent PostsWhat the Superbowl Taught Me About Co-opting Cool...HR Saga: Big Hat - No Cattle What I Really Think About The Ladders Ad...TheLadders: More Cirque Du Soleil Than Evil EmpireAre Recruiters School Snobs? Afraid... of Me?!Want To Improve Your Training Initiatives? Hire the Tiger MomOur Employees Are Addicted to RewardsShould a Job Seeker Ever Have to Pay... For Anything?The Taco Bell Syndrome: Where’s the Beef? (...In Your Interviews...)Friends of FOT on Twitter...« The Taco Bell Syndrome: Where’s the Beef? (...In Your Interviews...) |Main| Our Employees Are Addicted to Rewards »Monday, January 31, 2011Should a Job Seeker Ever Have to Pay... For Anything?Here’s a question for you – is there anything that job seekers should ever have to pay for?
Resume writing services. Okay. Career coaching. Sure. But anything else?
Last week, I spent some time in NYC with the people of The Ladders for their first ever Position Accomplished Summit. First and foremost, know that I attended this little event from a skeptic’s perspective. I don’t know how I feel about their biz model and I’ve been plenty irritated by them in the past. I have not received positive outcomes from having my company’s jobs listed on their site. And, I’ve had non-$100K+ jobs pulled onto their site. But I do have respect for their marketing and technology chops. So after the event, I left wondering if I would even write about the experience and their services as I’m honestly still unsure of them and have more questions than answers.
And question number one that I’m stuck on is simply this – is it culturally acceptable, today at least, to charge the job seeker for much of anything?
One of the criticisms of The Ladders is simply that they charge job seekers for access to $100K+ jobs, not all of which are employer verified as truly being $100K+. Unless it’s a position that an employer has actually posted on the site, they don’t know for sure that the role pays $100K+. They do however assert that two sets of eyes at The Ladders review all scraped job postings on the site against specific criteria and benchmarked data to validate that they are likely $100K+ jobs. But again, there’s no way to know for sure whether any positions are $100K+ unless an employer actually is the one to post the job. That issue aside, the jobs being both scraped then posted by The Ladders and posted by employers on their site are not necessarily exclusive. They are likely advertised elsewhere – from corporate websites to other job boards or aggregators – so job seekers could conceivably access these opportunities elsewhere for free. But it does remain a single place where the $100K+ job seeker could go, on a subscription basis, to see a collection of perceived and confirmed $100K+ jobs
It’s a different business model. It’s something we’re not used to. Traditionally, anyone involved in the job search business has always charged the employer. Headhunters charge employers to surface them candidates. Job boards and newspapers charge employers to broadcast their job opportunities. So today, job seekers don’t pay for much of anything. It’s a buyer’s market even despite unemployment numbers. It’s also uncommon that for a marketplace of “goods” so to speak, both the buyer and seller are positioned as “consumers” of a shared service, with both charged a fee for service. In other words… it’s not as if eBay, another marketplace, charges both buyers and sellers fees. In the current eBay model, only the seller who presumably is the one making a profit off of the sale, pays any fees to eBay. The buyer doesn’t pay to get access to goods via eBay. Yet on The Ladders, the “buyer” and “seller” both pay.
So I wonder… what do we make of a model where the job seeker also has to pay? Or is there a threshold on the dollar amount charged to job seekers for something like The Ladders? Or could it be that it’s perfectly fine for a job seeker to pay? So long as the job seeker, as the consumer, demands and receives a certain level of service or a guarantee of sorts? Or maybe Capitalism rules all and if The Ladders wants to charge employers and job seekers both because they can and because someone out there perceives a value for what they provide, they will continue to do so. And perhaps in the future, we’ll see others follow suit. I dunno. I’m thinking about this one though. And either way you come down on the discussion, it’s an interesting issue to deconstruct so at least we can thank The Ladders for disrupting things a bit... for a different business model, and for those crazy commercials too.
Editor's Note- Jessica Lee is a Senior Employment Manager for APCO Worldwide, a global integrated communications consultancy in D.C. (Okay, you could call it a PR firm too.) Like most upscale HR pros, she spends half of her time on recruiting, the other half on ER, Training and OD. When she's not hammering a candidate to determine Motivational Fit, she's thinking about the future of HR and wondering how she can avoid using the job boards to fill the next spot in her organization...
Posted by Jessica Lee on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 08:21 AM in Jessica Lee, Job Boards, Recruiting | PermalinkTrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry:
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I think it's less about the fact that The Ladders charges job-seekers and more about the fact that they are fraudulent in what they charge them for. They promise one thing and deliver another.
Posted by:Alison Green / Ask a Manager |Monday, January 31, 2011 at 09:27 AMSure they should. That isn't The Ladders specific because it is too easy to dismiss that case as being flawed or unethical. But the idea that the job seeker could be charged isn't out of the question.
I think the debate about any service that people are going to be charged for is the same:
1. Is it worth the price?
2. Is it something I can and am willing to pay for?
3. Does the marketing match the product?
Certainly not all resume services or job coaches meet that criteria either. But we at least accept that it is a legitimate way to do business if done correctly.
Posted by:Lance Haun |Monday, January 31, 2011 at 11:39 AMhey both - the ladders aside, i'm actually still stuck on whether there is anything we, as an industry, should really charge job seekers for. and as for the ladders, what their promise is is one thing, what their service is, is another thing... but just generally speaking... i dunno about the notion of charging job seekers anything at all. it's so different from the norm and shifts the dynamic of power a bit. but maybe i'm just stuck for no reason and i am totally over thinking this...
Posted by:jessica lee - FOT |Monday, January 31, 2011 at 02:59 PMJLee -
to muddy the water......LinkedIn has inMails and premium versions - I am presuming the pay for getting more mantra in your mind should not be the issue but as LI is a pretty job centric site now, what say you about that? (difference that you can do with free I assume?). There have always been pay services for Jobseekers around mailing back in the day, contacting, emailing and listings...just not as main stream as the Ladders - is their success it?
tough stuff! Shannon
This is a similar dilemma that the outplacement/career transition industry faced during its rapid growth in the late '80s and early '90s. Many of the small firms (not DBM, Right or Lee Hecht Harrison) did both outplacement (being hired by the a company laying people off to help them find new jobs) and search (being hired by a company to find new talent). The industry did a lot of soul searching and set a benchmark that these two businesses needed to be totally separate. The ethics of being hired to take an employee out and then being hired to replace them -- or worse, having been paid to take out an employee and then paid to place that same employee into another organization seemed at the time a step too far. At the time, it was an ethical issue. In the ensuing years, most organizations have given up that position and don't see it as an ethical issue at all. I think this discussion is very similar. It doesn't bother me at all. It's like being a corporate yenta. All parties find value in the "transaction" and ought to pay. How much they pay is really the question. Hitting job seekers with huge fees seems unfair -- especially if they're among the unemployed. However, it's a new world. And if it's true that nearly 90% of all employees are currently looking for a new job, it would behoove them to get good data and good leads. And that should be worth something to them. Interesting times...
Posted by:China Gorman |Tuesday, February 01, 2011 at 08:28 AMI think its intriguing but not necessarily worth losing sleep over. There are costs involved with just about any job search (resumes, printing, paper, phone calls, travel (i.e. gas) that the job seeker is already bearing to accomplish their goal. I think the Ladders are within reason to charge to those that want to access their services (or levels of). I know we had a couple of candidates in my past experience who were sending us information that was requested and they chose to Fed Ex the packet...then requested reimbursement after they were hired. We approved the expense, but my HR Director and I were looking at each other saying, well, ya got a job didn't you? This was for a near six figure salary, these folks typically have the resources to seek the caliber of positions that are expecting.
Posted by:Jason H |Tuesday, February 01, 2011 at 09:50 AMI predict the day when people will buy jobs. As it is, those who have invested in the "infrastructure" of themsleves (education, training) are ahead of the curve now.
Posted by:Maureen Sharib |Saturday, February 05, 2011 at 08:18 AMeBay used to charge buyers fees for a successful purchase but that did not last. Maybe there is a message in that?
Posted by:DS |Sunday, February 06, 2011 at 03:19 PM Verify your Comment Previewing your CommentPosted by: |This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.
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