Sometimes this type of advertising can work against you. What they’re trying to illustrate is how amazing their platinum and titanium services are, but with this same nifty graph what they’re also inadvertently doing is highlighting how comparatively ineffective their cheaper (or free) services are. Since the bulk of folks that use Careerbuilder.com use the free service, convincing them to spend money at all is a challenge not best served in this fashion.
If we can see that the difference between copper through gold is marginal, why would anyone buy any of those? Now we’ve created too many choices just for the sake of having choices. And remember that adage: a confused mind doesn’t buy.
What this graph is also admitting is that their free service isn’t even worth mentioning. (You don’t even see that on there, do you?) Five seconds ago they touted how they were the best free job service out there, and now they’re basically admitting that without spending money you won’t get any results. Following this logic then, they’ve then just admitted they over-inflated the outcome of one service, so why should we believe what they’re claiming about another?
Thoughts?
Well, reading all this makes me feel like all the resumes I’ve sent out through them was a waste of time.
Oh well, I’ll just keep convincing myself that the reason why I never hear back from anyone is because I just don’t have the qualifications they are looking for.
POOP !!!
Well for what it’s worth I’ve gotten 3 calls in the last 1-2 months from passively having my resume on CareerBuilder. It’s not to say that you’ll never get results from them, but more likely that their paid service isn’t worth it.
Obviously they want to show big numbers but I’ve been reading their page about this upgrade and I see two big issues with it.
1) These percentages are just a percentage increase. Based on that spending $150 doesn’t even get you double the number of employers looking compared with the free version. This effectively means spending the money is worthless. What this says to me is that employers are willing to sift through a significant number of resumes when doing a search so the upgrade isn’t worthwhile.
2) As an employer this would annoy me. On their page describing the resume upgrade it says:
“Our resume database displays resumes by relevancy to the employer’s search. Resume Upgrade increases your relevancy score within our database, allowing it to be placed higher in the listings. The higher the level you purchase, the higher your relevancy score!”
So basically CareerBuilder is giving me less qualified candidates and telling me they’re more qualified. This seems like a good way to shoot themselves in the foot. I can easily see how this would ultimately lead to fewer employers using the service which obviously makes it less attractive to job searchers too.
I’d wondered about that, too. What is it they’re doing to ensure your resume is being seen by more employers unless there is some artificial mechanism in place? Great perspective from a hiring manager’s standpoint; cranking up the “validity” of platinum members may just mean more junk for managers to sift through.