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The best we can all do is run our own experiments and spend our resources accordingly. Anyone basing their recruiting spend on hearsay or secondhand numbers is gambling on poor odds.

Here’s the problem: Weddle does not publish the data you cite on his own website. It appears on the “International Association of Employment Web Sites” website, which references Weddle’s site, which provides no information. I call B.S. on it. You prove I’m wrong. I’m willing and glad to look at and discuss the methodology Weddle used.

Good luck. You’re gonna need it. Does it occur to you that Weddle’s conclusions are a bit self-serving since he caters to the job board industry? The bigger problem is that they are also suspect. Please: Before you cite a “very good, reliable source,” be ready to disclose the source AND its methodology.

That’s pure crap. On October 5, on Minnesota Public Radio, Monster’s Doug Hardy used the same line: “You are talking about the kind of data base management that was happending in job boards before… If you look at Monster now, it has much more associative types of search in it, especially the new beta search… we’re trying to go beyond exact word matching.”

The audio is here: http://corcodilos.com/blog/1005/the-monster-ous-quality-of-choice

You guys must be attending the same staff meetings. But here’s the problem, Matt. Let’s forget about your mountain of resumes. It’s nothing to brag about. Dung tends to accumulate where its dropped if no one cleans it up — and your database is not worth defending. Let’s talk about performance. Since 2001, Monster’s success rate — the percentage of hires that companies make using Monster’s data base — has not changed appreciably from about 3%. In fact, between 2008 and 2009, Monster’s success rate has dropped. (Source: CareerXroads Source of Hires Study, 2008.) The other big job boards have fared no better.

In 2008 HR departments bought $1.3 billion worth of resume swill from Monster and got a less than 3% success rate. That allows you to claim huge revenues, but that pile of revenue does not prove your product works. It just proves that HR on the whole is inept or corrupt. Those HR departments need to be called to task for wasting their investors’ money. One extremely frustrated HR vice president at a Fortune 50 company complains to me that, “The big job boards aggressively wine and dine our top executives, who sign up for yet another year. Virtually our entire recruiting budget goes into the job boards, with the result that I can’t get any money to spend on going out to actually recruit good people.”

Matt, your success rate has dropped, not gotten better. What does it matter how many resumes you own? I believe it was George Carlin who explained extreme volume: “Imagine you could have everything in the world! Where would you PUT it??!” Monster has all the resumes in the world. So what? That’s not a metric. How much HR spends on your service is not a metric. Success rate — that’s a metric.

Your “semantic search capabilities” make great PR, but a look at legitimate research in human cognition tells us that it’s bunk. Matt — printed NEWSPAPER ADS deliver a higher percentage of hires (8%) than Monster does. They have no semantic search capabilities.

See you next year, when we can take another look at your success rates. In the meantime, I think you’re better off feeding this baloney to the HR executives you wine and dine. It goes better with gall than public debate that serves facts and data.

Thank you for weighing in with your comments on “mega job boards.” As a competitor to job boards, it’s no surprise that you find traditional job boards to be wanting. Our clients, both job seekers and employers, overwhelmingly disagree with this assessment. While we normally wouldn’t respond to such self serving and vitriolic commentary, we here at Monster wanted to make sure we participated in the dialogue it generated.

Monster absolutely agrees that Social Media is an “essential, mandatory component” of recruiting efforts. That’s why we’ve recently launched Monster Communities, over 20 niche networks where professionals from accountants to firefighters can build profiles, interact and engage with other professionals and hiring makers while staying on top of pertinent trends and best practices specific to the careers they’re passionate about.

We also agree that there’s a job board revolution underway necessitating “fresh thinking regarding talent acquisition strategies.” The 1997 job board model you point out is indeed outdated; that’s why we’ve developed cutting edge semantic search capabilities to allow employers to intuitively match top candidates with specific criteria, paring both cost per hire and time to fill.

It’s funny, to us and our employer customers, our millions of resumes is an asset; why limit a search to those easiest to find when you can use the most powerful technology to find the best person from the largest relevant pool? Our new search technology is also available at a range of prices; we get that small business and limited hiring situations need the same search precision as big enterprises filling dozens of positions, and our products, including our job posting packages, reflect these diverse needs.

So we understand that recruiters are demanding more for their money than clinging to a “post and pray” mentality. That’s why this year we brought our clients the “Keep America Working Tour,” free of charge to all Monster customers, making nearly 100 stops nationwide in 2009. That’s why we provide a slew of free webinars, white papers and thought leadership articles to the recruitment community through our Employer Resource Center. And that’s why we want to make sure we’re listening to ensure every hiring professional (and candidate) walks away with a positive experience.

Finally, we absolutely agree with the need for increased transparency in advertising jobs. As the CEO of LinkUp, which your article mentions as “better, cheaper, more efficient, more effective,” but as the only tangible alternative to the “mega job boards” suggested in this best practices piece, we wish you’d extended your desire for transparency to this posting, too.

We think you should see for yourself what we’re up to at Monster, because it really sounds like we’re on the same page when it comes to the evolution of job boards.

Matt Charney
Monster Social Media Engagement Manager
matt.charney@monster.com | @monster_works