Friday, March 13, 2009

RealMatch: A Better Job Board?

RealMatch is the match.com of the work world:

It matches job seekers with employers based on their compatibility. Employers and job seekers find matches based on compatible skills (not just keywords,) salary, geography, etc.

RealMatch seems particularly desirable for employers because, instead of a mountain of applications (mostly ill-suited), RealMatch sends only the best matches.

RealMatch should also be good for job seekers because it empowers you to state what you want and then you receive a list of compatible job openings.

Alas, that's just the theory. I don't know how well it works in practice. Do you?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

just signed in with a throwaway email address.

told it what I had, where I'd like to be located, and there are 6 offers. A "freelance writer" at about .10/word which is probably a job writing spam for the www. Multiple offers to be employed by a Cypriot company called cyprusukinvest which smell to me like a scam, possibly one of the we deliver goods to your address, you ship them for us, we bought them with stolen credit cards, type of scams. finally, a "team builder" for DVM enterprises and one Clark Bartram which a google search suggests is a way to get you to buy unsaleable dietary supplements from DVM and resell them to you friends.

Is there a reason why a job guy can't spend ten minutes on minimal diligence before telling people desperate for work to try this particular site out?

Seriously, the unemployment rate is through the ceiling, people turn to you not as a libertarian first but as a job or career guy first, and while this site might be a good idea, the implementation smells bad.

Why recommend this site over Monster or another listing service? You are our trade press on this topic; you should do a better job at covering your patch than Jim Cramer does at covering his, don't you think?

Marty Nemko said...

I have heard from multiple sources (including Business Week, Entrepreneur, and a career counselor discussion Yahoo group I'm on that RealMatch was a worthy site but wasn't completely convinced, which is why I clearly stated that I wasn't yet recommending it but asking for input. They do claim to list 7 million jobs, of course, listed without screening. Those will include, for example, scams. There's no substitute for your weeding through them.

Anonymous said...

Hi Marty,

My colleague showed me the derogatory comment on your site posted by the “anonymous tipster”. I’d be willing to bet you a buck that it’s a competitor with an axe to grind. We know for a fact that some sites which feel Realmatch is competitive try to trash any reviews when we get coverage. The M.O. is always the same, they won’t identify themselves and they cannot find one single good thing about the service despite 40 people working 4 years to make it what it is today. Anyway, we appreciate your coverage and thought you were fair and balanced. We also appreciate writers like you that cover a diverse range of issues, ideas and topics. It wouldn’t be much fun if every article was about Monster now would it?

Regards,

Rafael

Rafael Cosentino
VP Business Development
Realmatch Inc.

Anonymous said...

So many of these search inventions for job search like Real Match leave me disenchanted. Jobfox also let me down. They don't have the human part needed for excavating human resources.

Speaking of search, I remember in the book _The Search_ how the author says Google still has a long way to go. Google has some smarts built into it because it uses the wisdom of crowds. However, what so many in search don't tackle is the question of intent.

This is also what I don't like about job aggregators like the SimplyHired's and Indeed's. It seems to be all keyword matching. There isn't any scrutiny done by truly competent people who understand the language of certain professions. This is currently mocked by a radio commercial that says, "I'm applying for a job as a Java programmer. That's not a coffee making position."

Technology is great for some things; I just worry when we delegate more and more to machines, especially for something as personal as job search.

Richard Jennings said...

Tried it, thought it was pretty cool.

Anonymous said...

I am a recruiter and I think Real Match is a complete scam. They will steal my job postings and have a candidate apply through the RealMatch portal and try to sell the resumes back to me. The will remove my contact information and put in their own. They do not know the client company and cannot help the candidate at all obtain a position with a company. They approached me with a package of $95 dollars to OPEN 6 resumes that applied to MY job post.

Anonymous said...

RealMatch is preying on the unknowing and trying to take advantage of the slow job market. Stealing job postings and hanging up on you when you try to call their office to get them to stop.

Ben W, executive recruiter said...

I recently posted a job on monster.com. When I was checking its exposure via simplyhired.com, I saw my ad linked to realmatch.com with an "apply" button to apply via joining realmatch. This was disturbing since I did not post the job to realmatch. A few hours later, I received an email from realmatch with a "complementary" candidate resume attached. It was a real candidate's resume with the same job title I'm seeking, but it was not what I was looking for. They used this as a way to "introduce" me to their services for which they offer a "free trial" but eventually want me to pay.

What they are doing may not be illegal, but to me it is certainly unethical. Basically they hijacked my posting from monster without my consent, and candidates who find the job via their site think they have applied to the job! But if I don't pay for their service, these resumes will never reach me.

Their product may well be effective, but if this is how they go about marketing themselves, I will not be using their service. To me, this is simply an extension of the shady practices (presenting candidates or representing companies without their consent) used by a very small minority of contingent recruiters, but which gives all recruiters a bad name.

Ben W, executive recruiter said...

I wanted to add to what I wrote in my previous post that when I complained via email to realmatch, I did receive a response that they would remove my posting from their site. They also told me that in their original email to me there was an opt-out link that enabled removing my ad from their site. I did not scroll down far enough to see it.

This does not necessarily change my initial opinion of realmatch.com, but in fairness, I wanted to update my original post.

Bernard in Sri Lanka said...

The real way to search for jobs is to go the sites that have the most jobs: the job posting aggregators. There are 3 that I know of:
Simply Hired
Indeed
The Green Job Bank

These sites crawl the web and index job postings from jobs boards and employers career pages.

Raz said...

Hello Marty Nemko,

I am currently an intern at Realmatch.com and I decided to see what google had to say about the company I work for, you might be pleased to know your site is one of the top hits:).

Several commenters here have noted the ability for RealMatch to scrape job postings from one job board to another.

The complaints are largely based on the assumption that RealMatch "steals" jobs that were posted on other sites, post them on its site and then keep the applicants to itself. To clarify, this is incorrect.

Firstly, the jobs in RealMatch are mostly jobs posted directly by employers. But, mainly in cases where we are unable to provide sufficient matches to our registered candidates, specific job categories or locations, we sometimes re-post jobs. This is a perfectly legal practice which is done by many sites. In such cases we do not keep the applicants to ourselves (as stealing implies).

Rather, we send actual screened and graded applications through the e-mail address provided by the advertiser. Also, RealMatch does not re-post jobs that have no e-mail address or those we cannot send applicants to directly.

As Ben mentioned, the e-mail along with the resumes includes an opt-out link, allowing employers to ask us to remove their jobs and never send any applicant to them. Actually I was surprised to see these reviews because, most employers --and many recruiters-- choose to keep the jobs on our sites because it is free to do so, and it generates additional applications for their job.

In any case, the jobs are only re-posted for a few days--unless the poster takes action. In addition to the resumes RealMatch sends employers, we invite them to look at additional candidates that we found for them in our database and post the job for a longer period on our site (for free). It is a “pay per performance” model and you only need to pay if you want to get the contact information of the candidate whose resumes we deliver to your job. The candidates are screened, ranked and graded for you, based on your job requirements.

There is really no down side for the job advertiser, only greater exposure for the job and more applicants. As mentioned, he can always opt out and never be bothered again.

Jobs that are posted on our site are reviewed and approved manually.

We have a mechanism that eliminates scam jobs when we scrape them. This mechanism has been upgraded recently and is constantly improved. It may not be perfect, but it is very good. We choose very carefully the sites from which we scrape jobs. The sites are all valid.

To Ben W. thank you for taking the time to alter your review.

Raz
Intern
RealMatch Inc.

Anonymous said...

I just tried to apply for a job with realmatch.com and it kept telling me I had to put in a location when it was right there in black on white. What is their problem. I even tried to recreate a new account and that didn't work. I guess my location just isn't good enough for them. anonymous

Anonymous said...

I just happened to type this realmatch company into google and I seen that it had this scam site with everyone's comment's on here. I do think this site is just a scam. I just had someone contact me threw my e-mail indicating that they got my resume threw real match. I have never been on that site or heard of them until today and plus the supposed person that was in touch about a job I think is a scam also b/c it's one of those stupid set ups of I need someone to do my work while I'm traveling and it says what you need for this job b/c oh by the ways it's an at home job (of course) is versa check gold 2010 versa check paper, ink and so on. All this is for those scams where people send you those checks and then ask you to send them a certain amount and you keep a certain amount for cashing it. It's so bogus and I would love to be able to just catch one of these people doing that. I knew it was a scam but I went to my bank and asked if there was any way I could see if the check was lagit and they told me how you could go about it with out anything falling on myself if it was a bogus check but at the same time they have to let you know that you can take 500 of the money that day while you are depositing it, which of course I told them no but it took @ 5 days and it showed that it wasn't a good acct. I don't see how these people get away with it then people like myself are the one's that get into the trouble over it. There are people out there that are naive enough to really believe these things and end up thousands out of money.

Anonymous said...

My 2 cents here. RealMatch is clearly buying names of users as I never signed up for there site to receive alerts and suddenly I am. I have been employed for the last 8 months and was previously unemployed for about a year. But I need to be fair here, RealMatch is not the only job board doing this and the reality is that what they are doing is common practice amongst job boards and is something that a user may have agreed to in the terms of service of another job bard. It is common practice for job boards to sell information to other job boards as a huge source of revenue. I am not claiming that RealMatch is selling information but other boards are and are likely selling information to them so beware folks. I am very familiar with job board practices because I worked for a niche job board for 3 years and saw what went on behind the scenes and a lot it was pretty slimy. My guess is that it only has gotten even worse over the last 2 years considering the economy and how it has effected revenues of job boards. I recommend that all candidates and employers find a credible source to validate a site. One source I used to validate the ladders site was a Linkedin group that I had subscribed to (sorry I forget which one but possibly linking the laid-off). I ended up with real time answers that were generally without bias since.


Thanks, Mike

Anonymous said...

Another note from Mike...I now know how RealMatch got my contact info. From one of there network sites and this sites name is Beyond.com. I signed up on their site along time ago because they were a partner network site of the job board that I used to work for. I tried to opt-out of their site roughly 20 times without any luck and so did my wife. They do not know what opt-out means and they have about 1000+ sites that they power. It looks like realmatch has a similar structure and i would not be surprised if they have the same investors or somehow mutually owned.

A recommendation to job searchers out there. First, use Indeed, Simplyhired, Linkedin, or a truly local site (verify it is local not just a job scraping network minisite). Second, find your opportunities and in a separate browser window find that posting on the employers site. If it is not found on the employers site check out where else it is posted because a placement company may be listing it like administaff. Third apply for the job on the employers site whenever possible. Finally, go back to the Indeed posting and click on it to see where it will take you. More often than not you will be taking on a ride handing out your personal information for free only to find out in the end that you never make it to the employers actual site or when you get there the posting has expired. This does not bother the job board because they make between $2-10 per resume depending on how much information you give them and this is before employers pay for resume access.

Ok, one more finally, I just visited a job board that I had worked at and I was floored at the revenue desperation. In there terms of service they had placed dozens of contextual ads, for gods sake, this is their legal page but I guess they really don't want people reading between the lines do they.

nuf said

Andrea Robertson said...

He is no scam,i tested him and he delivered a good job,he helped me settle bank loans,he also helped my son upgrade his scores at high school final year which made him graduate successfully and he gave my son free scholarship into the college,all i had to do was to settle the bills for the tools on the job,i used $500 to get a job of over $50000 done all thanks to Walt,he saved me from all my troubles,sharing this is how i can show gratitude in return for all he has done for me and my family

Gmail; Brillianthackers800@gmail.com
Whatsapp number; +1(224)2140835

 

blogger templates | Make Money Online