Caveat Emptor – something Stephen Colbert translates as tuff tittie – should be the motto for any buyer.
Looks like it should be the same for any job hunter using social media to find their next gig.
While many a job hunter has seen the Craiglist Scam Alert (“affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first. . “), it’s the type of thing that is seldom seen on Twitter or mainstream job boards.
Until now.
TheLadders – a job board targeted for “your next 100k+ career” – now runs teaser ads; you click on the ad or URL only to see that you’ve got to pay a subscription fee in order to see “the real ad” and find out who the prospective employer might be.
Another job board, Work in Sports, does the same thing; runs an ad to entice you to join the site so you can apply for the job. So does Jobs in Sports.
So a word of caution for those great opportunities you see on Twitter that link to job boards? Social media – a place where outside of spammers – is mostly one of transparent give and take – has become more opaque, and more sleazy. And for those firms that run teaser ads to lure people to buy subscriptions? Shame on you – and not the type of thing that will encourage employers to list their ads on your job boards.
Part of the growing up is a loss of innocence; with social media, you just hope that you don’t end up with sleaze all over you as part of the experience.
Life Back West is an occasional set of writings focused on ways people, teams and organizations can be both more effective (doing the right thing) and more efficient (doing the right thing well). More about executive, career and team / leadership coaching services can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar or the “Hire Me” tab above. You can also read an online interview with me at WhoHub, as well as participate in my learning community courtesy of KnowledgeCrush.