JC the Sales Guy: Ethical selling

Careerbuilder.com was kind enough to send me an unsolicited booklet in the mail called “Sales careers”. I was fairly surprised that any companies would think it was a good investment to partner with careerbuilder to send out a glossy magazine type ad booklet. After all, monster.com and careerbuilder.com have widely become recognized in job seeking circles as examples of technology ruining a process instead of helping.

Sure, when they were launched they increased efficiency. Now, all they seem to do is make it easy for great candidates to get lost in the pile with the hundred or thousands of other folks who aren’t really qualified, but applied anyway out of some misguided notion that the more they apply, the sooner they’ll find a job.

I know, I’m not coming across as a fan. Why am I feeling so hostile to careerbuilder, you ask?

Great question.

You see, careerbuilder sent me this glossy magazine that was cover to cover ads, with one little artcle tucked in. The first paragraph of that article (titled “Finding success in sales”) told me everything I needed to know about WHY careerbuilder has squandered such a great concept and now provides a product that is practically useless to job seekers and a burden to employers.  It started with the second sentence and read: “Do people say you could sell water to a drowning man? Do you have the gift of persuasion? You might be perfect for a job in sales…”

Anyone care to guess what I found offensive?

Go read some of my past posts and you’ll see that a common theme is that I detest the idea that a sales professional is good at selling things that their customers don’t need. Maybe I am taking this too literally, but I think it is telling that careerbuilder would lead into their article on sales careers by suggesting that if you could sell a drowning man the absolute LAST thing that he needs, you could be perfect in sales. Sell him a life jacket. That is what a REAL sales PROFESSIONAL would do.

After all, careerbuilder is one of the biggest offenders in making it so easy for any unqualified rube with internet access to apply for every position on the site, whether they are remotely qualified or not. They routinely sell job seekers on the value of using their service, while at the same time watering down the impact of each application to the point that the process has practically no value to the job seeker.

Am I being unfair?

After all, it is a free service to the job seeker. The companies that place the ads are careerbuilder’s real customers, right? To me, it appears pretty clear that the companies are being completely overwhealmed as well. HR departments are being downsized just like everyone else. They have less resources to screen candidates, yet they are getting more and more candidates for each position. It is no wonder that the internet and networking groups are full of stories of “perfect fit” candidates never even getting an acknowledgement that their application was received… and stories of HR managers feeling so overwhelmed that they look at only a fraction of the applications that they receive.

What we have here is a case of careerbuilder selling water to a drowning man.

Jeff Cress, the Sales Guy