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Opinion Summary
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Not Your Daddy's Monster
by Joubert | Aug 28, 2007
"Hey, what if we build a walled garden where job candidates and recruiters can contact each other without the noise of get rich schemes and multi-level marketing offers?" "That sounds pretty good. But how are you going to keep the riff-raff out?" ...Return to opinion
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Date Written |
theladders.com is a pure scam (Reply to this comment)
by reportscam
This is a pure scam targeting job seekers. You can argue that in general it make sense to pay for a premium content however these guys do not add any value because they scavenge their "premium" content from other job boards. They charge monthly fee just to show you full job description for same positions that are posted elsewhere – on site like linkedin, dice, simplyhired, etc. Try for yourself: google some uniquely distinguishable phrase from theladders' job description preview/teaser (place it in quotes for exact match) and you will see where this position was posted. You have to re-type it because Theladders actually make it so you couldn't do copy/paste from their search result.
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Jul 13, 2010
11:54 am PDT
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Ops Ladder leaning on the WRONG wall (Reply to this comment)
by jpyshny
Do not waste your money. I tried it for one year and the results are POOR to none. Customer service is nonexistent. It is a RIP OFF!
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Mar 17, 2010
9:40 am PDT
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The Ladders Job Search (Reply to this comment)
by hrexec
Have just a little experience in the fields of career counseling, outplacement, and recruiting - 43 years, over half at senior exec level. Thought I would check out The Ladders to see what it was about. I have no reason to change my opinion:
Any time an applicant is expected to pay for a referral, it is a rip off.
Nuff said.
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Feb 28, 2010
3:59 pm PST
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Not worth the money (Reply to this comment)
by jb101010
The ladders have started running ads in the UK so I thought I'd take a look at the site.
Given that they expect you to pay a subscription I would have thought that they would have numerous vacancies available... wrong.
Sites like totaljobs, jobserve and cwjobs have many many more roles paying over £50k per annum... oh and they're free.
Why would anyone pay to use the ladders is beyond me.
I guess maybe it's useful for people who can't use search engines or maybe americans
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Jan 12, 2010
5:40 am PST
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Not overly impressed (Reply to this comment)
by Jakeblack
I think the site is too expensive for what you are getting. A lot of the jobs are just linked from the web, obviously they have a web scraper that is automatically indexing the internet.
Also their "free" resume critique, is full of canned statements and trust me, no matter what your resume looks like, they are going to tell you its horrible - and you need to pay them $695 to fix it.
I think linked-in, monstor, dice are better as they are free I am not seeing a huge advantage that Ladders has over them.
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Oct 2, 2009
8:48 pm PDT
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Re: Ladders now charging employers and job hunters (Reply to this comment)
by smp30
It seems to me that charging employers to post jobs will eliminate some of the postings that were previously only posted to satisfy fair hiring requirements. I would think this would save a job hunter quite a bit of time, providing they distinguish between jobs that were posted by employers and jobs they merely pulled from other web sites.
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Aug 17, 2009
1:40 pm PDT
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Re: Ladders now charging employers and job hunters (Reply to this comment)
by Joubert,  in Online Stores & Services
Thanks for the update, Placekicker. That would certainly change things, wouldn't it? As everyone woos recruiters, these guys go for charging them.
Best,
George
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Jul 24, 2008
5:35 am PDT
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Ladders now charging employers and job hunters (Reply to this comment)
by placekicker30
Until 11/2007, Ladders had been a site that charged the job hunter ($180/year or $30/month or so), but was free for recruiters and employers.
They started charging employers and recruiters to use the service as well as of 11/2007; those who had been existing users were given a grace period, providing them free use until August 1, 2008.
From here on in, employers and recruiters will have to pay an annual fee of $4500 to $6000 to use Ladders, in addition to the fees charged to job hunters. Look for the volume of jobs posted to drop off, and for fewer employers/recruiters to be combing the resume database.
They have a tremendous ad campaign going on, so maybe it will work, but it seems to me that it would provide job hunters a lot more opportunities for their money if the other side was allowed to use it for free (I run a search firm, and am not going to pay to continue using it, by the way).
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Jul 23, 2008
1:04 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Expensive? (Reply to this comment)
by Joubert, in Online Stores & Services
You're welcome. Had I known back then that my reviews would be living on in 2007, I would have left the prices out then too!
And weekends beat months all the time. Hope it works out for you!
George
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Aug 30, 2007
7:46 am PDT
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Re: Re: Expensive? (Reply to this comment)
by thedragonweyr
Thanks George!
I have noticed that you leave prices out of your reviews nowadays and figured that was the reason.
Bill is always looking for a land-based, closer-to-home position, which is what piqued my interest. The D.C. area is only 3 hours from the farm so he could be home weekends instead of being gone for months at a time.
Pamela
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Aug 30, 2007
4:01 am PDT
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Re: I experienced TheLadders during my one year... (Reply to this comment)
by Joubert, in Online Stores & Services
Nick, I ended up finding my own the traditional way as well. What was frustrating, and brilliant marketing on their part, were the teaser postings for roles that seemed perfect, but required a subscription to view.
I'm not a shotgun searcher when I look, but good recruiters don't want to waste their time so will either prep you and screen you well for the role or just blow you off. I had better communication with them than almost any inhouse HR person, and I did 20 some interviews in about 12 weeks, including 1 out of town.
What continues to surprise me is how much of the traditional way we looked (newspaper, resumes, networking) is gone. Now it's all about objective statements, reputation monitoring on the web and joining 6 social networking sites. Amazing. I think half my LinkedIn list is recruiters!
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Aug 29, 2007
2:34 pm PDT
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I experienced TheLadders during my one year... (Reply to this comment)
by NFP
...between jobs after getting fired from my senior exec position in Nov 2005. I found it to be both useful and frustrating. Useful in that it clearly let me know what's out there in VP, SVP, and Director land, but frustrating in that many of the jobs were clealry posted there because of fair hiring practices, and were positions that were high enough that they would go to referrals. One of the most useful aspects was that many of the jobs were posted by recruiters I could investigate and reach out to.
I imagine most of the applications via TheLadders end up in the HR dept., which is death for a senior exec slot. I ended up gtrying to determine the company, then visiting their site outside of TheLadders, and then looking for mhy own entree contact at a suitable level via news articles and press releases posted on the site, or referrals from my own network.
cheers, George. And thanks for getting sonicbids.com into the EP database for me to review.
cheers, nick
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Aug 29, 2007
9:29 am PDT
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Re: Expensive? (Reply to this comment)
by Joubert, in Online Stores & Services
Hi, Pamela, long time!
I've started keeping prices out of my reviews because they change so often -- even just on sales or promotions. Anyway, it's $30/month right now. They're selling 6 months for the price of 4 and a year for the price of 6 months, but the long terms don't have refunds.
I'm pretty sure I saw jobs requiring clearance, but since I remain the only person in DC without one, I tended to skip over those.
If you're in a search, it's probably not a bad way to spend thirty bucks, but I wouldn't buy more than a month until you had a chance to explore.
George
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Aug 29, 2007
9:17 am PDT
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Expensive? (Reply to this comment)
by thedragonweyr
How expensive are we talking here, a flat fee or percentage based on salary?
Also, do they field positions that require clearance? If so, they might actually be useful to us.
Thanks!
Pamela
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Aug 29, 2007
6:28 am PDT
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