The Ladders Led Me To New Opportunities, But Few In My Sector
Written: Apr 04 '09 (Updated Apr 04 '09)
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I paid approximately $80 for three months of service at TheLadders.com during a recent job search. The service included access to a free resume critique, thousands of online job postings, career advice and access to recruiters.
At the time, I held a director level role at a Chicago area nonprofit and had about 10 years of professional experience under my belt. Before signing up, I was warned not to purchase the service unless I was sure I had earning potential of $100K or more. As a nonprofit executive, I certainly had never brought home a six-figure salary, but I was flirting with the idea of jumping into a Community Relations or Public Relations role at a corporation and thought I might be qualified for the positions listed. I knew that the site wasn't geared to nonprofit professionals, so I took the salary prerequisite with a grain of salt.
When I signed up, I uploaded my resume which is supposed to be searchable by recruiters in my area. You can also search for recruiters in your industry, though I only found a whopping 2 in mine. I quickly learned that I would need to change the nonprofit jargon in my resume (development, board committees, strategic planning, etc.) to somehow fit the top keywords searched by recruiters in the for-profit sector in order to be found. That was tough to do, since the top keywords included "VP," "retail," "sales," and "CPA." I am a little surprised that my free resume critique did not touch upon this critical issue based on my objectives, but I did receive a spelling and grammar check (clean on the first pass!) and tips that were marginally helpful. The tips mostly showed me that I didn't do what I thought I'd done, which was to balance my use of quantifiable results and softer accomplishments that describe management style and leadership qualities.
The free resume critique is really just a lead in to hire a site employee to rewrite your resume and cover letter for you. Since my resume writing expert didn't address my primary concerns and gave me few tips of substance, I chose not to pay the fee.
The job postings are easy enough to read and navigate. I was able to get rid of jobs with a long commute easily. I could also search by company or by industry, though the industries are very broad. For executive level positions like these, it would have been nice to break down the overarching industries and departments to a greater degree of specificity.
It was no great shock to see a total of one nonprofit job in the bunch, and few community relations or public relations jobs. The Ladders taught me that I really need to consult with a live human being if I'm serious about moving out of the nonprofit sector. Everyone I know came to the nonprofit from the for-profit sector, but I can guess that I will be dealing with an immense learning curve. Even the jobs that should fit my skill set (marketing, PR, sales) use a language and candidate profile that perplex me.
Nearly all of the jobs I was interested in applying for accepted applications online, and the process was so seamless that I was confused when asked for user names and passwords. It feels as if you're getting some kind of exclusive opportunity to apply online through your account at The Ladders, but really you're just logging into the employer's online application site. I finally figured this out after requesting my user name and password from the site twice when I really needed to create new accounts with the employer. (Yes, I am that stupid.)
I was also always slightly annoyed with the site's attempt to pull information from my resume to auto-fill forms when applying for jobs online. My resume follows a very straightforward template so that it is easy to scan. Still, The Ladders would put a fragment of a previous title held into the Employer form or hiccup in other ways. For this reason, I strongly recommend filling out all online forms from scratch. Don't rely on the auto-fill feature with information this important.
The career advice section wasn't particularly educational, but I did learn from a few articles about how to brand yourself and negotiate salary for executive level positions. Many are written by recruiters who use actual case studies, which are far more interesting than a laundry list of bulleted "do's" and "don'ts."
I knew I was on the fringe of the target market for this site when signing up, but I didn't realize how defined that market was until I did. Unless you are a competitive executive-level candidate in the technology, human resources, sales, finance or marketing fields, think of the the subscription fee as an educational expense. I did get access to jobs I did not see on other popular jobs sites, and I didn't have to sort through loads of get rich quick schemes in order to see them, but I certainly didn't find the career advice or job opportunities I was looking for. But hey, at least I got affirmation that there isn't a nasty typo lurking on my resume.
Be sure to unsubscribe or your service will be automatically renewed, as with most web-based services. Good luck with your job search! LinkedIn has proven to be far more effective for me with mine.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
meagandowney
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Member: Meagan Downey
Location: Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 358
Trusted by: 218 members
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