Monstrous service

Ahhh, good ole Monster.com and their customer service.

Below is my response from “mayday”, and my original complaint about M.L. Stern using Monster to telephone-spam people.

I’ve included the entire email message, but the point is that their robot is amusingly and annoyingly inappropriate here. If not always.

————begin email—————————–
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:22:19 -0500
From: mayday@monster.com
Subject: Re: complaint about “employer” [#2725309]
To: steve@portigal.com
X-RCPT-TO:

Thank you for your interest in Monster.com, the leading online global career site.

Searching for job opportunities on Monster.com is very easy. We’ve outlined several suggestions and examples below to help you use our search functions the most effectively.

There are different ways to search for jobs on Monster.com: Full Search, and Browse Jobs.

Instructions included below:
Full Search
Browse Jobs
More information
Keyword Search Tips

FULL SEARCH (by location, category, keyword)

To get to the Job Search page, select ‘Job Search’ from the menu at the top of the page. From this page, you can search for jobs by location, category, or keyword(s).

Location: If you’re not sure which location to choose, pick all of the locations which may be applicable. To select multiple locations, hold down the Control key (PC) or the Command/Apple key (Mac) while clicking the desired locations. This method also works to deselect locations. If you do not choose a location, your job search will default to the entire United States.

Job Category: If you are not sure which Job Categories to choose, select all of the job categories in that may be applicable. To select multiple categories, hold down the Control key (PC) or the Command/Apple key (Mac) while clicking the desired categories. This method also works to deselect categories. If you do not choose a category, your job search will search all categories.

Keyword: Keywords are not required. Use the ‘Keyword’ function in addition to ‘Location’ and ‘Category’ to return more targeted results. Keywords are words or phrases describing your job preference. Keywords can be a job title or skill, the name of an industry or company, or a location. Examples include: programmer, SAP, telecommunications, North Dakota, human resources, America online, marketing, Cincinnati, etc.

Now click ‘Search Jobs’. You can continue to narrow your search on the next screen by typing another keyword in the blank field and then clicking ‘Subsearch’.

BROWSE JOBS

Go to the Job Search page by clicking ‘Search Jobs’ on the menu at the top of the page. You can browse job listings by clicking one of the following categories under the heading ‘Browse Jobs by’ in the right-hand shaded column:

US City/State: If you know the city, state, or region where you’d like to work, begin your search here. Click on a specific state on the map (or state abbreviation below the map) or one of the regional listings to the right. When your results appear, you can continue to refine your search by entering a keyword and clicking ‘Subsearch’.

International: If you are interested in working abroad, begin your search here. Click on the map or country/region listing to begin your search. When your results appear, you can continue to refine your search by entering a keyword and clicking ‘Subsearch’.

Company: To search for jobs at a particular company, select the appropriate letter of the alphabet. Scroll down the list until you see the company in which you are interested. Click on the name to see valuable information about the company as well as its available job listings. Not all companies with job postings are listed here. This is an optional service for employers.

MORE INFORMATION

Search Results Page — The Search Results page will tell you how many jobs match your search criteria. Jobs are then listed by date posted, location, job title, and company name. All jobs appear in reverse chronological order, i.e. the most recent job posted to Monster.com’s database will appear at the top of your Search Results page.

Some of the jobs that are posted come from clients that post jobs in newspapers. If a company in Boston, MA places an ad in an Austin, TX newspaper (for a Boston, MA job), that company expects us to post their job in the same fashion–i.e. post the Boston job in an Austin location in order to recruit talent from Austin. So the job postings that you’re seeing are from companies that want to attract people from the location(s) that you’re searching in. The jobs may not necessarily be physically located in that location.

If your search matches more than 50 jobs, click ‘Next’ at the bottom of the screen to access more jobs.

Subsearches — At the top of every Search Results page, a ‘Subsearch’ box will appear. Subsearching allows you to further refine your search from your current screen without having to start from the beginning. For example, if you performed a search using the keyword “publishing” which retrieved 1,500 listings, you could then do a Subsearch for “editor” to narrow your search within those same 1,500 listings. You can conduct additional Subsearches until you get the results you want. Names of states and cities can also be used in your Subsearch.

To retrieve even more job listings, click on the arrow by ‘All Jobs’ to pull down ‘Last 7 days’, ‘Last 60 days’, etc. The system will search for ‘All Jobs’ unless another choice is selected.

Apply online — You can apply for a job online by clicking ‘Apply Online’ at the bottom of most job description pages. If you have a rÔø?sumÔø? posted on our site, a copy of that rÔø?sumÔø? is automatically submitted to the company via email. If you do not have a rÔø?sumÔø? posted on our site, you will need to submit one before you can use the ‘Apply Online’ function.

Some companies opt not to have the ‘Apply Online’ function, or have it link to an application form on their own website. In these cases, you will not be able to use your Monster.com rÔø?sumÔø?.

KEYWORD SEARCH TIPS

Use keywords to describe your specific skills or areas of interest. Keywords are not case sensitive. Searching by job titles is less effective because titles can vary from company to company. When typing in your keywords, you can either type in just one word or try these suggestions for using multiple words:

To specify words that must all appear in the search results, put ‘and’ between the words (e.g., publishing and editor).

To specify words any of which may appear in the search results, put ‘or’ between the words (e.g., publishing or editor).

To specify a word that must not appear in the search results, put ‘and not’ before the word (e.g. publishing and not editor)

Note: The search will not accept any characters that are not alphanumeric (e.g., “&”). Therefore, you may want to change the keywords in your search accordingly.

Should you need additional information, please check out our Frequently Asked Questions at http://help.monster.com/jobseeker/FAQ/ or Reply to this message (but please DO NOT REMOVE the Ticket Number from the Subject line) and we will gladly answer your questions.

Need more information on your career or profession? Visit our Career Center at

—– Steve Portigal Wrote —–
I’m registered with monster.com as a job seeker. My core skill is user research and product design.

Today I received a call from “Judy” at M.L. Stern who saw my information on monster.com. She left a message for me to call Bill Pinkerton, at 1 800 965 2220. Bill is the office manager, apparently.

I called Bill, and the call was strange – he had no idea who I was, but started on the “what is your ideal position” – at any rate, it turns out that they are looking for commission-based telephone brokerage sales.

(it was starting to remind me of the film “Boiler Room”, actually).

I asked Bill what in my information made them think that I was interested in sales and he said that he didn’t know.

In any job search, there will be appropriate and inappropriate leads, that’s totally part of the gig. But this seems fairly unethical, they are using monster to simply collect data and “spam” people who might get fooled into taking a job. A tool like monster is useful for job seekers and employees because of its ability to target, not to harvest.

As a job seeker in this economy, I’m busy, and I’m worried, I don’t need to be played or have my time wasted by an organization that is looking to hook people into commission sales. I don’t want Amway calling me, I don’t want Fuller Brush, or Mary Kay Cosmetics contacting me. I shouldn’t have to deal with M.L. Stern and their rather sneaky tactics.

Thanks for listening,

Steve

Series

About Steve