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Revenge of the resume?
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July 29, 1999: 6:32 a.m. ET
An online posting can help you land a job -- or infuriate your boss
By Staff Writer Nicole Jacoby
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - If you think posting your resume online is the next great way to land better employment, you're probably not alone.
A growing number of job-seekers are flocking to the Web in the hopes of avoiding the mass mailing of cover letters and those networking phone calls to their cousin's best friend's brother in the hopes of securing an interview.
But if you think you can post your resume, kick back and watch the offers flood in, you may have another thing coming.
"Some people have better luck than others," said Pam Dixon, author of "Job Searching Online for Dummies." "It all depends on what kind of field you're in and where you are on the job continuum."
More importantly, by posting your resume online, you may be opening yourself up to current employer ire and identity fraud.
Job seekers flock online
There is little question that the proliferation of resume-posting services on the Internet has dramatically simplified the job-hunting process.
Whereas prospective job-seekers once had to hunt down willing employers through classified ads and repeated phone calls and companies had to pay big bucks for recruiters to find sought-after candidates, prospective employees and employers can now skip the middleman altogether by logging onto the Net.
The Web also has increasingly put the ball in the job-seeker's court.
"In the old days, networking was about who you knew. In the Internet arena, it's about who knows you," said Peter Weddle, author of "Internet Resumes: Take the Net to Your Next Job."
But the success of online resume-posting can be difficult to gauge, since Internet job sites are generally responsible only for bringing applicants and employers together and rarely are responsible for sealing the deal. However, most of the larger job-search sites report an increase in both the number of resumes posted and employers using their database service. Monster Board alone, one of the most popular job-seeking Web sites, hosts more than 1.6 million resumes with thousands of new resumes being posted every month.
The popularity of online resume banks among employers has been prompted in part by the tight labor market, which has forced companies to get creative when looking for new blood.
Increased access to the "passive" job seeker also has bolstered resume-posting sites. Passive job seekers, in growing demand as the labor market becomes more and more competitive, are those that are generally satisfied with their current employment situation but might be open to new opportunities under the right circumstances.
Landing an interview
Recent college graduates and employees who have been in the work force two or three years, especially in the fields of high-tech and finance, have the best luck landing a job through a resume bank, as do high-level executives, according to Dixon.
"When recruiters go online, they are just assuming a lot of resumes are going to be in the early career stage," Dixon said. And good executives are just eternally in demand.
But mid-career workers can have a difficult time finding a job by posting their resumes on the Internet. That's because mid-career job seekers tend to be more choosy than younger workers regarding location, salary and benefits, making finding the right job online more difficult for them, says Dixon.
Privacy concerns
Because posting a resume online is so easy, it may be tempting to just throw up your resume on as many sites as possible to bolster your chances of landing a job.
But that strategy could blow up in your face.
"There is no privacy on the Internet and job seekers need to be really careful about where they put their resumes," Weddle said. "It's almost guaranteed that your resume will end up in places that you had no idea even existed."
Resumes get duplicated throughout the Web because Internet companies hoping to build up their own resume banks use software programs, known as "spiders," to pluck resumes from competitors' sites. By bolstering their databases, these companies hope to draw big advertisers to their own job sites.
Another problem with online resumes is "salvaging." Companies wanting to find out which of their high-level staff members are seeking new opportunities sometimes hire human resource specialists known as "salvagers," who scour job sites for current employee's resumes, often simply by searching for the company's name.
However, these cloak-and-dagger tactics are largely limited to high-level employees with access to sensitive company information or intellectual property.
"This is a real problem only if you are working in a high-tech field or biotech or anywhere where there is highly-competitive software development or research and analysis going on," Dixon said.
While many prospective job-seekers may be most worried about their current employer spotting their resume online, identity theft or stalking should probably be at least as big a concern. Resumes often contain sensitive personal information, such as addresses and telephone numbers, that can be used fraudulently to set up bank accounts and credit cards in your name.
"There are a lot of creeps on the Internet," Weddle said. "There's just a certain amount of risk."
Personal data is also sometimes used to put people on direct mail lists or marketing lists.
Job sites respond
The growing concern among consumers regarding privacy on the Internet has sparked new protective measures on many job Web sites
Monster.com, for instance, allows users to choose between "live" or "archived" resumes. A live resume can be accessed by any of the site's paid subscribers. An archived resume, on the other hand, is kept on file until job-seekers find an ad they want to respond to and send companies their resume through Monster.com.
Another strategy, adopted by CareerPath, allows users to submit confidential resumes, which leave out the name and contact information of the job-seeker. Companies interested in hiring these applicants can send them e-mail through an anonymous address hosted by CareerPath.
Eliminating contact information or even the name of former employers, as some resume banks permit, can be problematic, however. For one, a "salvager" will easily be able to recognize an employee's resume by a few characteristics, such as the company name or even division and job title, even if the person's identity is missing.
Leaving out information may also limit your job search.
"If you eliminate too much information on the resume document, it becomes less valuable," said Bruce Skillings, president of CareerMosaic, which takes a more laissez-faire approach to its resume bank and currently does not offer any additional privacy protection. The company does plan to introduce some new privacy features early next year.
"We don't want to give people a false sense of security. There's no way of knowing that a recruiter (subscribing to the database) is not working as a third party for a company that you don't want to see your resume," Skillings said, claiming it's simply impossible for employment sites to screen all their database subscribers.
Another industry insider says it's just a matter of time before the fears regarding employers finding out you are seeking new opportunities dissipates altogether.
"Eventually, everyone is going to have their resume on the Web and there will be less and less sensitivity to this issue," said Craig Besant, vice president of marketing for Monster.com. "Just because you have your resume up there doesn't mean you're unhappy."
Guarding your privacy
If you are planning to take your resume online, there are precautions you can take.
For one, don't post your resume just anywhere. Choose a site that has an effective firewall, a security system that keeps outsiders, including "spiders," away from a Web site's internal network. You can tell an Internet site is protected by a firewall if it requests a password for access to its resume bank.
Exclude personal information, such as addresses and phone numbers, from your online resume and consider using a third party e-mail address, sponsored by Yahoo! or Hotmail, to make it more difficult for con artists and current employers to identify you.
Consider using an online job agent instead of a resume-posting service, especially if there is a legitimate concern your employer could find out. Job agents, offered by many of the same sites that offer resume-posting, e-mail users when they have targeted positions job-seekers may be interested in based on a profile they have filled out.
Finally, although many companies purge resumes from their databases every 4 to 12 months, it may be a good idea to date your resume. That way if an old resume comes back to haunt you, you can point out to your employer that it is left over from a previous job search.
Bear in mind that privacy may be less of an issue for you than for others. If you are straight out of college for instance or unemployed, there will be no major reprisals if someone runs across your resume online. If you are a high-level tech worker with access to sensitive information, however, the consequences may be more dire and you should probably avoid online resumes altogether. Head to your nearest recruiter instead.
Ultimately, job seekers will have to decide for themselves whether the risks of putting their resume online are worth the benefits.
"It comes down to personal choice," CareerMosiac's Skillings said. "You have to police yourself in this world… you have to decide whether you want to expose yourself or not." 
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