After watching The Ladders for a while as a trial i. Nick, you are very courageous to expose this scam because low-lifes who perpetrate such scams are often armed with equally amoral attorneys and other professionals paid to retaliate. I hope some investigative organization is willing to look into this further. One question: how to I get off the Ladders mailing list? They have totally ignored requests to remove my information.
And others. But I get their weekly newsletter and it often has good articles on job hunting. So, they are not a complete waste. Or is there a company that has hired someone through the Ladders and are willing to come forward?
Wonderful information! Thanks for sharing. Just wish I had known several hundred dollars and years ago. She was unable to find them. As noted in the post, Bernadine Bednarz asked for contact info on people who got hired via Ladders. A Ladders rep declined to provide it. Proverbial you, not you. Housekeeping question: Would it have been better for me to cut this article into parts and post them separately?
The main reason I kept it all together sorry about having to scroll! And thanks for the kind words about the content of this one. It was a long haul…. Separate posts might make for more readable chunks, but, as you say, the responses get scattered.
Is there an option to turn off commenting to certain posts? In that case, you could allow comments only for the last in a series, thereby keeping them all together. Great job Nick! Did not happen! They wanted to show me how they could help me with my recruitment needs! Cenedella has a mansion for each day of the week. At least, I sure hope not. Lynda: Thanks for posting, and thanks for sharing your story in the article. So poison it. If every employer and job seeker that has been bitten by theladders creates 10 fake profiles, with fake emailaddresses, and Marc Cenedella sends out daily emails to ALL subscribers in his database, then that is a sure way to get him listed on most email blocklists.
For employers that have jobs listed on their websites that get harvested, track the source of the robot and block it from accessing your website. Have some fun with it. Melissa: I know, I know ;-. Er, members. Er, names. How gullible are they? I dunno. Ever watch people in a casino keep feeding quarters to the machine?
All night? Nothing illegal about it. Then we have a problem. Maybe many of the subscribers have just been brainwashed into believing that bigger is better. More to the point, they genuinely believe that the traditional job hunting method is how it ought to be done.
I know that I have no end of trouble trying to convince people to try alternative methods. They seem too scared to do anything differently. A friend of mine turned me on to your blog about TheLadders. I honestly did not know this site existed. I have never seen any advertising for this service. As an attorney with a class actions practice, based on the information provided, this seems actionable.
I encourage you to keep up the postings exposing companies that take advantage of consumers. Consumer advocacy needs people like you. Other than updating my resume with current position information, it is the same one I have used for years — successfully. I returned to the tried and true method of finding another job — legwork and networking. Regards and thanks. My astro-turfing sensor just beeped at your post. Sara-may may have found a job through Ladders. What troubles me about Ladders apologists not necessarily Sara-may is that they suggest a positive data point somehow erases clear trends of bad behavior and systemic misrepresenation of the product.
Nick, since you asked. Yes, the article is way too long. And it seems to repeat the same information quite a lot. No worries — your previous warnings about The Ladders have warned me off anyway. Someone who wants me to change my opinion on something needs to do better than just call me names.
Am I missing a post? Well, it will, but in the wrong way. Dan: Thanks for your candid comments. The article took a long time to research, fact-check, write, and edit. But time was short and the publication deadline loomed… I figured, better to leave it all in than to cut the wrong things out. But your point is well-taken. Nick, I respect its length. Besides being vintage Corcodilos, the content is a substantiated and grave indictment of unprincipled business practices.
It deserves the serious journalistic treatment you give it. Unprincipled businesses need outing. Thank you. So keep on keeping on. Nick, I think the length is fine because it is a summary well maybe not a short summary of all the Ladders info you have and you have put it all in one place. Please note the date of the contact i made to a posted resume in TheLadders database at the time we used them. I have removed the candidates name and contact information for obvious reasons.
Neither of us could figure out why his resume was posted on The Ladders in He could not remember ever signing up but when he did do a Ladders trial in he found his resume already there and a three year old message from me sent in in regard to a resume that he said was 5 years out of date. Once you check in you never leave. Whether you know it or not. My email is at the bottom as part of the Ladders message. I have not used The Ladders in the past and am sorry for the delayed response. I am interested in speaking with you.
Please contact me directly at xxx. If you provide your contact info I will call you back. Learn more about email security. He said they had no such job posting or position available. I called Ladders to complain and they said they would look into it. I never heard back from them. I run a small 1-man consulting firm. As I said one-man operation, ergo, no open jobs. Makes you wonder if there are any real human beings behind this. Read the language, and the lack of specific details, and see if it evokes the genuine words of a real person or a TV informercial script.
Quite a hostile and sarcastic attitude to be embedded in a story of good fortune another clue to fake. James G: My cognitive dissonance meter also shot over to somewhere near maximum when I noticed the linguistic and punctuation details of the sara-may post. Very similar characteristics can be seen in certain responses posted to an earlier article on TheLadders antics. A fellow named Ray Stoddard put it very nicely and very generously a few years ago. Ray has been a subscriber since the beginning:.
The good news for those of us who use them is that few people are really willing to implement what you recommend, giving those of us who do an edge. Just… go around them. As a note, please be aware the sales team at theladders is out promoting their newest products TLC and FitFinder. I finally found a way to deal with the excess mail I receive from TheLadders. Now, if there only were an easy way to also delete my information from TheLadders database and prevent unwanted marketing, I would like to know that too.
This is a very interesting article but, one professional to another, you seriously need an editor. You could have covered every point you made here in half the time. Blog posts are meant to be short. I encourage you to find someone to help out in that department. Also, anything you write, including a mundane job description, is intellectual property. It achieves copyright automatically after being created in a fixed form and is protected by copyright law.
Any of the companies whose ads were scrapped could easily sue for copyright infringement and they should get their IP lawyers involved if they are serious about stopping the practice.
SK: Point taken. I opted to leave it all in so that nothing important would be left out. Mea culpa. I might get inspired one day and trim it down. I consulted an attorney about this very point, and I should update the posting. Job listings are factual. Even if job postings are protected, each employer would have to register each job listing before it could file suit for infringement. No employer is likley to register all its job listings. But you were thinking what I was thinking…. Thank you for the fantastic article.
I have been a Ladders subscriber for a while now, and have become very frustrated over time with them and their bogus postings. I have just cancelled my subscription and feel like just another sucker looking for a better career. I will be happy to participate in any future class action against them. This is a shame because there really needs to be a place where executives and management can set themselves apart.
Upgrade to paying membership and learn about it. This was very informative, however, are there any alternatives being offered?
What credible avenues are available? Are there other websites or accredited companies that offer a solution to TheLadders shortcomings? Any information would be appreciated. Ben: The bottom line is simple. Think about it: Only an employer can control whether it hires you.
So how can anyone else promise you a job in exchange for money? It takes time and effort to do it that way. But so is the job you want or anyone wants. They judge personal referrals very highly. If people would stop wasting time on getting someone else to do it for them, and instead invest the time in doing it for themselves, there would be a whole lot less frustation.
I am so mad at myself. I have not heard from any yet. I just earned my MBA and I get recruiter calls and emails all the time. However, no such chance for work.
I do not know who to believe but myself. Check the book covers at top right of this blog page. The Ask The Headhunter website, blog and weekly newsletter all free are loaded with lots of free advice that works — people have been using it for over a decade.
I created the books to make it easy to study the material all at once. You need to go show the employer you want to work for how you will contribute profit to their bottom line. Only you can do it. I try to teach people how. I signed up, but unfortunately have not seen any real service beyond incompetent resume writing. I am wondering how I can get my money back. Any similar experience? I finally figured out the jobs were not real….
I did cancel my subscription, but they hit my card again. They will not remove me from their list. What a racket…. After landing a job on my own, through networking , I tried cancelling my membership. It took forever to finally remove my name from their database. Then suddenly a few days ago, I start getting emails again. I unsubscribe and immediately get another email. I unsubscribe, and remove all job search agents from my resume. Finally, I just closed my account.
What does it take for these losers to leave me alone? I do not wish to be affiliated with this scam in any way…. I signed up for a two year contract in March of and still have about 5 months to go on it. They just announced FREE service for all headhunters but refuse to let me out of my contract. The training sessions they offer are a joke to anyone who has been a headhunter for more than a day and the candidates they are listing have been around for years and are not removed unless specific requests are made.
What started out as a great job board has deteriorated significantly. I assume this means they are planning to sell the company to some unsuspecting and naive group and are padding the number of candidates and jobs. So I never fell for the paid service offering, but I did apply for a couple jobs many many many months ago… So out of the blue, today, I get an email from the ladders acknowledging that I had applied for a position.
It offered links to check the status, follow up, etc…. I followed the links to see what was up, and it seems that a ladders job posting that expired back in June was the one I supposedly applied for. And sure enough, the links in the email show the status of the application as having been just submitted today… However when I pull up the job, it says the listing is expired, and no longer accepting applications.
So I am left to wonder WTF? I doubt the recruiter wants to hire a dumbass applying for 6-month expired positions. Clearly somethging scammy is going on. So will I be out of work soon because of these guys? These guys are clearly out of control and grasping for straws. And the job is for a position that in no way pays as much as they claim. We are paid well under national averages here, so even if the employer is real, most likely the salary in the posting is NOT real.
Thanks for your blog! I almost commited to pay TheLadders. It is very helpful. On the side line, what job boards you know will do the real things that you feel confident to recommend to me?
When I sent an inquiry to Customer Service in that regard, surprise surprise, I never got a reply. I never got fooled into paying for the Ladders, but luckily I have a job and am only casually looking.
See the attached email saying you just got fired…. Career Services Shape your career story with a certified professional writer. Sometimes that bad news comes in the prettiest packages. What seems like a gift from the highest graces too often turns out to be bad tidings in disguise.
First off, the severance vacation can lead you into a false sense of security. This phony freedom from fear lulls you into believing that the future is far away.
Instead of your sixth sense flashing warning signals and blaring the alarm siren, your pleasant-enough living situation inhibits you from securing your future cash flows and career prospects. That serene sense of calm is harmful. And more time spent on the sidelines leads to ever-worse habits and rustiness. You forget the more obscure industry buzzwords. All that sun leaves you a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the tough interviews. You get softer, you get happier, you get lazier.
The job search involves rejection, rejection involves pain, and pain is something most of us want to experience at the gym and not carry through our waking day. The pain of the job search is the result of how unusual the job search is relative to the rest of our lives. A job search occurs perhaps twice a decade and involves meeting a lot of strangers so that they can assess you. That the assessment is in regards to your professional ability to meet their specific, narrow, corporate need, does nothing to alleviate your feeling of being a-foot-and-a-half short of puberty and still in braces at the junior high dance.
And avoid it, we try! If Dr. Having a tight schedule for your severance vacation will make those days of leisure sweeter for their scarcity, and allow you to tough it out in a better class of airline, hotel, or amusement park.
You need to take the break you deserve and recharge your batteries. Because once you come back, your new job is full-time. And your new job has just one goal — getting yourself into a new seat at a new company getting paid in dollars, not promises or favors. When the breaks go your way, bank your plenty rather than fritter it away, and make a timely transition into your new job-finding job. Good luck with the job search this week!
To manage any of the emails you receive from us, edit your email preferences. Find this email in your spam or junk folder? Is this sit real? No reply. I write to a guy who is supposed to be the VP for the site. He want to be my job coach on Saturday mornings at 8. Only time hes able. No one can answer about the job listings. Also, we do need to set a higher bar, a real Benchmark for Hiring Employers, and some transparency for recruiters to post salary ranges and any significant pkg issue such as corp housing, car, etc.
Whether applicants search databases or use an Agency or specialized recruiter, we all need our dats znd keywords. Great article! I wish to express appreciation to the writer for bailing me out of this particular instance. Just after searching throughout the the web and seeing advice which were not pleasant, I thought my entire life was gone. LinkedIn works really well now, yet in a few years it will decline unless its nature changes. Already it is being used as a source of leads for sales organisations.
Over time more senior professionals are going to become upset with these approaches and leave the site, making it a less useful tool for genuine recruiters. However, at present it is THE place to market yourself, so spend time developing your profile and gaining as many relevant recommendations as you can. For senior-level or executive roles, LI is entirely worthless. The reason is simply because those networks are invariably diluted with a sea of people trying to sell their services or goods to people-with-budgets.
At this level, LI is really more like Zillow than a serious networking or job search site. Job registrations for the career, coordinators or the trainers online is good and thanks for sharing the location and get the edubirdie for the ease.
Thanks for sharing this article. We hate spam so we'll never do it and we'll never share your email address with anyone. We love what we do. New Here? Love this article? Share it! Twitter Facebook Googleplus Pinterest Linkedin. About the Author Louise Fletcher. Randolph says:. Anonymous says:. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Three Popular Articles you will kick yourself for not reading. Like what you see? Sign up to get our very best stuff sent by email We hate spam so we'll never do it and we'll never share your email address with anyone.
0コメント