Shawn was on ebay, and he saw this little ad:
Monster.com is another site you can go to and search for a job. I’ve heard of it, but somehow, I never ended up going there to search for a job. I don’t know why I didn’t go there to look, since it is a popular site.
This little ad interests me. It implies that finding the “perfect” job on Monster is exactly as easy as finding the “perfect” item on ebay. Oh, really? I decided to test that implication.
It seems the first step I need to do is go to ebay , and figure out what the “perfect item” to search for would be.
Step One: Go to the main page of ebay. That was easy. There is a red button here that says “Sign In”. I don’t actually want to sign in. I prefer being able to have a look around at what a website has to offer before I sign up for whatever it is. So, I’m skipping that part.
Step Two: Figure out what the “perfect item” is that I want to search for. This is extremely subjective. The item I think of as “perfect” and want to search for is not likely to be the same item you think of as the “perfect” item you want to search for. And, tomorrow, or a week from now? I might have changed my mind, and the item that I considered “perfect” today will no longer fit that description. Hmmm… what to do?
There are a ton of categories to search through, and I think it’s going to be incredibly time consuming to randomly search around, hoping to happen upon the “perfect” item. Looks like I have to pick something. Ok, fine. For the purposes of this experiment, the “perfect item” is going to be a book. I’ve been looking for a copy of Anne McCaffrey’s “Masterharper of Pern”, in mass-market paperback size. I’ve got most of the series, and this one is next, and I cannot find it anywhere. So, this will be the “perfect” item I shall search for.
Step Three: Attempt to find the “perfect” item.
I found a category that says “Books”, so I clicked there. Easy! Oh, wait, not as easy. This brought me to a page with a billion sub-categories of books. What category would people who are selling this book place it under? I decided to click on “Fiction and Literature”, because “Fantasy” and “Science Fiction” are two separate categories in the world of ebay, and if I was in a bookstore, I would look for this book under the “Sci-Fi/Fantasy” section. Click!
This bring me to a page where I can see a big list with photos, and descriptions I can click on. It also says I have “942,095″ items to search through. Too many! Oh, wait… it looks like towards the top of the page there is a little space for me to put in a description, and it has already selected “Fiction and Literature” from the drop down list of items in the box next to it. I put “Anne McCaffrey Masterharper of Pern” in the empty box, and hit “enter”, hoping for the best.
“Safari can’t open the page”. Damn you, Safari! Damn you! I refresh the page, and see what happened to my search. It takes two refreshes to get me there.
There are exactly three items here that fit my search for the “perfect” item. That’s easy to sort through. Oh, wait…. under that is another category, that says there are fifteen items in the “ebay store”. What does that mean? I take a few minutes to look it over, and decide that the “ebay store” contains things I can buy right now, while the top three items are up for auction? Ok, that was a bit more confusing than I needed it to be.
Let’s see what these three items are. The very first one looks like exactly what I am looking for, so I click on it. It’s mass-market paperback, the cover looks like it pretty much matches the rest of the covers from the parts of the series that I already have. It says it costs $1.00, plus $3.75 shipping. Sounds good to me! I may have found the “perfect” item.
Step Four: Attempt to actually acquire the “perfect item”
I start by clicking on the bright blue “Buy It Now” button. This brings me to a nag screen. It seems on ebay I can look around all I like, but when I decide to buy something, it wants me to do some extra steps and sign up. Not unexpected, but still displeasing. I have two options here. I can either make an account with ebay, or, I can click on the button that says “Guest Checkout”. The gods of ebay allow one to “make your first purchase as a guest shopper”. Click!
“Welcome Guest, please enter your contact information below. Until you complete payment, another eBay user may purchase this item.” I can click on a link to “learn more”. Someone else can buy it out from under me? I’m not liking that too much. What if I give you all my information, and somebody else buys it before I get done? Ok, granted, there isn’t going to be a run on Fantasy books written over a decade ago, but still!
It only takes a minute to fill in all the boxes of information they want from me. That wasn’t so bad. Until it bounces back, and tells me that I haven’t filled in my telephone number, which, I did. I can see it right there on the screen! This is not so easy after all. Oh, wait, maybe it’s because I filled in xxxx where it wanted an extension number, because I don’t have an extension. Click! It works!
I am now on the payment option screen, where it wants me to log into my Pay Pal account. I can’t remember how much money is in there at the moment. It take a minute to go search around to find my password, and then I hit enter. Now it wants a credit card, “just in case” my Pay Pal account payment doesn’t get to them. You know what? The hell with this! I’m canceling. Too many steps.
Finding the “perfect” item on ebay wasn’t too hard. Actually going through all the steps to get it was aggravating! So much so that I simply stopped filling things out, and, essentially, canceled the order. I would not describe this experience as “easy”.
Let’s see what happens on Monster, when I attempt to find the “perfect” job.
Step One: Go to the main page of Monster. There is a giant box in the middle of the screen telling me I can try out their “Power Search Beta” whatever that might be. No, thanks. At the top of the page are two boxes I can type words into to have Monster do some searching for me. One says “Enter Keywords” and gives examples. The other says “Enter Location” which can be “city, state, or zip code”. So far, this is easier to navigate than ebay’s first screen was.
Step Two: Figure out what the “perfect” job is that I want to search for. Again, the criteria for this is as subjective is it was for the “perfect” item. What’s the “perfect” job? Your answer to this question will likely be different from mine. The box I can type into suggests terms like “nurse”. Hmm.. guess I can’t just type in something like “Stay at home, flexible hours, writing blogs, for full time pay, and benefits”. Damn!
I currently have a part time job, which I am liking enough to stay there for a while. So, for the purposes of this experiment, I am going to search for a freelance writing job, and consider this to be my “perfect” job. Let’s see what happens!
Step Three: Attempt to find the “perfect” job.
I go to the box of keywords, and type “freelance writer”. Considering how much writing takes place online now, do I really need to type a location into the second box? I think not. I click the little box that says “search”. And, we’re off!
There are “263″ items that have appeared. I like that I can scroll the mouse over each one, and read the little window that pops up, and gives me a description. This is an improvement on ebay, where you must click on each and every separate thing to get a description of the item. Also, I’d like to note that Monster did not crash my browser (twice) before letting me see what my search criteria gleaned from it’s resources.
I notice that these jobs are not listed by date, meaning that the most recently listed is not on top. I prefer seeing the newest ones first, so, I click the box that says “date”. Monster magically re-arranges the jobs for me. It doesn’t crash my browser this time, either.
Let’s see what we have here. The first job wants an “Investment Writer”, which I do not have the skills to do. Honestly, do you want to listen to the writings of a dyslexic stock analyst? I didn’t think so. The next twenty two listings are exactly the same, except for the location. This company wants “writer/photographers” local to particular areas. Only one of these places happens to be in California, where I live, but it is far, far, away from me. (At least, I think so. I know it’s not someplace I could easily drive to). The next listing wants a “Web Content Writer” for “downtown Baltimore”. This is followed by a listing for the same company, that now wants an “Interactive copywriter” who lives in Plano, Texas. Nope! Too far away for me to even consider. The last job on this page of twenty five listings is from the same company that listed itself twenty two times on the page already. It wants a “writer/photographer” who lives in Jackson Mississippi.
Not one of these jobs fits the description of “perfect” I had in mind. Page two is filled with that same company again, looking for “writer photographers” for everywhere but where I live. The center of the page has an internal advertisement, suggesting I should get a degree, or perhaps give up on my “perfect” job and consider becoming a nurse instead. Page three has twenty five more listings for the exact same company that spammed up the first two pages. A few of these listings are in California, but the nearest one is still a couple of hours away from me (one way). I notice the internal ad embedded in the middle of this page is telling me, again, that I should get a degree, or else, it suggests I should go do a job listed as “retail” in another town that is several hours away from me. I have hit my personal “frustration point” with this whole experiment. I am now giving up on Monster dot com.
In Conclusion:
Finding the “perfect” item on ebay was not exactly easy. I had to jump through several hoops to find it, and then I would have had to jump through several more hoops to actually get it. Finding the “perfect” job on Monster was impossible. Nothing in the first four pages of my search showed me what I was looking for. None of it’s listings were even close to my idea of the “perfect” job.
Of course, much of this experiment was subjective in nature, and your results may vary.