Internet becomes more important search tool
While that tactic is straight out of the Great Depression, another part of their strategy is strikingly modern. The group, which includes former investment bank staff, has set up a website, wewantwork.com, where they have posted their resumes, also for all the world to see.
They have thus joined millions of other people, in work and out, who are making use of the internet to look for a job. A survey by the UK research company BMRB found that searching for jobs was the fourth most common use of the internet in the UK, behind e-mail, shopping and booking travel or holidays.
That was in 2000. It is becoming even more common. A survey by Ilogos, another research firm, found that 91% of Fortune 500 companies use their own websites for recruiting, up from 79% in 2000 and 57% in 1998.
In financial services the practice is widespread. Among the firms posting adverts for specific jobs on their sites last week were UBS Warburg, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.
Other firms are more tentative. Goldman Sachs encourages jobseekers to send in a speculative CV by website e-mail, but does not advertise specific jobs. Rothschild says it does not yet advertise jobs on its site. But a spokesman says it might in future: "Why not? It would save on headhunter fees."
Internet recruitment is most advanced for graduates. Almost all banks, including Goldman and Rothschild, require applications for traineeships to be made via their site.
Jobseekers can also search hundreds of jobsites that have sprung up in the last few years, listing adverts placed by recruitment firms and often directly by employers as well. The cost to advertisers is a tiny fraction of the cost of an advert in a newspaper.
Several UK sites are prominent in financial services. They include the Financial Times' site, which
last week was advertising 305 jobs, totallyfinancial.com with 335, cityjobs.com with 810 and eFinancialCareers.com (owned by Financial News) with 1,420. Jobs range from junior staff to salaries above 500,000 and some are based in continental Europe.
John Benson, chief executive of eFinancialCareers.com, says that between 8,000 and 10,000 applications for jobs on the site are made each month, about twice as many as 18 months ago.
Bill Shipton, chairman of the Association of Online Recruiters, a body that represents jobsites, says: "In 1996, when I entered the industry, newspapers were frightened it would be their death knell because it would take away all their advertising. That hasn't happened. But I suspect there is a shift away from print and towards online."
Experts have plenty of tips for online job applicants. One is to write a pithy career summary at the top of your CV, before all the detail. While this has always been eyecatching, it is more so now so many CVs are circulating on the internet.
A recruitment expert says: "It's a blizzard. You might get hundreds of replies for one job and you can take just seconds to discard an application."
Another trick is to include the key words that recruiters search for when dragging up CVs from vast databases. If you are a manager, use the word "manager"; if you describe what you do in a roundabout way instead, your CV might never see the light of day.
Searching for jobs in the right place is also important. Jobsites that specialise in narrow areas are often favoured by headhunters who believe their adverts will attract replies from the most relevant people.
On the other hand a generic site such as monster.com, which has more jobs than any other, can yield opportunities from banker to ski instructor.
Mike Moran, head of the City of London office of Penna, an outplacement firm, says: "The significance of job boards is that you need to be aware of the brand. Good brand; apply. Bad brand; don't apply."
Plenty of recruitment sites have gone out of business in the past year, including financial services sites fincareer.com and onvocation.com. Some others appear to be struggling, including Futurestep, owned by global search firm Korn/Ferry, which is mainly a CV collector rather than a jobs board.
The firm made an operating loss of $9m (€8.1m) over the past year, though that was an improvement over $28m the year before.
Other jobsites are profitable. But not everyone is sold on internet recruitment. Stephanie Peckham, a consultant at US outplacement firm DBM, says networking remains by far the most common way bankers find jobs.
She says: "Applying online can be like filing into a void. You often hear nothing back. Nothing beats personal contact."
Philip Beddows, a director at outplacement firm BG Careers, says the average time for redundant staff in the City of London to find another job is at least six months, twice what it was two years ago. "Some are getting jobs online or by approaching headhunters. But networking is still easily number one."
However, a recruitment manager at a large fund manager says: "We advertise many jobs on our internet site and on external jobsites. There are hundreds of CVs in our database. It works very well."
Shipton says a perception that online job-hunting does not work for senior jobs is fading. "There are many well-paid jobs advertised nowadays. We will get a clearer idea how successfully online job hunting works when the economy picks up and more firms start hiring."
