by Sharon Hill
DISCLOSURE: The views or comments shared by Sharon Hill within this headline reflect their own experience and opinion. According to Hill, they have no financial relationship, sponsorship, or partnership with any vendors, services, or affiliates mentioned here.
The alpha build of Monster founder Jeff Taylor’s Boomband non-traditional job search concept is a well-thought-out response to prevalent job seeker complaints of ghosting and recruiter complaints of voluminous non-qualified applicants in several ways. However, it’s definitely not for everyone — at least not as their only resource for job hunting.
We see it as a poor fit for those who are financially strapped, laid off for months and desperate to find a job — any job — by next week to pay the bills. That’s not what Boomband is designed for. It’s a great resource for those who are looking to fulfill the adage: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
This is how Boomband introduces itself: “Welcome to Boomband v0, the very first version of our platform, built for the people who are helping us shape it from the ground. As part of our Backstage Pass crew, you’re not just getting early access, you’re part of the build.”
“What you’re about to see is raw, real and intentionally unfinished. This is where we test, play, tweak and co-create Your job? Explore it, use it, and give us feedback. Tell us everything. What felt great, what didn’t, what’s missing, what made you smile. We’re so glad you’re here. Let’s make Boomband better together.”
Boomband is obviously a work in progress, and some of the negatives we see may be resolved in the near future. The one exception is likely to be the time it takes to create a dossier.
The dossier — a profile that showcases a job-seeker’s work history, accomplishments, skills, proficiency levels, interests, dreams and so forth — is very time-consuming to create. We have been working on it for eight hours and counting.
It’s a terrific concept for the most youthful job seekers and those without a lot of job history, for whom a traditional resume would highlight their paucity of experience. They now have the opportunity to talk about how managing their high school basketball team taught them leadership and team-building skills, as well as communication. They can talk about how their TikTok videos about building a bird house or how a podcast about writing book reports helped them gain video, speaking and marketing skills.
Those less likely to benefit from Boomband are more experienced individuals with an extensive work history. Boomband relies heavily on the upload of photos. For those of us whose careers began prior to cell phone use or hand-held digital cameras, that’s a stumbling block.
For example, to showcase our media career, we began with our first newspaper job — at The Anchorage Times, 1977-1981. Talking about the job was easy. A photo was tough, however, unless we wanted to take the time to digitize the old film pictures in our decades-old photo album. And, since the Times closed in 1992, the only photos were from online archives. Nothing personal there at all.
Additionally, our job history is lengthy, and the process for showcasing each position was much more time-consuming than uploading a resume. (Boomband does parse uploaded resumes, but the dossier requires a lot more detail). We’re not saying that “much more” isn’t an opportunity, but it does take a very long time.
Boomband is a great concept that allows a job seeker to showcase what they want and to put their best foot forward in exactly the areas where they wish to work. The process of suggesting the right positions based on a job seeker’s dossier is also great for employers, many of whom are looking for a better way to weed out hordes of non-qualified and poor-fit applicants.
After completing a small portion of our hefty job-history dossier, Boomband built us our own exceptionally well-worded Studio, with top-notch visuals. Its back-end is clearly efficient. As long as it maintains a hefty volume of truly active job postings and job seekers are willing to take the time to create an accurate and well-thought-out dossier, Boomband will be a game changer.
However, we wonder how many job seekers will devote the time required to make this happen. They should, but we doubt many will. It clearly has to be accompanied by other quicker-and-dirtier job search processes in the meantme, unless the job seeker has the time and patience to wait for the perfect job. Many just don’t.
We’ll reserve judgment until the final launch.
#jobsearch
#candidateexperience
#talent-pipelines