Need a Job? Kill the Computer!

Using the Internet may harm, not help, people find a job

That surprising finding will be presented Tuesday (Aug. 18) during a
session on economic sociology at the annual meeting of the American Sociological
Association in Atlanta by Christine Fountain, a University of Washington
doctoral student.

"The punch line is everyone thinks the Internet is a great new way to
help people find a job. But it really is not," said Fountain, who
used a sample of monthly U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics
data of 50,000 American households to track two groups of unemployed
workers.
.
Fountain said the prime reasons for this were the quality of job information
available on the Internet, the surge of people using the Internet as
a job search tool and the flood of resumes that has made it more difficult
and time-consuming for employers to sort through job applicants.

"There is a distinction between having a lot of information from
the Internet and the quality of that information," she said. "There
is a lot of information on the Internet that is very useful, but not
necessarily
about jobs. Sites such as Monster.com don’t tell you which jobs you are
suited for and those where you have a real chance of being hired."

from Eureka Alert