Careerbuilder.com: Spam King of the Recession Age?

Like many Americans these days, I'm hunting for positive cashflow and investigating ways in which I can trade my time and effort for paper I can turn around and trade for food and lodging and art supplies. And in this day and age, the way to do that is through a variety of websites that connect job seekers with employers.

The highest value sites are ones where the employers have to pay to look at a résumé. The logic is like the old days of catalog marketing where you had to send a dollar to get a widget catalog. Often the seller would rebate the dollar with the first order, but in order to get the catalog you had to show some initiative and commitment. There are zillions of people out there who will take anything as long as it's free, and there is a much smaller number of people that will pay even a dollar for something they don't even want or have no more than a passing curiosity about. At the same time a dollar, especially if it comes off the first order, is a low enough barrier to entry that no one that seriously wants your catalog would stop at it.

After updating my résumé on CareerBuilder.com, which is one of the bigger job websites, I immediately started getting «interview offers» from companies that were unrelated to anything that appears on my résumé. Here is a sample:

June 8, 2009

Dear Steven,

We have reviewed your resume on CareerBuilder.com and feel we may have an interest in scheduling you for an interview. Please take a moment to answer a brief questionnaire (see the link below) that will further assist us in determining if a preliminary match exists between your qualifications and career objectives and our corporate goals.

Interviews will be conducted in the San Francisco area on Monday of next week. To be clear, this position does NOT require a daily commute.

PLEASE NOTE: You have been sent this email because we saw something in your resume that would indicate to us a potential fit for professional business to business sales.

If you feel we have made an error, there is no reason for you to click on the compatibility profile below. Please simply scroll to the bottom of this email and click on the link to be permanently removed from our selection process.

Click below for our online compatibility questionnaire: [REDACTED]

The Lionheart Group, Inc. is uniquely positioned to attract, develop and retain preeminent field and management talent in an emerging industry characterized by high-growth and minimal competition. We specialize in providing business owners and employee groups of all sizes with cutting edge employee benefits specifically designed for identity theft restoration and access to the legal system.

We seek independent-minded individuals with solid interpersonal communications skills to join our elite team of highly trained business to business sales professionals. Our Agents can earn substantial incomes marketing our plans both as employee benefits and as valuable tools for business owners.

This went on for several more paragraphs, but it's pretty clear that where they wrote «You have been sent this email because we saw something in your resume» that «something» was a contact email address and nothing more.

One of two things is true: either CareerBuilder.com is selling email addresses in bulk (which I think would violate the terms of service) or $600 for two weeks is too low a barrier of entry to prevent multi-level-marketers and Ponzi scammers from scraping up all the email addresses of all résumés they can get and sending mass-mailings to everyone who is looking for any job.

It gets worse, too. Some of these «offers» are in broken English and carry the earmarks of the famous Nigerian email scams:

Our part time work proposition provides you with supplemental wages which depends on your percent, and is rather competitive. 

You have a possibility to earn $700-1400 per week. 

Requirements: 

- Computer and Internet skills 
- Age 21 and older 
- Good Communications Skills 
- checking account

If CareerBuilder.com cannot do a better job of weeding out «employers» who are looking not for workers but for marks, then they shouldn't be getting the business of individuals with actual skills who are seeking to make themselves available to be employed.