A long time ago I made the mistake of posting my resume on Careerbuilder.com, hoping that I could get some freelance writing and editing gigs this way. Since then, I have been inundated with all sorts of spam, many of it from entities claiming to be representative of Careerbuilder.com.
I know this spam is the result of my e-mail being on my resume, which was on Careerbuilder.com, for several reasons:
No. 1: Oftentimes, the sender’s address has “careerbuilder” in it. I know these aren’t legitimately from the careerbuilder.com site because NONE of these job offers are ever addressed to me by name.
No. 2: The job offers are NEVER related to what’s on my resume. In fact, the offers have absolutely no relevance whatsoever to writing or journalism. And most sound like money-stealing schemes.
No. 3: These strange job offers keep showing up in the e-mail “in” box of the very same e-mail that’s on my resume. I have numerous sub-accounts, and only this particular sub-account keeps getting these stupid job offers.
No. 4: Sometimes, something in the body copy of the message mentions careerbuilder, but again, these messages never address me by name.
I have never received a freelance editorial offer as a result of my resume being on careerbuilder.com. So, I don’t know just who searches this site, but apparently, entities in search of writers and editors never go near it.
Having being totally fed up with the careerbuilder.com’s site’s inability to keep e-mail information protected (and I’m sure there has got to be a way to do this; for Pete’s sake, we have the technology to put a man on the moon. You mean the Web designer can’t figure out a way to keep spammers from getting e-mails off of resumes? The setup on the careerbuilder site is very loose and weak, for lack of better terms), I finally deleted my resume from the system.
Like that was really going to make a difference! I continued to get the spam! So I phoned careerbuilder, and I told them that I want all my information deleted from their site. The woman verified that my resume was no longer on the site, and when I logged onto careerbuilder, it showed that my resume had been deleted.
I continued to get the spam. Somehow, spammers were using careerbuilder as a portal through which to obtain my e-mail address. I phoned careerbuilder again and was told that my resume absolutely was not on the site. I said, “Somewhere on your site, in your system, must be my e-mail!”
He told me that in their system they retain e-mails from people who post resumes. I can’t recall exactly what he said, but the list had to do with record keeping, or something — dang, I can’t recollect — but whatever the reason was, that they automatically retained e-mails — was a very poor reason. When a person takes a resume off this site, this means that careerbuilder has no right keeping the e-mails for records!
The man told me he’d delete my e-mail. He also had the nerve to tell me that there’s no way spammers could get to it. I said, “Well obviously, there IS! Take my e-mail out of your system!” He said he would.
I continue to get job offers from entities whose sender addresses have “careerbuilder” in them.
Do not post your resume on careerbuilder unless you want to get soaked with stupid spam job offers (very suspicious-sounding offers, I might add) that have nothing to do with your background. If you want to get writing gigs, forget careerbuilder.com. Instead, peruse Web sites specifically geared towards writers.
