The job board is far from dying or dead, no matter what you may hear. For communicating employment opportunities to people you do not know, there simply is no more effective vehicle. For the employment market, job boards have become the essential channel. Of course, there is no one size fits all tool for distributing information.
Operating on a single technical platform, you have the job boards of Beyond.com, which features thousands of domain names. Beyond.com has distribution in more than 15,000 job boards and hosts another 2,000. To pinpoint whether Beyond.com is right for you or your business, we review it in depth below.
About Beyond.com
Focused on helping people succeed and grow professionally, Beyond.com utilizes The Career Network. They are helping people build relationships around the globe and changing the way job searching is done. They are doing this by connecting employers and job seekers through over a thousand regional and industry communities and 75 unique career channels.
Members have access to statistics, job search functions, industry and social research, and networking features and have a seven day a week, 24 hours per day online presence. Beyond.com does this by providing members with a personalized online Career Portfolio and powerful communication tools.
As a free job board serving the Philadelphia metropolitan area, PhillyJobs.com was launched on January 1, 1998. To facilitate the staffing process for recruitment and employment agencies, within the year, the company had evolved into the 4Business Network to supply recruiting connectivity and software. The domain 4Jobs.com was acquired by the 4Business Network in 2000 to help them grow nationally.
The business has only continued to expand, and in 2005, it rebranded as Beyond.com. The name change was representative of the corporate image of aiming to deliver service and product offerings that go beyond that of traditional job boards. To recruit talent around the world, Beyond.com now serves as a single point of contact for many United States businesses.
Top Features of Beyond.com
The traditional resume is being uprooted by Beyond.com. Acting as a destination to point recruiters and contacts to, Beyond.com creates a visually appealing infographic of your accomplishments, work history, awards, and skills. This gives you an artistic tool in your efforts to stand out for potential employers. Plus, you have a professional online presence by keeping the information updated.
You will love Beyond.com’s Career Network if you like to keep up on all of the latest news, opinions, and trends in your field. In any of the hundreds of interactive talent communities, you can jump into the conversation.
When networking for a job or preparing for a job interview, you can uncover industry insights in these communities, so you can sound more knowledgeable. With the goal of supporting others seeking jobs in their field and sharing information, there are millions of people who use these communities every day.
Beyond.com’s personality assessment tool is a great starting point for those who are considering entering a completely different career. This tool helps you identify your ideal job by figuring out what motivates you. Also, to find out what personality type you fall into, you can take the free personality questionnaire.
You receive a Career Mapping Analysis Report and Candidate Personality Assessment after you complete the personality test. This helps you find the career path that is perfect for you based on your personality type.
Beyond.com Prices
There are essentially two types of memberships for job seekers: Basic Membership and Premium Membership. Basic Membership is free and includes all of the features outlined above. They also help you with
- Self-assessment tools
- Interviewing
- Job searching
- Financial services
- Portfolios and resumes
- Continuing education
The Premium Membership costs $19.99 per month. It includes everything in the Basic Membership plus a whole host of other features. With Premium Membership, you will have access to the Twitter job feed, which allows you to see the over 200,000 jobs that are posted on Twitter. You will be showcased as being a featured applicant.
Also, with the Premium Membership, you will be able to tailor your resume and cover letter to a specific company by gaining access to full company profiles. This will also help you prepare effectively for interviews. Finally, you will also gain a featured resume listing. At the top of employers’ resume search results, your resume will be featured.
This review is mainly focused on the benefits of Beyond.com for job seekers, but I will just touch on the benefits for employers too. There are many. For just $300 per month, you can access the database of over 30 million candidate profiles. That is a rather small investment when you think about what getting the perfect candidate to fill a position can do for your company!
Criticism of Beyond.com
In order to tailor their application to different companies or industries, many people like to use multiple resumes. Unfortunately, this process is not simple with Beyond.com, since they do not have a multiple resume upload feature. You must re-upload and re-edit for different applications if you cannot upload multiple resumes.
The Career Portfolio and other Beyond.com tools are supposed to compete with LinkedIn. You can apply directly to jobs using your LinkedIn profile. Though they are working on it and will likely launch it soon, at the time of this printing, Beyond.com does not allow you to do this. Consequently, it takes you a little bit longer to apply for jobs.
To find out about other criticism of Beyond.com, I hit up online forums. The vast majority of comments were positive. There were a few people who had some of the same concerns I did. And, there were just a couple people who had scathing words for Beyond.com, but their gripes appeared to be beyond Beyond.com’s control.
Customer Support
Beyond.com offers a wide array of ways to contact them. It appears their preferred mode of contact is through web form, since that is the main feature on their Contact Us page. In addition to web form, there is a toll free phone number, live chat, and physical address. If you are like me and want to try to solve the problem yourself before getting someone else involved, there is also an extensive FAQ section.
I tried the web form, since the site was pointing me to it, and I was not disappointed. I received a prompt response by email from a friendly and knowledgeable customer service representative. She provided me with supporting documentation for my question and asked to see if there was anything else I needed help with.
It appears the customer support is only available during regular business hours because I did not get an answer when I tried to call late at night and on the weekends.
Conclusion
Beyond.com does a good job of providing job seekers with all of the help they need. In addition to being a great resource for those looking for their dream job, advertisers, publishers, and employers will also find it useful. Connecting job seekers to employers is the main focus for Beyond.com and it shows.
With their access to thousands of industry communities and dozens of career channels, Beyond.com is one of the most comprehensive job sites on the web. Professional success and growth are easily attainable with networking features, personalized online portfolios, industry research, and communications tools.
If you are looking for a job, Beyond.com should be the first stop in your search. And, if you are looking to fill a position, you will find Beyond.com to be the ideal place to find the best candidate. We strongly recommend this job site.
