Monster.com Privacy Rape

The good people at Monster have decided in their infinite wisdom to remove the block companies feature.

This sneaky fucker is selling you out.

“Monster is always committed to enhancing and protecting your privacy. As part of this effort, we would like to inform you that we have removed the ‘Blocked Companies’ feature from our site.”

Question to the moron who suggested this idea, HOW IS THIS PROTECTING OUR PRIVACY?!

I for one think this is a particularly bad idea almost certainly rooted in some clients of theirs stamping their feet demanding more access to more people and monster having their monopoly deciding to trample on the rights of its commodity (the jobseeker).

What this means is if you have your CV on monster your current employer can now find you and make your life miserable for wanting to look elsewhere for work, this sadly is a reality for many people currently employed.

I wrote back to complain and received a phone call soon after from a customer service advisor telling me that I could set my CV to confidential, which for many people will not help as this doesn’t change anything on the uploaded word version of your CV and does limit the appeal of your CV.


My advice to anyone who doesn’t want their employer to see they are job seeking is to:

A) Set your CV to private so no companies can find it and apply for jobs that you want – not ideal for those in dire need of a new job as this prevents people from contacting you.

B) (Monster recommended) set your CV to confidential, this removes your name and current job from your profile, not your word version of your CV so you will need to edit that. My argument against this is that a lot of recruiters are pressed for time and will just skip over anything that looks hard. Doing it this way also prevents people in your company’s competition from searching for you.

Or my personal recommended option:

C) Delete your data from Monster and give them a firm middle finger, they make their money selling access to your data. Without your data they don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

Are you on monster looking for work, or just there open to job offers? How will this affect you? Leave a comment and let me know. Or don’t.

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