Do Resume Blasting, Resume Distribution Services Work?

It’s important to note that resume blasting and resume posting is not the same thing. Resume posting involves a site sending your resume to the top resume services such as Monster and Career Builder. There are services that post your resume to over 50 career sites. They will provide you with login information for each site and allow you to update your resume as and when you see fit. Resume blasting on the other hand involves sending your resume to hundreds or even thousands of recruiters and employers. Many of these services send resumes to companies with jobs you’re not even qualified for though the best sites target suitable employers.

Pros
The most obvious benefit of resume blasting and resume distribution services is the fact that your resume is sent to potentially thousands of employers and recruiters. It is also rather inexpensive on the face of it with many services performing the necessary steps for less than $100. Most services will also send your cover letter with a handful of different ‘disciplines’ targeted. If you were to post the resumes to individual sites yourself, it would take several days of constant work. With resume blasting services, you can sit back and relax as thousands of resumes are sent in no time. As such a huge number of resumes are sent, it’s almost certain that you’ll receive replies.

Cons
You need to ask yourself if it really is inexpensive and good value for money. It’s normal for the response rate to be in the region of 0.5%. So if you sent 3,000 resumes for $100 and received 15 replies, that’s $6.66 a reply. Bear in mind that resume website services such as Monster are free to use.

Your resume probably won’t even be read by a huge percentage of recipients. These companies receive junk mail all the time and are likely to see your resume as just another unwanted burden. When you send resumes yourself to individual companies, you do so in the knowledge that they are looking for employees. With resume blasting, your resume is being sent to thousands of companies who many not even be looking for staff at this time. This could damage your chances of getting a job with these businesses in the future.

Overall
When you use resume blasting, you’re not sending applications that are tailor made for 99.9% of the jobs you will be applying for. The low response rate suggests that this is really a case of throwing mud to the wall and hoping that some sticks. Resume website services such as 4Jobs.com are a much better bet as you can filter job openings yourself and tailor your resume to each specific vacancy thus improving the response rate. The best way to get a job is by building relationships so start networking as well as using resume services. The more people you know in your chosen industry, the more likely it is that someone will inform you of a job opening that is not known by 99% of people. Resume blasting may have some success but it’s relatively limited.