Do you know who's reading your resume?

Marysville, WA - September 19, 2002 - Pam Dixon knew she was onto a good story when she got a phone call that she should never have gotten. Dixon, an author, investigative reporter and researcher in the area of privacy, kept 25 resumes with fictitious names on job boards at all times. When an insurance company called, asking to solicit one of her fictitious identities, Dixon knew the job board she posted that name on had breached its agreement to keep her information private.

Dixon, a research fellow at the Privacy Foundation and author of many reports and books, including Job Searching Online for Dummies, looked more into the practices of the big job boards and came up with enough horror stories about the lack of privacy on the Web to receive a grant to do research on the topic from the Privacy Foundation. The resulting report on the privacy practices of Monster.com found that job seekers who post their resumes online face considerable threats to their privacy, including identity theft and the inability to remove that information.

She continues to do research on the topic and today makes generalizations about the dangers of posting resumes on the large, publicly traded job boards, such as Monster, Hot Jobs and Career Builder. "Their focus online is to make a profit. And this really is very much reflected in how they handle job seekers. That's something that every single person that is looking for a job should really remember," Dixon says. "The way these companies boost their bottom line-30% or more--is through their resume database. That's a lot of revenue. With Monster.com, I listened to their Q-2 [second quarter] earnings call, which was just in August [2002]. Basically, the executives sat there and said, 'We are selling our resume database at a much lower price so we can increase profits.' Nowhere did the executives say, 'We really want to help jobseekers get jobs ….'"

According to Dixon, people who post on the big job boards should know that the people who get access to resumes include marketing professionals, people who want to steal the identities of others and who want to commit financial fraud on upper echelon workers. "Essentially, what you're doing is you're giving them data for free and they're making money off of it," she says. "Some of this changes when you go to the smaller niche sites. There are some excellent sites out there. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), is incredible. They have a very small site that is focused only on engineers. And when people post their resumes there, they tend to get jobs because it's small, very low traffic and very focused. I think the niche sites still have a fighting chance of making this work."

"We've heard a lot about questionable practices," says Frank Heasley, PhD, President and CEO, MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and professional community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. "We have found that maintaining high ethical standards really pays off. Candidates appreciate knowing that we're in their corner when it comes to ensuring that only employers and recruiters with real jobs to fill get access to their data. That translates into more business later, because many of those same people become hiring authorities, and our most loyal clients, in their new positions."

Corporate job sites, which are considered safe by many, aren't much better, according to Dixon. "When you go to Blockbuster and post a resume, that resume is going directly to Monster.com. They [Blockbuster] don't disclose that. I think it's wrong and it's a process that I'd absolutely like to see abolished," she says.

Other experts don't see the situation as quite so dire and think job boards are a key element in the job-hunting process. Gerry Crispin, SPHR, co-author CareerXroads, an annual directory to the 500 best job resume and career management sites on the worldwide Web, also sees the potential for harm when posting resumes on the Web, but believes the greatest threat to job seekers is that they'll be flooded with spam.

What's most important, Crispin says, is that job seekers make sure the job boards they post on have privacy policies and job seekers read those statements. Job seekers should be comfortable with how the job board uses the information, how long it keeps the information, whether candidates can opt-out of the board and whether the job board plans to repackage the information. "Particularly [look for] the extent to which they guarantee that the information will not be used for anything but the purpose intended. The purpose intended is to submit to specific corporations," says Crispin, who is an international consultant on employment processes.

Margaret Riley Dikel, author of the Riley Guide, www.rileyguide.com, a directory of job and career resources on the Internet, says one of the biggest drawbacks to posting resumes on the Web is that current employers can find them. "I've heard stories from people who have seen it happen: Your current employer finds your resume and you're fired," she says.

Dikel believes many can avoid identity theft by not including personal information, such as social security numbers or dates of birth. "If you're someone with a Green card or H1B Visa, you do not want any numerical record that will give someone an opportunity to get it," she says. "When you're taking about [job seekers that are] scientists, we do have a lot of scientists in this country who are not native to the US and might be here on Green cards or research grants. Outside of the United States it is very common to put in information like your marital status, your religion, your date of birth. Inside the United States, we don't do that."

She says that corporate sites are usually safe havens as long as a third party doesn't run the site.

Dikel also suggests that job candidates read the Web site's privacy policy. If the site says it sells aggregate data to an advertiser, that's OK, Dikel says. But if the site's policy discloses that it reserves the right to sell personally identifiable data, steer clear of that Web site. Or worse, if the site doesn't have a privacy policy, run! she says.

Job seekers who only post on secure sites using generic information to avoid being identified should know that nowadays identification from very little information is easy. While job seekers often don't put their names, addresses and phone numbers on Web sites' forms, they might forget to take the information off their resumes before posting them. Dikel also says that if candidates want to be anonymous, they shouldn't put the names of their current employers or past employers, or their actual titles. They should be as vague as possible, while still wetting the whistles of employers and recruiters.

Dixon recommends that candidates avoid the big, publicly-held job boards and consider first attempting to email resumes directly to those doing the job posting. "A resume is a very personal document. You have your name, your phone, your home address, your work history…. It only takes $25 to match that information up with a social security number and they have a life," she says.

About MedZilla.com
Established in mid 1994, MedZilla is the original web site to serve career and hiring needs for professionals and employers in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science and healthcare. MedZilla databases contain about 10,000 open positions and 10,000 resumes from candidates actively seeking new positions. These resources have been characterized as the largest, most comprehensive databases of their kind on the web in the industries served.