I’ll be the first to admit I have a beef with theLadders.com If you put their name in my search bar, you’ll find previous blogs I’ve written about this company, along with links to other sites waxing about their practices

In fact one of our resume writing associations (or academies, I don’t remember) hosts an annual conference that has the Ladders as its major sponsor. It’s the main reason I refuse to attend. The Ladders runs a resume service where they will critique your resume and convince you using a boilerplate email that you need to fork over $700 for a new one. Some Ladders customers have turned the tables on the company and resubmitted their newly minted resumes only to get the same boiler plate letter again stating the Ladders should re-write their resume. Because of this, I have had to add a clause to my contract that states “1st Rate Resumes does not respond to critiques used for competitive sales.”

To add further insult to injury, many of  the purported $100K jobs on the Ladders website don’t pay $100K, nor were they published with the consent of the employer. They were picked off employer websites to beef up their offerings to subscribers without even checking what the salary was being offered. This has pissed off many HR Directors when they get applications for jobs that only pay $50K and the applicant is expecting twice that.

The other complaints coming in have to do with those employers who pay the Ladders to produce $100K candidates. Apparently they are listing jobs in the $185K and getting applications from people who haven’t made more than $75K a year. Recruiters are tired of paying high fees to get sub par candidates.

According to Nick Corcodilos of AskTheHeadhunter, subscribers from theLadders.com are calling for an investigation.  And some are calling for a class-action lawsuit. All I can say is, it’s about time.