The Ladders Takes A Lickin’ With a Class Action Lawsuit

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The Ladders, founded in 2003, is a job board, that, up until September, 2011, was only for executives who earned $100K+.  Well, that’s what it was supposed to be. But for years, before the company changed their business model to be inclusive of lower salaried jobs, there were complaints from consumers yelling “fraud.” And, finally, it seems as though a class action suit has been filed against the career behemoth.

Nick Corcodilos, job advice guru and author of “Ask the Headhunter,” announced the news today in his newsletter and that’s how I got wind of it. (Thanks Nick!)  Nick has been writing about The Ladders’ practices for years and I can just imagine him doing a little happy dance at his desk right now, with the knowledge that “what goes around, comes around,” even if it does take a while.

Among the most egregious complaints in the legal suit are that The Ladders, up until September 2011, routinely:

  • Listed jobs that offered salaries significantly lower than $100K
  • Trolled Websites and repurposed job postings that were obsolete and/or were not at the $100K level, which is what subscribers to the site were guaranteed as part of a premium service fee

    In addition to this, The Ladders is apparently being sued for shoddy resume critique practices that involve form letters, and cheesy techniques to get consumers to spend oodles of dollars on resume rewrites. As a former resume writer, I can tell you that I’ve had my fair share of clients who came from The Ladders. They spent $500+ on really bad resumes that I had to then rewrite.  Not cool.

If you’ve had bad experiences using The Ladders, I’m curious to hear about them. But more importantly, you can reach out to the law firm of Bursor & Fisher, for payback.

Carpe diem

2 Comments

  • Tom O'Brien
    March 12, 2013

    Jane– I remember using them for a job search in late ’08 and early ’09. That was after I worked with you to re-do my resume, Yet they still sent me those form letters inviting me to get a resume consultation. If you did a linkedin search of the resume writers’ profile you immediately saw that they were very Jr.

    I can honestly say that I’ve never been shown a good job opportunity through a jobs site (except LinkedIn). Finding the right job really is a full time job and involves these sites, recruiters, your personal network and to unafraid to cold call any and all CEO’s.

    I wouldn’t be upset if Ladders, Monster, career builder and the others went the way of webvan…

  • TJ Turner
    March 21, 2013

    I was a premium subscriber, but not for long. The job opportunities were no better than many other free job board sites. Just for kicks I submitted a recently revised (professionally done by a top notch guy) for a critique. The response was amateurish, laughable and clearly only intended to part money from my wallet. LinkedIn is a much better option, though not worth the premium offering, unless you are in sales and looking for leads.

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