Dear Joyce: I've been looking for a job, using big job boards, for three months. I've posted my résumé on a service that zaps it to 75 sites. Offers for interviews: Zilch! I need help. What's going on? -- L.H.

Dear L.H.: The big online job sites are leaving a lot of people in the cyberdust. The reasons are varied.

Recession Overload
No job hunting method is magic in a weakened job market. We've never been through a recession with e-mail and the Internet before. Early returns suggest the job boards are, at least for now, not cutting it at producing jobs for people.

Back in 1995, a zillion years ago in Internet time, advisers, including myself, urged job seekers to get aboard the Web train or be left behind. The message was received around the world.

Seven years later the online novelty has vanished as millions of job seekers found out how easy it is to pop a résumé online and have done so. But as an unintended consequence, the crush of résumés has muted the ability of hiring managers to effectively respond.

The end result: The online job sites are delivering virtual bodies but not many job offers and acceptances, according to recent studies.

Slow Hiring Action
Consultants Drake Beam Morin report that only 6 percent of hires for manager jobs happen through any Internet site, compared with 61 percent for (human) networking.

Another study of 2001 hiring results by consultants CareerXroads of nine big public companies, which together accounted for 62,000 hires last year, didn't turn out well for job sites. The percentage of hires made through the Big Four job boards -- Monster, Hotjobs, CareerBuilder and HeadHunter -- was small; none exceeded 1.4 percent, and most didn't reach 1 percent.

The poor showing might be explained by a lack of tracking data -- some who were hired may have first noticed the position listed on a job board and bypassed it, networking their way into an offer.

By comparison, CareerXroads principal Mark Mehler says that at those nine big public companies, 16 percent of total hires were initiated at the corporate Web site. Those nine companies rated employee referral as the No. 1 way people were hired for their workplaces.

Other Online Sins
Outdated listings and impersonal responses are other disenchantments job seekers express. From a recent e-mail sent to me by a frustrated job hunter complaining about human resource personnel:

"Do they realize that receiving an electronic auto-reply and then never another word is inhuman? That not even replying this much is even more inhuman?

"I have spent countless hours filling out online application forms (nearly all are different) only to experience one of these two insults.

"Do they realize that carelessly leaving stale, already-filled positions posted induces human beings to apply for a non-existent position and that these humans might even feel (futile) emotions of hope?

"Only now, they do what they do even more anonymously -- read that, electronically."

Other readers write that they suspect some job listings are phony, designed merely to stuff commercial databases with résumés.

Still others complain that the number of job listings are down on the job sites since the unemployment rate began to rise last year. That's to be expected. But what can you do if you're in the market?

A Few Tips
If you're Web-bound, rethink your job search approach.