Over a one week period beginning May 11 and running through May 18, nearly 12,000 U.S. visitors to Monster.com participated in the Monster Meter poll.

Of those who go to work sick, “33 percent fear losing their job if they take a sick day, while 38 percent admit their workload is too busy to take a day off from work even when they are ill,” said Norma Gaffin, director of career content at Monster.com, said in a statement.

Only 19 percent of respondents say they stay home from work when sick in order to rest up and get well. The remaining 10 percent who avoid the workplace when sick actually work from home, even though they’re ill.

The results of the poll are as follow:

Do you go into work sick?

• Yes, work is too busy for me to miss a day: 38 percent

• Yes, in this economy, I’m afraid I’ll lose my job: 33 percent

• No, I work from home if I’m sick: 10 percent

• No, I rest up to get better: 19 percent

“Whether it’s the sniffles or H1N1 Swine Flu influenza, a recent Associated Press report addressed the fact that sick or not, many workers cannot afford to stay home when ill because an estimated 57 million working Americans do not have paid sick days,” Gaffin added.

Access is free. Users can log on to Atomkeep, and with one click of a button, relevant information can be updated, including resumes and personal data.

Atomkeep also plans on adding Bebo, Dice, and Myspace to their support roster in the near future.

Over 68 percent of respondents said no, they were not satisfied, whether it’s due to pricing, technology, or lackluster results.

A whopping 75 percent of respondents said that resume databases do not uncover quality candidates. No surprise there, since finding the right person via a large database is like searching for a needle in a haystack. One might spend hours typing in various acronyms, adjectives, and well-worn phrases like “problem-solver” or “top earner 2007,” when they really wish that the perfect candidate could be packaged with praise and hand-delivered to their in-box with minimal leg work.

Job sites like craigslist, which offers free postings in many cities, are fast-becoming the preferred method of posting jobs over sites like Monster and Careerbuilder, which can cost anywhere from $115 to $300 per posting, as opposed to the $25 (or nothing) that craigslist charges.

According to Peter Weddle, 50,000 job boards are operating now and 110,000 are expected to be live by 2011. The gap between employers and job seekers is widening.

Employers have more choices that can be customized to suit their company’s needs. They will no longer need to fork over $30,000 for a standard pack of postings on a general job board, and another $2,000 to have access to a vast database that is like pawing through a giant pot of gumbo for that prized bite of shrimp.

Instead, according to the survey, which stated that 64 percent of HR reps would prefer a pay-for-quality pricing model over the traditional pay-per-post option, staffing and human resource professionals would either like the model of the traditional job board to be vastly improved upon, or they will be turning to niche job sites to find candidates in a less costly, time-consuming manner.

Rafael Cosentino, VP of Business Development for Realmatch, says because of the cooling economy and a general dissatisfaction when dealing with traditional job boards, hiring professionals are seeking more cost-effective approaches at a rapid rate, explaining why some job boards have shown a recent decline in purchases.

“Realmatch differentiates itself with technology, reach, features and pricing. The technology makes the process fast, the network provides access to lots of users in lots of industries, the features make the process simple and the pricing removes the risk because employers only pay if they decide to open the resume of a matching and interested candidate,” Cosentino said. “We believe our pricing model lets the genie out of the bottle by lowering the barrier and making it risk free for employers to post their jobs.”

One wonders why traditional job boards are still being utilized by any company, when considering the blazing ads, muddled resumes, and costly features that are in the end a detriment and a poor representation to the job seeker. Just as Marketing must present customer-focused, results-driven ideas to their clients, job boards need to do the same to keep their customers happy. No longer is it the case that one HR rep refers Monster to another; instead, HR is getting together over lunch to talk about another fruitless day spent searching through a job board database. And next year, they might be taking their budget dollars elsewhere.

The career resources portal will also be offering video production, hosting, and job posting integration to enhance the video component.

Each Monster Video Profile will offer three different video presentation options:

1) Company close-up: an in-depth company profile highlighting corporate culture, benefits, and work environment

2) Company snapshot: a spotlight that highlights one or two aspects of the company

3) Career insider: a video snippet that gives job seekers “a day in the life” of an employee

Monster.ca is also offering the option to have existing corporate video added directly to an employer’s posting.

To see which companies are also jumping ship, visit www.mffais.com/mnst.html.