In Feed Week – Tools for the Semi-Active Jobseeker I wrote, “…you can setup ‘feeds’ on one or more job sites and then sit back while these job sites monitor their new content for jobs matching your criteria. Then ‘bingo’ – all the great jobs come flowing into your email box or RSS feed reader.”
To test how well this works, I started with the following 10 sites – previously ranked for active job search:
Each site was reviewed for options to receive job ads via email and RSS feed; and where possible, a search was saved on each site for auto sales jobs in Boston, MA. The results from these saved searches were compared based on the number of matching jobs returned, and the percentage of the jobs that were in auto sales in Boston. Bonus points were awarded to sites that made it easy to create and manage saved searches.
Of the ten sites reviewed, only Google Base failed to provide any option for saving searches as email agents, alerts, scouts or RSS feeds. If the option is there, I failed to find it – even after reviewing the FAQ for references to saving searches.
So, although Google Base ranked as the 6th best site for active job search, for semi-active job search they receive a DNW – Does Not Work. No doubt this will change in the future; and yes, Google Base is still in beta. But how a company as successful as Google can release, even in beta, a database product missing such a core feature as saved searches is beyond me.
No worries though – nine other sites do provide this feature, and in the coming days, I’ll be counting them down.
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