Relevance has Multiple Perspectives ... One for Each Customer

   

What’s the primary purpose of a job board?  At the core is the process of connecting employers and jobseekers. Not just any employer with any jobseeker – no, each employer seeks the candidate that best fits their needs, while each jobseeker looks for the job that best satisfies their criteria.  One size does not fit all.  Or does it?

   

Periodically I’m asked to check out new job boards and provide feedback – as I did last week for a job board in beta that will remain nameless – and I can’t count the number of times the conversation has gone something like this:

   

Bob:   Your site has a nice clean look. My primary area of expertise/focus is search, and I tried a couple strings on the site ... the results seem weak at this point ... but as you say, you're still in beta.  Try a search for auto sales – most of the results are for auto parts sales.

   

New Job Board:  I think our organic search results are relevant and good.

   

Bob:  You're in good company when you say the organic results for auto sales look relevant. While true that all of the results contain the words 'auto' and 'sales', wouldn't I have likely used the word 'parts' if I wanted to sell auto parts?

   

New Job Board:  Point taken, however do consider the issue of international terminologies, I would probably look for "car sales" if my intent was to sell cars or automobiles.

   

   

Translation:

Bob:  I know what I want, and the search engine isn’t giving it to me.

New Job Board:  Looks good to me, you need to learn how to search. 

 

   

Bottom line – both perspectives are correct.  Our goals and skills are unique, so when we ‘search’, our perspectives on relevance are also unique.  However, and this is key, as a user, my perspective counts; the perspective of the job board does not.  The challenge for every job board is learning how to provide search results that meet the ‘relevance’ criteria for each and every unique user that falls within the job boards target audience.

   

Comments

[Joel]

Holy shit! Welcome back!

[Bob Wilson]

:-)

Thanks Joel! The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

[Canadian Headhunter]

Still alive, eh?

[Bob Wilson]

Hi Headhunter,

Yup, still kicking. I'll share the story as the next few weeks unfold.

It's nice to be back!

Bob :-)

[Eric Caron]

Would you mind sharing some other search terms that you commonly test out? I would just love to see some other examples! But if you consider this information a trade secret, I understand.

(And to join everyone else's chorus - it is good to see you're back.)

[Bob Wilson]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the question and the encouragement! I don't consider the search terms a trade secret; but if I share them, then I need to drop them from our testing pool.

To get a good feel for overall accuracy, I use strings of varying lengths ... here are a few, ranging from one word to five words:

Reporter
Grocery Clerk
Dental Office Manager
Computer Hardware Design Engineer
Printed Circuit Board Hand Assembler

[Bob]

I was just about to delete yor blog from MY rss feed. Welcome back!

[Bob Wilson]

Thanks Bob. :-)