Automated Job Tagging in Action

   

In Reducing Job Tag Spam … for Profit I said, “…the price incentive to place verbose ads covering multiple positions is offset by lower fit scores and thus lower placement in search results.  This substantially lowers the ROI of non-specific ads, and encourages advertisers to place focused ads for best results.”   Here are a few examples to illustrate:

   

The image at right (click the image for a larger view) shows a hypothetical ad for five jobs at a new furniture store:

   

- Furniture Delivery Driver

- Furniture Stock Clerk

- Furniture AP, AR, Payroll Clerk

- Furniture Salesperson

- Assistant Store Manager

   

The advertiser expects that as long as the proper keywords are included, the ad will show up in all the appropriate jobseeker searches.  Problem is, this unfocused approach results in the ad appearing for unintended searches too (e.g. Payroll Manager, Delivery Manager, Driver Manager, Salesperson Assistant, etc.) – at least that’s what would happen without automatic tag assignment. 

   

As you can see in the first image, the unfocused nature of the ad results in a best-fit occupation tag of ‘Not Classified’, with a secondary tag of First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Transportation and Material-Moving Machine and Vehicle Operators with a ‘fit score’ of only 50 (on a 100 point scale).  These tags and scores would place this ad very low in any set of search results – the same effect seen for ads with tag spam – and the opposite effect desired by the advertiser.

   

The solution is to place focused ads for each job.  The ad at right, for the Furniture Delivery Driver position, yields a primary occupation tag of:  Truck Drivers, Light or Delivery Services, with a score of 90.  This is excellent, and ensures this job ad will place highly in job searches for delivery drivers.

   

Breaking out the Furniture Salesperson opening into a separate ad results in a primary occupational tag of:  Retail Salespersons, with a score of 93.   Again, excellent.

   

The results are similar for the remaining three positions when placed as individual ads. 

   

So, by automatically assigning occupational tags to each ad, job boards ‘encourage’ advertisers to write focused ads, generating additional business for the job boards, better candidates for advertisers, and more relevant search results for jobseekers.  A win-win-win.   

   

Comments

[Sujith Nair]

Hi,
An interesting topic, that is, spam. Interesting points here. How do you ensure that advertisers posting same job advt with similar title can be filtered out? Problem is when a single advertiser posts similar jobs and that too in bulk.

[Bob Wilson]

Hi Sujith,

Great question ... worthy of a new blog post ... later today or tomorrow.

Thanks for asking!

Bob :-)