An interface is a window through which we can see part of our world. Some windows are small, providing a very limited view; others are large, providing a broader view.
Job Central’s new interface provides a panoramic view of the job market – the best window yet.
With a single search, I can now see how many jobs are in inventory at Job Central, Simply Hired, Indeed, Google Base and Jobster.
Job Central handles the ‘translation’ work needed to ensure that the results across the sites are comparable.
So if I’m searching for a ‘sales clerk’ position in Seattle (click the image at right for a larger view), I can quickly see that:
- Job Central has 4 jobs;
- Simply Hired has 68 jobs;
- Indeed has 54 jobs;
- Google Base has 24 jobs; and,
- Jobster has 356 jobs.
One of the really cool features is that any of the five sites can be the primary site – if Jobster is generally giving me the best search results, I can search Jobster from within Job Central, and continue to keep an eye on the other sites for unusual differences in coverage. Brilliant!
A caveat – each site uses a different search algorithm. So, even though Jobster shows more than five times as many jobs as Simply Hired on this search, it could mean that Simply Hired does a better job of finding what we’re looking for, with fewer errors of inclusion.
Honestly, none of the sites do a great job on search accuracy – notice that the top job in the results from Job Central is for a data entry clerk – I wouldn’t consider that a great match for a ‘sales clerk’. For comparison, the top job on Simply Hired is for an Accounts Receivable Clerk – another poor match. Jobster, Google and Indeed return sales clerk jobs as their top results; but they also include jobs for ‘warehouse clerk’, ‘inventory clerk’, and ‘accounting clerk’ in their top ten. Again, not great.
Over time, Job Central intends to integrate O*NET tags into their search algorithm to improve accuracy. When they do, Job Central will be hard to beat.
Disclosure – Job Central licenses O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software from my firm; however, the JC Beta interface does not yet leverage our software.
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