Targeting Your Job Search

   

Damon Billan, Community Marketing Manager for SimplyHired, has a nice post on targeting your job search.   Number one on Damon’s list of pointers:  Define what type of job you're looking for (job title, occupation). 

   

Exactly right!  Why then is it impossible? 

   

Today, not a single job board/site makes it practical to search by job title or occupation.  Take SimplyHired as an example…

   

Let’s say I want to find all jobs in Omaha for an executive secretary … as of today there are 10.

   

But some companies call executive secretaries by the title administrative assistant.  Unless I search for this phrase too, I miss at least 190 jobs (200 minus the ten already returned, if the ten job ads include both titles).

   

What about the executive assistant jobs?  There are 61 jobs with this title.  Do they overlap the 200, or the 10?

   

And what about the job ads using abbreviations … there are 15 using the abbreviation admin instead of administrative.  SimplyHired treats abbreviations, plus all partial word strings and plurals, as unique words.

   

Bottom line, it is totally impractical to search for a job using a job title.   That’s why the 24^th most frequent search on Jobster last week was (executive OR secretary OR administrative OR assistant).  Try the same search on SimplyHired for Omaha and the result is 1,551 matching jobs … most of which are way off the mark.

   

Now, if the jobs on SimplyHired were accurately coded by occupation, then things really would be simple.  We’d be able to enter the executive assistant search string, and the system would identify the proper occupation.  Then we’d see all of the appropriate jobs, no matter what words or strings used by employers.

   

Properly implemented, occupational search would eliminate the games we now have to play with keyword search strings.  I could do without the games.  I’d rather see more time spent connecting with employers.

   

How about you?  Would you like to see an effective, really simple, occupational job search?   

   

Comments

[JobTide]

That would be really nice to see implemented. I tried a quick search at O*NET OnLine (see http://online.onetcenter.org/find/result?s=administrative+secretary&g=Go) and it seems to work just fine.

Except, if your job titles are all in a language other than english. Suppose that your job board is in spanish, french or any other language. You could query a national service, for instance, the french job code database (see http://rome.anpe.net/candidat/index.php?url=fiche_rome.php&rome=12131&rub=cat&lib_rome=Secr%E9taire%20administratif(ive)& for a administrative secretary description).

[Bob Wilson]

Hi JobTide,

Thanks for the feedback! :-)

Yes, I think O*NET Online works pretty well too ... I designed the methodology. But, it is primitive compared to our newer product http://www.onetsocautocoder.com/plus/onetmatch

Try the same search for administrative secretary and you'll see that:

1) fewer marginally related occupations are returned; and,

2) the difference in scores between the primary occupation and other secretarial occs is much greater.

But beyond that, O*NET AutoCoder will accept a full job description as input ... making it possible to assign occupation codes at 90% accuracy.

It's interesting that you mention multiple languages and other coding systems. Earlier this week I contacted Canada to discuss integrating their NOC classification system; and in the following post, we're seeking partners to help us add multilingual support.

http://rmwilsonconsulting.typepad.com/onetsoc_autocoder/2006/09/multilingual_on.html

Best wishes!

Bob :-)

[jon]

I do no think "standard" codes work. There are way too may job title to cover all the opportunities on the internet. In addition jobs vary greatly based on each company. For example: Do you think a project manager for Coke needs the same skill set as a project manager for Amazon.com? There is simply to many variations out the to try to "box" job in. In closing keep in mind that people also want to see where there skills can be applied, not necessarily for a specific job.

[Sujith Nair]

Hi,
Different companies have different titles. Its better to classify jobs as roles at the time of posting. When searched, just provide a cluster on these roles. A job seeker will be too happy to dig into the cluster and narrow down on the relevant results.

sujith :-)

[Bob Wilson]

Hi Sujith ... thanks for posting!

I agree, roles are good. In fact, a standard taxonomy of occupations is a collection of roles.

For example, a position with a job title of 'Accounting Clerk II' fits within the standard occupation "Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks"; and this occupation performs the following roles:

"Compute, classify, and record numerical data to keep financial records complete. Perform any combination of routine calculating, posting, and verifying duties to obtain primary financial data for use in maintaining accounting records. May also check the accuracy of figures, calculations, and postings pertaining to business transactions recorded by other workers."

So I think, when I say 'occupation' and you say 'roles', we're talking about the same thing.

Does that sound right? If not, let me know.

Best wishes,
Bob :-)

[Sujith Nair]

Bang On ....

tx,
sujith