Job Search Engine Guide

JobCentral Rolls Out Next-Generation Job Search

   

With few exceptions (e.g. Just-Posted and Itzbig), search technology has remained essentially unchanged for the past ten years – we still enter a few keywords, we still hope employers are using the same words, and we still sift through volumes of marginally related results – or worse, we stare at some variant of the message ‘no jobs match your search criteria.’ 

   

The problem is simply this – keyword-based search is a poor proxy for intention-based search. 

   

Intention-based search differs dramatically in that each search has two equally important components:

   

¾      First, search terms/phrases entered by the user are interpreted by the system to identify the intent or theme of the search; and,

   

¾      Then, content matching the intent or theme is displayed … it doesn’t matter if the original search terms are included in the ad text, so long as the ad falls within users’ intent.

   

The image at right illustrates the following example of intention-based search from JobCentral’s new search engine:

   

First, I select the ‘Occupation Title’ search option.

   

Second, I enter words that describe the type of position I’m seeking … note that I’ve chosen to use ‘medical lab tech’, but I could have entered skills or duties.

   

Third, the system interprets my search terms and offers five occupational themes for me to choose from … in this case I’ve chosen ‘Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technicians’.  As a side note, this is a standard ONET occupation for which significant labor market information exists, including employment growth projections and possible employers … more on this in a follow-up post.

   

Fourth, the JobCentral system then returns ads within this occupational area.  In fact, no keywords were used to generate this list once I selected the occupational category.  Cool!

   

A scan of the results looks pretty good, but not perfect … yet.  This first release of JobCentral’s new search engine is just beginning to leverage their structured data; so accuracy should improve as the engine is refined and additional metadata elements are incorporated. 

   

I think the same can be said regarding the interface … it’s a bit complicated, and I noticed a few quirks. For example, between steps three and four I had to manually remove my search terms from the keyword box to search for all ads within the occupational category.

   

No matter … JobCentral’s new intention-based search is a big step towards the goal of a more intuitive search process that returns highly relevant search results.  Kudos JobCentral!

   

   

Note:  JobCentral uses O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software from R.M. Wilson Consulting, Inc. to assign occupational metadata. 

   

High Hopes for Itzbig

   

Joel has posted a great interview with itzbig CEO Jim Hammock … it is well worth the 10 minutes to view the video.

   

Jim highlights four key areas of focus for itzbig … areas that regular readers of this blog will recognize as weaknesses in many of the current job boards.  If itzbig delivers on all four, they’ll certainly be worthy of a high rank in a crowded market.

   

Quality – rather than selling ads, or trying to maximize ad impressions, itzbig is focusing on delivering high-quality job matches between jobseekers and recruiters.  Users will see match relevance scores and be able to set minimum thresholds to weed out low quality matches.

   

Efficiency – rather than delivering deluges of marginal quality matches, itzbig is focused on delivering fewer high-quality matches. Finding diamonds shouldn’t be as time consuming.

   

Privacy – rather than a typical caveat-emptor approach to business, itzbig is promising a high level of protection for personal information.  Users will search in a confidential environment.  Frankly, I think this is a key to connecting with passive job seekers.  I may be the exception, but I no longer use Jobster because of the perception that others can watch my actions on the site … when it comes to searching for a new job while employed, most of us would like the option to keep it private.

   

Usability – rather than delivering a product with interstitial ads, or a product with sponsored ads that obscure more relevant results, itzbig says they are committed to usability first, and that they will rollout slowly to ensure that they don’t lose focus on usability.  Of course, usability, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder … nonetheless, I have to give props to a firm that states that they are highly focused on usability.

   

Soundzbig to me!