Job Search Engine Guide

You Can’t Buy My Love

   

But you can buy a detailed report describing the 2007 Top Sites for Job Search competition. 

   

Interested in the testing methodology and detailed results for each round?  Curious why your site scored below your competitors?  Looking for specific usability and performance analysis that can help guide future development?  It’s all available to you in a format that uniquely compares your site to each of the tested sites in the 2007 Top Sites for Job Search competition.

   

If you follow the Job Search Engine Guide, you know that I refuse to accept advertising of any kind.  If I ever do, then I think you should question my objectivity.  But objective tests like the 2007 Top Sites for Job Search competition require considerable time; and one way to make this a sustainable evaluation process, providing guidance year after year, is to sell the detail-level findings to job sites as competitive intelligence.

   

Price?  $4,995 for a customized report for your site; or $9,995 for the report plus an onsite visit to discuss the findings and recommendations.

   

Let’s be clear though … at the end of the day, what I really want is your commitment to site improvement … the fee is simply a crude way to make sure that we’re both focused on the same goal.

   

Do you want to improve?

   

2007 Top Sites for Job Search – America’s Job Exchange Wins Round 4

   

Although America’s Job Exchange (AJE) is a new site, with limited traffic typical of a new entrant, below the surface is an old friend, the now shuttered yet award winning AJB.  So AJE is mature far beyond its years.

   

Maturity brings refinement, but just as important, the AJB/AJE interface was designed without the constraint of profit motives … no ‘featured ads’ clutter the results, no fear of direct comparisons to other sites limit filter choices, and no worries about generating metrics in support of high advertising rates guided navigational flow.  This freedom is reflected in the many basic search options, filters and sorts that give jobseekers unmatched control of the search process.  Hopefully this won’t change now that AJE is privately funded.

   

Yes, content is important.  So is search accuracy.  But the benefits of both pale without placing control of the search process in users’ hands.  And among the remaining twelve competitors, no site provides as many basic filters and sorts for date range, geography and relevance, as America’s Job Exchange.

   

For example, AJE provides the following options for limiting ads by date:

¾      Within Last Day

¾      Within Last 2 Days

¾      Within Last 3 Days

¾      Within Last 4 Days

¾      Within Last 5 Days

¾      Within Last 6 Days

¾      Within Last 7 Days

¾      Within Last 14 Days

¾      Within Last 30 Days

¾      Within Last 60 Days

   

On the other hand, LiveExpo takes a page from the Craigslist playbook and provides limited options for filtering and sorting results by relevance for user-specified date ranges and distances surrounding specific geographies.  Too bad – after finishing third in round three, Microsoft’s LiveExpo places last in this round and exits the competition.

   

   

Best Job Sites – Round 4 Results

   

1. America’s Job Exchange
2. JobCentral
3. Indeed
4. SimplyHired
5. Jobster
6. CareerBuilder
7. Monster
8. HotJobs
9. Jobs.com
10. GetTheJob
11. Oodle
12. LiveExpo

   

   

On to round five … which of the remaining sites offers users the most compete set of advanced ‘filters’, ‘sorts’ and search options?   

   

2007 Top Sites for Job Search – JobCentral Wins Round 3

   

Surprise, surprise … JobCentral jumps from next-to-last in round 2, to take first in round 3. 

   

Think of the 2007 Top Job Site Competition as a decathlon, where instead of testing speed, endurance, strength, and skill, we’re testing ad coverage, relevance and features in large markets and small.  It’s possible that a winner will emerge without winning a single event; but to do so will require the competitor to be free of weaknesses, finishing well in all events.  Still, we shouldn’t expect that the fastest sprinter will be the strongest in the shot put.

   

Rounds two and three were as different as a sprint and a marathon.  Whereas round two looked for ads in Boston, MA, a population center of about 4.5 million, round three looked for ads in Baker City, OR, population of 10,000.

   

As it turns out, government employment represents a more significant proportion of the economy in many smaller towns in the west … these towns are often county seats, and citizens expect access to government services regardless of population density.

   

So the job boards that don’t include government job ads for Baker City are missing a key sector; and this is a sector where JobCentral shines brightly.  With the closing of America’s Job Bank, JobCentral stepped forward to provide similar services, and they have successfully executed relationships with 30+ State government employment agencies … Oregon included.

   

   

Additional surprises in round three? 

    

Monster placed next to last, paying a price for trying to limit comparison between other job sites – for example, instead of offering the typical filters of one week and 25 miles, Monster offers filters of 5 days or 10 days and 20 miles or 50 miles; and when Monster finds no results (indicating limited coverage) for a specified search, they substantially broaden the search without notifying the user … returning many results that do not match the original intent.

   

LiveExpo placed third, perhaps indicating that organizations in smaller communities are more likely to use free classifieds rather than paying top dollar for listings on national job sites.

   

Just-Posted, despite a 5^th place showing in round one, came in last in this round, and therefore exits the competition.  Unfortunately the site was undone by a change in a third-party feed that resulted in erroneous records displaying for the Baker City search.

   

   

Best Job Sites – Round 3 Results

   

1. JobCentral
2. Indeed
3. LiveExpo
4. SimplyHired
5. Jobster
6. CareerBuilder
7. GetTheJob
8. HotJobs
9. Oodle
10. America’s Job Exchange
11. Jobs.com
12. Monster
13. Just-Posted

   

   

On to round four … which site offers users the best combination of ‘filters’ and ‘sorts’ to allow the display of search results in relevance order for user-specified date ranges and distances surrounding specific geographies?  May the best site win.

   

2007 Top Sites for Job Search – Indeed Wins Again

   

Two rounds, two wins for Indeed.

   

In this second round, fourteen of the top general job sites were tested to find jobs for ten hypothetical jobseekers in Boston, MA.  Roughly five times the size of Tulsa, OK (round one test location), Boston provides plentiful job opportunities. Thus, this test puts more emphasis on the ability of each search engine to prioritize their search results.

   

Indeed continues to impress by providing the most relevant opportunities with very few duplicates.

   

   

Surprises in round two? 

   

GoogleBase dropped from third in round one to last in round two.   While GoogleBase did the best job of weeding out duplicates in this round, perhaps their methodology is too aggressive in eliminating marginal content and partial matches because in the end they returned the fewest relevant results.  As a result, GoogleBase won’t be back for found three.

   

Jobs.com jumped to third in round two, from ninth in round one – impressive, but I can’t explain it.  In round three we’ll see which of the previous rounds was a fluke.

   

Jobster tried my patience – their site was painfully slow yesterday – but no points were awarded or deducted for speed in this round.  Alexa data indicates that Jobster is “Slow (72% of sites are faster)”, but performance yesterday seemed atypical.

   

   

Best Job Sites – Round 2 Results

   

1. Indeed
2. SimplyHired
3. Jobs.com
4. CareerBuilder
5. America’s Job Exchange
6. Jobster
7. Monster
8. LiveExpo
9. Oodle
10. GetTheJob
11. Just-Posted
12. HotJobs
13. JobCentral
14. GoogleBase

   

   

Round three challenge?  Who has the most jobs listed for a small western town?  May the best site win.

   

2007 Top Sites for Job Search – Indeed Wins Round 1

   

Indeed takes the top spot in round one of the 2007 Top Sites for Job Search competition – not a surprise really since Indeed took overall honors in 2006.

   

In this first round of competition, fifteen of the top general job sites were tested to find jobs for ten hypothetical jobseekers in Tulsa, OK.  To score well, sites needed sufficient ad content for Tulsa, plus they needed search technology that was powerful enough to find matching jobs without returning mismatches. 

   

Surprises in the first round? 

   

Craigslist is the first site to be eliminated from further competition as a result of a last place finish.  I’ve never been a fan of Craigslist (see here, here and here for background), but going in I expected them to finish mid-pack … after all, Craigslist does have a strong following.  In the end, simplistic search technology and limited ad volume in Tulsa were Craig’s undoing.  Yes, the results would have been different if the test location had been San Francisco; but, doesn’t that make Craig’s more like a collection of regional sites as opposed to a national site?  I think so.

   

HotJobs and Monster in the bottom five … ironic that two of the big-three job boards garner so much traffic and yet performed so poorly in this round.   

   

Just-Posted, a site that almost no one has heard of (Alexa traffic rank = 1,559,714) was fifth, leveraging their next-generation search technology to muscle past many of the big guns.

   

Best Job Sites – Round 1 Results

   

1. Indeed
2. SimplyHired
3. GoogleBase
4. Jobster
5. Just-Posted
6. CareerBuilder
7. LiveExpo
8. Oodle
9. Jobs.com
10. JobCentral
11. Monster
12. HotJobs
13. GetTheJob
14. America’s Job Exchange
15. Craigslist   

   

   

So let’s head to the round 2 challenge – finding jobs for ten hypothetical jobseekers in Boston, MA.  May the best job site win.

   

2007 Top Sites for Job Search

   

Who will be first?  Which of the following fifteen sites provides the best combination of content, features, and ease-of-use for active job search?

   

To make my list of 2007 competitors, a site must provide national coverage of the job market and contain ads for most types of jobs in the economy – for simplicity, let’s refer to these competitors as general job sites.

   

As you can imagine, with 40,000+ job sites to choose from, there are many excellent niche sites that can be better choices than any of these fifteen general sites in certain cases – e.g. theLadders in the $100k+ market, and Dice in the tech market, to name only two.  However, as good as some of these niche boards are, their ad volume is often quite low, so even dedicated niche board users will often watch one or more general job sites when actively searching for a new job.

   

So which of the following general job sites is best in 2007?  That’s what we’ll find out by challenging the competitors to a series of tests, with the poorest performer in each test eliminated from further competition.  In a competition like this, it’s just as important for each competitor to have few weaknesses as it is to have strengths.  May the best site win.

   

   

First challenge – Find jobs for ten hypothetical jobseekers in Tulsa, OK.  Who wins?  Who goes home?  Stay tuned.

   

   

The Big Three

CareerBuilder

HotJobs

Monster

   

Vertical Integrators

Indeed

Oodle

SimplyHired

   

General Classifieds

Craigslist

GoogleBase

LiveExpo

   

Federally Endorsed*

America’s Job Exchange

JobCentral

Jobs.com

   

Next-Gen Search

GetTheJob

Jobster

Just-Posted

   

   

* In preparation for the shutdown of America’s Job Bank, the Department of Labor published Training and Employment Notice 27-06, which included a copy of a Federal Register Notice outlining the criteria for inclusion in a list of links of private sites providing functionality similar to AJB.   

   

Garry Wiseman of Live Expo Responds

   

A few days ago I posted that Windows Live Expo Jobs Fails to Deliver.  I was too tough on the team at Microsoft.

   

Garry Wiseman, product manager for Expo, posted the following feedback:

   

“You're right - on the 21st there weren't many CareerBuilder jobs (only a few thousand).  The blog entry regarding the CB data went live a bit too soon (it wasn't a press release). If you check the site now and search for "sales" you'll see many more listings in the jobs category and the number will continue to grow.

   

Regarding being flawless at execution, just like all other software engineers - I suspect that I'll see mistakes made for as long as I work in the field of engineering, no matter how large or small the team I work with.

   

Our dedicated team of 10 (not all 65,000+ Microsoft employees work on Expo unfortunately!), we will continue to improve the service and strive to meet our customers demands.”

   

   

I’ve met Gary, and found him to be talented and a good guy.  His response to my post does nothing but reinforce my impression.  So, now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I’d like to offer an apology to Gary and the Expo team.  Sorry guys!

   

   

If I could go back, this is what I would conclude …

   

   

With increased resources come higher customer expectations.  Yet at the same time, more resources mean increased bureaucracy, limiting the ability of great people to deliver the products that meet these higher expectations.

   

So as organizations grow, they lose the ability to exceed expectations; and when organizations become the size of Microsoft or Monster, they often lose the ability to consistently meet, forget exceed, expectations … the beginning of the end for some.  It’s the bureaucracy that slowly kills them. 

   

Looking at the big three in the job field … Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs … would you describe any of these organizations as innovative?  Responsive?  Savvy?  Exceeding customer expectations?

   

There’s the rub.  We expect a lot from those who have a lot; and yet, these same folks have the least freedom to surprise us with greatness.

   

Windows Live Expo Jobs Fails to Deliver

   

The team at Microsoft is delighted to announce a new update to the Windows Live Expo service, including the addition of thousands of local and national job listings supplied by CareerBuilder.

   

A couple months ago, in It’s Alive! … Windows Live Expo Jobs, I said:

   

Umm … OK, there aren’t many jobs yet.  Let’s just say that on the job front, Windows Live Expo is in the embryonic stage of life.

   

Now, with CareerBuilder content, Live Expo surely has entered the big time, right?  Well no … and I just don’t get it.

   

The image at right shows the search results for sales jobs in the entire U.S.  How can there be:

   

§         only one job;

§         nothing from CareerBuilder; and,

§         a 92 Civic?

   

Come on guys.  With all of the resources of Microsoft, this is the best you can do?

   

Bugs happen to everyone, but there really is no excuse for not testing a feature touted in your press release.  And why is it that the bigger a company gets, the more inept it becomes.  Sure, Live Expo is only a couple months old … but that excuse only works for startups.  When you’re one of the largest software companies in the world, people expect more.

   

Jobster Tops for Active Job Search

   

Perhaps, given all of the recent positive press for Jobster, this seems like piling on, but sometimes, when a company is on a roll, they can do no wrong.

   

In a new job search shootout with CareerBuilder (previous winner: most accurate), Indeed (previous winner: active job search), and SimplyHired (previous winner: most jobs), Jobster wins the new crown as the Best Site for Active Job Search!

   

To take first place, Jobster won the social networking portion of this comparison hands down, and came in 2^nd for both Search Accuracy and Correct Jobs Returned.  Results are based on ten search strings, two- to four-words in length, in three metro areas, ranging from huge (Los Angeles, CA) to modest (Columbus, OH).

   

Going from 4^th to 1^st in less than six months is very impressive.   Congratulations Jobster!

   

   

   

No rest for the winner though.  There’s still plenty of room at the top, since none of the tested sites returned 50% of the matching jobs in this test. 

   

SimplyHired found slightly more of the correct jobs than Jobster (46% versus 41%); but SH also returned more incorrect jobs, and 8% of SH’s results were duplicates.

   

Indeed found 36% of the correct jobs for the ten search strings; but did deliver the best ratio of correct results at 66%.  SimplyHired and Jobster followed at 60%.

   

CareerBuilder came in last across the board – returning the fewest jobs, the lowest accuracy rate, and almost no social networking features.

   

Damon at SimplyHired states “We will be making some very cool changes to the site over the coming weeks.”  Jason at Jobster indicates that their recent release is just the first step in a larger rollout plan.  And another top ten site informs me, confidentially, that they plan a major release within a month. 

   

Add in the reentry of Fligdog, plus the production release of Live Expo, and these have to be the most exciting times we’ve seen in the world of electronic recruiting and job search!   Today though, Jobster leads the pack – all hail the new king!

   

It’s Alive! … Windows Live Expo Jobs

   

Today is the Official U.S. Launch of Windows Live Expo … so I ran right over (metaphorically speaking) and gave it a spin. 

   

Umm … OK, there aren’t many jobs yet.  I tried Bend, OR plus 50 miles … and found 4 listings of questionable quality.  Then I tried Portland, OR plus 50 miles, a population center of about 2 million people (24^th largest in the US) … and found only 27 listings.  Let’s just say that on the job front, Windows Live Expo is in the embryonic stage of life.

   

And let’s hope it keeps evolving, because at launch, it’s just another classified site using an unworkable clustering scheme.  What am I missing?  Why, when there are much better ways to organize information, does a powerhouse like Microsoft release a product that is this weak?

   

The image at right (click for a larger view) shows the top three jobs listed for Portland, OR.  With only 27 jobs, it really doesn’t matter how these jobs are categorized and clustered.  But, what about when there are 10,000 listings …or even 30,000+ listings as currently on SimplyHired for the Portland Metro area?  Then the categorizing and clustering schemes will be key – but an example indicates trouble ahead.

   

Say I need an ‘Apartment Maintenance Supervisor’, and I’m listing my ad in the category … ‘Other’?  Perhaps potential candidates know that the best place to look for their perfect job is in the ‘Other’ category … yeah, right.

   

Perhaps this is a silly ‘user error’?  Well, which category would you choose from the 34 provided by Windows Live Expo?

   

Accounting/Finan..., Administrative, Agriculture, Architecture, Art/Entertainmen..., Automotive, Banking, Biotech/Science, Business/Managem..., Construction, Customer Service..., Education, Government/Milit..., Healthcare, Human Resources, Internships, IT/Systems, Law Enforcement/..., Legal, Manufacturing/Op..., Marketing/PR, Nonprofit/Volunt..., Other, Part-time, Real Estate, Receptionist, Referee, Research Subject..., Restaurant/Food ..., Retail, Sales, Skilled Trade/Cr..., Software/Hardwar..., Transportation.

   

I’d guess ‘Skilled Trade/CR…’, although, I’m not sure what CR means.  Although, maybe a supervisor goes in ‘Business/Management.’  On the other hand, if Microsoft used our automated tagging software, there wouldn’t be any guessing involved; the following three tags would be transparently assigned:

   

• First-Line Supervisors and Manager/Supervisors-Construction Trades Workers
• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers
• Maintenance and Repair Workers, General

From a user perspective, which tagging approach is better? And which approach provides better information for improving search accuracy?

   

Sure, it would be great if Microsoft licensed our software, but that’s not really the point.  The point is … Please, please use a better tagging and categorizing system than asking infrequent users to select

from 34 artificial occupational groupings that are too limiting to be useful.