Search Seek On Google

This Onrec blog has commented previously about Seek’s relative lack of search engine optimisation.  However, I s’pose this doesn’t matter if you get a job search box in Google’s organic search results.

Let’s say you type in ‘Accounting’ into this search box, you will then be presented with a list of jobs from Seek with the term ‘Accounting’ in them. Click away…

When you search MyCareer or other job boards they don’t get the same celebrity treatment??

2Vouch Goes Beta

I’ve discussed 2vouch on this Onrec blog already back in February Vouching For 2Vouch . Today they launched in Beta. Congratulations.

Social referral sites such as 2vouch and Hoojano(which launched some months back) will be a prominent aspect of how we recruit into the future. The idea is nothing new, as indicated by the old adage 2vouch has chosen to adopt as their motto, “It’s not what you know…” (initially they had a genie as part of their campaign. I wanna know where the genie’s gone:)). Being social creatures, we communicate with one another. Being creatures ruled by the ego, we like to be “in the loop”, and being creatures driven by economic concerns, we like to make money. 2vouch satisfies all the needs.

Recruiters pay referral fees to people who give them a lead on a placement. 2vouch is merely formalising this already-existing convention.

Online recruitment has placed some jobs on 2vouch, to give it a go. Stay tuned for how that’s tracking…I wish, I wish (picture me rubbing the magic lantern here) for several successful job placements….

Where’s the Genie??

Seek Delivers

There’s good money still to be had in the traditional job board model. If you are Seek. They finished the financial year with total sales up 34% to $210.2 million. Nice.

Not hard to see why. Even their competitors are advertising with them…

MyCareer’s Search For Excellence

Past Fairfax Digital CTO Seth Yates has covered the update to MyCareer’s search functionality here already.

Here’s my view. (since I took this home page search box snap shot, they have rolled back to include the sector/sub sector, location e.t.c drop down menus again) MyCareer have informed me that they are running a Test A and Test B search box.

They have gone with the new search suggest keyword technology. Yahoo are using this tool successfully.

Once you make your way to the search results page, you can’t help but notice the new ‘refine your search’ column. With such a nice simple keyword search box on the home page they let themselves down here. Should have kept it slick and given the advertisers the spot light with their job listings.

May I suggest MyCareer, that you keep up the innovation.

MyCareer latest Ad Campaign

This is MyCareer, it’s the TV campaign you’ve been waiting for.

(AND YOU WON’T EVEN REMEMBER IT EXISTED)

Don’t Shoot The Messenger

A recent decision by a US court might mean sound sleep tonight for the owners of websites.

Online bulletin board, Craigslist, was found not liable for users posting discriminatory advertisements, a US court has ruled.

“Judge Frank Easterbrook said the Chicago lawyers could not “sue the messenger just because the message reveals a third party’s plan to engage in unlawful discrimination”.

What this establishes is a discrimination between folks publishing discriminatory views and third party publishes which merely provide the forum for publication.

Besides a good night’s sleep, I took from this how exciting this new frontier we’re traversing is. In law, many of the rules that have been established so far and will be established in the future are based on precedents set in publishing generally. However, the web is a beast of a slightly different nature in regard to, amongst other things, the capacity of companies to merely provide the tools for publication. I love how this gives us guys, who are at the forefront of such an amazing tool, to shape the world we wanna live in.

Kinda makes me feel powerful…like Van Hielsing slaying the vampires and stuff…

Old School Meets New School

An alliance between JobX.com.au and social networking site, friendsreunited.com.au was announced today.

JOBX will provide FriendsReunited.com.au a full white label of its technology and functionality, including powering and launching the FriendsReunited.com.au jobs portal.

Good on ‘em. JobX has done the right thing in that, prior to spending squillions on marketing, it’s building some strategic alliances.This’ll help friendsreunited, too. Friendsreuinited is old school, web1.0, whereas JobX is more web2.0, giving its counterpart a bit more wizz-bang.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Health Check.

“We think that we can create the number-two job board in Australia within 12 months, which really means knocking off MyCareer and CareerOne, and we think that we can be a third of the size of Seek within three years.”

-Guy Sigston (smart company magazine, 20 Feb., 2007)

It’s nearly a year on for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Call it an early happy birthday present if you like, but I reckon they’re about due for a little health check.Let’s start with the positive. The site has pretty good functionality. It remembers the user and returns the upon entry to their last viewing point. Handy stuff. And not that it really matters so much, but the site is aestetically slick and easy to navigate - a welcome break from some stuff I’ve been looking at lately.Okay.

On to Guy’s quote. See, the problem is, if you’re going to go to the media with big claims, you wanna be pretty sure that you can see the claims through. Based on this idea, Guy Sigston was pretty…um…stupid. Sure, you left Jobs, Jobs, Jobs rather “abruptly”, but you’re back now and I reckon all the hooha is no excuse for not making good your inflated promise, Guy.

Let’s have a look at how things are tracking…According to Hitwise Australia February 08 market share, Seek holds 25% of the market, and CareerOne and MyCareer, 8.7% and 7.3%, respectively. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs has NOT EVEN 1% OF MARKET SHARE. I don’t wanna kick you when you’re down, and frankly, I wouldn’t be expecting much more than what you’ve achieved in such a short time. The thing I have an issue with is your public escalation of expectations. Don’t tell folks that you’ll be number two in a year, don’t tell folks that you’ll be a third of the size of Seek in three years, unless you have a bloody good plan for how this will be achieved.Say we let ‘em off the hook for the Guy comment. Say we’re in a benevolent mood and we’re prepared to allow a pretty humungous margin of error…where do we go from here?

Archie Mills, my friendly telesales rep. from Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, led me to the answer to this question. Archie was pretty keen to get my business by setting up a meeting with one of the sales team. I’m pretty busy, though, and won’t go to meetings unless I’m pretty sure it’s going to be fruitful for me (this is the reason I’m self-employed, goddam). I asked Archie for some info about the job board and he sent me an email, jam-packed full of claims. Most of them were pruely propaganda. For instance, “We offer better value”. Der, Arch. Then there was this one “57% growth in the past two months” That one bugged me a bit, considering that January is the comeback month for job boards. I wanted clarification on that point, “How does this compare with the growth of the competing job boards” and “What is the source of the statistics”, I asked my new friend Archie - twice. No reply. That was a few weeks ago.

Looks like Jobs, Jobs, Jobs is up to their old tricks again.