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Meta-Job
Search Tool Evaluation: JobSniper Remains #1 - Followed Closely
by AllJobSearch
Tina
Wong, Insala Research Manager; Leah Niska, Insala Researcher
This is the third part of a research
study series being conducted by Insala's Research team. Our goal is to study the most popular meta-job
search tools to determine if they offer the job seeker value in
sourcing jobs on the Internet. In
our April issue of InfoLink we compared Wanted
Jobs with JobSniper.
Meta-Job Search Tools - What are
they?
There
currently is no one tool that "crawls"
the entire Internet to find every job opportunity available to match
a set of criteria. There are, however, a handful of meta-job search
tools which do attempt to source jobs from multiple locations. These
tools typically search a selected number of job boards at one time
(many of them are the large, well known job boards). A job seeker
can visit one of these tools, enter their job search criteria, and
run one search that goes through many websites at one time and returns
jobs found in one centralized search. Conceptually, this saves the
individual from having to visit many different sites to find jobs.
An
overview of our findings for AllJobSearch Compared to Wanted Jobs
and JobSniper
A sample
search for an "accountant" job in Boston was run through
AllJobSearch, Wanted Jobs, and JobSniper. The
exact same search was then re-run through each of the job boards
that these respective tools searched. An overview of our findings
is below. The detailed findings for AllJobSearch,
Wanted
Jobs, and JobSniper show the statistical results of these searches.
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Question
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Findings: JobSniper
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Findings:
Wanted Jobs
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Findings: AllJobSearch
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VOLUME / THOROUGHNESS
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Do meta-job search tools actually find all of the available
matching jobs that exist on the job boards they search or
do they miss some?
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Answer: Yes, it finds many of the available
matching jobs.
JobSniper found all or even more of the matching jobs available
at 35 of the 45 job boards it searched. Of the remaining 10
job boards, JobSniper typically missed 2-3 available matching
jobs.
Overall, JobSniper returned approximately the same number
of job matches (946) as the search through each job board
directly (744). JobSniper actually returned a larger number
since two of the sites (Boston Works and HotJobs) returned
jobs from the greater Boston area, whereas when the searches
were run through these two sites directly, the returned jobs
were specifically in Boston proper.
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Answer: No, it does not find many of the
available jobs. It misses most of them.
Wanted Jobs only found 5% of the available jobs.
Wanted Jobs was highly inadequate at finding all of the available
jobs at the job boards it searched. It only found 3
matching jobs when it searched through the 16 sites where
it found jobs. Our same search through each of the 16 job
board directly found 55 matching jobs.
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Answer: Yes, it finds most of the available
matching jobs.
AllJobSearch found most of the matching jobs available
at 32 of the 33 job boards it searched.
Using AllJobSearch to search America’s Job Bank (AJB)
failed; a keyword search function is available but not
AJB results.
Overall, AllJobSearch returned approximately the same number
of job matches (686) as the search through each job board
directly (700). AllJobSearch returned a larger number for two of the sites
(WantedJobs and DirectEmployers) because it pulled all jobs
in Massachusetts instead of returning only the jobs
in Boston. However, AllJobSearch
filtered out jobs over 30 days old whereas the direct search
included them.
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ACCURACY
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Do meta-job search tools actually return valid matches
(jobs that meet the criteria entered); or do they return large
numbers of jobs that don't actually meet the criteria?
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Answer: Fairly good validity - 39% accuracy
rating.
39%
of the jobs found through JobSniper were accurate matches.
This
was basically the same accuracy rating as when searching the
job boards themselves which yielded 38% of the jobs to be
accurate matches.
Bottom line, running the same searches through the majority
of the job boards directly did not produce any better job
matches.
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Answer: Poor validity - 6% accuracy rating.
6% of the jobs found through Wanted Jobs were accurate matches.
When
searching the job boards themselves, 47% of the jobs found
were accurate matches.
Bottom
line, running the same searches through the job boards directly
found significantly better job matches.
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Answer: Fairly good validity - 32% accuracy
rating.
32% of the jobs found through AllJobSearch were accurate matches.
This was basically the same accuracy rating as when searching
the job boards themselves which yielded 38% of the jobs to
be accurate matches.
Bottom line, running the same searches through the majority
of the job boards directly did not produce any better job
matches.
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EFFICIENCY
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Do job seekers actually get more and better matches by
visiting the job boards directly (which takes more time)?
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Answer:
No.
JobSniper
actually found more matching jobs (946) at the sites, than
when we searched the job boards directly (744).
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Answer: Yes.
Wanted
Jobs only found 3 matching jobs at the job boards; when we
searched the job boards directly, we found 55 matching jobs.
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Answer: No.
AllJobSearch
found about the same matching jobs (2111) at the sites as
when we searched the job boards directly (2110).
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OVERALL
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Can job seekers rely on one quick search through a meta-job
search tool to get good results and save time?
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Answer:
Yes.
Job seekers can confidently run one quick search through JobSniper
and be assured it will return basically the same job matches
from the job boards, as when they visit each job board and
run the same search directly and in the process definitely
save time.
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Answer:
No.
Job seekers should not rely upon one quick search through
Wanted Jobs to find all of the available matching jobs at
the job boards it searches. In our test search, it missed
the majority of available matching jobs.
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Answer:
Yes.
Job seekers can run one quick search through AllJobSearch
and be assured it will return basically the same job matches
from the job boards, as when they visit each job board and
run the same search directly and in the process definitely
save time.
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Based on these
findings, JobSniper is still the best performing meta-job search
tool with AllJobSearch coming in a close second.
Meta-Job Search Tool Evaluation
Report: AllJobSearch
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