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February 4, 2010

Job Search Shakeup: Monster to Buy HotJobs for $225 Million

Yahoo! sells off job search site and strikes new ad deal.

The job search landscape is about to get a major makeover. Monster.com has struck a deal with Yahoo! to take HotJobs off their hands for $225 million. That would allow the combined sites to take the number one spot in the job search space - a place currently held by CareerBuilder.

According to comScore numbers from February 2009, CareerBuilder saw 12.2 million visitors that month, while Monster saw 9.5 million and HotJobs saw 7.7 million.

Winning in job search for Monster and shedding some weight at Yahoo! wasn't the only deal on the table.

The two struck a 3 year partnership arranging for Monster to provide exclusive career-oriented content as well as job ads for Yahoo!'s U.S. and Canada portals. Yahoo! expects this to be an asset to its newspaper consortium as well.

In the meantime, the acquisition is subject to approval by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

February 1, 2010

Monster.com's 6Sense Technology Fuels Innovation in Job Search

Online job searching can be a daunting task. Keyword queries often return irrelevant results in with desired listings. On the recruiting side, sifting through hundreds or even thousands of candidates is not practical.

But Monster.com is working hard to make job search easier. They've been introducing some new innovations for job search - both on the job seeker side and on the recruiter side. Monster is using patented search technology they've dubbed 6Sense to fuel these new job search technologies.

When you visit Monster.com as a job seeker, notice that you now have two options for search. Standard search, Monster's traditional model, and PowerSearch, the new patented technology which is currently in BETA.

As you can see, in the Standard search, you've got one box for your keywords and another for location. With PowerSearch, you get to a box for searching job titles, another for skills, and one for location.

I tested out the search using terms and skills I used to help my husband search for a job two years ago. He's a software developer specializing in Autocad in Raleigh, NC. Power Search returned zero results - but that's a good thing. Because searching on other job sites - I couldn't find a job that meets that specific skill - but I had to scan hundreds of job listings to learn that. That's because traditional job search will pull up any job mentioning Autocad - including drafting positions.

I wanted to make sure, though that when a search is conducted on Power Search, the results are actually good. Not an easy task in this economy. So, I searched for my husband's new skill - iPhone development - and pretended we were looking for a job for him in New York. There was a nice list of 12 jobs to sift through.

I compared that to HotJobs, which not only made me sign into my Yahoo! account (annoying!), but returned listings for IT jobs, which weren't relevant.

"The 6Sense semantic search technology is an extension of our investment in many technology innovations we've delivered over the past two years," said Darko Dejanovic, executive vice president, Global CIO and head of product for Monster. "We've continued to invest significantly in technology, product and infrastructure to completely revamp the talent and job search experience."

For recruiters, the new Power Resume Search offers an insanely robust search that filters searches from having to scour thousands to sifting through a short list of truly qualified candidtes.

"I hear from our customers that their businesses have jobs that they desperately need to fill and yet don't have the resources to make that a reality. 6Sense technology changes all of this, facilitating the hiring process so that better matches are made more efficiently thereby getting people back to work more quickly," said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Monster.

Last fall, Monster briefed me on the Power Resume Search technology and I must admit, it's very awesome. Recruiters can filter by location, skill, years of experience and many other factors. They can also decide which factors are most important.

Monster is really on to some great tech here. It's the kind of tech that needs to expand to other search verticals and search in general.

"This is an early example of what the online experience will look like in the coming decade, as we move from search as a separate tool to integrated online environments that guide us through an information task. Monster is a very early example in this search revolution," said Susan Feldman, Research Vice President for Search and Discovery Technologies, IDC.

Even if you're not looking for a job right now, go check out their new Power Search. It's what search can be and it's what search is right now for Monster.com.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 20, 2010

SimpyHired.com Expands Integration with Social Networks to Enhance Job Search

It's a tough time for job seekers, but SimplyHired.com has released new features on their job search site to maximize the search for those looking. The update expands upon integration with social networks LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

"Given the competitive employment landscape, it is now imperative for job seekers to leverage all possible resources in pursuit of their dream job," said Gautam Godhwani, co-founder and CEO at Simply Hired.

Who Do I Know? is Simply Hired's mashup with LinkedIn. It returns an in-line view of a searcher's LinkedIn connections that are relevant to job search results. Connecting with recruiters and hiring managers via LinkedIn can definitely improve your chances of being contacted for an interview versus just sending the ol' resume and cover letter to a generic human resources email. Simply Hired is very smart to integrate this into their search results.

"With hundreds of applicants vying for any one role, a personal or professional connection within an organization can give a job seeker the crucial advantage. Simply Hired's new features show job seekers that there is hope; that their network of connections is more powerful than they believe," said Godhwani.

Simply Hired has also added a "Share" feature that easily enables searchers to share job listings with their networks on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - as well as through email. This is an easy way to shoot out a message to social networks to find contacts and referrals.

"The job search process can be incredibly time-consuming, with some job seekers spending the equivalent of a full-time job on their search," said Francis Larkin, senior product manager at Simply Hired. "Our goal is to help increase the exchange between job seekers' personal networks and SimplyHired.com to provide a faster, more efficient job search experience."

Last, but not least, Simply Hired has launched the following features:

Improved filters, including a telecommute, employer, recruiter and job board filters
A "New Jobs" link to aid returning visitors in quickly recognizing new listings in their job search
Customization of job search results, including the ability to block a specific job listing or a company

The new features are live, so head to Simply Hired to check them out for yourself or view their online tutorial before getting started.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 6, 2010

Online Job Listings Rise by 255,000 in December; Companies Expect to Add More in 2010

The Conference Board has released data showing online job listings rising by 255,000 last month. The average monthly increase of jobs for 2009 was just 60,000.

"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year," said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board.

Online job listings still remain below average. While the total number of vacancies last month was 3,642,000, the average for 2008 was 4,481,000.

"The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction," noted Levanon. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."

Meanwhile, Yahoo! HotJobs has released data from a survey about job outlook and attitudes.

Job satisfaction is low, even among new hires.

38.3% are "very satisfied" with their jobs and are not looking for a new job. That's just about the same as 2008 (38.5%)

44.6% are satisfied with their current job, but would consider a new job if the right opportunity came along. This is a big increase since 2008 (38.2%)

The most unsatisfied make up 17% (down from 23% in 2008) and are new hires. 34% have applied for jobs they're overqualified for and 30% have accepted lower salary and/or fewer benefits.

"For employers, the statistic about unsatisfied recent hires is a warning sign," says Tom Musbach, managing editor for Yahoo! HotJobs. "This is the same group that potentially took on the job while sacrificing salary or growth, and these are the people who could leave once the economy turns."

While most workers are pessimistic about the immediate future, employers are more hopeful. 42% of hiring managers expect to maintain the same recruiting levels while 32% expect to increase recruiting in 2010.

"Job seekers and hiring pros don't have high hopes for a job market rebound in 2010, but our survey also shows many companies intend to hire more than they did last year," said Musbach. "It's incumbent on job seekers to remain resourceful, persistent, and positive to succeed in getting a job today."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 30, 2009

Indeed is a job search aggregator. If you conduct a job search on Indeed, it will pull opportunities posted to a variety of job boards including Career Builder, Dice, etc. as well as corporate sites.

Today, they've revealed the fastest growing job opportunities for 2009.

Twitter
Cloud Computing
iPhone
Facebook
Corporate Social Responsibility
Blogger
Pediatrician
Hospitalist
Social Media
Speech Language Pathologist (SLP)

With high unemployment rates in the past year, many have chosen to look at new careers. This list may help you find a new path if you're struggling to find work.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 22, 2009

Searching and applying for jobs keeps getting more and more modern. A new iPhone/iPod Touch App allows users to search Twitter for job apps and then apply for them with one-click. The app is appropriately named "Real-Time Jobs" and was developed by WorkDigital, the makers of the web-based TwitterJobSearch.com. (Full disclosure: WorkDigital is partly owned by Incisive Media, parent company of Search Engine Watch.)

The app uses WorkDigital's new technology, which they call QuickPitch. Users can attach an online resume, video or other pitch to respond to jobs found on Twitter.

Bill Fischer, Co Founder of TwitterJobSearch explains the concept behind the app. "By bringing together our real-time search capabilities with our QuickPitch platform, we're aiming to re-invent a job search process that simply requires too much effort." Fischer will be speaking at SES Chicago this December at the Real Time Search Paradigm session. With the increased popularity and implementation of real-time search, that will be a session you won't want to miss.

Real-Time Jobs is available in the iTunes app store for free.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 30, 2009

At the Society for Human Resource Management Conference, CareerBuilder announced a new recruiting tool built with the Bing API. It's called Applicant Explorer and it uses the API to integrate online results such as social networking sites, blogs, and corporate websites with CareerBuilder's results.

"One of our key goals with Bing is to simplify search and make it easier for people to find what they are looking for online; searching for the ideal job candidate is no exception," said Alessandro Catorcini, senior program manager, Bing. "By combining Bing functionality with the extensive CareerBuilder database, Applicant Explorer helps recruiters and employers customize their search criteria and dynamically sort through and display hundreds of data sources in one easy to use interface, cutting the manual search time substantially."

The idea was to streamline the candidate search process for human resources professionals. Instead of sifting through CareerBuilder results and then conducting the same search on a separate search engine, now recruiters can do it all in one place.

"With so many employers already utilizing the Internet to research candidates, Applicant Explorer was created to help employers do that necessary research in the most efficient and simple way possible - helping them go beyond the resume," said Greg Brass, director of profile search at CareerBuilder. "In addition, job seekers can benefit from the clearer picture employers can gather of their qualifications and background."

Applicant Explorer is free for those using CareerBuilder's resume database.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 31, 2009

The job search site, Simply Hired, has announced its expansion to Germany, Spain and France. Simply Hired already has job search sites for the U.S., Australia, Canada, India and the U.K. and has aggregated 5 million jobs worldwide.

"Each of Simply Hired's websites is tailored for the job seeker, with features and functionality that empower them to lead the pack of candidates applying for any given job," said Sachin Shah, director of product management, Simply Hired. "By design, the Simply Hired websites show job seekers their requested results and then enable them to click directly to the originating website, facilitating the most direct interaction with the employer." Related Reading: Job Search is Fastest Growing Online Content Category in 2008 Top 10 Toughest Jobs to Fill? The Top 3 Are In Search Engine Marketing The 5 Web Resources You Need to Find a Job in Search Matt McGowan Quoted in BusinessWeek Article about SEO Jobs

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 23, 2009

For news that should shock no one, the job search niche is the fastest growing online content category, according to comScore. The niche has grown a whopping 51% to 18.8 million visitors.

CareerBuilder.com leads the pack with over 9 million searches.

Women, the 25-49 age group and the $75,000+ salary set saw the most growth in job searches in December 2008 versus the same month a year prior:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 1, 2008

Graduation is on the horizon, and Facebook is making the most of its college-heavy demographic by teaming up with CareerBuilder. The partnership will primarily target college grads in an attempt to assist them during their job search. Recruiters have traditionally experience difficulty in reaching this particular market, despite the various channels for job listings available.

Users will be able to place a CareerBuilder app on their profile page. If successful, this could be a great first step in Facebook building trust with users again. Last year, the social network blew it when its Beacon platform accessed user preferences for advertising - without user permission. The CareerBuilder app will require user permission first.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:58 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2007

Trovix grew up in the Googleplex but would thrive down the road at MS SV Live Search. Searchification of boring resumes made a name for Trovix, leading to the launch of its free, live jobs search (read: white/blue collar) and recruitment site. Now job candidates can find more suitable jobs; and Jobs, more suitable candidates.

Why would Trovix find itself more at home in Microsoft Live Search than even at Google? Simple. Great artificial minds think alike.

Trovix search technology extracts attributes from job descriptions and CVs the way Microsoft Live Search extracts attributes from online content in key verticals (Shopping; Health, Entertainment, Local). In simple terms, by parsing words, phrases and acronyms their search technologies determine a database of intentions on the fly.

Trovix is a vertical search engine (people/jobs). Live Search aggregates vertical search engines in a SHEL game where the Microsoft prize is the searchers' true intentions; the ultimate payout: a bigger slice of online ad dollars.

Key Trend To Watch: Microsoft Live Search bucks the trend of human intervention in search. Sophisticated filters and algorithms improve relevancy.Lately Google has tried to put a human face on search, emphasizing they're more than just an algorithm.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:17 AM | Permalink

May 21, 2007

Job search engine Indeed.com has been testing a pay-per-action (PPA) advertising model, which for recruiters means a pay-per-applicant ad model. The offering lets recruiters pay only when a job applicant responds to their listing, or lets other advertisers pay only when a specified action has occurred. Advertisers can specify any kind of online action they want to pay for, such as filling out a form or creating an account.

The PPA job ads will appear above and below Indeed's organic results, in the same positions as its pay-per-click (PPC) ads run now. Keyword-targeted ads, sold by Indeed and back-filled with Ask Sponsored Listings ads, appear next to the organic listings. PPC and PPA ads will be intermixed, with Indeed's algorithm ranking both types of ads together.

Organic and sponsored job listings are also outsourced to Indeed's network of content sites, who share in revenue generated by a co-branded job search or a site-targeted "Jobroll," a custom feed of jobs matching the interests and locations of their audiences.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:31 PM | Permalink

May 9, 2007

Microsoft has acquired a minority equity stake in job search engine CareerBuilder, owned jointly by newspaper companies Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy.

In addition, the 3-year-old agreement to display CareerBuilder results on the MSN network was extended through 2013. The agreement continues to be performance-based, with payments determined by the quality and quantity of traffic delivered by MSN. Under the agreement, CareerBuilder will pay MSN up to $443 million over the course of seven years to serve as the exclusive job search engine on the MSN Careers channel.

Microsoft will also begin deploying CareerBuilder results abroad, expecting to launch CareerBuilder on MSN sites in most European countries by the middle of 2008 with several rolling out by the end of 2007.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:20 PM | Permalink

December 10, 2006

The newly launched job search engine, WhoToTalkTo.com, is using job seekers to help build its database of jobs.

The engine requires users to post job listings in order to gain access to the site. Though limiting its listings to its home area of Michigan at the moment, founder Brian McCullough hopes to add 100,000 listings a month. This method of growing a job listings site reflects the growing use of social networking. How the experiment works in this niche should be interesting to watch.

Posted by Frank Watson at 8:00 AM | Permalink

December 5, 2006

SimplyHired, a vertical search engine focused on employment, has partnered with the New York Post to supplement that publications job listings. Similar to Indeed's integration with the New York Times, listings from SimplyHired can only be found after an initial search through the default job listings.

Here's a New York Post job search for Search Engine Optimization. There are only three results, all for Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which happens to own a stake in SimplyHired. Clicking on the Simply More Jobs link, though, returns over 1000 jobs. The power of vertical search at work.

In related news, SimplyHired takes a cue from my data feed submission service, and launches Resume Post, which allows job seekers to instantly post their resumes to 5 major job boards, including Monster, Career Builder and Job.com. The Resume Post service has prominent exposure through MySpace's Jobs section (must be logged in).

Posted by Brian Smith at 8:45 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

Indeed, the job search engine, announced the launch of a Salary Search tool. It basically allows you to enter in a job title description and a location (optional) to find "objective" and "current" salaries for jobs offered based on your search. It pulls the data from "millions of current job listings." Below is a screen cast I performed on my computer while testing it out, you will need to boost up your speaker volume to hear it (sorry).

Example searches performed in screen cast: - seo 10010 $83,000 - seo $59,000 - google $42,000 - google vs yahoo $75,000 - barry $25,000 - danny $43,000

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

A number of people have talked about the potential power of MySpace getting into search. Well, the company put its toes in the water this morning with the launch of MySpace Jobs, powered by SimplyHired.

Back in April, SimplyHired raised $13.5m from Fox Interactive Media (FIM), MySpace's parent company. At that time, Ross Levinsohn, FIMs president joined the SimplyHired Board.

When I was first briefed on this story, SimplyHired gave me a run down of the MySpace numbers, saying that the site had 76m members with 42m unique users a month. Well, my 'network' is now up to 84m people, so I'd guess that the uniques number has risen too. As for the demographics on MySpace, the core user group is 16-34 years old, a demo ripe for summer internships, first jobs, and new jobs...all available through SimplyHired's 5m+ job listings.

At launch, MySpace Jobs is focusing on summer jobs, highlighting examples like Lifeguards, Camp Couselor, and retail positions at Gap and Abercrombie.

Also featured on the MySpace Jobs page is the always irreverant SimplyFired, which is giving away an Xbox 360 to the best summer job sob story.

Posted by Brian Smith at 10:20 AM | Permalink

May 15, 2006

Indeed, a job search engine, announced last week that it officially launched its pay per click network (the system had been in beta since mid-2005).

CEO Paul Forster sat down with me for an introduction to the company: "The job search market is very fragmented. There are 1000s of different places to search which makes it very difficult for seekers to do a comprehensive search. Indeed saves people time, enables people to find unique jobs, and also to find sources of jobs that they normally wouldnt have heard of. Weve put a lot of work into the search algorithm."

Read the full interview at VerticalSearch.

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:01 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2006

The vertical search space continues to attract interest from major media companies. This morning, SimplyHired announced it raised $13.5m from Fox Interactive Media (FIM) and Foundation Capital.

FIM represents the interactive assets of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which made a splash last year by purchasing MySpace. In total, FIM properties reach aproximately 70 million unique visitors a month.

Ross Levinsohn, FIMs president, will join the SimplyHired board of directors.

If you're looking for a primer on the job search market and SimplyHired, read my recent Q&A with SimplyHired's Phil Carpenter.

Posted by Brian Smith at 12:30 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2005

A few weekends ago Wall Street Journal reporter, Kevin Delaney, gave me a call asking for a few ideas, thoughts, and suggestions about useful specialized databases (aka verticals) that would be of interest to WSJ readers.

Today, the article was published and it's titled, "Beyond Google." You'll find it linked here. However, at least for the moment, Kevin's story is only available to WSJ subscribers.

A couple of quick comments and notes:

1) Thanks Kevin for asking for my suggestions and for the quote. You should know that for each database suggested and included in the final article, 40-50 more could have been included and received a well-deserved mention. I had to limit my picks for obvious reasons. Of course, Kevin spoke to others and also included their suggestions.

2) The "Beyond Google" headline is great. The word Google has a way of drawing peoples attention and the title of the headline is often the title of presentations I give. Why? A presentation titled, "Learn about Specialty Databases" does not pack in the crowds. Tossing the word Google into the title, does.

Specialty tools do not replace general purpose large web engines like Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Gigablast, Exalead, and others. A web researcher should have a good working knowledge of both general databases and specialty tools. Plus, in terms of some of my presentations, the word "Google" gets the crowd in the door and then I have time to not only talk about Google (many don't have any idea of what it can offer) but also have time to talk about the great useful stuff being developed by AJ, Yahoo, and elsewhere. So in reality it's a two pronged presensation. As I posted on Friday, it's clear that many people who use these and other tools have little to no idea of how these services work and what they offer.

+ General web engines (The full landscape, how to take full advantage of some of their services, creating better queries). These days it can also include time letting the audience know about verticals that these companies also provide like Yahoo Audio Search.

+ Specialized databases (verticals) the power and often time saving capabilities they offer. The challenge for many is just knowing about them.

3) If you read the blog on a regular basis, you'll likely notice that Kevin used several suggestions that I've written about on our site. Cool!

4) I was especially pleased to see the WSJ article mention the wonderful RegLightGreen bibliographic database and NetLibrary, available for free from many libraries that offers the full text of thousands of books. Remember, as I wrote in this guest column for BetaNews, public, university, and many other types of libraries offer FREE, 24x7x365, access from any web computer (no need to go to the library) to a full range of specialized databases that often offer content not found in web engines (full text journals, newspapers, magazines, reference books, etc.) OR packaged in such a way to add extra value to the data. Plus, these databases tend to offer search capabilities not found from general web engines. Every library offers different service and databases. The easiest to learn what your library offers is to either look at their web site or make a quick call.

Postscript: I'm happy to report that at least for the moment, it's the most popular story on the WSJ site today. Yes, I think the public is beginning to understand the value of specialized tools.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:27 PM | Permalink

December 8, 2005

Things are happening fast a furious at job metasearch vertical engine Indeed.com lately. It's a service I use quite a bit to monitor jobs in the search space and it works very well. We blogged about the launch of Indeed.com Canada the other day and today we learn of MyIndeed.com. Look for the MyIndeed link in the top right corner of every results listings. Included in its features is the chance to tag your job search findings.

From the Indeed.com Blog You can save a job by clicking ?Save job? next to any search result. At the same time, you may also add notes and tags to the job. Tags enable you to group jobs together in ways that make sense to you, so you can organize them and find them again easily. We?re not yet sure if people will mainly use tags like ?applied? or ?interviewed? to categorize their saved jobs, or characteristics of the jobs themselves like location, industry, or function

Like the Indeed.com team, I'll be interested to see if and how tagging is used on a personal level where tagging can be useful.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:41 PM | Permalink

December 2, 2005

The San Franscisco Weekly reports in the article Craig$list.com, that the very popular classified ad site, its founder calls it an online marketplace "like a fleamarket," is beginning to cause layoffs at well-known and established news organizations. The story offers all sorts of interesting facts. For example, Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark, still uses text-based Pine as his email program. Probably not a bad idea. (-:

Seriously, the article includes plenty of good reading. Here are a few passages from the nine page article.

A good read not only on Craigslist but also its founder and ciizen journalism in general. Btw, OurMedia, Wikipedia, and Korea's OhMyNews are also mentioned.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:59 PM | Permalink

November 25, 2005

Job metasearch vertical, Indeed.com, has just launched a new Canadian version (English speaking Canada that is) of their database at Canada.indeed.com.

A Francophone version is still not available. The Indeed Canada UI is just about identical to its American cousin and like Indeed.com, provides results from a variety of employment databases, job sites, and even employment opportunity pages found on company web sites. RSS and email alerts (I find them to be very useful) are also available on Indeed Canada. More info in this Indeed Blog post. No word if Indeed's Canadian listings will also become searchable and browsable via Jobs.clusty.com where you can browse and cluster job postings.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:40 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2005

Job search database, SimplyHired.com, has just released a feature that allows the searcher to map job opportunities with Google Maps. Details and directions, here. Caveat, many job listings don't contain the specific address of where the job you're applying for is located. Many times only the town name is listed. Specific locations (street address is available) are shown using a red pushpin, locations where only a city or Zip Code is known use a blue pushpin. Of course, even if an exact street location is available, it doesn't necessarily mean this is precisely where you would be working.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:04 PM | Permalink

August 8, 2005

Last Friday, I posted that job search vertical SimplyHired.com received some funding from angel investors. Today, News.com reports that Indeed.com (another job search vertical) has received a $5 million investment from the New York Times, Union Square Ventures, and Allen & Company.

This is yet another Internet investment from the NY Times. In February/March they purchased About.com for $410 million in cash.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:22 PM | Permalink

August 5, 2005

A news release and Silicon Valley Business Journal story clues us into the fact that job search vertical SimplyHired.com has raised $3 million from angel investors including Rajeev Motwani, and early investor/advisor to Google and Ron Conway, founder of Angel Investors LLC., also an early investor in both Google and Ask Jeeves. In addition to veteran angel investors, the round includes notable entrepreneurs Michael Tanne, founder of the Internet advertising company Adforce, James Hong, founder of top-50 Internet site HotOrNot.com.

Along with the funding news, we've learned that tech evangelist and investor, Guy Kawasaki, has joined the SimplyHired board of directors.

On the search front, SimplyHired launched an advanced search interface last week. One option allows the searcher to limit their search to companies that appear on various lists like the Fortune 500 and the Inc. 500.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:05 PM | Permalink

August 4, 2005

Job search vertical Indeed.com has added several "hundred new job sources in the last month including the career pages of most of the Fortune 500." Nice.

Since employment databases can also be useful CI (competitive intelligence) tools, I would love to see Indeed.com do some data mining looking for trends, stats, etc.) How about beginning with their crawl of Fortune 500 job sites. Perhaps another revenue stream for Indeed?

Indeed.com has also posted on their blog about new services added to their suite of tools for webmasters.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:41 PM | Permalink

July 12, 2005

Matt Marshall from the San Jose Mercury News offers up an interesting read in Yahoo to 'copy' jobs to beef up its listings that takes a look at the new HotJobs database of open-web content that we blogged about last week. The new Yahoo/HotJobs service officially launched this morning. Here's the official announcement.

One comment about Matt's article. He writes, "Job scraping is fairly new."

I would argue that job scraping (for example, crawling company web sites for employment listings) would fall into the, "what's old is new" again category since a major online employment database once provided this type of service.

Officially launched in 2000, a site/database called FlipDog.com crawled the open web looking for job listings on company web sites. Here's how FlipDog described itself:

FlipDog.com crawls the World Wide Web and links to job openings found on employer Web sites.

Five years ago there was even talk (similar to what Matt discusses in his article) about FlipDog doing for free what others charge for.

Interestingly, in May 2001 TMP Worldwide (the parent of HotJobs competitor, Monster.com) acquired FlipDog from the now defunct WhizBang Labs who originally developed the job search engine to showcase their data extraction technology.

Today, FlipDog.com redirects to Monster.com. One has to wonder if Monster.com will either resurrect the service or use/enhance the FlipDog technology to integrate open-web job listings into their primary database.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:22 PM | Permalink

July 7, 2005

Several sources including News.com and the Yahoo Search Blog point out that HotJobs (a Yahoo company) is now using Yahoo's web crawler to enhance HotJobs own database with job listings posted on various sites and job boards across the internet. Yahoo calls the new feature its Job Engine.

This is similar to what Simply Hired and Indeed.com are already providing. In fact, both of these services include listings posted on HotJobs itself. Feedster also offers a jobs database that culls employment opportunities found in RSS feeds.

Note to Yahoo: It would be useful if you joined Simply Hired and Indeed.com in providing the underlying source site or database for each listing. This info can help a job seeker make sure their search is comprehensive but can alert them to resources they might not know about.

By the way, another way to access Indeed.com's database is via the "jobs" tab on Clusty. This way you can take advantage of Clusty's dynamic clustering to help spot potential job opportunities. Indeed.com and Clusty began their partnership in May.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:35 AM | Permalink

May 4, 2005

A news release let's us know that longtime business search vertical, Business.com, has officially launched another vertical, Work.com. The new engine provides job listings from "premium" employers via a direct crawl of employer web sites. I haven't had a lot of time to check the site out but I'll try to get to it soon.

The news release also points out that Work.com is offering a cost-per-click program. Instead of paying the flat fee common with current job board ad listings, advertisers on Work.com pay only for the candidates that click to their jobs on their website.

Results page offer numerous "clickable" refinements including date, job title, company, and location. Ads from Google are also visible on the page. More about Work.com soon.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:30 PM | Permalink

May 2, 2005

The new and impressive job listings metasearch database, Indeed.com and Clusty, the metasearch engine offering dynamic clustering of results from Vivisimo that debuted last September, have gotten together to offer Jobs.clusty.com. It allows the searcher to dynamically cluster job search results from Indeed.com several different ways.

The Jobs.clusty.com homepage presents all Indeed.com listings clustered by state. You can also keyword search the database and then cluster results by topic, company, cities (location), or source (the underlying database or site where Indeed.com gets the listing from). To change the cluster, simply use the pull-down menu option in the left column of a results page.

Jobs.clusty.com might not only be useful service for people looking for employment but also to business and competitive intelligence researchers.

About six weeks ago, Clusty launched another specialty search tool, Gov.clusty.com, that clusters results from U.S. Government "sources" including First.gov, an MSN search limited to .gov sites, and others sites and databases.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:29 AM | Permalink

April 11, 2005

Interested in learning more about job search vertical, Indeed.com? Nathan Enns from The Search Industry Blog and Fybersearch has posted a ten question Q&A interview with Paul Forster, a co-founder of the job search database.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:54 PM | Permalink

March 28, 2005

You mean another article about vertical search tool? Ubetcha!

From my researcher perspective, I've been very impressed with what I've seen from Indeed.com since first blogging about the service in December. This employment listings vertical/federated service aggregates results from many job databases, company web sites, messages boards, etc. Their RSS/email news alerts work very well and they also offer an interesting "jobs postings per capita" map. Today's New York Times article: Online Searchers for Job Seekers offers a profile of Indeed.com, which offically launches today.

WorkZoo and SimplyHired.com, two other recent startups offering a federated database of job openings, are also mentioned in the article.

The article points out an issue for these and other federated search tools, will the providers of the underlying databases (HotJobs and Monster for example) continue to aggregate results from their services?

Again, from the searcher perspective, if used properly tools like Indeed.com and the others can save the searcher time and potentially offer them a more comprehensive search. The database providers win by getting traffic they might not receive if the searcher would be using one database at a time.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:08 PM | Permalink

February 25, 2005

WorkZoo is a new crawler-based job search engine just launched seeking out pages from across the web that seem to offer jobs in the US.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:13 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

In December we first blogged about a new federated job search vertical Indeed.com that allows users to simultaneously search job listings from "hundreds" of sites. This morning, The Stamford Advocate has published a profile of the company titled: Indeed.com to be a hub for job seekers.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:03 AM | Permalink

January 19, 2005

News from Feedster that they're now adding more than 5,000 job listings each day from a variety of services and companies that offer employment announcements in RSS format. A specialized interface to acccess these listings is also available at: http://jobs.feedster.com. The news release also points out that more specialized interfaces (aka verticals) are coming soon.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:45 AM | Permalink

December 21, 2004

Both Search Engine Roundtable and Searchblog have overview posts about a new federated search tool that allows users to simultaeously search job listings from "hundreds" of sites. It's called indeed.com.

Key Points: + Clutter-free and simple interface + Sort results by relevance or date + Search term refinements available on results pages + Job listings available via RSS and/or E-Mail. + Jobs are ranked solely by relevance or date. indeed.com does not accept money for placement.