Sorry for letting you down … but, I simply don’t know how to return relevant job search results. It’s a lot harder than you think, and perhaps better left to startups like Just-Posted.com. Incredibly, they’ve achieved the impossible – developed a job search engine that returns job search results that are relevant. Imagine that …! A job seeker can now use a job search engine, and have confidence that the search results will match her search criteria. It’s truly amazing. Let me show you what I mean ….

First, I’ll show you the results I deliver. [I warn you though ... the results are bad.] Below are the first three search results I return for a ‘career coach’ job. As you can clearly see … I’m having difficulty figuring out which jobs to show you! I don’t understand the contextual relationship of the words ‘career coach’. Should I return job postings containing the word ‘career’ or ‘coach’ or ‘career coach’. Clearly, the jobs ‘Academic Coach’ and ‘Motor Coach Operator’ are off the mark and irrelevant. I’m so confused!

Yeah, I know what you’re about to ask … so, where can I go online to find the best jobs available? The answer is easy – Just-Posted.com. Their job search engine is the most advanced job search tool on the Web. When you execute the same job search for a ‘career coach’ position using the job search engine on Just-Posted.com, it searches through millions of jobs from among thousands of Web sites, and immediately returns the most relevant matching jobs available. There’s nothing else like it on the job market!

I don’t know how they do it. They must have an advanced search algorithm, and a commitment to enhancing the user (job seeker) experience. Maybe I can learn a little something from Just-Posted.com.

Dear Editor—I am a job seeker. Many of my friends say there is no such thing as search engine relevance.  They say, “job boards and job search engines don’t care about me, and can’t give me relevant job search results.”  Please tell me the truth, is there a job search engine that will help me find the perfect job?

Virginia O’Search

Virginia, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by uncaring job boards and job search engines. They do not believe. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds. All job seekers, Virginia, whether they be active or passive, want better search results from job search engines. In this job market of ours, users of online job boards are mere eye balls to be captured by advertisers.

Yes, Virginia, there is a job search engine that cares about you.  It can be found at Just-Posted.com  as certainly as job opportunities exist, and you know that a great job opportunity is just a click away. Alas! how dreary would be a job search if there continued to be no relevant job search result!  It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no interviews, no offers of hire, no career advancement to make tolerable this job search.  We should have no success, except in career aspirations. These aspirations with which personal and professional successes are driven would remain extinguished.

Not believe in job search engine relevance! You might as well not believe in the Internet. You might get your friends to use the Just-Posted job search engine.  The most real things in the world are those that neither active or passive job seekers have yet to see – until now. Did you ever view the perfect job opportunity on job board?  Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody, but Just-Posted.com, can deliver all the perfect job opportunities available online.

You search job boards and job search engines and hope to find the perfect job, but there is a veil covering the unseen job opportunities which not the strongest searcher, nor even the united strength of all job seekers that ever searched online could find. Only Just-Posted.com can push aside that curtain and understand and deliver the finest jobs available. Is it all real?

Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.  No search engine relevance! Thank God! it can be found at Just-Posted.com.  A thousand searches from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 searches from now, it will continue to make glad the heart of job seekers, employers and career resource services providers.

We caught up with Jason Alba, CEO/Founder, JibberJobber today to learn more about why JibberJobber’s ‘career toolset’ is so very important to job seekers.

What gave you the idea to develop JibberJobber?

I was in my own job search, the first real search I ever had to do, and found it to be a very frustrating process.  I think one of the most frustrating things was that I had tools like JibberJobber as a working professional, and I knew that the people I was interviewing with (recruiters, HR, etc.) had sophisticated tools, and wondered why the regular Joe Jobseeker didn’t have anything except a spiral notebook or homemade spreadsheet.

Why is JibberJobber important to job seekers?

Most obvious, it helps job seekers organize and manage all of the information they collect in a job search.  But I consider the value to be much greater over the long-term!  If you begin to use JibberJobber now, for this job search (or before you even enter a job search), imagine the ability to come back in a year or two when you are looking for a job again and track important information like contacts within a company, your history of what you’ve learned about that company (do they have good benefits, what their next year’s goals are, etc.).  JibberJobber is a tool to help manage a career, and the various job searches that you have during a career – these days there are very few jobs that employ you to retirement – and JibberJobber seems to be the only, or at least the best, long-term tool to help you manage all of this.  Additionally, it takes counsel from coaches and career experts and allows you to manage your network (complementary to social networking sites like LinkedIn), prepare for an interview and many other things.

How does JibberJobber improve the job search process?

Instead of spending time wondering who you talked to, where you applied and who you need to talk to, JibberJobber helps you organize all of this.  Believe it or not, I even missed an important phone meeting that I had set up – what a mistake!  So much information can be overwhelming, and trying to keep it all organized can burn time (if you are creating your own little tracking system like I had done).  But like I mention above, don’t forget how important it is to understand how to manage these job searches over time, as your network and contacts grow, these will be critical in a future job search.

From your feedback, what are the main tools and features job seekers are looking for when searching for jobs online?

There are lots of things that are requested, like the ability to manage and track all of the different names/passwords of job boards they use.  Obviously, keeping track of companies, jobs applied to and network contacts is critical.  But the online aspect adds a little more complexity because it is so easy to apply to a bunch of different jobs rather quickly – and keeping track of all that can be a mess. Some sites have a “save job” feature, and allow you to rank or put notes, but that only works for that site.  JibberJobber really helps in this regard as it is not site specific, rather it is like a hub to bring all of this information into one place.  Additionally, if the job goes away on the job board it won’t automatically go away in your JibberJobber system.  You might want to keep that information forever as it may be useful down the road, even when you are employed!

What do you think about job board aggregators/verticals and job boards in general?

I spent all of my time on job boards looking for and applying to jobs.  Verticals like Just-Posted.com are great because it pretty much allows me to go to one place to do a job search.  I admit that right now I don’t fully understand the differences between SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com, except one seems to get more traffic and one claims to have more jobs (or be the most comprehensive) – something that Joel Cheezman is watching and reporting on his blog.  Other tools like RSS and e-mail notifications on my saved preferences are cool.  I think that one piece of information that is continually miscommunicated is that job boards are indeed useful!  I was using them wrong, or not optimally.  To find a listing on Just-Posted.com is great, and its okay to apply to it, but there is also great information such as who is hiring, possibly names of HR or hiring managers, what the company is doing (if they are looking for a new Director or VP, they are likely shaking things up or looking to grow), etc.  It definitely is a great tool that could and should be used for what its intended, but there are other ways to get value out of the tool!

JibberJobber brings order to chaos, and gives career minded job seekers the job search management tools to be successful.

According to Alexander Halavais, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication in the UB School of Informatics, “People should Google themselves for the same reason corporations do, to help to manage their public face”.   [Read: "Self-Googling" Isn't Just Vanity; It's a Shrewd Form of Personal "Brand Management,"]

Career success is as much a function of what we do as how others perceive us!  Go ahead … self-Google.  You’ll be glad you did.

JibberJobber brings order to chaos, and gives career minded job seekers the job search management tools to be successful. 

Like ‘dirty-window’merchants fending off Wal-Mart’s dominance -  local and regional market job boards have opportunity to greatly enhance their job market visibility and potency with attractive pricing schedules, engaging content, advanced job search engine technology, etc.

Bob Wilson’s examination of search results relevance on job boards and job search engines highlights the challenge and opportunity for those truly commited to engaging active and passive job seekers. 

Instead of dancing around the tribal ‘online search’ fires contented that tomorrow’s foraging will yield mediocre results, let’s move search to another level.  Yes, search engine relevance is important!

RMWilsonConsulting.com