A thousand flowers bloom: new job sites, everywhere you look

August 21, 2012
JobBoardDoctor

flowers small It’s hard to believe that we are in the dog days of summer, at least judging from the number of new job sites I’m seeing. Granted, some of these have been around in alpha or beta for a while, some have been flying under the radar, and some are simply new to me – but there seems to be no letup in the volume of new job sites in the online recruiting sector.

This is great, in my opinion. New job sites force established players to rethink how they do business. They bring new approaches and technology to the table. Most importantly, they give both employers and job seekers new options for finding each other. I’m for that!

So, without further ado (and in no particular order) here are some new job sites that have caught my eye:

Jobvidi: Using your LinkedIn profile, Jobvidi matches jobs to your skills and serves them up. If you apply for a job, you’ll hear from the company within 14 days. Consider this a matching/LinkedIn mashup.
ApplyApp.ly: Using either your LinkedIn profile or resume, AplyApp.ly finds you jobs – with a twist. You can include location (nothing unusual, and limited), job type (intern, professional, etc.), and your MeyersBriggs rating….uh, wait? Meyers Briggs? Yep, the old standby of career counseling offices everywhere is used here – with the catch that you actually have to know what your Meyers Briggs is. Consider this a matching/LinkedIn mashup – with a psychological twist.
HireStarts: HireStarts says it is a social network for connecting employers with college students. It’s what I call a candidate pay site, charging the job seeker to participate (it does have a basic free membership), and also charging employers to participate. Also includes videos, a ‘marketplace’, and a few other features – let’s call this one a Ning-like site with video interviews.
Jackalope Jobs: As a former Texan, I admit to some lingering fondness for anything related to Jackalopes – so this site caught my eye. They claim to carry more than 2 million jobs. You can login via LinkedIn, Facebook, or Plaxo (!), then imports your connections. You search for jobs, Jackalope shows you where you know people, ala what SimplyHired has been doing for quite a while – but then you can ‘reach out’ to your connections via the site (i.e., email them). A pretty good implementation, I think. Let’s call this the social media/aggregator mashup with horns.
MyJobMatcher: Not surprisingly, this site takes your resume and matches it to a bunch of jobs (apparently using a fellow named Bob) to find the right job. This site apparently aggregates content from job boards, who are its primary customer. I think we can call this the job board aggregator matcher-upper.
DeveloperAuction: Yes, it’s exactly what it says it is: a place where developers can auction themselves to the highest bidder. For technically-astute employers, this site may be a good way to find better talent; for developers, it may pump up their wallet. DeveloperAuction is “currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates”. Did you go to Iowa State? Tough cookies! Let’s call this a job board eBay.
Zao: Referrals get a lot of play by recruiters, but are rarely well executed. Zao aims to change this by offering a reward-based referral hiring system. Companies encourage (coerce?) their employees to participate, employees get a graduated series of rewards as their referrals move from candidate to hire- and Zao takes a piece of the action in payment. This one has to be called the Pavlov’s dog model for the job board world.