CareerJet: A One-Stop Job Board?
CareerJet’s marketing guru sent me a note last month, inviting me to review their site and services. My initial reaction was, “what if I think their services suck and write a bad review? Wouldn’t it be less risky for them to just advertise?” My second thought was, “they must be pretty darn confident about what they have to offer if they are requesting editorial reviews from strangers like myself, vs. paying for advertising.” So, I checked them out and, overall, I give them a solid “B.”
If you use travel sites to book flights, then you might be familiar with Kayak, which aggregates travel data from expedia, cheaptickets, orbitz and the other gazillion Web sites that post airfare/travel data. CareerJet is the “kayak” search engine of the jobs industry.
The site was launched in 2002 and is privately owned. They boast a whopping 16MM+ global jobs. But, unless you are planning on moving overseas, only 3MM are U.S.-based. The rest are spread out across 50+ countries.
The site allows you to search across a broad spectrum of 45 industries that range from accounting to wood/paper/furniture. Once you click on a job listing, you are taken out of CareerJet to the job board or company site that the ad is housed. So, the user has to make sure to go back to Careerjet.com after reviewing each particular post.
Overall, the site is very simple to navigate. The first thing you see on the home page is a “what” box – as in “what key words do you want to plug in?” – and a “where” box, for location.
I did a search for “advertising sales jobs” in NY and got a list of 1,340 jobs. After looking through five pages or so, I scanned relevant job postings from the following sites:
There were an awful lot of listings from Craigslist, which did not make me happy as those tend to promote jobs in low-profile companies. But, I also learned the names of other job boards that need to be on my radar screen, like jobs2web and jobcircle, which I’ve never used before. Unfortunately, nowhere did I see any postings from MediaPost, imedia or Cynthia Turner, which are staples in my media diet.
When I did a search for Editor or Writer in NY, a total of 14 jobs popped up. I then went to MediaBistro and plugged in the same criteria. More than 300 positions appeared on my screen. The site crawls through 68,368 Web sites hunting for listings but the media sites are not on their radar. It just goes to show that there are no one-stop online shopping destinations for finding a job. You’ve got to check the mainstays in your industry if you want to be thorough in your search.
CareerJet allows you to create job alerts, where you can choose your own criteria and opt to be notified via email daily or weekly. And, you can post your own resume for employers to see. (Although, this is fine for you to do, don’t sit and wait for your phone to ring. You have to be proactive with job boards.)
All in all, I like CareerJet and think it could be a part of anyone’s job search strategy. But, it shouldn’t be the only tool used. Although I might only use Kayak for my travel searches, I’m still going to check out what my favorite media sites are posting because CareerJet doesn’t quite cover it all.
Carpe diem…