Social Jobs Partnership

Facebook has launched their Social Jobs Partnership, which is an aggregate of Work4Labs, Monster, Jobvite, BranchOut and, DirectEmployers US.Jobs. This is a parternship of non-profit, government, for-profit and Facebook developers into one aggregator, creating a vertical search engine of the partners' jobs.

Like most aggregators, such as Indeed or SimpliyHired, you can search a variety of job posting services and boards simultaneously from the vertical search engine interface and be redirected to the posting on the originating site's own board. So, no, you can't apply with your Facebook profile.

At this time, the service offers one filter for "veteran-friendly" posts.

TwitJobSearch

I realize that TwitJobSearch has been available since 2009, but results from their searches just finally appeared in my automated Twitter job search. So, yes, there are library jobs on this service and they include the obvious library job posters, such as  ALA Job List and LibGig. But they also get the infrequent tweeters, such as the small library or special library that infrequently posts or reposts jobs. Their dashboard also includes some interesting features that I think will help job seekers that are using Twitter:

• Email or RSS alerts for search strings
• A "featured accounts" setting, which either means they post lots of jobs that match your search terms, or they paid to be featured in relation to the keywords in your search. 
• You can click on a button to allow the employer to Skype you, or send a DM suggesting that you can take on the job. Now this is cool if you know the employer or industry wants to fill positions right now, such as PR, writing, programming, but it might make a library HR person pee their pants thinking that they are being cyberstalked.(And I am not kidding about this reaction: do you know how many library HR people I have heard get huffy about a job candidate that dares to call them to ask a question about a job posting--too many. Only for my sick amusement would I Skype them.) But this is an excellent tool if you are looking for a gig as a writer, book reviewer, community manager, or coding.
• And filters...which would be leave this Twitter search engine covered with awesome sauce, if they worked.

For example, a search for librarian includes the filters for "Engineer" or an "RN" and not as an employer or the name of the company, but for positions as engineer and a registered nurse. One content manager position came up, since you work as a "topic librarian". This was not in the job title, which the filter was supposed to search on. So the filters don't seem to do any filtering--and you need to get relevant jobs, before the successful filters of part-time/full-time or manager to work their magic.

The skills filter was also a little weird: what's a "COM", or a "PDF"? (No, there was no Adobe in that job posting.) It could be a translation issue, or it is possible there is a "collection management" hash tag that I don't know anything about--I guess a trip to Hashtags.org is in order.

Twitjobsearch does not tame the Twitter noise for job search, however, considering the alerts features and the assistance on finding good Twitter job sources, this vertical search engine will probably help people build up their personal Twitter for jobs list.

Get Library Jobs: Critical NeedsJobs

GetLibraryJobs, a library jobs search engine that uses RSS and Twitter to push jobs out to users, has added a feature called "Critical Need Library Jobs". These jobs are for job seekers who can fill the position right away, according to the site, though I hope that this also implies the employer wants to fill the position with the same urgency. Most of the jobs currently listed are suitable to computer science majors or librarians with some serious programming skills, but that could change depending on the type of postings the job board is harvesting and the information the employer inserts into the posting (such as "need to fill position ASAP").

I like tools that are simple to use, make the most of RSS and don't require a subscription to the service to get access to the postings.

Excelle releases The 10 Top-Ranked Cities for Women

Excelle, a career and networking site for women, has released a list of The 10 Top-Ranked Cities for Women. There isn't much info as to how they devised their ranking, but these lists can be fun for a person who decides they can really go anywhere once they graduate.

Try searching for opportunities in these cities by combining your keywords and the locale on the SimplyHired Special Searches.

Helping Job Seekers? Vertical Search Engines

The Points of Reference blog has a post on Helping Job Seekers and the one recommended resource is Indeed.com? That's it? That's the online job seeking source that Booklist could come up with for librarians that are helping job seekers? They could have at least linked to this article from the Searcher, The Info Pro's Survival Guide to Job Hunting, which even if it is a little dated, was thorough.

Not that I have any problem with Indeed. I actually like it and use it with our clients, but there are many other resources that might be better suited to this question. Maybe I just object to the title "Helping Job Seekers" as if this one resource will do it. Maybe I just need a cup of coffee. Anyway, there are more.

Vertical Search Engines

There are many vertical search engines, like Indeed, that scrape posting from major job boards or that accept feeds from employers. SimplyHired is another vertical search engine which has similar tools to Indeed, which includes the keyword and geographic descriptor mentioned in the blog post. They also have salary information, mapping tools and mashups with social networking software like Facebook and LinkedIn, so you can see if anyone in your network is currently working for the company.

These two vertical search engines also have a Trends feature that you can use to find out just how many of the jobs you are looking for are indexed in their engine.The Trends feature is meant to show you increases and decreases in job postings for a specific, title, region or keyword over time. If you take a look at the axis marked "Percentage of Matching Job Postings" you'll get an idea of how many jobs with that keyword are found in their database--or just how many jobs with that keyword there are available. Look at "librarian" compared to "engineer".

Librarian

librarian Job Trends

Librarian jobs

Engineer

engineer Job Trends

Engineer jobs

You can see just how many more jobs that mention "engineer" are available, as opposed to "librarian". That has to do with our economies, the types of professionals that are needed for each industry and sector, and just how many different flavors of engineer there are. (There are four distinct types of engineer civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical and more swirling sectors and specializations than what you could find at Baskins Robbins.) I just used it as an example to show that some vertical search engines will index more jobs of a certain type depending on where they scrape from and who's feeding them their feeds. This is something a librarian should consider when they recommend the search engine to patron: if you check the trends for "electrician" and compare by your state, one vertical search engine may have more postings than another and you may want to try another vertical search engine for your patron.

Other vertical search engines include Career Jet, Oodle, and JobCentral, which is a project of a consortium of employers to provide a place to post jobs for free.

SimplyHired is also messing around with a Local Search feature that is relevant to the job seekers that come into your library who need to find local work and who sometimes forget to add the limiting keyword of their homebase to their job search. Combine this search with a map and you can help someone who needs to relocate. This is the real power of a vertical search engine for job postings alone: it can look everywhere. At least everywhere or every sector it has indexed.

International Job Posting Vertical Search Engines

For Canadians, try Eluta. The result lists are smaller, since the board doesn't scrape but accepts employer supplied feeds only. I would also recommend WowJobs since it also includes Craigslist in its results, which is a great place for people to find a wide range of employment opportunities, especially work in the trades or short-term gigs. Yes, there may be job scams, but there were scams posted in the print classifieds; you need to educate your patrons about them.

Many of the vertical search engines mentioned have international channels of their search engine: Indeed, SimplyHired (click on the link marked USA below the location field to switch countries), CareerJet (click on Career Jet Worldwide for more information), Job Rapido and WowJobs.One of the reasons why I include the Career Jet widget on this blog is that is lets you search in different languages to get local results--I tested this on the Chinese version of the site to look for jobs in North America--which would be an asset to some library patrons that need a boost in English.

Indeed, though useful, is just the tip of the job posting vertical search engine iceberg. You should also make your decision for which vertical search engine is useful for your patron by asking them a bit about the type of work they are looking for, beyond I need a job. That's like responding to a patron's query of I need a book by just pulling the closest one off the shelf. Now, I know you're tempted to do that some days, but a little more questioning will help them find a vertical search engine that may lead them to some relevant jobs.

The Round-Up

• CareerJet
• Eluta
• Indeed
• Job Central
• Job Rapido
• Oodle
• SimplyHired
• WowJobs

SimplyHired New Grad Job Search

The vertical search engine SimplyHired has opened a new portal specifically for new grad jobs. Yes, it works for librarian.

In Canada, the vertical search engine Eluta, offers a similar new grad search filter, with Library and Info Studies in the Master of Science menu selection.

Book Review: Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

The authors of Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier include the CEO and Chief Counsel of ReputationDefender, a company that specializes in online reputation management. Though the book does advertise the services of their company, they also lay out a plan that a reader who understands the nature of the tactics described could use to protect their online reputation. Their plan could also be used to create documentation in case a question every arose about the veracity of the information in the attack, or may prove useful to law enforcement should an online reputation attack veer from malice to harassment or RL violence.


The authors explain the reasons why strangers, acquaintances or customers may use a search engine to look for information on a person. Verifying identity, reputation and claims of expertise may be the most common reasons. Employers, for example, will perform an online search to verify claims and credentials. Since a great deal of public information has moved online, it makes sense to conduct a search via Google, if only to satisfy curiosity.

The authors try to explain the motives of people who destroy online reputations—unfortunately, there may be no reason for wrecking a reputation except boredom—and they describe some of the tactics and tricks that reputation thieves use. Some of the tactics include:

• Googlebombing involves manipulating search results so that a search for other terms will lead to this person’s profile. The example the authors used is the “miserable failure” search leading to the biography of then-President George W Bush.
• Googlestuffing where top level search results are filled with erroneous information about the person searched for.
• “False flagging”, or becoming a double. Some examples include impersonating someone in a forum, blog—as in Fake Steve Jobs—or in a social networking site, like Facebook. Some of these impersonations have highly sinister overtones, especially if they masquerade as a family member.

There are also mistaken identity issues that can lead to online reputation smears. There are cases where a person may deliberately assume your identity online, but the authors also recommend periodic checks to look for “doppelnamers”, people with the same or similar name as yours, who have criminal histories, are a little dodgy or lack good sense. You can use some tactics to distinguish yourself from “dopplenamers”, such as adding your middle initial to your digital footprint, but it is also useful to be aware that these people may end up showing up in your top level search results. It would also be a good idea for any employers who are looking for information online to verify that they do indeed have the correct “Jesse James”.

The book does recommend for fee services, a few affiliated with ReputationDefender, for managing online reputation. However, there is a plan laid out in the book that person, who has read the entirety of the book and who understands the nature of online reputation attacks, can use to protect their personal and professional reputations. Reputation checking will require ongoing effort and it is worthwhile to document attacks and their clean up, in case there are questions about the attack or you need to submit a file to law enforcement.

If I have one big problem with the book, it is that I discovered that the site listed in the references, http://wildwest2.com, does not lead to a companion website for the book. The index/home page leads to the Amazon listing of the book. The links provided in the references at the end of each chapter, such as http://wildwest2.com/go/813 found on page 147, lead only to a broken links. Now a researcher will be able to find the actual references, but the implication of providing links like this is that, well, they will work and will lead the reader to useful resources.

Librarians who are looking for work may want to use the information outlined to check up on their online reputation--and I know for a fact that libraries are checking out their applicants online--and they may need to use it to defend the online reputation of their library. Sadly, only about an hour after finishing this book, I did have to recommend it to a client who was facing personal attacks online; though I was sorry about the attacks, I was glad to be able to give the person a resource to use so they could understand the nature of the attacks and how to resist them effectively.

Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

Paul Forster, Indeed's CEO, talks about Indeed

Total Picture Radio interviewed Paul Forster, the CEO of Indeed, about how Indeed works. Indeed, if you haven't used it, is a vertical search engine which "scrapes" jobs from major boards and allows you to search those boards from their interface. If you find something you like, you select the job and Indeed takes you to where the original placement of the job--like on Monster--and you follow the posting steps from their to apply.

The interview gives a good overview of Indeed and some of its features, like the Job Trends, setting up alerts, how the search engine lets you search by salary even if not every job posting includes salary information. I also learned about how sponsored jobs works--sounds a bit like Facebook's ads within the social network. They also talked a bit about job scams and phishers on the site and the steps that Indeed is taking to lessen the posts from scammers.

Which is how I found out about the interview, through a post on the Diggings blog which is powered by JobDig. The writer does make a good point that if Indeed didn't deal with places that harbor scammers, like major job boards that do no checks on job authenticity, scamming would be lessened, but that's like saying Google shouldn't return results that would include misleading information.

As a researcher, you should be aware that there are some vertical search engines that aggregate employer job feeds only, like Eluta and vertical search engines that scrape, like Indeed, SimplyHired and WowJobs. Taking employer feeds directly can indicate that these are real jobs--though you also get fewer results. (Researchers know less is more, desperate job seekers just get frustrated.) A submitted feed may also be inauthentic, since it is hard to tell if the search engine has someone who is investigating the authenticity of the the job feeds beyond the initial email of please add our feed to your results.

I think that including tools like map mashups or letting you discover how many times an employer has posted the job and for how long are other tools that will help you discover the authenticity of a job. If there is no mapped location, or the location seems suspect, it's probably not real--as in, using a post office box and not a company address to submit your resume, a tactic that was used by old school scammers that used print classifieds. If a job is frequently posted or runs forever, these are also tip offs that something is wrong, though it could just mean that the job has a high turnover rate, such as car washers.

The interview, however, is good and offers some insights to searchers using Indeed.

More Yahoo! Pipes

I've made some more Yahoo! Pipes which include instructions on how to modify them to meet your needs. Enjoy!

And if you make more, please comment and add the address to your clones or revamps.

Slaying Monsters?

Response to Will Monster.com go the way of newspapers?

I think it is too soon to suggest that Monster will go the way of the newspaper classifieds, for a few reasons:

• Vertical search engines currently aren't charging employers to post with them; most of them make their money with Google adwords
• Why not charge employers? Because they would need to have a whole host of staff to market their service, as well as an accounting department to deal with invoicing and hunt down the people who don't pay for their ads
  
• Most vertical search redirect the job posting not to the employer site but to the original posting on a job board. Monster never redirected a job seeker to a local newspaper because the classified service just dealt directly with employers and got paid for it.

Yes, it is possible that free (and not all are free to for-profit companies) will replace paid, but not for a while yet. Monster, and other job search services, also have other tools--such as resume handling, automatic response, and testing--that streamline other HR processes which no newspaper service ever did.

Whoa, knelly.

SimplyHired's Job Listing Report

SimplyHired, one of many vertical search engines for job postings, has released a Q1 report on job searching and frequently used keywords in job search, based on information from their engine.

Now they have indicated that job searches are up, and, yes that can be due to unemployment, but it can also be due to the fact that people are

• dissatisfied with their current employment and are looking for new jobs
• can see the writing on the wall with their current employer, or
• are just trying to stay ahead of the pack
  
• one of the popular keywords is part-time, so this could indicate that people are looking for extra work or returning to the workforce

Now, why might you can about this, except to use SimplyHired to find a job? Because the report mentions the appearance of prevalent keywords, which could help you creating search strings, and it also tells you the locations where job postings are up. Handy.

Simply Hired Trends Graph

Simply Hired now has a trends graph that you can use to look at the ups and downs of the number of job postings for your occupation, based on the numbers available in their search engine results.

Generalist Librarian, Reference Librarian trends

Generalist Librarian jobs | Reference Librarian jobs

You can compare various titles, as shown above, to see what has increased, decreased, or what the fluctuation looks like. It can also give you a glimpse into when most of the jobs you are looking for are usually posted. Actually, for librarian, it looks like jobs are posted all year round, with very few extreme high-low periods, unlike, say camp counselor.

What I found most valuable was using it to discover how jobs are listed, i.e. jobs with similar skills and what the preferred title is for the job posting. This may not come as a surprise for anyone, but I found that I got more relevant searches if I used a number, as in Librarian 1, than if I just searched for reference or generalist, though those searches also returned relevant results.

The percentage of matching jobs refers to all of the results harvests by Simply Hired, which indexes lots and lots of jobs, so don't freak out because the percentages are low. This tool is only available on the US version of the site.

WowJobs Canada Salary Search

WowJobs is a vertical search engine for the Canadian marketplace. It has already done cool stuff like search for results in Craigslist, but now, based on the information in the job postings that it skims, the search engine can provide a salary search.

 

As shown above, you can also compare salaries between types of jobs or by location. I went Canada-wide to get an idea of the basic salaries, but you can--and should, if you are asked to provide a quote--search geographic-specific.

Where do they get the numbers? From job postings that supply salary information. It is not clear, when a range is used, if they use the bottom of the range or the top of the range to create their calculation. Not every job provides salary information, so it isn't taking data from all of the postings that the engine has scraped. To ameliorate this issue, WowJobs is supplying a confidence level: how sure are they that the numbers are accurate? and including this with the results that you receive for your search.

This service is currently in beta, so we can expect more improvements as they get more sophisticated with the enormous amount of raw data supplied in a posting. Maybe they'll run a map mash-up that will let us see where particular jobs are concentrated, based on their historical data? For example, more postings in Toronto in June or October?

You can use this search engine to supplement the salary information that you find from other professional library sources.

Do you want to work in a smaller city?

This isn't a proper review of Job Searches Beyond the Big Cities: Finding Employment in Medium to Small-sized Markets, which is a scaled down version of the Guide to Internet Job Searching. Job Searches Beyond the Big Cities is an ok starter resource, but it shouldn't be the last place that you search, especially if you are looking for work in a "smaller center".

There are basically two different types of "smaller center": a small city or town, or a town or city that is the satellite of a much larger city. If you are fine with commuting, you have more options if you live in a satellite--but the cost of gas and the cost of living outside of the satellite may negate the benefits.

There are also three types of job seeker who look for work in a smaller city:

1. Footloose. Can go anywhere, but want to live in a smaller city. These job seekers have the freedom to choose any city or town--provided that there is a job at the end of the rainbow. These job seekers sometimes forget about smaller cities in their rush to court a big city. For a footloose job seeker try looking with vertical search engines, such as indeed or simplyhired, or my favorite widget on the right. Read Cities Ranked and Rated and Who's Your City? to find communities that match with the lifestyle that you would like to have.
   
2. Trailing. Partners of academics used to be called the trailing spouse--just some extra baggage that you brought along to your tenured position. I use the term trailing here to invoke that image of the person who puts love first, who followed someone home for love...a person who has an aging parent or sick family member. You may be heading back to a community that you know, or a place where your partner will have ties and some clout. You need to make use of the network that your partner or family has created.
   Try searches on the Inside Higher Ed Dual Career Search. Make like Lysistrata until your partner contacts someone with human resources who can tell you about hiring policies for the partners of academics, or if there is a service that will help the "trailing" partner of an academic. For a trailer, you need to make the most of your network, or the connections that your spouse or family has built. Look at the Chamber of Commerce, every directory you can lay your hands on, and make a Yahoo! Pipe that will keep you up-to-date on job matches. Military spouses can also take advantage of any career services, networks or job boards that are available to them--and they should.
   
3. Trapped. This is not a judgment on smaller cities, so don't send me any hate e-mail. Sometimes, people get trapped in a city: they own a house, the kids are happy, your partner still has a good job, you finally found a good veterinarian...but your well seems to have dried up. First step: are you going to stay with the type of library that you have always worked at? Can you transfer from academic to public to school to special? If not, what are you going to do that is similar to library work and still in your community? Is there a library type job that you can do as a telecommuter? Finally, will you stay in libraries? Is this the time to explore another alternative? You are looking for information on a career transition, so your local labor market information office--state, provincial or municipal--can get you started. In that case, you will need Job Searches Beyond the Big Cities: Finding Employment in Medium to Small-sized Markets, since it has all of the links to labor pages in all of the states. If you live in Canada, try Service Canada, Looking for a Job, or select your region for local labour market information.

People begin or find themselves in a smaller center for a variety of reasons, but they have to tailor their job search to match their region, as well as their professional needs.

Need a tutorial?

If you need a quick fix or a skills brush-up, use Tutsearch to find a tutorial online. It worked for resume writing, job interviews and php (just in case you need a technical skill polishing). Good example of a vertical search engine that you can harness for your professional development. You might also consider submitting your tutorial(s) if you have one.

DIY Yahoo! Pipes

You can make your own personal search engine using Yahoo! Pipes. Yahoo! Pipes uses drag and drop modules into a sandbox that you can use to remix your RSS feeds, searches from Yahoo! Local and the Google Base. You can also add a filter to sort by job title (didn't work so well in the one that I created for library jobs) and sort by publication date (field needs to be filled in the original RSS to really work).


I also used some RSS fields from some vertical search engines (Eluta, WowJobs and Indeed Canada) to give it some power. You can tinker even more with their feeds by adding the province or state that you would like to work in and get a better geographical fix when you run your searches.

Now, you don't have to cobble together your own pipe: you can use the pre-existing pipes (there are about 10 for library jobs). You can also easily clone one that you like and make some changes, provided that you have a Yahoo! account.

I did notice something weird looking for library jobs as my keyword: I got lots of pipes for lesbian (oh, yes, the first thing I think of when I hear librarian, so easy to confuse the two). Trying to remove the erotic search engines just didn't seem to work (maybe they use librarian or library as a tag?). I found lots of erotic pipes (ha ha!) on the Yahoo! Pipes service, so you may not be able to get results from the pipes service if you are running a family friendly search or are behind a finicky filter.

Career Jet

Career Jet is a new vertical search engine for job postings. Since the vertical search engine market for job postings is a bit crowded, I'm not sure how successful it will be. It does have some strengths:

1. The search engine is international, with international and multilingual versions of the engine available from one main page. (A Big Number One.)
2. There's a directory on the main page. You can search occupation keyword, but you can also explore by industry, which a bonus for special librarians who may be looking for "information officer", "researcher" or "evangelist" positions, but don't know what the company will call the job.
   
3. Filters, such as job type, and alerts are available, but this is a pretty standard feature for these types of engines.

Drawbacks:

1. Need to work out wonky results. I searched in the Canadian version of the site and got back a library director position located in Pennsylvania that had the SK (Saskatchewan) identifier attached. This was an early problem with SimplyHired (which decided to just throttle outside US jobs instead) and may be worked out in coming weeks.
2. You can't toss out duplicates or remove postings from third-party recruiters. This inflates your job search results, making you think there are more postings, when you are really just seeing fifteen scrapes of the same post. Indeed has had a duplicate, as well as a recruiter, filter for over a year.

Despite the drawbacks, Career Jet is a good multilingual vertical search engine to add to your job search tools.

I've got you babe: Dual Career Search

Sometimes, a librarian is a package with their partner who may also work in the same or similar field. If that is academia, Inside Higher Ed provides the vertical search engine, Dual Career Search. You can search by keyword "librarian" and then search for a position for your partner at the same institution, or an institution close-by. Positions are displayed on a map, with green for the first position type selected and orange for the second selection.



As you can see from the test search of "librarian" and any in chemistry, some of the positions are at the same institution or nearby, meaning that you may have to commute but that both of you can stay in academia. Currently, this job post mashup only works on the US, but Inside Higher Ed does post jobs from outside of the US, so it is possible that they may add Canadian postings in the near future.