Great and interesting article from Techcrunch.com today.
Two New Ways To Find A Job: Auction Yourself Off At JobaPhile Or Do A TwitterJobSearch
Posted: 17 Mar 2009 09:25 AM PDT
In this economy, looking for a decent job is no easy task. If you find yourself on the hunt, you have to try every avenue possible. Two new job search options came across my inbox this morning. The first one is Jobaphiles, which bills itself as the “eBay of jobs.” Started by some college students in Boston, now it is trying to expand nationwide. The site is really geared towards students looking for jobs, but could be applied to freelance work or any job that pays by the hour.
Employers list jobs along with hourly pay, and job seekers then bid on those jobs. Whoever is willing to do the job for the lowest pay is most likely to get it, although employers can take into account experience as well. The site seems a bit cruel in the current job environment. With unemployment rising, it gives employers even greater leverage over hourly wage earners. But if you are desperate, it could put some cash in your pocket. And when the economic tides turn and available workers once gain grow scarce, this same model will give workers the advantage. The site today, however, needs many more listings to remain a going concern in its own right. The same jobs seem to pop up no matter what you search for. A search for “software engineer” for instance turns up openings for a tutor, clerk position, and summer baby sitter—no thanks.
A much better experience out of the gate is TwitterJobSearch, which just launched into beta today. Developed by UK-based job search engine Workhound, TwitterJobSearch pulls up Tweets that are only job-related and links to the underlying job posting. Most of these seem to link to other job sites such as CareerBuilder or more niche job sites which all seem to be using Twitter to post their latest openings. But with TwitterJobSearch, you search across all of them, and results are ranked by both relevance and by how recently they’ve been posted. A job search for “software engineer” returns 4,838 results, and you can reorder results by geography simply by adding the name of a city to the search.
TwitterJobSearch is competing against Twitter’s own search engine, which does a pretty good job coming up with relevant results. Try a job search for “software engineer” and most of the results seem to be about job openings. TwitterJobSearch also seems to favor results from other members affiliated with job boards and job search engines. Twitter’s own results appear more varied, which I think is more likely to turn up that gem being Tweeted by the head of engineering at a startup. But it is also more likely to turn up false positives—results that have nothing to do with job openings.
That is okay, though. It’s all about the hunt.
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