The Daily Machete: PARETO: Use Aggregators Right to Increase Job Search Efficiency

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The Daily Machete: PARETO: Use Aggregators Right to Increase Job Search Efficiency

PARETO: Use Aggregators Right to Increase Job Search Efficiency

Posted by Mike Thomas at 10/28/2009 10:16 PM

Categories: PARETO
Tags: Job Search Productivity Indeed Efficiency Pareto Aggregator

Many job seekers scour job bank after job bank after job bank.

That's a time suck. That's why savvy job seekers use a job bank aggregator like Indeed.com, which searches thousands of job banks in one fell swoop and displays results in a one-stop-shopping format.

But I'm not trying to sell you on Indeed specifically - you can use any job bank aggregator you like. Today's post is meant to discuss ways to use the job bank aggregator of your choice better and more efficiently.

Now, most will go to Indeed or other job bank aggregator, and type in a job title and region. When the results are displayed, they'll be dismayed by the number of recent relevant jobs, but click on a job anyhow. Almost immediately, they're taken to the the host site where the job is originally listed. They will apply, then have to go back to the job bank aggregator and re-run the same search to find another.

This is a common scenario. Many job seekers use Indeed and other job bank aggregators because they can dig up many more jobs much quicker than going from job bank to job bank to job bank. And it IS quicker - unless they follow the above scenario. In this scenario, there's a lot of fat - a lot of wasted time.

There are ways to cut the fat out and to use your favorite job aggregator far more efficiently. Let's take a look at a few ways:

(EDITOR'S NOTE: For the sake of literary convenience, this advice will be specific to Indeed.com, though it will work similarly on other job bank aggregators.)

Advanced search. After typing in the "what" and "where," your results will be displayed. Don't look at them yet. In the upper right hand corner of the screen, you'll find in tiny print "Advanced Search." Click on that. When you scroll to the bottom, you'll see that the display default for number of jobs is 10. Change that to 50 (I hate clicking "next page" links). Still at the bottom, look slightly to your right and you'll find that the results are sorted by relevance. Change that to date (so the brand new jobs will be at the top and will be older as you go down). Hit okay and your results will be shown in a more useable format.

Grab the RSS feed. If you don't have an RSS reader, then you should. Google has an excellent one. Once you have the results from Indeed, grab the RSS feed for that specific search. This way, you can get fresh results without going back to the job bank aggregator and without re-running the same search day after day. All you have to do is check your reader.

Right click. Most people left click on their mouse. When you do this with a job bank aggregator, the search results are replaced with the job posting on the original site. So, after applying, you would have to re-run the same search. A more efficient way to go is to right click instead of left click. When you right click on a link, a small pop up appears which will prompt you to choose "new window" or "new tab." Choose the tab option and that job posting will open in a background tab while you continue going through the rest of the postings. Then, when you're ready, you can check out each tab; each will be a new job posting.

By just using any of - or all of - these three techniques, you'll save yourself immense amounts of time scouring. And this time can be applied toward higher success percentage job search techniques.