Some thoughts on Metrics

My vent when I started this was that there was very little hard data ever cited about job hunting.   As I said, there were a lot of stories.   I’m sure you’ve heard them  – the guy who blurted out his needs in an elevator and was talking to the CEO who hired him on the spot,  the homeless man (and supposedly jobless) who put up a You Tube blurb that went viral, the poor HR gal digging through gazillion resumes who picks out one because it is hot pink….etc.    

So what are hard facts that could help the job seeker.   Here after the first dive at Monster are a few areas that might be worth further exploration:

• How many jobs do they have listed?  The bigger the pool, the more likely the hit?
• How many ways do they have of searching their listings?
• Do the searches work?  The metrics would be a rating scale.  On a scale of 1 to 5, is the radius you typed in coming back with reasonable answers.    For twenty five miles from my home in Brookfield, CT.   Danbury is a 5, New Jersey is a 3, Kentucky is 1, Malaysia is 0. 
• Rating scales for ease of use – extra points given if you don’t have to reset the search each time you click to review a particular job.

The companies:

(OK, supposedly I haven’t gone there yet, but I did peek at some of them while doing my ‘big board’ search).

• If you Google them, what comes up?  Are they first in a Google search?  I’ll admit this is a little off my stated objective.   Unless you are looking at VERY small companies, a website means it’s researchable.
• On their website, do they have a ‘careers’ or ‘jobs’ section with a link?  This means that you can apply to the job directly to the company.
• …and almost as important…if you go to their career site or start an application,  does the url turn to something that indicates that their search is being outsourced?   They can get past this check by buying an http address, but http://jobs&stormdoors.com is not a good sign. 
•   I am sure there are other indicators…

Looks like a rating system for companies might be possible. 

The same goes for jobs, there are those that have such long lists of impossible qualifications that only archangels graduating Summa from Harvard with 100 years’ experience need apply and there are those where the qualifications are so foggy that a breathing body is all that is seemingly required.

Have to work a little more on this…but I think it can be done.