Graph Reality..

Below are the actual graphs for each of the counts.  Each same-color bar is for a single job board. Scanning across a color gives you the ups and downs from week to week.   My take, as you look across they are all relatively even.  Yes, there is an occasional blip, but from week to week the counts are all within range. 

So to recap my conclusions…

• The counts stay relatively the same per board per search keyword

• Monster’s new search cuts down the number if the search is bringing in high numbers and gives you a bit more than the others when the numbers are low.  How?  I have no idea.

• Career Builder’s numbers are lower than the other two

Not mindblowing!  …but sorta interesting.

Five Mondays

I’ve counted the number of hits on the three big boards on my three keywords ‘IT Auditor’, ‘CISA’ and ‘Compliance’ for five weeks.  So let’s look at how this has paid off.

I now know a lot more than I did before about the wonders of graphing on Excel and I have the great bar graph shown above.  I’ve run the numbers through bars charts as cones, stacked on top of each other, pie charts, line graphs and scattergrams. 

And what does this show?  As an analysis tool for the big boards - very little.  It may be a bad measure of my analysis skills! 

A couple of comments on this slice and dice on the big three…

• The numbers on each of the boards do not vary much from week to week.  This DOES mean that if you’ve found a keyword that works and gives you a useful number of relevant jobs, you will not have 100 job listings one week and 2 the next. 

• Monster’s new search will expand and contract to give you a more jobs if the numbers are low and lower the numbers if you are bringing in the world in your search.

• Career Builders numbers are consistently lower than the other boards.

What it has done for me is to force me to look at distinctions between the boards systematically and that has produced notes.  Lots of notes.  Notes on job listings, notes on other board options, notes on urls, notes on company websites, notes on what to rule out on a listing….and so on and so on.

One more quick look at the graphs...and then what?

The Warning…

Way back when I started this process, I signed on for a search agent with America’s Job Exchange.  Pretty regularly I get notifications from them…some relevant, some not.  Yesterday as I was browsing through a job, I found the following notification from an accounting firm…

(*  Names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty…)

“Disclaimer: If you are not reviewing this job posting on our Careers' site (cpafirm.com*) or one of our approved job boards, we cannot guarantee the validity of this posting. For a list of our current postings, please visit us at careers.cpafirm.com*”

WHAT?

Ok, it’s an accounting firm.  They are, by nature, paranoid.  But what does this mean?  Actually, I have no idea!  But taking a closer look at the page I start to notice things.  

There are summary items on the Job Exchange site and a number of these are not filled in. So I start looking at other jobs on this board.   The job experience area is the same – Entry level (0-2 years).

I look at a few more jobs.  The job description says experience, sometimes a little (3 years), sometimes lots (10+).  (Everyone wants experience!)  The summary for every job says Entry Level.

Not a good sign. 

There is the suggestion here that America’s Job Exchange is not legitimate!  ..or, according to the CPA firm, “invalid” or “not approved”.  Have they stolen listings? Are they hacking?

I need to check these summaries out.  Remember what I said about ‘scope creep’, well my scope is up on its feet and running away.