Making a Match: Job Sites Get Personal

From the Wall St Journal  |  July 10, 2009

Finding a job in a recession is tough, let alone one that suits your background and interests. But a strong fit is important. Chances are you won't be happy if, say, you're an introvert and vegetarian working as a sales rep for a foie gras purveyor.

The good news is that several help-wanted sites now offer to identify free of charge ideal career opportunities, much as dating sites pair up singles. We asked two professionals to each test the matching capabilities of four sites: Bintro.com, which is in beta; Jobfox.com and Trovix.com, which are built around their job-matching functions, and industry veteran CareerBuilder.com, which features its ‘job recommendations' matching tool on its home page.

The sites dig deeper than traditional job boards, asking questions to help determine what job hunters are seeking in a new position. For example, you might be asked whether you prefer working for a small or a large company, or whether you previously had people reporting to you. Such additional questioning is aimed in part at heading off the common complaint from job seekers that traditional job boards often fail to retrieve positions that suit their preferences.

Using proprietary algorithms, most of the job-matching sites then search their databases for appropriate jobs and list the results. One site, Trovix.com, searches the entire Web, including other job boards and company career sites. Last month, there were 3.3 million job vacancies advertised online, according to the Conference Board, a nonprofit research association.

One of our testers was an information-technology professional with 15 years of experience who is seeking a full-time position within 35 miles of his Bedford, N.H., home. The other has 13 years of experience in corporate marketing and is interested in part-time or freelance work in the New York City metro area. Both were laid off from positions in their fields earlier this year.

In general, our testers found the sites easy to navigate and encountered only minor technical problems. And all of the sites except Trovix required an initial account setup, which was quick. But none of the testers fell in love with any of the jobs recommended, and they halfheartedly applied to a handful each.

It took one tester 30 minutes and the other 45 minutes to fill out Bintro's questionnaire and retrieve results. Both job seekers griped about having to type out answers to all of the questions rather than getting to choose from a menu of options. But they liked being able to create multiple searches, or "broadcasts," to highlight different skills.

Bintro didn't recommend any jobs for the information-technology pro. The corporate marketer received two referrals: one from an individual looking for help on a marketing project, another from the owner of a fashion company seeking a business partner with a marketing background. In addition to jobs, Bintro also helps users find business partners and investors. Our tester, however, wasn't interested in either opportunity.

Since launching on May 13, Bintro has attracted mostly employers looking to fill contract and freelance positions for nurses, translators, personal assistants, copywriters and graphic designers, says Richard Stanton, Bintro's chief executive. "As we add jobs and users, you'll see more and more matches," he says.

Jobfox's questionnaire took about 25 minutes for our testers to complete. They would have preferred more options for questions that offered a menu of answers, plus more space for responding to questions that required typed-out answers. (In evaluating these, the sites focus in part on key words, so it's important to be specific and watch your spelling.) But the testers liked that the site ranked the results according to how well the jobs matched their profiles.

Our IT pro was recommended 35 jobs and "some were pretty accurate," he says. Others were in his field, but he didn't qualify for them, and some were located beyond the maximum distance he selected.

Just two jobs were recommended to our marketing pro. Although they were for positions in her field-telemarketing and business development-they didn't require her high level of experience and weren't part-time or freelance.

Rob McGovern, founder and CEO of four-year-old Jobfox, says users may be referred to jobs that don't match their search parameters if employers are willing to consider their candidacy anyway. For example, someone looking for a job in Chicago could retrieve an ad for a position in New York if the employer indicated it's willing to hire telecommuters or cover relocation expenses.

Jobfox says it has more than 60,000 job listings from the site's more than 5,000 employer members. CareerBuilder says it has around one million jobs from more than 300,000 employers. Bintro declined to provide comparable statistics, and Trovix scrolls the entire Web for listings.

Our testers finished Trovix's questionnaire in about 10 minutes. They were referred to more than a dozen jobs each and liked that the positions were ranked by fit. But they didn't find any of the site's suggestions appealing and said some of the jobs were unrelated to their backgrounds. The IT pro says he retrieved several ads for engineering jobs, for example, and the marketing pro got ones for entry-level positions.

Trovix was launched in September 2007 and was acquired by Monster.com the following July. Its founder and CEO, Jeff Benrey, says Trovix users may be referred to jobs that aren't an ideal match because positions in different fields can share common qualifications.

CareerBuilder launched its matchmaking tool in 2005. One of our testers already had an account with the site, and had previously uploaded her resume; she retrieved results in about 10 minutes. The other needed close to half an hour. Both said they were confused by commercial advertisements that appeared on the same page as the questionnaire because these seemed like part of the form. But our testers liked being able to search for jobs in up to three geographic areas and see only ads posted within the past 30 days or sooner.

Each tester was recommended more than 100 positions, but these included internships, jobs in far-off locations and ones unrelated to their fields. They found the results disappointing, considering that CareerBuilder offered more search parameters to choose from than the other sites tested and that it was the only site that allowed users to exclude criteria.

Richard Castellini, CareerBuilder's chief marketing officer, says the site takes into account the types of jobs users apply to when determining results for later searches. "The more you use it, the better it will be," he says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

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