The Aggregators

About six months ago I went through each of the job sites that list jobs that I knew of and collected a bit of information about each.  I was specifically looking for GIS jobs in the Bay Area but I think the list is a good one.  I wanted to do more with the list but I recently got a job and my research on this subject has slowed.  However, I am happy to share it with you.

I look for resources—websites mostly but also email lists and personal contacts—that provide me with a lead on how to get a job.  For instance there are three websites in particular that I spend a lot of time looking at and learning about and they are the ones I have used the most.  I have been calling these sites integrators: Craigslist, Monster and Career Builder.  This group I call the aggregators because they really only aggregate job listings.  I suggest looking only at the top ten in this list because the ones at the bottom are likely just fakes.

The information I collected for each site is broad.  I identified where I learned about the resource and with what it is affiliated.  This is important for aggregating those that seem to be disassociated.  For instance Beyond is an easy example but there are several that don’t have an easy description.  Also, some websites are just dummies that are only the last step in a set of emailed links.  I tried to identify what the site says.  This is simply an extension of what I have been doing already.  Many markers, like a log in and a search filed are common but every site has something different.  To continue with this process I then used the search field and described what it did.  Sometimes the websites I am looking at don’t have this option at first but if you look hard enough it is usually there.  I think that there is one site that didn’t.

Finally, I have been using two sites, Website Informer and Alexa, to figure out each sites ranking and ownership.  The list has 36 aggregators and one might note that every entry in the list below is ranked based upon the Alexa website.  This tactic has been invaluable in identifying which sites are even worth looking at.  I went each entry and made a simple description

186: Rank        Indeed.com is similar to Bright but the site is ranked 187 meaning it is possibly the best site available.  It has grown considerably in popularity over the last few years.  It says it has 500,000 job listings and SF GIS produced 135 jobs—many of which I had seen or had applied for. There is also an especially useful review element on this site.

762: Rank        Glassdoor.com was surprisingly popular.  It is in my email alerts from Beyond.  It trolls websites to list about 100,000 jobs of which 3500 of which are in the Bay Area and about 80 are in SF.  Most of the jobs are located on the site, which has a lot to offer such as membership and browsing in addition to worthwhile advice on interviews and statistics.  I found that it is comparable to Careerbuilder

1922: Rank      Simplyhired.com is a weaker version of Indeed but is still worth tracking as it is ranked well.  It has a way to post a resume and/or a job as well as a list of trending jobs and a set of categories.  The site says it has 1.5 million jobs and searching for SF GIS returns 342.  Each listing identifies the primary poster.

4003: Rank      Dice.com is an older tech oriented site and has maintained a better position than Beyond or Bright.  The number of jobs is not huge but the number is actually big when one considers that the site only lists tech jobs.  Paring the number of jobs down to GIS and SF worked well.

5657: Rank.     Beyond.com started showing up in my email somehow.  There are about 12 sites associated with this one via the Career network and the profiles are all the same.  While this primary site is the only one worth anything, I did have to shut off the alert.  This site has a lot of jobs on it many of which are familiar.

5930: Rank.     Bright.com is comparable to Beyond and I am considering joining it.  It may not necessarily have many results for GIS in SF but it does have a lot of jobs.

6148: Rank      Governmentjobs.com has a pretty straight forward name with around 8000 job listings but SF GIS returns only one.  There are categories on the bottom of the page and Alexa shows the site changes rank from 6000 to 12000.  There is the possibility for a log in.

10801: Rank.   Bullhornreach.com uses the leading social networks to provide its offerings and seems to be for recruiters and employers.  There is a way to search for jobs but you can’t search by location and there aren’t a lot of GIS jobs.  Its rank and position makes it worth watching though it did dip when Glassdoor jumped.

11582: Rank.   Action Without Borders or idealist.org is a non-profit/volunteer oriented site with only a few job listings that is more oriented towards networking.  I have found that it is really good for promoting my own content and I don’t have to be a member to search for jobs or organizations.

25459: Rank    JobsRadar.com says that there are 20,000 listings on the site for the Bay Area. I found that searching for SF GIS returned around 50 jobs.  However, all of the listings are from the other sites documented in this list.  It’s Alexa ranking seems pretty high because it is low quality.  The comparison shows that it is on par with Dice and Beyond.  It did have a drop that coincided with Beyond’s.

35974: Rank.   Americasjobexchange.com is not a good site in my own estimation.  There were only about 20 jobs listed for GIS and many were from Indeed or Beyond.

47464: Rank.   ARCA24.com doesn’t seem to have a lot of listings and seems to be an international service.  You can post a resume and search for a job but it is hard to say how many jobs are available.  There were only a few jobs available for me to review.  Its recent activity is weak.

57454: Rank    Postjobfree.com seems to be for both recruiters and candidates and offers a free job alert and apparently has 25000 jobs.  The search button is broken but Placing SF GIS returns 6 leads.  Alexa has ranks this site as not changing much over the past two years.

62295: Rank    Tweetmyjobs.com, from CareerArc, has a lot of jobs but its subscriptions are all made via Twitter.  The problem that I have with this site is that it doesn’t allow a person to pick and choose what the streams contain because they depend upon specific categorizations.  The site’s position tracks the rise of Beyond and Bright but at a much lower level.

118761: Rank  iHire.com hives searches off to a group of niche sites.  Typing GIS in the field returns a selection of these sites.  This seems inefficient since it requires that I visit several sites for one categories of job.  These sites also misleadingly request personal data.  There are location based links.  For the past two years the site has barely shown a blip on the radar.

120000: Rank  NetTemps.com has a member form as a splash page with a “no thanks” link.  There may be about 20,000 items on this site but it there isn’t any way to know.  Searching for SF GIS produces 15,000 and both produces 40 and all the leads are in-house items.  Alexa ranked this site around 120,000 but I think it recently fell out of Alexa’s rankings.

128091: Rank  Planetizen.com is an online magazine for planners with blogs, literature and directories.  There is a membership.  There are no more than 75 jobs listed on this site at any one time.  At times the site tops 80,000 at times.

137308: Rank  Localhires.com came from a subscription with my college and was related to nationalcareerfairs.com, which has a login and a search tool.  There is no indication that these sites are related to Localhires.com which has a search tool with 10,000 listings, around 80 of which are SF GIS jobs.  These opportunities returned listings at known sites.

268641: Rank  Justjobs.com never produced any leads that I hadn’t found through other sites.  It is related to Internet Inc, LatPro (a site for Latinos) and Jobs in Geography.  None seem to offer a membership.

395044: Rank  Jooble-us.com provides SEO for jobs from sites like Indeed or Monster with advertisements and is generally unpopular.  The advanced search returns 1.2 million jobs, 2500 for GIS and 65 for SF GIS.  It has few of its own listings and a lot of repetition.

1142942: Rank            Jobserious.com is a spammer site that came unbidden to my email.  There is no immediate way to search for jobs but it does have a place to give your information.  In this and other examples clicking on the email link shows that I am logged in.

1577377: Rank            Jobsvianet.com is a poorly blocked, advertising heavy site with around 48,000 leads listed in house.  SF GIS produced around 300 results.  This site is slow but the listings are real and worthwhile with a lot of repetition.

1759153: Rank            GetGISJobs.com is a spammer that I had to unsubscribe from and the way that it was optimized implies that it used a resume from years ago.  The search field for this site provides poor estimates and leads and returns intermediary sites.  The newsletter page doesn’t provide an opt-out.

2102372: Rank            Employer-Network.com is a spammer site that came unbidden to my email.  When I most recently looked at it the rank was around 17 million but now it is around 2.  This site is poor.  The emails drive traffic to zipalerts and this implies that the site is more for marketing rather than jobs development.

The Recruiters

On 022614 I received a bunch of calls from recruiters between 9 in the morning and 6 at night.  While two were for other jobs in the tech/mapping industry, eight of them were for a job that I had heard about for months.  It was variously described to me as an architect/analyst job and they all provided me with the same description (see below).  It was for client job order/requisition 6020, an IT GIS Specialist/Analyst.  Most of them identified the client as PG&E at their location in downtown San Francisco.  The 6 month contract was 40 hours a week and the pay rate was more than $70 an hour on a W2.

Each of the recruiters had found my resume on Career Builder or Monster.  However, many of these recruiters had actually saved my resume from these websites in the last year.  Each one of them sent both an email and made as many as two calls and in every case they wanted a “right to represent” form from me in addition to my newest resume and a competed application.  They often wanted my availability, availability and an explanation of any “gaps” in my resume.

The thing that has always struck me about these postings and recruiters is how uncoordinated they are.  They generally seem to be four or five person teams with a sheaf of announcements that they must fill.  I have noticed that often the same people call me for months at a time and then they are replaced by a new set of recruiters or recruitment groups.  While many of these agencies do seem to disappear over time, I have also found that there is a subset that persists.  They have a well-organized staff and require that each of their candidates go through an introductory interview before receiving new opportunities.  At this point it would seem that these groups are taking a greater stake in the projects for which they are recruiting and bear a closer to firms rather than recruiters.  However, I am reluctant to include them in my lists for firms because the manner through which I have learned about them is via the recruitment process.

  

These were the qualifications directly from the announcements:

The ideal candidate should have experience with Experience with ArcFM AutoUpdaters and ArcFM configuration, Demonstrated ability to support business end users and production issues. Should have good understanding in data management in a relational database; 5-7 years of GIS Analyst experience utilizing the principles and practices of GIS is required. - Knowledge of multi-faceted disciplines which contribute to the implementation of the GIS application. - Some experience and exposure in GIS application development utilizing (asp.net, C#, Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flex) - Knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) scripting language to retrieve data from relational database management systems in MS SQL Server; - Familiarity with ArcObjects/VBA/Python scripting and programming - Considerable knowledge and experience with the core ESRI GIS software products, specifically ArcGIS Desktop, Arc/Info, ArcSDE, and relational databases within MS SQL Server. - Knowledge of methods, procedure

These were the responsibilities from the announcements:

Staff members in this labor category provide database development support in creating cartographic and digital data products. These staff members have expertise that includes the performance of hard copy to digital data conversion tasks, data migration, and translation activities utilizing advanced processing techniques in ArcGIS. These individuals design, develop, and implement efficient production tools and workflows in accordance with approved project plans and design parameters.

Academy of Sciences

This is a post pertaining to the Snaphire website called for the California Academy of Sciences:

California Academy of Sciences (2012). Welcome to California Academy of Sciences [Careers]. Retrieved November 9th, 2012, from http://calacademy.snaphire.com/.

I received an email from a friend about this position on the 8th of November. The link in her email had an error message in it but I was able to find the job description in one of the links on that page. One of my problems with the site is that it doesn’t list the reference elements correctly. For instance, the bottom of the page doesn’t have a standardized author, copyright and year. I didn’t think that “Welcome to California Academy of Sciences” is a good title for a page that is the “Careers” link on the home page. The only date I could find listed for this page is one associated with the Snaphire logo. I think the whole thing is rather unprofessional.

I clicked on the link for the Georeferencing specialist that was listed halfway down the page and this sent me to a description for the job. I felt that the description was perfect for me. The job entails georeferencing imagery for museum properties. It is a full time position and it was listed on 101512 nearly a month ago. I clicked the apply link and this sent me to a page that asked for my registration information and, if I hadn’t entered this information yet, a button to do so. I had to enter my email and then I clicked Register Now and this sent me to a page called “Step One of Two” where I entered my profile information, contact information, address, source data and uploaded a resume. I also had to select my shifts, availability and type of employment. There were several fields that asked me about desired income, EOO data and a privacy statement to which I agreed. I clicked on the “Worked at the Academy Link” and said no. I also unsubscribed to alerts. I pressed save and continue.

After this there is a questionnaire. However after I opened this I discovered that they only wanted a cover letter. I found the last one I wrote and attached that. After this finished loading I clicked on finish and the site said thank you.

They sent me an email letter in confirmation.

CalOpps Reference

This is a post pertaining to the website called CalOpps:

CalOpps (2008). Welcome to CalOpps. Retrieved October 2, 2012, from https://www.calopps.org/default.cfm

Upon logging into this site you end up at the profile options page, which has 14 links on it many of which are redundant. The edit profile link on the profile options page is where you can add your previous job experiences and change their order. To upload a resume you have to paste a text string into a field. This page has several buttons. The job cart is for saving applications, the my applications link shows recent submissions and the profile information link shows a static version of what is loaded into the edit profile above.

The banner has several other links on that are also on the profile options page like an FAQ and a government employment link with a readme. There is also a member agencies link, which produces a full list of the many Bay Area and California Cities available on the site. They are mostly smaller cities smaller with less than 200,000 people. Finally, the banner has a search link.

Clicking on the search link produces a set of search terms: location, category, keyword, salary and type. Search results vary depending upon when the search is made as can be seen from searchers performed on 081812 and 100212. For instance searching for “all locations” on 081812 produced 34 announcements and 27 on 100212.

Once you have made your search you can reorganize the results by these attributes as well as the date. Doing this on 081812 returned two state wide jobs, four jobs in the East Bay that were attractive to someone like myself with experience using GIS. There were two jobs in Sacramento and the South Bay each. Meanwhile, doing this again on 100212 only returned one state wide job.

Meanwhile, choosing an area like SF/Peninsula will narrow the search. On 081812 produced three administrative jobs and four on 100212 produced 4 additional jobs. These included engineer, manager and analyst in environmental compliance and planning cities jobs (sometime several) in places like Half Moon Bay (2), San Carlos (2) Los Altos, South San Francisco and Menlo Park.

If you are a regular visitor to this site much of this will be pre-populated. My automatic search uses the term GIS and the location SF/Peninsula because I am a geographer in the Bay Area. However, just hitting search sometimes doesn’t produce anything. For instance on 100212 this same search produced only one job for the Public Works director in Foster City.

Here are some examples of jobs that I applied to on this site.

I opened an Assistant Job announcement on 081812 and pushed the apply button. This returned a page with the minimum requirement questions. I then had to update my profile, submit a typing certificate and answer a set of diversity questions. I later received an email in September of 2012 saying that I was passed over for the job because I hadn’t submitted a typing certificate.

In May of 2012 I submitted applications for two jobs in the Peninsula. I got an email and did an interview for one of these and the other was an unpaid internship that I passed up. More recently there was a job that I applied for in the East Bay. I have since received a rejection.

Normally I open up this site once every other week. However, sometimes I get emails from people. For instance, I received an email from a prominent local academic on 080912 which I posted here but the announcement was not going to be posted for another month.

This series is a showcase of the different types of job search resources I have encountered. It is a Resource Bibliography that seeks to describe the process through which one must go to find various types of employment.