Job Search in the UK and Europe - JobDreamz

[JobDreamz]

Okay guys,

This is my recently launched jobs website. Would appreciate any comments regarding design & functionality etc and of course marketability (is that a word?)

The site is really two as It must cater for both candidates and advertisers.

Candidates
http://www.jobdreamz.co.uk

Advertisers
http://www.jobdreamz.co.uk/adv

Look forward to your feedback

[TWD-Tony]

Well first impressions when the page loaded were not great, don't get me wrong - it's a clean and well presented site it's just the choice of colours made me "queezy"

Once I got used to the colours though it was fine

Why does the homepage scroll down for ages with no content??????

[JobDreamz]

LOL, well your the first to call the colours 'queezy'. Most have said that its calm, easy on the eyes or similar but I understand that the colour scheme is not everyone's cup of tea. One of the main aims of the design is to be clean, uncluttered and easy to find navigation (the login box is replaced by a side menu of options for registered users).

I assume you must be using IE7 to have the long scroll bar? The effect is only present in other browsers when viewing an advert where the background is greyed and the main ad displayed (which can be of variable length thus the need to 'overdo' the length of the page)

Thanks for the feedback

G

[fisicx]

Hi there.

The following may seem critical but you are entering a very competitive arena. You will be up against the might of Monster and similar sites so you need to have something really special to stand out. So here we go:

I don't like the colours either. The black in particular attracts the eyes and makes it difficult to focus on the other areas of the website.

I don't agree that the interface meets the 'keep it simple' criteria. There are 12 data chunks on the home page. From a usability point of view this will lose you customers. You need to ensure that one key area stands out to become your focus. I would suggest that this is the job search bar. But this needs a lot more work. I carried out a search for 'aircraft engineer' and not one of the page one results met this job specification. The search facility can't cope with spelling errors.

You have a tag cloud that displays what? The most popular searches, the highest paying jobs, the jobs with most results? Unless you tell the visitor what is going on they have to guess, and that's not good if you want a sticky site.

On the results pages you have some traffic lights. What are they for? You have a tooltip indicator but all that happens when I click on the button is the advert changed colour. Is it supposed to do anything else?

Using the back button open a 'POSTDATA' warning box.

On the results page, the 10 | 20 | 30 links don't work but 'all' does.

In the search box pressing 'enter' works for the skills field but not the location field.

To find out more about the job I had to click on the advert. Again not intuitive - where is the link that says: 'find out more...' When I did click the info appeared in a lightbox type thingy. How do I print out the job specification?

I wanted to bookmark the site but your bookmark button is for social networking sites - I want to add the site to my bookmarks but the button doesn't have this option.

I tried to register but you want to know my gender, year of birth and preferred language - all are mandatory, why? In any case, the only language option is English!

I've got a high resolution screen so tend to increase my font sizes. The site falls to pieces when I do. The site doesn't work in accessibility mode or on a PDA.

There are no contact details - where is your phone number, address, registration number? I agree that it is on the 'about us' page but I expected it to be on the 'contact us' page. Which incidentally is not prominent on every page along with the 'home' link. In the about us and other pages the search bar disappears - lack of consitency.

Hopefully not too depressing. There a lots more little niggles that you need to fix, not least the complete lack of SEO and hundreds of coding errors but whacking you all at once wouldn't be fair.

PS, I found Jobs24 much easier to use then jobdreamz.

[JobDreamz]

Thanks for the feedback fisicx. You make some good points but also some that I don't agree with.

Firstly, you are of course correct that it is a very competitive arena and I would not expect that my site would be able to compete with the giants. It will be a learning curve for sure and I will have to adapt the site to suit the needs of users.

The colours seem to be a matter of taste with more positive comments than negative received.

There are various boxes of info on the home pages however I still believe this to be less cluttered than other sites but I appreciate that there should be one main focal point.

With regard to your search, the results returned would be matching either of the words 'aircraft engineer'. If there was a match of both words, this would have surfaced to the top of the results, but you have picked a pretty specialist search for a new site. You would have however received results matching engineer. Also it is a huge task to deal with all possible spelling errors. However, the drop down list on the search boxes shows the actual keywords used therefore spelling should not be too much of an issue.

I think it is fair to assume that even those that are not familiar with tagclouds would come to the conclusion that the larger words are the most popular. But I agree that this could mean the most popular searches or the most popular keywords relating to available jobs. I had temporarily turned off a tooltip which states how many jobs match each keyword which I will be switching back on soon and should make the purpose clearer.

The traffic lights relate to shortlisting which is available on the white bar under the search bar. Again I agree this may not be intuitive to some and I will be providing tutorials and explanations of the various features of the site and probably a step by step tour of these.

The POSTDATA box appears because I am retaining the keywords in the search box (which are via POST in the first instance) and would only appear when returning back to the first search results page. Maybe I need to weigh up the benefit of retaining this against the popup box or switch totally to GET which is already used for pages and limiting the results.

The 10 |20 | 30 links do work. Can you tell me what search you performed so I can recreate this as it is working fine for me and others?

The Enter key also works in both search boxes. It may require two presses if your first is to select a suggested word. I may need to look at this functionality though. Again it is about weighing up the advantage of not having to complete a word by pressing Enter to select it and the disadvantage of having to press Enter twice if this is the case.

Surely the majority of people now know the significance of the hand mouse pointer showing that you are over a link. However, It wouldn't hurt to put a View link in the bottom left of each ad. I have already done this in both the candidates and the advertisers registered areas. Print? Do you really want to print each job spec you are interested in? Although I agree that even wanting to print the odd one would necessitate this functionality. Something to look into.

The Bookmark button is one provided by AddThis and yes it only links to the various social bookmarking and sharing sites as without it, you would have to copy the url and then visit your bookmarking site. You are right that the button does not provide functionality to add a bookmark to your browser, which is a nice feature if you have it but not a big loss if you don't. The browsers own 'add bookmark' button, menu or right click option isn't far away.

You have a fair point on the required fields. They were originally going to be used when creating cvs but recently decided to change this and I am in the process of making this an elected option.

I agree there are parts of the site that have fixed size boxes and so don't upsize well but these are mostly the sides of the screen. However the main content should upsize no problem (em used throughout). I think the site is more accessible than most and I also show adverts in a separate page if javascript is disabled (which should also help ensure bots can still see the content).

Keeping the search bar at the top of all pages is something I could look at. I initially thought it may distract on certain pages but I will revisit this.

I didn't think there was a 'complete lack of SEO' on the site. From my research I thought I had covered quite a few of the main points but would be glad to hear any suggestions on how to improve this.

Hundreds of coding errors? I would be glad to hear which? I wasn't aware of any coding errors at all. I assume you are referring to the javascript (which does not report any errors) as obviously the php isn't visible, or are you talking about functional coding errors?

Thank you taking the time to give this detailed critique. I would be more than happy to hear any response you may have to my above comments or any other observations you have made.

Thanks

G

[josha]

I've spent a bit of time on job sites either looking for jobs or figuring out how the back-end works and the one thing that differentiates the good from the bad is the search facility.

If I'm looking for a job then my skills and location are the two key criterias, however...

Maybe I'm prepared to travel a bit so a '5,10,15,20 miles from' a location option is useful.

I like to see similar jobs so a 'more like this' selection on a job card would also be handy.

As your database grows a 'salary range' may be helpful.

Basically anything you can do to refine a search and provide associated job matches is good. Some social networking techniques would work very on a site like yours, maybe show how many people are applying, show the total number of jobs (in salary range / area / segment) and suggest similar jobs in different segments. Let me provide more specific information when I register and use this to make intelligent recommendations .

A couple to look at are 'www.cwjobs.co.uk' (specific to the IT segment) and www.reed.co.uk.

Interestingly reed lets you select 'email me jobs like this' but not, crucialy 'find me jobs like this now'.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Josh

PS - I quite like the colours!

[JobDreamz]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for your comments.

Rather than go down the route of x miles from this location, I encourage advertisers to enter locations in a particular format which includes County and Region as well as just the City or Town thus allowing wider searches. This does need to be included in my tutorials for both Candidates and Advertisers to promote it more.

Like the idea of a 'more like this' link. I have seen this in use on several of the sites that I researched. All it requires is to take the keywords and locations from that particular advert and populate the search. Added to my wish list

With regard to totals, I already have this ability built in but have not enabled it yet until the site grows.

I look forward to your comments / advice.

Thanks

G

[fisicx]

Thanks for the feedback fisicx. You make some good points but also some that I don't agree with.

I would be concerned if you did agree with everything I suggested!

My mistake on the 10 | 20 | 30 link - I didn't read the caption (result per page). Usability again - it not common to see these types of links. Might be an idea to have a caption: you are viewing xx results per page. Minot stuff though. The meat follows:

Cluttered is a realtive term. Grouping similar information together makes it easier for the visitor to determine what they are looking at. For example on the right you have: Notice board, Feedback, RSS Help in alternatre colours. On the left you have: Candidates, Bookmarks, Tell a friend, colours are black, green, green (not alternate).

The right boxes don't link - there is no theme so they form 3 information chunks. It's the same on the left - three different chunks. Now suppose you simplified the layout, put the candidate, tell a friend and feedback all together on the left, with some colour theme to indicate the group. Put the rest on the right but lose the 'notice board' until it exists. The eye will have scanned the page and the subconscious sorted out the important bits long before you have consciously decided what you want to do. If there are too many information chunks the brain will lower the response signal and your visitors will not focus in io the bit your want them to look at.

...I will be providing tutorials and explanations...

No! If you need to provide an explanation then the site has failed. Two seconds is all you get. If you visitors can't work out what you offer and what to do in that time you have lost.

The tagclouds tooltip is the wrong solution. Why not have a header that says: most popular searches. No ambuguity there!

The search is still an area that might need refining. I don't ever bother using the dropdown suggestions, I can type faster than I can use the mouse to select. But if I just search for jobs in a location then the double enter is required. As to the dropdown showing the actual keywords, I'm still getting zero results even when I use them.

I don't want to print every job, just the ones I'm interested in. I personally don't like the lightbox, it requires an action on my part to close the window which if the job were displayed as HTML would allow me to use the back buttion to se the job listings.

SEO - page titles are weak. They are probably the key indexing element and are the first tihng anybody sees in the SE results pages. An because you use the lightbox for each job, the SE can't even index the database. The result is almost no indexable content. You have identical descriptions. You need to write a unigue description for every page - this include for every single job - except you don't have a page for every single job! Only one <h1> on the page please, again prime indexable material, if the SE sees more than one H1 how does it know which is the most important.

Validation - here's the result for your home page, 84 reported errors. Another page I checked had 669 errors.

A few more thoughts for you...

[JobDreamz]

colours are black, green, green

The colours are actually dark grey and blue I admit when on my laptop (my main screen is also LCD) the dark grey appears almost black but the blue is the same. This is just because laptop display has not been calibrated.

No! If you need to provide an explanation then the site has failed.

I still think a site needs tutorials. Not everything can be totally intuitive. I have however made some changes over the weekend, one being the changing of the links at the bottom of each ad in the search results. There is now an indicator that the traffic lights relate to shortlist (and a view link for those that don't realise the whole box is a link).

As to the dropdown showing the actual keywords, I'm still getting zero results even when I use them.

I need to amend my script for this as has not been updating correctly.

I personally don't like the lightbox, it requires an action on my part to close the window which if the job were displayed as HTML would allow me to use the back buttion to se the job listings.

Isn't clicking on the back button an 'action' on your part Also, when closing the lightbox, the page is not reloaded and so is faster than using the back button (depending on browser cache settings). In addition, after closing the lightbox, you are returned to page position of the advert that you originally clicked on, something which (depending on your browser) wouldn't happen using the back button.

SEO - page titles are weak.

I researched my titles by referring to the competition and my titles, although distinct, aren't that far away from the others.

An because you use the lightbox for each job, the SE can't even index the database. The result is almost no indexable content.

As stated in my last post to you,

I also show adverts in a separate page if javascript is disabled (which should also help ensure bots can still see the content).

there is also an alternative html page for each ad which is loaded if javascript is not enabled which I believe is the case for indexing bots. Therefore all the content is indexable.

Validation - here's the result for your home page, 84 reported errors. Another page I checked had 669 errors.

I am aware of the validation results already. Almost all the errors relate to the repeated use of the 'id' attribute with the same value. I should have used 'class' of course but the desired effect could not be achieved. I normally test for validation when designing and I am not worried about these results if I can achieve the desired effect at the cost of some minor errors which do not affect functionality.

G

[fisicx]

Okey Dokey,

Missed the point about the html alternative. Is there a reason why you use the lightbox as opposed to the 'traditional method'?

The page titles really are so important - I can't strees this enough. When I click on 'manager' in the tag cloud the target page title is: 'Job dreamz - Job search'.

Much better would be: 'Job vacanices for managers'.

And for a location search: 'Job vacanices for managers in London'.

For the actual job itself: 'Vacancy for a xyz manager in locastion with abc'

Hope you can see the difference.

Incidentally. I tested the site in accesbility mode and the 'view' link doesn't work. The 'shortlist' looks just like a link and from a usability point of view can confuse (it did me). Maybe put a box round the word and traffic light and lighten the text colour so it looks different.

Using the back button - I agree that I have to click either the 'close' on the lightbox or the back button. But if you use the HTML version I don't have to scroll down. If I'm scanning through lots of jobs I can tell in an instant if it's right for me. If it's not I have to scroll down and close the window. Maybe only a tiny thing but it can get very frustrating. Put close at the top of the ligth box as well and the problem is solved.

As to all your other points, no problem - they are just my thoughts and obervations.

Except: it's definately green and black.