A Favorite Site: Indeed.com

Another favorite site, this one a job search engine. Why do I like Indeed.com’s job search engine so much? This one separates itself from the rest by its various tools, all of which are actually quite interesting and helpful.

What Indeed.com Is Doing Right

The interface to this search engine is very uncluttered, reminiscent of Google. Several things I noticed right away set this job search engine apart:

• It has some great forums, and offers job seekers a chance to interact. You can find people offering tips on job interview questions, researching company information and networking away.
• The Job Trends section allows you to view trends in a particular industry merely by searching for that term.
• Salary information has a variety of ways you can break down salary analysis for different factors, ranging from degree type to region and job descriptor.
• A blog. How many search engines have a blog? That’s just cool, shows a different attitude that says a lot about the company.
• The tools. Lots of tools. Useful tools.

What Could Be Improved

Indeed has done wonders for the job search field. It still has room for improvement though. A few of the improvements that I personally think would help it even more are:

• Jobs segmented by industry or job function and by skills required—two separate ways for each search to be run. This problem plagues all job search sites. If I search for creative, it would be nice to eliminate jobs looking for a creative problem solving accountant, so I could focus on jobs looking for creative marketers. Of course, since Indeed is listing jobs from other sites, this isn’t likely to ever happen. Yet another failed opportunity in the job search industry. Sooner or later, someone will get it right.
• I created several RSS feeds and saved them in my reader. What I wish I could do is merge them all into one feed coming from Indeed that addressed all my preferences. [Note: I intend to make a trip to Yahoo! Pipes and do this very thing. I will filter all the individual RSS feeds so that I have one output feed that will allow me to click on one feed and see all the jobs I would be interested in. Pipes might even help filter out some of those unwanted bean-counting jobs as well.]

Indeed does allow you to filter out words in its advanced search feature, however, it is not effective if you try to search for more than one job type. At least I did not find it to be so.

The Big Picture?

All said and done, it is the best job search engine out there. There are smaller job sites that do niches really well and will likely stay on top in those markets. However, Indeed should be the jumping off point for any job-seeker. It certainly covers a lot of figurative ground for you in the least amount of time.

The wide variety of tools which include browser plug-ins and widgets for your website or blog put it ahead of the competition. It is a friendly and uncluttered search engine that does it right.

By integrating forums, Indeed is making a good attempt humanizing search portals without the clutter often associated with such endeavors. And that may be the best selling point yet.

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[Update: Thanks to Sophie Beaurpere, Marketing Manager for Indeed, who pointed out that the site does allow you to browse jobs by category, job title, company and state. The site also has a powerful advanced search feature. I was aware of that but may have confused the issue with my first item listed under "What Could Be Improved" in the post.]