JobServe.com is a UK-based website that delivers its content through three separate, regionally-based portals: JobServe.com, JobServe.us and JobServe.com.au. Within each of these sites, job seekers can search listings, post their resumes and search through a host of targeted career segments.

Recruiters can register and advertise their jobs on JobServe.com, and the site will email their listings to candidates, provide RSS feeds to job seekers, provide recruiters with candidate databases and more.

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it is. While it’s true that JobServe provides up-to-date technology for its site visitors, and streamlines its job search capabilities through the use of a handy tool that remembers your last search, or a global map that shows what regions you’re searching, with the ability to choose larger or smaller regions - it’s hard to feel as though any of these gadgets are truly innovative anymore.

There’s a double-edged sword to being the Internet’s “first” of anything. That’s because, while it may be impressive to create an innovative online tool to search jobs, many others have done so since, and have created more and better user-friendly capabilities to do this exact same thing. It’s an unfortunate fact of traditional marketing that age and experience are not necessarily advantages on the Internet where the thing that’s getting the most traffic and serving the most people at any given time could very well be only 16 minutes old.

None of this is to say that JobServe.com isn’t a valuable site, because it certainly performs well and seems to deliver on its claims. The fact that the site segments its content across three different global regions and delivers job seeker information for millions of opportunities is a pretty significant feat and worthy of notice, especially for those recruiters and job seekers who are not limited by the traditional 50-States-and-no-more approach that restricts the capabilities of many other websites of this kind.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

From the i Six Sigma website comes this explanation of Six Sigma:

“¢‚¬¦a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company’s operational performance by identifying and eliminating “defects” in manufacturing and service-related processes.”

If you’re already familiar with the Six Sigma methodology, the i Six Sigma website has a wealth of content for you, whether you’re a recruiter or job seeker. If you’re not a tenant of, or curious about, the Six Sigma process, there’s not much for you there, but it’s also not a website you’d likely stumble across if you weren’t interested, anyway.

i Six Sigma provides comprehensive resources to businesses at every level of the Six Sigma maturity. The site offers searchable job listings, a resume database with over 19,000 professionals, blog posts, newsletters (where job postings are promoted to over 38,000 subscribers), events and conferences, forums and more, all designed to assist readers in learning new skills, advancing their careers and contribute to the success of their companies through the use of Six Sigma.

Job recruiters focused on finding prospective clients or researching companies that subscribe to Six Sigma would certainly find a lot to do at i Six Sigma. Among the best resources on the site are the discussion forums, where hundreds of career- and company-related chat threads can be searched and surfed to find Six Sigma-related topics. One possible use for the forums would be to research specific companies that use the methodology, or to learn common concerns and themes in Six Sigma-prescribed employees who are seeking ways to advance their careers.

The site also has a fairly involved blogosphere area with multiple authors and plenty of topics and opinions on all things Six Sigma. While the i Six Sigma site can be a bit tricky in terms of navigation - due at least in part to its copious advertising banners that flash, blink and otherwise grapple for your attention - it must be said that anyone researching Six Sigma and its attendant capabilities would do well to make i Six Sigma their first stop.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

eQuest is a different kind of online tool for human resource professionals. There are no job listings there; no quick or advanced search involving career criteria such as job description, location or desired minimum salary; you won’t find e-newsletter sign-ups or message board forums there. In fact, eQuest has virtually none of the kinds of functionality that one tends to see at the most popular job board sites.

What it has, however, is the ability to use all of the other job board sites to your advantage.

Essentially what eQuest offers is the ability for human resource departments and recruitment professionals to post their company’s available job listings to multiple online job boards all at once, thereby eliminating the need to visit multiple sites re-enter information multiple times and pay multiple vendors for essentially the same service. According to the site, eQuest manages the flow of job-posting transactions to more than 1,000 unique job boards and reaches more than 200 countries and territories worldwide daily.

And eQuest offers additional tools besides simply posting your company’s job listings on multiple sites. eQuest will also track those sites for you, providing detailed analytics in terms of where candidates are finding your listings, where they’re clicking when they find them, and which job sites are working best to bring you serious, qualified job candidates.

Ultimately, eQuest provides a fairly specialized service for a specific clientele; but it’s simple to see how a large corporation with many open job assignments at any given time would be able to realize savings of time and money by taking advantage of eQuest’s services.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

Hcareers is a site that is focused toward candidates in the Hospitality industries, such as Hotel, Resort, Restaurant/Bar, Casino, Travel, and Foodservice.‚ The types of candidates that you will find on this site range from everything from cooks to hotel managers to travel agents.‚ ‚ Hcareers offers employers advanced search functions so they can find exactly the types of candidates they are looking for by narrowing down experience level, industry, location, skills and more.‚ 

Employers can also post jobs for a fee for job seekers to search and apply to through the Hcareers website.‚ Many large employers in this industry use this site for finding candidates for their open positions; a list of all employers registered is available from a link on the main homepage.‚ 

Another feature of this site is an area called “Resource Center”, where job seekers can get advice and tips on searching for a new job, acing interviews, and putting together a resume.‚ There are also newsletters that both employers and job seekers can sign up for; the employer newsletter focuses on recruitment strategies and opportunities for training, and the job seeker newsletter highlights new job opportunities or companies and strategies for job searching.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

With robust content more or less evenly targeted to job seekers and recruitment professionals alike, Medzilla provides employment information, news and discussion forums covering the biotech, pharmaceutical, healthcare and science industries.

When you first arrive on the Medzilla homepage, you’ll notice that the site’s primary navigation is split between “Job Seekers” and “Employers & Recruiters”. Very quickly it’s clear that the site is designed and created first and foremost to appeal to its users’ needs, which of course is always a good thing.

Clicking on the “Job Seekers” tab provides a keyword-based job search, an interface to create an online account and submit a resume, develop a job search agent, access articles and forums and more. For recruitment professionals, the “Employers & Recruiters” navigational tab results in quick access to the site’s resume database, where site visitors can search via keywords or location radius. Employers can, of course, also create an account with which to post available job opportunities.

Medzilla also supplies a helpful means for both recruitment personnel as well as job seekers to search open assignments via company. The site displays about 70 corporate logos, each of which navigates to a job search result page when clicked. To be sure, it’s a great way for job seekers to find available openings at a given company, but recruiters can also discover value here in seeing at a glance what kinds of openings are currently available at a company-wide level. The search results are grouped according to location, which is also very helpful in terms of targeting recruitment opportunities. In terms of strongly serving a niche market, Medzilla more than fits the bill.

Whoever thought up the phrase “Information Highway” probably had something like Workforce Management in mind. It’s a thorough, exhaustive site with copious resources for recruitment professionals.

At first glance, it would appear that Workforce Management is primarily a resource for news and little else. And while there is an abundance of news on the site - latest news, top articles, recent blog posts, lead story, more stories, etc. - one doesn’t have to look very far to find more interactive online resources such as job listings, upcoming conferences and webinars, e-newsletters and downloadables and pretty much everything in between.

Take a look, for example, at this portion of the Workforce Management homepage, where “Topic Channels” break archived articles down into quickly-referenced topics on the top left. Or, on the bottom‚ right of this screenshot, notice the “Featured Jobs” box in which dozens of clickable, nationwide HR positions scroll endlessly by, complete with company name and locations. This area clicks through to WorkforceHRJobs - a site exclusively dedicated to HR related jobs. Employers can post HR jobs and request resumes there.

There’s a lot to find and a lot to do on Workforce Management, and recruiters can discover a great deal of information specifically geared toward their interests, often via links labeled “for recruiters” and the like. Site visitors can also subscribe to the printed version of Workforce Management and register for “full access” to the site. It’s a crowded, busy site where a great many links demand attention - but as packed as it is, Workforce Management still doesn’t feel confusing or overwhelming. It’s organized intuitively and leads you to make certain navigational decisions as you delve deeper into the site.

Just make sure you’ve blocked out enough time to do it.

TheLadders is a job site that focuses only on candidates and jobs that are over $100k.‚ Employers that have job openings that pay over $100k are able to take a free fourteen day trial of the site.‚ TheLadders focuses on senior and executive candidates since many of these candidates may not want to post their resume on the more popular mainstream job boards, and those same job boards may not have the level of positions that they are interested in.

As an employer member of the site, you are able to post jobs and search their extensive database.‚ Candidates have to pay to view job postings, which narrows down the chances of your company receiving resumes from under-qualified or unqualified candidates.‚ ‚ A great feature of the site is the ability to see a quick preview of each candidate’s profile on the results page without having to click through multiple pages.‚ You can hover your mouse over the candidate’s name and a small window pops up, giving you the basic information including industry, job title, salary range, summary and more.‚ One catch is that the job posting function will not allow you to post jobs if the salary that you enter is below $100k.‚ 

Using this site to recruit senior and executive level candidates will give you access to the “cream of the crop” candidates who are serious about their careers and their job search.‚ 

Guru.com has what you need to connect with freelance consultants.‚ The site currently has 629,000 freelance professionals. The types of gurus you can find on this site are everything from web developers to designers to writers to accountants and more.‚ For free, you can look at profiles of consultants that match the field you’re searching for.‚ You can also post a project on the website and get quotes from freelancers who are interested. If you want to move forward with a freelance consultant, the site offers to manage the payment cycle between both parties for projects.

Each‚ profile includes information like geographic location, hourly rate, and the freelancer’s skill set.‚ These gurus are also rated on the projects that they have completed for employers who have found them through Guru.com.‚ The employer can write a review on the person’s work, and some freelancers include some work samples in their profile so you can get an idea of their previous projects. One other thing that you’re able to see in the profiles while performing a search is how much money the freelancer has made from these projects.‚ You may want to choose someone who has had several projects this year instead of someone who hasn’t yet worked on any projects.‚ If you’re interested in learning more about any of these gurus, you can easily request a free quote or ask them a question.‚ See the example profile shot below:

‚ 

The interface of this site is really easy to use and there are tons of freelance consultants of all backgrounds for you to choose from.‚ This site‚ represents a good alternative‚ for companies to find talent for very short term projects, or perhaps to open the door to a long-term relationship with many different consultants for use outside of the site. On a‚ final note, the site does have “vendors” that represent themselves on the site as well. Using Guru.com as a middleman to work with vendors now represents another option at your disposal.

Jobster is a site designed to connect employers with job seekers. Per their website - they are a “leading innovator in online recruitment technology”. Jobster gives employers many options when using their site - such as posting jobs, searching for candidates, building a talent network, managing email campaigns‚ and promoting their brand.

As with most career websites, their are free and pay plans to choose from. Jobster has a variety of different packages designed to meet most recruiting needs. Jobster has partnerships in place with companies such as‚ Facebook and ZoomInfo to provide a wealth of contacts and additional sourcing data found outside of the Jobster network. Posting jobs gives you the option to pay $25 up front and receive unlimited applicants, or pay nothing upfront, and pay $5 only when a job seeker‚ applies to your posting. There are other ad options and upgrades, such as sending a feed of all your company jobs to be included in their search engine.

The free option lets you create a user profile and search across their network by key words and locations. Each profile can be filled with work history, resumes, personal information, videos‚ and tags.

Here is an example search. I want to find people with sales experience located in Miami, Florida. Please note the arrows in the screenshot. Each profile has what Jobster calls “superstar tags” which are key words a user picks out to best describe themselves. There are ways to refine your search on the right hand side, such as filtering profiles to find only those who are “job hunting”.

An example of a profile I clicked on is here. Alot of profiles have resumes attached to them, and there are ways to reach out to each user by “leaving a note”.‚ Users can get set-up in their system for notifications on notes, candidates, profiles, you name it.

Meetup.com is a site that organizes groups worldwide into one area. Meetup.com is a free site to either find and join groups on a wide range of topics from technology to sports to politics and more, or a site designed for starting your own group and promoting your own causes. The site has alot of search functionality, where you can‚ find “meetups” by topic, city or group, or find people and connect with them directly. There are a number of ways to communicate with groups and organizers of groups within the site as well. If you become a member of a group, you will get invited to all the local events, where you can attend and network with all the members face-to-face. For recruiters, this is a great way to reach out directly with potential job seekers and get referrals and leads for open positions. Staying active in your local community through groups found on Meetup.com is a great way to promote your company, market job openings‚ and get your name out there as well - all of this being subtle of course.‚ ‚ 

Here is a look at the site in action. Say I want to find groups focused on Information Technology local to Pittsburgh, PA.

I note one group titled DotNext-Pittsburgh and click on it.

I see that this meetup group is for people who like to learn new skills in the technology arena. This group has 4 ways listed where a member attending the meeting could get involved. For example: you could introduce‚ your company’s product or service (making it relevant to the group) and make an impression on why your company would be a great place to work.

I continue further, and click through on the organizer of the group and note that there are a few ways to reach out to him without attending the meetup. Say for instance the group really frowns on recruiter attending. So I may send the organizer my contact information and see if I can share my company and openings with him and the group at the next meeting. It sure doesn’t hurt.