Digital Media Buzz > Semantic Search Benefits CareerBuilder, Monster and Other Job Listings Services

Semantic Search Benefits CareerBuilder, Monster and Other Job Listings Services

By Moria Byrne

Social networking was difficult to measure until recently. That was how countless recruiters and job search engine companies explained their reluctance to use social networking professionally. TwitterJobSearch changed job search companies’ approach to communication. When TwitterJobSearch started hitting more than 100,000 jobs searches in the month of April, job search engines met their new competitor.

TwitterJobSearch, which is a third-party page run by Twitter, can calculate how many jobs are loaded onto their database each month and how many jobs each user views per visit. More importantly, the platform searches online data based on contextualization rather than keywords. Current job search engines base their searches on keywords. Yet, job titles and their meanings are changing constantly. TwitterJobSearch uses a program called Semantic Search created by Workhound, which is equipped to pull words from everyday language.

“It doesn’t require hash tags or any special key words,” says William Fischer, director of WorkDigital Ltd. WorkDigital is a subsidiary of Workhound, a job search engine in the United Kingdom.

Semantic Search looks for the words and the context, in order to ensure that the Twitter entry is about a job. For instance, a tweet may read, “being a mom is a full-time job.” 99 out of 100 of those tweets won’t be related to a job opening. “Anytime there was a tweet about a job, we would follow the link, grab the data and link the information to TwitterJobSearch,” Fischer says.

Semantic Search has access to the five largest job boards in the world. In the month of May, there have been 1.2 million clicks to jobs and 10 million people viewing jobs. Semantic Search is a platform accessible to an international audience in real time (without expired job listings) and a community to interact and communicate with about job searching. The system has increased the number of hits on WorkDigital’s job search site dramatically.

“People are seeing more jobs there [in TwitterJobSearch] than anywhere else,” Fischer says.

Although CareerBuilder has been using the TwitterJobSearch for the past month-and-a-half, this is the company’s first venture with Twitter. “We’re using it mainly to communicate with audiences,” says Allison Nawoj, public relations director of CareerBuilder.

CareerBuilder built a page on TwitterJobSearch. Its database is merged with Twitter’s and CareerBuilder receives all job applicants in its system. CareerBuilder applicants’ resumes and job search profiles are linked to a third-party account in TwitterJobSearch. Applicants will get tweets on their cell phones about job openings immediately through Twitter. You can also receive tweets from other job search engine companies. The only difference is that the tweets you receive will be automatically sent from CareerBuilder’s database. Other job search subscribers without a third-party site must manually tweet direct messages to their subscriber list. Either way, applicants can automatically retweet the employer who sent the message and instantly form a professional relationship. Without a third-party page, job search engine companies don’t have immediate access to the job applicants accessing them through Twitter. They have to wait until the applicants register at their company site or e-mail their resume. On a TwitterJobSearch page, you can register directly on Twitter.

“Twitter is just one extension of how CareerBuilder helps clients reach qualified candidates – through our twitterjobalerts.com service,” Nawoj says. “In an effort to consistently serve our clients with the latest technology, CareerBuilder has begun to leverage Twitter to connect with job seekers in that space.”

CareerBuilder also has partnerships with Facebook and YouTube. They built their own talent community, BrightFuse, to connect people in the same professions and share professional advice and contacts. They also have an SEO called Category Search Optimization that “leverages both domain and sub-domain terms to target candidates for a [company’s] particular niche.”

“We’re focusing on getting our current employers onto the system [Twitter]. It’s an evolving process right now,” Nawoj says.

Monster has been slow to adapt a social networking platform. The company has three registered Twitter accounts. One was used for a national campaign called “Monster Keeping America Working.” Monster tweeted about its national tour as representatives went from state to state. The company also has a Twitter user called Monster TRAK that offers support for entry level workers. The third user is a Monster fan site. Currently, Monster doesn’t have a third-party site on Twitter. “The company is considering a few different social networking strategies involving Twitter,” says Steve Sylven, director of public relations at Monster.

TwitterJobSearch has proven that a semantics engine can drive a lot more traffic to a job search engine. There were a total of 229,386 jobs submitted to the site this month. Monster has built a semantics job search engine, which is slowly being implemented into its keyword search engine. The semantics search product should be running by the end of the year, Sylven says.

Prior to incorporating Twitter into its job search platform, users opened 40 jobs on average at Workhound. Now the number of jobs viewed per visit has doubled. Workhound is the job search company operating a semantics program that reads Twitter’s database for words and the context of words about job searching. William Fischer explained that WorkDigital, a subsidiary of Workhound, tracked early users and found that they spent more time at the site because they would keep clicking on different job listings on a job search site posted.

“I don’t know another user interface that allows users to see as many jobs as they are capable of seeing on Twitter,” Fischer says.