Sunday, April 12, 2009

Do You Want to LinkUp?

Did you know when you submit your resume to the blackhole for a position you saw posted on a typical Internet job search board over 3,000 other people are submitting their resumes for that same position? Did you also know that when you submit your resume online it will most likely be scanned for keywords by a computer program before it ever is seen by an actual set of human eyes? Do you wish you could find jobs and send your resume directly to the employer and not have to go through the screening software used by recruiters?

First, I want to thank a good friend in my network for informing me about this website: Terrance Seamon. You can visit his blog at http://learningvoyager.blogspot.com/.

We all know about, or should know about, the two big aggregate job search engines on the Internet: indeed and SimplyHired. But there might be a new kid (at least to this blogger) on the block: LinkUp. And LinkUp might be the better of the three depending on what you are looking for. LinkUp positions itself as an aggregate that grabs postings from only the company websites – over 19,000. But I'll let the readers decide with the a sampling of results from each of the aggregators using the same criteria, which by the way, is my personal job search criteria while I am in transition.

A little research shows that LinkUp is registered through GoDaddy.com and might be housed out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Of course with the Internet, there doesn't need to a brick and mortar office with a web server being located anywhere.

When one looks at the site one has to wonder who LinkUp is trying to appear like. Anyone who has used indeed and SimplyHired can see the similarities between those two. However, I invite readers to comment on what major Internet branding LinkUp might be trying to connect up with.

Criteria used: 50 miles; training coordinator; employer websites only; last 7 days.

InDeed

If I had broadened my search to 100 miles, I would have found 41 jobs. Unfortunately, indeed is only aggregate job search engine that has a radius setting of "100 miles".

SimplyHired

LinkUp

There are some other interesting tools/functions that are available on LinkUp. There is a page where you can check out the Word Cloud. For those who don't know what that is (before this blog neither did I), a Word Cloud is…a tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color.[1] Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag. Click here to learn more about Word Clouds at Wikipedia.

The Word Cloud in LinkUp, http://www.linkup.com/job-cloud.php, lists a variety of different job categories. After clicking on a job category, the Word Cloud will be displayed. Here is the Word Cloud for…

LinkUp states that one can use these words for job search terms or those hard to find words for your resume. Personally, I think one should look for glossary sites related to their industry and bookmark them.

Because LinkUp posts only jobs from employer career websites you can start networking immediately. Then you can find advocates who can hand your resume to the hiring manager, and supporters who can help you gather intelligence in your target organizations.

4 comments:

  1. I wasn't aware of LinkUp. The job search landscape is constantly changing so thanks for keeping us informed of new tools we should consider!

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  2. The day after I created this post I found a problem and notified LinkUp. Here is the message from me and their reply. *Names from been changed to protect the...

    I don't know if this is a bug or not.
    I ran a search on "Curriculum" within 50 miles of 08691. One of the results was from XYZ Recruitment. They are a recruiter aren't they? How did their posting get into LinkUp when these are only supposed to be Employer Postings?
    Thanks and God Bless,
    Genesius
    genesiusj.blogspot.com

    Genesius,
    I know we say that there aren’t any recruiter/staffing companies on LinkUp, but they drove a dumptruck full of money up to our office. We’re not made of stone!
    Ok, in all seriousness, thank you for catching this. XYZ Recruiters has been removed from LinkUp. It’s a difficult process to weed out all the recruiting/staffing companies from our website. We try to catch as many as we can, but we also rely on generous jobseekers (such as yourself) to point them out when they come up in the listings. It is wonderful people, such as yourself, that make developing LinkUp.com such a wonderful experience. Feel free to ping me if you have any other questions.
    Have a great day,
    support@linkup.com
    Team LinkUp
    PS: Your blog post at http://genesiusj.blogspot.com/2009/04/do-you-want-to-linkup.html is tremendously appreciated. Well written! We are based (and hosted) in Minneapolis, and our servers are in the same facility that powers Honeywell, 3M, and many of the Best Buy websites. We’re going to be unleashing a flurry of new features over the next month, and we’ll be announcing them on our @linkup twitter account.

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