Shine.com is quite good !!!

I had been planning to check out Shine.com since quite some time. They have been very aggressive with their marketing efforts, a little too aggressive I would say. There have been a few voices about some kind of spamming over orkut. I am not sure of this, I haven’t come across any.

Coming to site, the UI looks great. Compared to the other job portals, its much better. The name is a nice one too. I had read a few reviews about shine previously. And quite a few of them actually questioned the idea of launching a Job portal first place. Lot of people slammed it as a “Me too” from HT media.Well I believe that the online recruitment industry is yet to be exploited thoroughly. So a product which is good and better then the rest will gain acceptance,provided they keep walking the right path. It might take sometime, but as long as you have deep pockets like those of HT media, whats the harm. And secondly considering the fact that HT has a huge print inventory, an online arm does make sense.

Coming to Shine, I spent around an hour on the site checking out the features and comparing it with few others portals. Here’s what I felt about it.

1. Registration : Initially I faced problems registering on the site , kept getting “session expired” message. I guess they need to sort out the glitches. But the registration forms are well designed and they cover a quite a lot of details without allowing the sense of fatigue to seep in unlike Naukri.The registration process seems to have been designed in order to get a good snap shot of the resume which would help in job matching. The info is well segmented and looks neat. As you keep progressing with the registration , there is lot of prompting for the next fields, that makes the process lucid and quick.

2. Job Search: Once you are done with the registration it allows you to either do a job search yourself or you can look at the recommended jobs. The suggested matches were quite close. It seems shine search is powered by redmatch. Who’s complaining, as long as you get good results. You can choose to view, delete, block any employers ,add a personal note to it for later use and obviously apply. The UI scores here again. The entire design makes it very easy to use. Also when you apply for a particular job , there is a self screening system.You need to provide experience details in various required skill sets. Apart from this you can always keep a track of your applications

3. Research and career advice: There is a quite a bit of information to help you identify companies . They are trying to rope in a lot of people for career advice and have built a decent amount of information about various verticals. There is stuff related to news and latest developments etc . You don’t need to register to explore these features, so go ahead and check it out.

On the whole a Job seeker will enjoy the features at Shine, I need to check for the recruiters also. Maybe once I am able to get an recruiter account , I will try and explore that too.

I think Firefly has a good product in Shine, now its all about geting enough job listing and candidate resumes. The HT release says that they already have 1.25 lakh candidate registrations and 4000 recruiter accounts. For any job site it is very important that they build the critical mass before users realise that the stuff is missing. As a job seeker I wouldn’t like to wait for listing to come on to shine, I will go any place where I get it. So is with a recruiter, any portal which has a good database will do .

But I do have great hopes on Shine.com and it will be nice to see how naukri,timesjob respond to the competition.

30 best job sites in US

Weddles.com has come up with a list of 30 best job sites in US. These rankings are purely user generated and not based on any kind of scientific survey. You can find the rankings on CNN Money. Weddle’s is a major US based publisher of guides to internet job hunting. Every year it invites its users to come and vote for the job site of their choice. Both job seekers and recruiters are invited to participate in these surveys. The idea is to get the end users to rate the Job sites . Coming to the results , here they are. They have been listed in alphabetical order.

General Purpose

• CareerBuilder.com
• CareerJournal.com
• Craigslist
• Indeed
• Job.com
• Monster
• SimplyHired.com
• Workopolis.com (Canada)
• Yahoo! HotJobs

Niche – Career Field

• CareerBank.com (accounting, finance)
• ComputerJobs.com
• Dice (IT jobs)
• HealthEcareers Network
• JobsInLogistics

Niche – Industry

• Absolutely Health Care
• AllHealthcareJobs.com
• Bio Space
• Hcareers (hotels, hospitality)
• HealthCareerWeb.com

Niche – Geography

• JobCircle.com
• Jobing.com

Niche – Affinity

• CollegeRecruiter.com (new grads)
• LatPro (Hispanic and bilingual)
• VetJobs (military veterans)

Niche – Employment category

• EmploymentGuide.com (hourly)
• ExecuNet (senior level executive)
• The Ladders.com (senior level executive)
• Net-Temps (contract, temporary)
• 6FigureJobs (senior level executive)
• SnagAJob.com (hourly)

I was wondering if we could have something like this. Both Naukri and MonsterIndia are slugging out for the number one position. The Alexa results are here to check. I have considered Monsterindia.com for the comparisons. Have a look. I think some independent body should conduct a poll like weddle’s for the Indian job sites also.

jobs…. portals and more portals

During the early days when I had just started with my recruiting firm , thats little more then three years back. Me and my partner were listing down what all we need ,to start off . Job portal subscriptions came at the top of the list. How much ever any recruiter claims that he works through references and have their own internal database of resumes, trust me it doesn’t work .

You just don’t need portal subscriptions for resumes alone. There is a plethora of information out there , provided you are smart enough to figure it out. A smart recruiter can spot trends, develop a network among the talent pool and also find out who’s hiring and a lot more info.

But portals like naukri.com and monster have remained more of repositories and job boards. There is not much to be found there . As a job seeker you go there to post your resume. As a recruiter you hunt for the resumes. No-body’s complaining as long as they are getting what they are looking for. And the Job portals are happy selling subscriptions.

But with the talent crunch looming large it becomes imperative for a recruiter to go seek-out for the passive candidate. Somebody is there who fits the bill well but is not looking out. Happily ensconced where he is . He has not listed his resume in the job portal and neither sent you his resume. So do where and how do you find him. You find such people in college alumni sites , community sites . I remember Orkut , yahoo groups were a huge hit. In fact, Orkut still is. Then you had linkedin, zoominfo etc. I am new to Facebook and haven’t explored it much. But I am sure your scrapbooks would always have at least got a few scraps talking about a “Sizzling hot” job opening in an “MNC”. Or got a mail from a recruiter on linkedin. Perfectly fine again. As long as you don’t mind a few irrelevant mails in your inbox.

Then came the school of thought that job boards should be where the community hangs out. Rather then list jobs and expect people to turn, why not the jobs reach them. I had read an interesting post on how social networking sites are giving a new turn to online recruitment. Linkedin is an interesting example.

Somehow I personally don’t endorse this. I go to a particular site for a purpose. If I am on Orkut, its because I want to hang out wiht my friends, on Linkedin I maintain my professional network. I may not always like to see something apart from that. Please treat this as a totally personal view. Lot of folks may not have a problem to this.

I also have been following whats happening in the referral based recruitment portals. I am aware of quite a few. TechTribe , Toostep, Wisestepp, Careerknight, Zubka and Reffster . I am yet to explore Shine.com . They seem to be quite aggressive with their ad campaign. I intend to cover all these sites in seperate posts. So you will have to come back to it . Meanwhile some food for thought. I have this from Alexa.