Finding a job has never been easier. With popular employment sites like Indeed and Monster providing lists of thousands of jobs every day, the endless string of opportunities makes it seem like getting a job might no longer be a problem.
Unfortunately, the panoply of listings on these sites masks the true struggle of getting a job in the digital age. In their abundance, jobs can be speciously presented as “open to anyone.”
In reality, job applications can differ in complexity from the simple fill in your info and wait for correspondence format, to the multi-step online interview and prerequisite ethics survey that some larger corporations call for. While in-person interviews and walk ins are still used by local businesses looking for hire, the preferred method of employment by most companies rests in online and mobile platforms developed by game-changing new sites like Jobr and Hirevue, which offer potential employees more convenient at-home application options.
Though in person conversations tend to benefit the more personable would-be employee, the benefits of these innovations are growing in popularity by the more tech-savvy millennials.
So, with the changing tide in online job culture, here are some of the sites leading the surge in this generation’s transition from paper to computation.
1. Monster
Monster stands as the forbearer of America’s transition to online job searches. Debuting in 1999, Monster.com became the leading job search site in the early days of the internet. With foundations in the early 90s, the online job database merged with Online Career Center in 1999 to become the internationally renowned job-listing site users know it as today.
For over a decade the site dominated the sphere of online job searching, providing listings for over 60 million users every month. Nearing the end of the 90s, Monster saw itself slipping into second place as a relatively new job listing database called Indeed became the most utilized job seeking website.
Today, Monster is still one of the world’s most influential job-searching sites, and provides both job seekers and employers the utilities to get hired and post jobs. By being one of the first globally recognized companies with a clientele in the millions, Monster helped shift the world of in-person hiring toward the digital sphere.
2. Indeed
Founded in 2004, Indeed.com boasts the most highly trafficked job listing site in America. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the international website serves over 180 million unique job seekers every month in 60+ countries.
Indeed’s success reflects a job market that’s quickly progressing toward online job applications. The site offers job seekers and employers the options to search and post job listings online, while simultaneously culling from the internet millions of listings made available for online submissions.
Indeed has the reputation of being #1 job site in the world, but even with the astronomical number of job listings and unique users visiting their site each month, the global conglomerate still recognizes the untapped potential of old-fashioned “Help Wanted” signs.
In an innovative step toward bridging the gap between analog and digital job searching, Indeed has introduced a new crowd-sourcing job app that allows users to capture and post photos of “Help Wanted” signs. Known as Job Spotter, the new app merges apply-in-person listings with the technological convenience made accessible (and expected) by sites like Monster and Indeed.
The users of Job Spotter are incentivized for snapping and posting job openings via a point system that can be cashed in for Amazon spending credit. In addition to exposing online applicants to analog job opportunities, Job Spotter also offers offline business owners the ability to generate online exposure. As an early venture into the collaboration of analog and digital job applications, the future of Job Spotter is promising.
3. Jobr
In the same vein as Job Spotter for Indeed but slightly older, Jobr is a mobile app that reduces the pain of job searching by optimizing match efficiency. Citing convenience as its hallmark feature, Jobr has been branded by media outlets as the Tinder for job databases.
Bought by Monster in June 2016, the start-up has met with tremendous success in its first two years . Now #2 in the Apple App Store for business, Jobr has reported over 100 million swipes by users since its inception. The market-disrupting app allows users to upload their resume via popular sites like LinkedIn and apply with a simple right swipe. The job search database is now expanding to include resume uploads from utilities like Google Drive and Dropbox.
With the recent Monster merge, Jobr now offers millions of job listings for potential job seekers in a platform that exemplifies the ease of access that might soon make the comparatively time-consuming paper application redundant.
4. Hirevue
In another step away from the in-person application process, Hirevue is a video interviewing startup that’s already been adopted by large corporations like Urban Outfitters and General Electric. Utilized by companies because of its capacity to reduce the time spent on interviews and increase the efficiency of the hiring process, Hirevue has disrupted the job market by removing another traditionally in-person aspect of job searches. Hirevue’s platform allows applicants to autonomously interview either on their laptop’s webcam or phone, the idea being that a personal setting will more accurately convey the person behind the camera.
With the technological innovations of recent years and the prevalence of online job databases, the market for in-person applications seems to be shrinking into nonexistence. Even so, apps like Job Spotter and sites like Indeed that realize the opportunities of in-person job openings could help revive the viability of paper applicants seeking to jumpstart their careers. In the meantime, the facilities provided for digital applicants will continue to expand, bringing more and more employees into the occupation of their dreams.
