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Online Job Portals, Job Searches, Employment and Career Sites

Definition, Explanation

In the course of applying, you should also use the service of online job portals, or career sites, to find interesting job offers. An online job portal provides a collection of job offers, normally by a number of different companies. For the reason of easy up-to-dateness and comfortable use, today you find the most of the job offers on the web. Many Job portals specialize to branches or professions. On some, jobseekers can make put their profiles on, and be informed by email about job offers.

Kinds of job portals:

• Job portal of the Federal Labour Agency, yielding the largest database. This database is also fed to other job portals, on which it is presented in more user-friendly ways
  Examples: Rekruter, Jobomat, Backinjob, meinestadt.de
• Metasearch engines searching job portals
  Examples: Jobrobot, JOBworld, Jobrapido, SimplyHired, Jobster
• General job portals offering jobs in various branches and professions
• Specialized job portals like
  • Regional job portals, as are mostly integrated on webpages of cities and regions
  • Branch-specific job portals for certain professions or professions with a small job market
    Examples: Hotel-Career, salesjob, IT-Treff
  • Profession-specific, respectively apprenticeship-specific job portals
  • Job portals on companies’ websites and websites of institutions, respectively special job portals searching these
    Example: Jobscanner, Joboter, Worldwidejobs
  • Job portals of umbrella associations
  • Age-specific job portals
• Job portals of newspapers, magazines
• Job portals of universities
• Job portals by private employment placement agencies

Kinds of jobs offered:

• Fulltime jobs
• Side-line jobs
• Student jobs
• Casual jobs
• Temp work
• Mini-Jobs
• Executive and expert jobs

Pros and Cons of different Job portals:

• Generally, compared to using job adverts in print media, the search is easier, more comfortable and quicker
• Job search is normally free of charge, however on many job portals you need to register and login in order to use them
• Unfortunately, the free job portals – on which also the company does not pay for taking out a job ad – are not always right up to date. Often also, the date the ad was posted is not always displayed. This is particularly a flaw of the Federal Labour Agency job portal. Also, the labour agency job portal is mainly offering jobs for “normal qualification” or “minor qualification”
• For searching executive and expert positions, the recommendation goes for the specialized job portals

The job portals are normally financed by the companies posting the ads paying for it. This is payment by ad, by abonnement or with a flat-rate. For the jobseeker in turn, the use is mostly free.

Tips, Checklist

• First, from the number of job portals, you should select some that are bet suited to your desires. There are a flood of job portals, in Germany. Crosswater-Systems lists more than 1,800 entries, divided in categories. It is a good strategy to use this categorization, first
• Use the general, un-specialized job portals first, so you get an idea of what branches are interesting, and what jobs and professions are being offered
• Precisely define your desires – place, branch, profession, income. It will make your search better targeted
• Look at the different job portals in detail so you get a picture
• Make sure you do not use several clones of the labour agency job portal, using the same offer several times. You identify the clones by the labour agency logo displayed on the website, and the note “in Kooperation mit der Bundesagentur für Arbeit”
• Do not rely on search bots, that search job portals like search engines. They do not always find all matching offers
• Post application ads yourself, or make up your profile. Do it with the same care you use for a regular application
• Update your profile
• Use results of surveys that compare job portals
• Before you apply in response to a job ad, you should check whether it is still referencing an open position
• Be selective in posting your personal data on profiles, and restrict it to be displayed to the groups of people intended. Also mind that one or the other employer might save your online application for later use
• Stick to the offered ways of applying when you have found an interesting job offer. If e.g. the employer provides for a form to be filled on their website, you should use it, and not send an application dossier by post. If an email address is given for applying, you can send your documents as an online application. If they give nothing but a phone number, call and ask in what way you should apply
• Also use other ways to find a job

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Last update: 07/27/2010