Digital Journal — The Google Maps mash-up craze has informed us about which New York subway stations to avoid, where to find stores carrying Nintendo Wii on Nov. 19, and where former sex offenders currently live. Now job-hunters in Canada and the U.S. are celebrating the launch of several sites that map posted job opportunities in a given area.
According to the blog Google Maps Mania, at least four new Maps mash-ups cater to online job-seekers who can find careers by inputting their city or postal/zip code into search fields. A quick tour through all the sites proved to be a painless affair — and one of the best uses of Google Maps this journalist has ever seen.
Here is Digital Journal‘s list of mappers you should know about:
MapMyJobs
The U.S. is well-served with MapMyJobs, serving the IT-related job market. You can search by keyword or location, and a test using the keyword “C++” and “New York” as the location found 37 jobs in that city, mostly for developer positions. The site even went the distance by mapping 11 jobs posted outside downtown Manhattan in places such as Brooklyn and Jersey City.
GIS Jobs Map
Working with the GIS Jobs Clearinghouse, this site lets you can find careers solely in geographic information science. The splash page is a map of the world with the most recent jobs symbolized by green “I”s, but searching through jobs by city was nowhere to be found. A scrolling menu on the left lets you sift through GIS jobs, so you can click on an item to see it represented on the map. The site is mainly targeting the U.S. market, but today’s opportunities even listed career postings in New Zealand, Qatar and even Iraq.
JobLoft
Canadians are not left out in the cold in job mash-up mania; JobLoft is probably the most highly-publicized site (recently getting plugged on the CBC Show The Dragon’s Den) and definitely deserves the attention. Focusing on retail, food services and hospitality jobs, the site makes searching so simple it’s virtually impossible to screw up. Inputting a postal code instantly brings available opportunities on a map and also on a list in the middle of the page. You can sort the list by clicking on “newest”, “closest by distance” or “A-Z by company.” Even more useful is the ability to apply for the job instantly by hitting a link. For the truly retail-oriented, searching by specific malls offers updated information on posted job opening (For example, at Toronto’s Eaton Centre, there are 30 job postings as of today).
Eluta
Another easy-to-use Canadian site is Eluta, whose ambitious goal is to “create a searchable database of every new job opportunity in the nation.” The map function is somewhat buried on this site — you can find the location of a job posting only after your search — but its interface is impressive. The Advanced Search option trumps competitors by allowing you to find jobs within a given number of kilometres of your postal code (for example, by writing “location: M5R 1P7 km:25), or by letting you search for opportunities available from Canada’s Top 100 Employers. The map function worked flawlessly in our tests, and even includes a summary of the given employer directly above the map.
All in all, wandering through these four sites gave me hope that Google Maps mash-ups have entered a new era of functionality. Sure, they’ll still be used for finding which beer store is open at what time, but for the more serious-minded Web user, career-oriented mash-ups will give value to the next generation of interactive websites.
And most importantly, the unemployed desperately seeking a job need never pound the pavement again.
