http://www.thevacancymarket.com/
Over the last few months the developers have been hard at work upgrading and updating The Vacancy Market.
One of the main reasons for the update was the speed factor. When the site was conceptualised, a lot of the technologies in use on the site had to be created by us. With all new technologies there is a debugging period and we soon realised how much we could improve site performance with a complete rewrite. On average the site now operates some 14 times faster than before, using aggressive caching. We have also created other technologies to optimise site performance.
You will also notice a completely new user interface which has been constructed using feedback from our users. The new interface sets apart common site usage away from the main page content keeping the user focussed on the page content being viewed. On the right hand side we have added new functionality in the form of “widgets” which can be reorganised in any fashion the user sees fit or finds useful, and can be closed should they hinder the user in any way.
The other major changes come behind the scenes in the search technology. As developers we have always prided ourselves on delivering relevant search results and job alerts to our job seekers. When the site was first conceived we had little data to base our search algorithms on and as such had to constantly tweak our searching techniques. We invented some very powerful technology for context and weight-based searching which allowed us to deliver pertinent results with relative ease. The problem we always had was the geographic location of the jobs posted by the employer on the site.
Some job seekers may not be aware but the recruitment industry is a very competitive battle-ground, as such many recruiters do not like to disclose too much information regarding a job’s geographic location, among other things. The trouble we had with this is that if a recruiter posts a job opportunity in “Southend-
We quickly realised, this was an intrinsic flaw in the way online job boards work so we went to the drawing board. After a few hours one of our developers came up with the idea of requiring a postcode for each job – which at first glance looked to solve the problem as we would not display the postcode to the job seeker only the visible area that they wished to display. From here we set in motion ways to link postcodes to areas and vice versa and stumbled on a fundamental flaw in this line of thinking, which was: postcodes only work for the “United Kingdom” and as we are not tied to a location this would be the weak link in the chain. Around 3 o’clock one morning I awoke suddenly with the solution, which was GPS. We ran over the scenarios where geocoding would not work on a site of this manner and found none, so we started to change the way jobs are posted and searched on the site.
The end result is pinpoint accuracy (to the nearest 50 meters or so) for area based searches / look-ups / job alerts. This coupled with contextual and weighted searching gives us immense query-capability on our databases. The above mentioned search technology is also inherent in the alert system and so job seekers can benefit from the fact that relevant jobs will be delivered to their inbox.
The Help System.
After a lot of feedback from users, we restructured the help system to be more informative and user friendly. Both job seekers and recruiters can now search the system to find answers to frequently asked questions and other more obscure ones. We have updated the graphics in order for you to visualise more easily how to complete a task or function on the site.
The Research Tool.
We have created a research tool to enable job seekers to research a geographic location and return information on prospective employers, public transport information (buses & trains) , a route planner – to assist you in locating potential interviews. To accompany the research tool we have added a custom Google search into the mix, allowing you to retrieve information from web, news, blog and location results.
If you require any further information please contact us at support@thevacancymarket.com where we will assist you in any way we can.
We hope you enjoy using the new site; any feedback from our users is always welcome and appreciated.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
