Four Canadian Job Search Portals

 Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Today's online job search web sites are quickly evolving from mere job post and resume aggregators to full-blown career development and human resources portals. They have become powerful tools that can inform and enable users in their career search and match people with the appropriate jobs. Most also have robust notification e-mail systems that deliver regular job listings directly to your inbox.

The job search websites have expanded to serve, not just job seekers but also employers, working as an efficient staffing tool to attract and sort out the right talent.

Eluta.ca, Workopolis.com, Monster.ca and Jobboom.ca are four of Canada's largest, most robust and feature packed career web sites.

We review the strength and usefulness of their features and what they have to offer users and we have also run identical job searches on all three websites to get the feel of the user experience and compare the results.

Eluta.ca

This is the new kid on the job search block and it offers a fast and fresh search interface. Eluta.ca focuses on search and very similar to Google.ca. In their own words, Eluta.ca is all about expediency.

 "Eluta is a search engine that specializes in just one thing: finding new job announcements at employers        across Canada. Our goal is to create a searchable database of every new job opportunity in the nation.

As a vertical search engine, Eluta monitors new job announcements at tens of thousands of employers across Canada every day. Whenever an employer posts a new job on its website, Eluta adds the position to our searchable database. Once added, jobs on Eluta are searchable by keyword and location. An Advanced Search option lets you find new job announcements in other interesting ways, including by occupation and industry."

Eluta.ca also focuses on specific sectors  such as new Canadians, Top Employers, Diversity, Greenest and New Grads. Overall, we are impressed by Eluta.ca's speed, simplicity and user-targeted interface.

The results of our quick search, which used the text box on the top of the homepage, are as follows.

• Searching for Editors in Ontario - 18 results
• Searching for Nurses in Ontario - 150 results.
• Searching for Web Designers in Ontario - 315 results

Workopolis.com

Toronto-based Workopolis.com claims to be Canada's leading career-solutions provider that receives 3.7 million unique visitors monthly. They also have Canada's largest resume database. Layout-wise, Workopolis has the busiest homepage and seems to have the most advertising up front as well.

Users have the option of English and French language versions of the website; there is also a mobile version for use with cellular phone and smartphones. Workopolis.com offers an immense amount of information up front. While this can be overwhelming especially to first time users, using the quick job search feature is the most expedient way to search quickly.

Workopolis.com is noted for its resume builder, which will take roughly about 40-minutes to properly set up. Once enabled, users can quickly apply for jobs directly via the web site selecting cover letters and resumes from the ones stored in their profiles. Workopolis.com also saves searches and keeps track of when you used it last.

One of the key features of Workopolis.com that many seekers find useful is the "Now Hiring" section that shows the logos of all the companies that are currently hiring. Using this feature is sometimes faster than sifting through the sometimes-voluminous search results.

The results of our quick search, which used the text box on the top of the homepage, are as follows.

• Searching for Editors in Ontario - 27 results.
• Searching for Nurses in Ontario - 500 results.
• Searching for Web Designers in Ontario - 11 results but only 9 of which were relevant.

Monster.ca

Owned by Monster Worldwide, one of the 20 most visited websites out of 100 million worldwide and the largest job search engine in the world; Monster.ca is busy beast that's keeping up with the times.

Robert Waghorn of marketing communications for Monster.ca, pointed out some of the portal's focus areas. "For job seekers, we've made the site more personal, more relevant, and more engaging - to ensure seekers have a myriad of reasons to come back to Monster. Similarly - and equally important - employers benefit from increased candidate engagement and activity, and improved reach and presentation of their jobs to the right seekers."

Waghorn adds, "it is now over 70 percent easier to upload a resume to Monster, and for members to apply for a job in as few as two clicks. Now, building a resume takes only four simple steps, not 30."

Some of the newer initiatives Monster.ca is rolling out include Monster Career Snapshots that allows users to access thousands of occupational profiles describing various roles, the skills required, the compensation and work/life balance seekers. The second feature coming to Canada is Monster Career Benchmarking. An assessment tool that helps candidates measure themselves against other individuals or jobs in their industry so they can compete more effectively for the positions they desire.

Monster.ca's search results are also some of the most dynamic and offer location, salary information, video and relevance options where applicable.

The results of our quick search, which used the text box on the top of the homepage, are as follows.

• Searching for Editors in Ontario - 9 results.
• Searching for Nurses in Ontario - 99 results.
• Searching for Web Designers in Ontario - 32 results but around 5 were not relevant.

Jobboom.ca

Based in Montreal and part of the Canoe.ca network, Jobboom wears its bilingualism proudly on its homepage where the first choice users have to make is choosing between French and English. The website shows that itis celebrating 10 years of experience and has around 2,600,000 users on a counter on the top of its page.

Other key features that are accessible from Jobboom's starting page are a by province drop-down search option as well as a "search jobs by industry" link system which will deliver the most recent job postings. The navigation is fast; the layout is efficient and gives users results within a few clicks.

Compared to other job search websites, Jobboom does clean and sparse well but this doesn't at all mean that its features are lacking. You can spend a lot of time in the Career Zone section browsing articles work-life balance, workplace issues and career planning.

Users also have the option of checking out eCareerFit, a career assessment and planning sub portal using indexes and evaluations to help determine an applicant's fit to specific jobs, This feature isn't free, interested users will spend between $30 to $40 for various assessments.

Jobboom also features a salary calculator powered by Salary Wizard Canada, a subsidiary of Salary.com that, depending on location and job description, can give you an estimate on what you should be earning in your current position.

The results of our quick search, which used the text box on the top of the page, are as follows.

• Searching for Editors in Ontario - nine results (although 6 were internal postings from Canoe.ca)
• Searching for Nurses in Ontario - nine results
• Searching for Web Designers in Ontario - one result

Strategize Your Job Search

Serious job seekers will probably benefit from making use of all four job search portals since this would cover more possibilities. Some job search services work better for specific careers by offering more search results, it is suggested to try them all and then tailor your job search strategy accordingly. The only investment is time, since all the services are currently free for job seekers.

Pre-preparing all your information like resumes and cover letters beforehand will save you a lot of time since all you would have to do is cut-copy-and-paste.

It is also a good idea to keep your information current, especially on your online resumes since employers are partial to updated information. Happy job hunting.