Tom Raftery's Musings

I have been saying for some time that Irish recruitment companies should be offering RSS feeds of searches on their sites (this would enable job seekers to do a search on the recruitment co.’s site and have constantly updating search results delivered to them via RSS until their ideal job pops up). IrishDev were the first to step up to the plate.

I first approached Bernard Tyers (sysadmin of Irishjobs.ie) about the possibility of Irishjobs.ie rolling out RSS feeds over a year ago and it has taken some time but today Irishjobs.ie unveiled their RSS enabled job search engine. I’m glad I was able to help with the initial idea and the formulation of the strategy behind this development.

A couple of comments about the final result – the link to the RSS feed (the orange RSS button on the top right) needs to be brought closer to the results (and labeled something other than RSS). Right now, it is not obvious that the RSS button is in any way linked to the search results and very few people know what RSS is yet.

Also, there needs to be an advanced search. I know there is a link to an advanced search but this leads me to essentially the same search as the basic one. How do I search for a job title “Chief Blogging Officer” based in Cork, paying over €70,000 p.a. (or chief bottle washer, based in Terminfeckin, paying over €180,000)? With an RSS enabled search I can perform unlikely but desirable job searches like this and site back and let the jobs come to me – even if it takes 12 or 18 months.

Damien and Bernie have also posted about this.