General Tips For Modifying Your Job Agents

Job agents (a.k.a. Job Alerts) are automated search engines that directly email you job matches from the top job boards based on search criteria set. They allow you to spend 5-10 minutes scanning through one email every day, instead of spending hours searching the top boards. Your Real Time Posting Report will show “+ job agent” next to the boards where we created an agent for you.

Job agents are designed to bring to your attention the jobs that best match your criteria from a given job board, but will include jobs that partially and then slightly match your criteria as well. How much you see of the “partial” and “slightly” depends on how much you tighten your agents. If you can see anywhere from 30-50% quality matches, you have a valuable tool working for you.

The amount of matches you see depends on how common the job is you’re looking for, as well as how many exist in your geographical choices. It’s possible you may not see many matches simply because there aren’t many available in your area or listed on the career sites. If you’re not seeing enough matches, consider making your agent settings “broader” in range to see if anything interesting pops up. Please keep these suggestions below in mind:

• Focus on “Desired Titles” and Geographical Preferences. While every job agent functions differently, a consistent rule of thumb is that “Desired Titles” and Geographical preferences will dictate the results more than the other search options, so focus on these areas first when fine tuning your agents. When you have your matches as good as they’re going to get, be sure to save your settings!
• List SPECIFIC titles in your agents and use as many as apply. The "Desired Title" entry field can handle multiple titles. Put in as many as you see fit! A CFO at one company may be titled a Finance Manager at another, depending on company size; the more applicable titles that you list, the more job matches you will receive.
• Be Specific on each title you enter. DO NOT simply put “Vice President” or “Manager” or “G.M.” by itself. Being that vague will cause you to receive Vice President or Manager or G.M. positions in every industry, regardless of your background. Instead, put more specific titles such as “Sales Manager”, “Vice President of Technology”, “Director of Human Resources”, etc.
• List as many variations of a title as possible!!! For example, if you want a Director position in Human Resources you need to use as many titles as you can think of: “Director of Human Resources”, “Director of H.R”, “H.R. Director”, “Human Resources Director”, etc. Some companies list jobs with title abbreviations, some do not. The search engine will only search based on the exact words you typed into your criteria. In order to see all of what is on a board, you need to account for ALL ways your position(s) could be titled.

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