Site links grads to sought-after jobs

As any new graduate knows, finding a job is a full-time job in itself. Now a new Internet search engine hopes to make the job search less frustrating and more fruitful.
Kim Peters, the founder of legendary employment listings site Workopolis.com, is president and CEO of Eluta.ca, a site that aims to cut the fat in the job listings market by linking accurately and efficiently to those most sought-after jobs: Full-time positions with companies who hire candidates directly from the public, located in a specific area.
“We’re very much like Google, except for jobs. Traditional job sites only advertise jobs that people have paid to advertise. We cut out the middle man and drive the traffic through to the employer,” Peters said.
Eluta’s most recent feature is a New Grads link at the top of its search page to help recent graduates search a career directory based on their university degree and field of study to find employers looking for grads with exactly that knowledge. Users can search to find companies that hire people with your particular degree and read a wealth of information about the company, including possible jobs and starting salaries, or the search can be narrowed down to only show those exact jobs being offered that require a particular degree.
Peters says the need for on-line tools tailored to employment listings has grown out of the void left by the bigger search engines, due mostly to the difficulties involved in trying to catalogue a sea of information that doesn’t adhere to any particular standard.
“You would think that a search engine is a search engine, but because job information is very unstructured, traditional search engines struggle to list it effectively,” Peters said.
Peters says Eluta combines powerful searching algorithms with manual editing, as every single listing is read over by a trained employee to ensure it is a legitimate posting.
“There’s a real emphasis on quality. We’re focused on full-time jobs from direct employers because those are the hardest to find. Job postings themselves have really become a commodity and the paid posting is dying,” Peters said.
While similar types of search engines do exist on the web, most of them are U.S.-based so Eluta is hoping to position itself as the go-to site for the Canadian job market.
Eluta is not a job counselling site, however, and Peters is quick to point out that following up on a job listing — fixing up your resumé, writing a cover letter and making sure you fit the required qualifications — is still up to the candidate.
“Even though the Internet makes job searching so much easier than before, it still is work to find a job. There’s no shortcut — you still have to work hard to get hired,” Peters said.