On the Prowl: Jibe’s New Job Board Makes Job Hunting Easier
Searching for a job is tedious, anxiety ridden and only sometimes rewarding. Most times I do not even know where to start. That’s when I head over to the job boards. Besides looking for a job board that is easy to use, we all want one that enables the most access in one place. Nothing is worse than spending hours and hours of our time browsing through job listings and researching the company making sure its not a spam ad. Been there, done that, no thanks!
Some job distribution boards offer either a connection to your LinkedIn or Facebook account. This is an advantage, we spend time nurturing our network of connections, so why do you only get to use only one of the many social networks that you are apart of? Welcome to Jibe! Jibe is not your ordinary job board. Not only does it enable you to connect with both Facebook and LinkedIn but it shows you which companies that your friends work for are hiring. This is a great way to actually utilize your network and this increases your chances of finding a great job.
This sounded great! So I decided to see it in action for myself. When you first reach Jibe.com it seems basic and easy to use. Some of the high profile companies that they list are right there to entice you to want to join. The sign up process was easy and I figured I was well on my way. When applying for jobs through Jibe its great that I do not have to fill out a profile more than once and you do not get redirected to another site. Awesome! Then I noticed that next to my sign in name were the amount of credits that I had. After clicking on it I had discovered that when you apply for a job on Jibe it costs you credits of varying amounts (they give you 200 to start). Okay, so what do you when your credits run out? You can earn more by inviting friends (when they join, you get even more credits), sharing a job posting, or you can simply purchase them. By the way, the cost of credits per a job application is 50 to 200 credits.
Now, no one really wants to pay to apply for a job and be able to only apply a limited amount of times due to a credit system. Does anyone really want to do any extra work after applying just to attain more credits? Also, after scrolling through Jibe’s listing there is a limited amount of companies that you can apply to. This could be a way of ensuring quality jobs from great companies (and not those companies that spam every free job board out there) but yet people still want diversity in their job hunt. Some other downfalls are, depending on your friends’ privacy settings, Jibe might not even be able to access their work history leaving you without the connection.
With all that said, Jibe’s concept of linking multiple social networks and showing which companies your friends work for that are hiring is a forward thinking idea. Its good to have friends in high places, right? The credit system is a turn-off though. Although, I do think they have a great thing going, why limit the usage with the credits? Also, by adding more companies to their network (there are more then 30 great companies out there that are hiring!) it gives people more opportunities to become hired. If they get rid of the credit system Jibe could really take off and be ahead of the game.
