It has been said that the “journey is better than the inn.” Cervantes, however, isn’t my mortgage lender nor landlord.

Just like investors want to see some kind of numeric return, so do job hunters. What’ll really turn on candidates is to see actual numbers and statistics published that say how many positions were filled through ads on the different job boards and search engines, vertical, horizontal or diagonal.

Speaking of getting horizontal, it’s still amazing to note that in this age where everybody allegedly has more access to everybody through blogs, emails, cell phones, etc. the way many still land their positions is through the “hidden job market.” I’ve heard estimates range from 60% to 85% of jobs still get filled that way. Can job search engines pierce that? Job hunters, especially enthusiastic motivated ones who are also Internet savvy would like to know.

Improving & diversifying our job crawls and indexing is obviously an ongoing & primary effort. However, in addition to having millions of jobs and thousands of data sources and fresh/recent data, we’re pretty sure most people want a great user experience that goes much further than where we’re at today.

So while i may agree with your observations, i don’t necessarily agree these are the *most* important areas to be focused on.

Sometimes people look at search as the hammer for every nail. Search is a useful tool, however content & applications count for a lot too.

another way to say that: sometimes a pretty face is a lot more interesting than a thousand words.

(keep watching joel… the game has only just begun ;)

- dave mc
Watch

Paul
http://www.indeed.com