Interview with Jobalot’s Kirsteen Lankford

Wed, Feb 28, 2007

I tend to put vertical job search engines into two primary categories: Islands and peninsulas. Simply Hired is an island, for example, while Flipdog is a peninsula, existing in a supportive role to Monster Worldwide.

In the case of Jobalot, an arm of The Employment Guide, you have a clear example of a peninsula, right? Well, maybe not.

I sat down with Jobalot’s Kirsteen Lankford last week to find out more:

(5 mins.)

This post was written by:

Joel Cheesman - who has written 1261 posts on Cheezhead.

One of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world. Accomplishments include being named Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog and Best Recruiting Blog. Joel's been featured in Fast Company magazine, BusinessWeek Magazine, Resumes for Dummies, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and more. Plug into Joel via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube or Flickr.

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2 Comments For This Post

Maneck Says:
February 28th, 2007 at 7:21 am

Joel it’s interesting that you would call Flipdog a vertical search engine at all, that may have been true prior to their acqusition by Monster when they were aggregating some third party job content but now, (and correct me if I’m wrong ) they are nothing more than a glorified “search box” for jobs on monster.com, doe that qualify them as a vertical job search engine ?

Eric Caron Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 10:18 am

I would love to know what Kirsteen feels Jobalot offers that nobody else does. I see a lot of features that certainly help make the Employment Guide shareholders happy, but what does it bring to the table that helps recruiters and jobseekers?

Both the site and the interview lean too much towards “we’re doing what the others are doing.” I’ve talked to a lot of wonderful people at Jobalot, and know there’s a lot of potential there, but as a recruiter I don’t want to waste my time on YAJSE (yet another job search engine - can we make that a standard acronym) that won’t add value to my content (which I have to pay Jobalot to list each listing).

(Apologies for arriving to the party late, I’ve been on vacation and feels like this topic isn’t past its prime yet.)

Maneck Says:
February 28th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Joel it’s interesting that you would call Flipdog a vertical search engine at all, that may have been true prior to their acqusition by Monster when they were aggregating some third party job content but now, (and correct me if I’m wrong ) they are nothing more than a glorified “search box” for jobs on monster.com, doe that qualify them as a vertical job search engine ?
Eric Caron Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 10:18 am
I would love to know what Kirsteen feels Jobalot offers that nobody else does. I see a lot of features that certainly help make the Employment Guide shareholders happy, but what does it bring to the table that helps recruiters and jobseekers?

Both the site and the interview lean too much towards “we’re doing what the others are doing.” I’ve talked to a lot of wonderful people at Jobalot, and know there’s a lot of potential there, but as a recruiter I don’t want to waste my time on YAJSE (yet another job search engine - can we make that a standard acronym) that won’t add value to my content (which I have to pay Jobalot to list each listing).

(Apologies for arriving to the party late, I’ve been on vacation and feels like this topic isn’t past its prime yet.)

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