More and more companies and job sites are turning to matching technology to create a symbiotic relationship between candidate and employer. Monster recently acquired Trovix for a cool $72 million back in July. Both Jobfox and Climber claim they have revolutionized the hiring process with this kind of technology.
With the recent death of itzbig, it’s now more important than ever that these companies roll out better technology that results in the most accurate match possible without losing job seekers due to lengthy and often frustrating profile sessions.
So who’s gonna survive?
My money just might be on Vitruva, a lesser-known semantic matching system that uses a proprietary artificial intelligence engine on top of a bi-directional fuzzy logic database in order to achieve a matching accuracy that is greater than 90 percent.
Vitruva, created by Jindrich Liska in 2006, doesn’t use key words when matching candidates to jobs. Instead, Liska said their system weeds out those irrelevant search results by using semantic search technology that pulls key attributes like work history and education from a resume to provide a more meaningful match.
Here are some screen shots of what the process looks like on the employer side:
Liska said their revenue is based on pay-per-performance, which allows employers to access the most qualified candidates for free and pay only for the highest ranking candidates. There are no posting or subscription fees. The service is free for job seekers, and Liska said the average amount of time candidates spend building their profile is 10 minutes, as opposed to the 40+ minutes users on other sites have complained about.
So how do they compare with competitors like RealMatch and Jobfox?
“We have about twice as many jobs as Jobfox,” Liska said. “In a side-by-side comparison using real-world job descriptions between Vitruva and Jobfox, the matching accuracy of Vitruva is greater than 90 percent, while Jobfox averages about 40 percent, meaning that Vitruva’s system reaches the same conclusion as an experienced recruiter in nine out of ten cases.”
Ironically, the same beautiful woman appears on both Vitruva and Trovix’s site. Perhaps Vitruva placed this “matching goddess” there for a bit of luck in the hopes that one day, several million dollars might just fall out of the sky and land in their lap, too.
Popularity: 14% [?]
September 25th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Jobfox’s Rob McGovern claims that his company is the “fastest growing” online recruiting board. It took me 45 minutes to fill out my profile and then had only 2.5 ’stars’ of compatibility. I have had about the same experience with Climber. After reading this post, I filled out my profile with Vitruva and am very impressed with my 80% matches which are very accurate. The matching is great! Keep it up.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
It is the same old chicken and the egg scenario. So-called matching technology w/o users is fruitless.
Itzbig did not fail because of its technology or because it took too long to build a profile. Jobfox will be the same story.
BTW When I did not see MTV as an employer, i bailed out of Vitruva’s easy to use sign up process.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:21 am
@Vanessa:
Did you actually tried to fill out a profile at Vitruva? The user experience is the worst I have ever encountered on a job matching site. That will be their undoing, unless they improve dramatically in that area.
And any site that flashes matching in the face of the user has missed the point anyway. Matching is about providing more appropriate jobs to candidates. That’s the central point. With the least effort possible from the candidate. The candidate shouldn’t be bothered by the technology behind it. Nor with the avoidable extra effort to create a profile. It’s about ease of use combined with a better result than current job boards.
Jobfox, Realmatch, itzBig, Trovix, and Vitruva all miss the mark dramatically. Walled gardens where you have to fill out your complete profile once again.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Matching site traffic according to Quantcast
Jobfox 623K
realmatch 284K
trovix 140K
Climber 89K
Itzbig 33K
vitruva 3K
Reaching that critcal mass is tough.
September 26th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Clearly itzbig didn’t reach that critical mass. There’s a traffic jam at Quantcast.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
A profile on Paidinterviews takes around 10 minutes to complete, they match you based on your ideal job and skills, plus you can name a signing bonus upfront, my Jobfox profile took me 45 minutes and I didn’t even finish, haven’t registered on the others yet.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
took me 10 minutes to fill out a profile on jobfox….I think they made the process easier or something
February 7th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I tried the Vitruva thing after they flooded indeed.com with hundreds of postings that forced you to go to the Vitruva site. After filling out their profile and then trying to get the matches, it did bring up an impressive looking screen though with little or no details about the positions. In order to see the details, you have to click on an icon. After seeing the details for that one job, there is no easy way back to the “matches” list so you have to go through the matching search (which can take more than a few seconds) all over again for each job you might want to see.
I think they must have hired a 10 year old to program their website.
Frankly after trying to do it their way and getting tremendously frustrated with little useful results, I quit. An email asking for help has gone unacknowledged and unanswered for a couple of days now.
My suggestion is save your time and stay far away!!
June 1st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Vitruva has been advertising a job I’d be interested in. I tried their process and had to just give up because it (a) wasn’t clear and (b) didn’t allow me to enter correct information (e.g. my prior employers weren’t listed). Since that first attempt, I’ve seen the same job (and same description) posted repeatedly. I can only think that either they are not so good at matches or its a scam job posting trying to draw in high end resumes. Either way, if the job is real, I wish they (the employer) would advertise through a means that I CAN respond to.
After seeing the site traffic above, I think I am going to try posting on jobfox and real match.