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Job portals

 

Job portals have become self-service instruments for citizens of all social-demographic characteristics. Online job vacancies form a large and varied source of data on skills demanded by employers. Progress in web crawling techniques and machine learning transformed this vast source of web data (Big data) into a new source of labour market information to generate fine-grained and almost real-time skills analysis.

Online job portals have spread in most countries. Features that distinguish effective job portals for users include:

  • Convenient features such as filter by date, mobile app compatibility and daily email alerts. 94% of smartphone owners use their phone to surf job boards.
  • Number and quality of listings
  • Fresh, relevant search results
  • Easy-to-use interfaces
  • Effective search algorithms
  • Advanced filtering
  • Improved platform

In its landscaping of European online job portals, Cedefop (2018a) synthesised national experts’ assessments of two main questions:

  • What drives the spread of the online job market?
  • What skills-related information can be retrieved from online job vacancies?

Question

First driver (higher number of countries)

Second driver

What drives the spread of the online job market?

Technological transformation / digitalisation (widespread use of Internet, mobile devices; changing nature of jobs’ and skills’ needs across occupations)

Economic growth (web offers wider job matching possibilities in context of skills shortages)

 

The same analysis found that online job vacancies contain rich (plenty) information on soft and transversal skills (such as communication, flexibility), as well as on job specific skills (such as programming languages) in most EU countries. A few countries thought assessed as poor (hardly any information) the skills-related information provided by employers in vacancy advertisements. It is likely that in these countries it is sufficient to advertise the job title, or holding a formal qualification is the key requirement to get the job.

In ETF PCs the spread of online job vacancy (OJV) websites has been dynamic. Findings from ETF analysis of OJV websites in Tunisia and Morocco shed light on this phenomenon and the quality of these portals as data sources for labour market information. This analysis screened and ranked 16 online job portals in Tunisia and 15 in Morocco. The follow-up phase to build a system for analysis of data from OJVs is scheduled for 2020 in Tunisia, and in another ETF partner country.

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