Salary is one of the most important criteria when hunting for a job. Unfortunately, finding compensation information amid the countless job postings online can be a daunting task, and few employment sites have done anything to make this easier.
To remedy this problem, leading job-aggregator Indeed has released a unique feature that will allow users to narrow their job search results by salary. Users can now choose to eliminate jobs below a certain salary level, or they can browse jobs that have been grouped by income bracket.
Because most companies do not include explicit salary information in their job offerings, Indeed relies on an algorithm to determine the compensation for many of their posts. The system takes data from the 20% of job postings that do include this information, and uses a number of different details to infer salaries for the remaining positions.
In practice the system doesn’t seem particularly helpful for finding a job with a specific salary, as there isn’t any way to confirm if a job posting has been classified correctly. This could easily lead to headaches as prospective job applicants apply for positions under false pretenses. That said, the filter seems good for eliminating jobs that are obviously out of the desired range, which helps make the process considerably less time consuming. Along with a little common sense, the new search system seems like it could be helpful for job-seekers.
Indeed’s CEO Paul Forster says that the site receives over 1M new job postings per week, with 7M unique visitors each month. These traffic levels make it one of the web’s leading comprehensive job search tools. Competitors include SimplyHired, HotJobs and Monster.
