Online job search and career specialist Glassdoor has launched Job Explorer, a mapping tool to help match workers with their skill sets on a nationwide basis.
Comprised of a job map and opportunity scale, as well as a career-progression tool, Job Explorer offers several ways to search for jobs, using an interactive U.S. map so job seekers can see the level of job opportunities where they live, or where they might be willing to commute or move.
Regions with the highest job opportunities are determined by density of relevant job listings, population and the unemployment rate in each area.
Job seekers will also have access to reviews about companies of interest from current and former employees, as well as the ability to filter by company rating, and type of job—be it full time, part time or a contract position.
A color-coded map makes it possible to distinguish the locations with the greatest opportunities—the darker the highlighted region on the map, the greater the opportunity to find work.
The job map also allows users searching for jobs to find open positions in their fields in their hometowns, nearby communities or any region across the country by moving the mouse over the interactive map.
“Job Explorer can also help IT workers determine where in the U.S. there are IT jobs as well as where there are jobs for their partners,” Samantha Zupan, a Glassdoor spokeswoman, said. “For example, it lets you do two job searches at the same time and highlights where in the U.S. both jobs are more widely available.”
The career progression tool provides customized suggestions on alternate career paths. For example, if someone searches for a warehouse worker job, the progression tool suggests other jobs like security officer in which 11 percent of warehouse workers transition to a security office role and earn an average annual base salary of $28,290.
To help determine alternate jobs, Glassdoor bases suggestions on the analysis of millions of resumes to see what other people with similar skills and experience have gone on to do.
The Glassdoor team architected the prototype for the tool during a hackathon and then incorporated feedback from job seekers and partners, which included sharing the early beta in a private brainstorming event at the White House last month. The current version also takes into account job openings as well as other key factors like population and the unemployment rate on a regional basis.
“The interface is designed to be very user friendly—we want to make the job search process as easy and informative as possible,” Zupan said. “Within just a click or two, job seekers can see where there is the greatest job opportunity, what companies are hiring and what a person is likely to earn when it comes to salary.”
Zupan also noted the tool is available in a mobile version for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems.
Knowing where the jobs are is key.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a third of the 9.5 million unemployed Americans are classified as long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks or more). Yet, the same agency reports 4.6 million job openings in the United States as of May 2014.
