Following the beta launch of its location-based search engine for jobs at the beginning of July (recruiter.co.uk, 1 July), Zubed Geospatial has added the ability to search for agency jobs as well as employer vacancies.

The website uses a semantic search engine [interprets results based on context and meaning, basically to understand written language] to interrogate company and agency websites to find any advertised jobs.

Ian Haynes, chief executive at Zubed Geospatial, told Recruiter that the search technology had been three years in the making and was originally developed for an interim business to semantically search CVs. “The semantic searching allows us to really understand who the person on the CV is,” he said. “With the market changing to a client-driven one, we looked at whether the software we’d built to read a CV could be re-engineered to read a job ad.”

A jobseeker inputs their postcode and other search terms, and the site returns a map with job vacancies marked on it. Clicking one of these indicators brings up the job vacancy with further details. The service is free and agencies who want to make their jobs more prominent can buy context-sensitive advertising on panels on the site or use animated icons on the map.

Haynes said that the company also plans to launch an end-to-end recruitment system based on the technology later this year. Features will include a heatmap, effectively showing companies an “instant 40,000ft view” of their resource around the UK, he said. Future developments on Zubedjobs.com will include a job swap feature that will, for example, help an individual find a similar job abroad; volunteering and training opportunities will also be indexed.

Giles Guest, director of Enhance Media which publishes the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey, said that more visual and interactive approaches are appearing in the online recruitment world. “The future of online recruitment holds further interesting visual developments including tagging clouds and 3-D image-based views of skills and industries.”

www.zubedjobs.com