Review: Jobserve (Verdict: 6 out of 10) This review of Jobserve was conducted as a mystery shopper experience. We approached the site with a "hypothetical" vacancy, an admin/office manager in a financial services firm in North London on a salary of between £22K and £26K. The job site did not know that this was a review call. Go to Jobserve site profile.  Reviewed: October 2007.

The Jobserve website

Jobserve is a well-established UK job site. Traditionally, it was said to be strongest at IT roles, and still has good coverage in that area, but over the last number of years it has broadened its job inventory and now makes a good case for being a broad generalist job site.

The site is straightforward and easy-to-use. A recent update has added some rather nifty search functionality for candidates. On the day of this review there were over 40,000 jobs on the site, though how many of these were from employers we were unable to establish.

How Jobserve works

Jobserve offers a full account managed service to advertisers though, it must be said, that most of the advertising process seems to be automated via an online account. Jobs can be posted and edited as required. Each job is advertised for a one-week period, and if the job runs longer than that then it can be “refreshed.”

Refreshing the job will have no impact on the position of the job on the site (unless candidates search according to posting date) but refreshing the job will send it out on the daily email to matching candidates. I asked about screening/filtering questions (to reduce the number of unsuitable applicants) but the account manager was unclear as to whether there was a screening option available as yet. Media packs we found did indicate that there is a candidate screening functionality.

Jobserve Products & Services

There were two products suggested for my job. The first was what the account manager called the "Credit Week:" one week's worth of advertising on Jobserve costing £100. If I bought 5 advertising weeks the price came down to £90 per week.

A far better product for my one-off job ad, however, was the second offering called “Advantage.” This was a four-week fully-branded 3000-character job ad which also came with 60 CV downloads and cost just £200. Via the account management system, I could make changes to my job. Indeed, the account manager said that if I made changes to my job every day, I could ensure that my job was emailed out every day.

Jobserve user statistics and site demographics

When I asked about monthly unique users the account manager said that they didn't really record or quote them. This response surprised me as Jobserve was ABCe audited in October of 2006 (a healthy 571,240 unique users, actually.)

When I asked about how many unique users there might be for my job, the account manager again couldn't help me. This is unfortunate as Jobserve participated in the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey, a survey of job sites which captures exactly this kind of information (according to NORAS approximately 8% of Jobserve users fall into the admin/secretarial role —again a healthy figure.) Why the account manager wouldn't give me this information is something of a mystery, and quite disappointing.

On the other hand, the account manager did say that there were about 13,000 CVs that were tagged as office jobs for me to search and that there were 215 London office jobs currently being advertised. When I asked about potential response, the account manager was again rather cagey and left me with no idea as to what would be a good response for my ad.

Jobserve — the Pros and Cons

The Pros: The "Advantage" product is an ideal product for the one-off job ad. The cost of advertising is about what you would expect to pay and the free CV search bolt-on is a nice touch —especially for a job role like our administrator/office manager.

The Cons: The cageyness of the account manager in giving me statistics did nothing but plant doubts in my head. Letting an advertiser know what to expect from their advertising should be a basic. Jobserve has reasonably good traffic, and surely the account manager should be familiar with that fact. Also, the fact that the account manager didn't know whether the site provided a candidate screening service was disappointing. Knowing your product is Sales101. 

Overall Verdict: 6 out of 10.

Jobserve is a nice site with reasonable traffic and a nice product. We scored this job site at a low 6 out of 10 because of the poor knowledge of the account manager. Both the cageyness about the statistics and the lack of knowledge about the screening was disappointing from such a well-established recruitment web site.

That being said, the account manager did say that talking to small clients like me was not his particular area. Perhaps, a different account manager might have been able to answer these questions confidently. A final nice touch was that the follow up email arrived just as I put the phone down. Go to Jobserve site profile.

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