The next ìBig Ideaî in online recruitment?

This week sees the full-scale launch of Jopit (http://www.jopit.com), a new search engine for recruiters and jobseekers that promises to revolutionize the online recruitment marketplace.

Results from the beta-testing of Jopit are highly encouraging, generating rave reviews from candidates. As it gains popularity with jobseekers, it could become the next ìBig Ideaî that encourages a new wave of recruiters to embrace the power of the Internet for generating candidate shortlists.

To date, considerable investment has been channelled into developing dynamic careers sections on companiesí websites but their recruitment results have been disappointing. Jopit could fundamentally change this.

- A substantial increase in the number of online applications is expected -

Like most successful Internet concepts, the idea behind Jopit is remarkably simple. Jopitís search engine (dubbed a ìjob engineî) simultaneously searches of thousands of corporate websites and Internet job sites in just secondsñ and as an added bonus, the end result is a better set of job matches, too. Candidates are presented not only with the best jobs from the leading job boards, but also with all the jobs hidden away on companiesí own websites, jobs they might otherwise have overlooked.

Despite companiesí tendency to post many more roles on their websites than they advertise externally, company websites are currently candidatesí least-used source of new job opportunities (source: Top-Consultant.comís annual Recruitment Channel Survey, http://www.top-consultant.com/recruitment_report.asp), owing simply to the time it takes to research and browse through all the possible company careers pages out there.

The quality of individual job postings will be key to achieving top rankings on Jopit, so attractive job postings on corporate websites could become the most highly-ranked search results. The flood of free candidates that this will bring recruiters is likely to greatly enhance the ROI of developing corporate careers pages. Niche job-boards will also benefit from a traffic boost, where they have a high proportion of the relevant jobs for a particular search term.

According to Jopitís founders, by improving the search experience of job seekers Jopit will increase candidatesí success in finding appropriate jobs and so will boost the number of applications generated online. In other words, so long as careers sites continue to grow the number and quality of adverts on their job boards, they will benefit from a major new source of free traffic and job applications.

Overall, though, the most notable winner will be the job-seeker ñ who will save on hours of frustrating job searches and be able to focus more time on applications rather than simply tracking down appropriate roles.