11 January 2011

Seek, and you may not find...

| neanderthalsis
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As a passive job seeker (I like to know what is out there and what I’m worth elsewhere), I was hunting around on Seek to see what was available in my field. The Seek website in the quick search function asks for a location and gives the lists the options under major cities or regional areas. Canberra, for some reason, doesn’t rate a mention as a major city and the listing for the ACT is under regional areas. Those chosen locales regaled with Major City status are Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth Hobart, Darwin and the Gold Coast. Poor Canberra gets no mention despite having a population roughly that of Darwin and Hobart combined. Even looking at actual numbers of job listings, in the executive listings Canberra has the same number of listings as Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart combined and in the regular listings, we have more that Darwin, Hobart and the Gold Coast combined.

Petty rant I know, but it gets my goat to see the nations capital disregarded.

I’ve sent my rant to Seek as well.

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neanderthalsis2:02 pm 12 Jan 11

Well, the word from Seek is that the ommision of Canberra from the list of major cities was just a bug:

Dear Jobseeker,

Thanks for your email.

SEEK understands your frustration and are attending to the matter. ACT being listed in the regional category is a bug that appeared when we lunched SEEK new home. SEEKS IT team are doing their best to fix the situation.

Kind regards

Yeah petty rant but it gets my goat as well (must google where the hell that saying came from). Its’s worse when Canberra gets left of the list of Australia capital cities.

Kerryhemsley5:02 pm 11 Jan 11

The mayor of Gold Coast City Council thinks it is.

Is the Gold Coast even a city? I thought it was, well, a coast?

georgesgenitals4:50 pm 11 Jan 11

Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! It’s not fairrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Kerryhemsley4:48 pm 11 Jan 11

No Gold Coast has a population of over half a million (ABS). It has been a high growth area for a number of years.

I still don’t see what the issue is with Seek.

I’m with you on both counts, neanderthalsis. It is a petty rant, but you’re quite right. Seems odd, too, that they’ve included the Gold Coast, which is neither a capital nor a leading city and last I checked had a similar population to Canberra, but they’ve excluded Newcastle and Wollongong (both of which have larger populations than the Gold Coast, don’t they?).

Methinks Australians have a very skewed view of what constitutes majorness due to our very small number of mid-sized cities.

Look at Regional > ACT. If that doesn’t suit you, I’d like to know what is the effective difference between Canberra and ACT in a job search sense.

Since Canberra is effectively ACT, what’s stopping you from looking at “Regional > ACT”?

I don’t blame Seek for not bothering to double-up the major category.

It’s the same as when Federal Politicians make a decision on behalf of Australia that the Sydney media doesn’t like and when they report it, they say “Canberra has decided too,” or “Canberra is behind”.

It’s not the general population making the decision, but we cop the blame. Who cares anyway, the less outsiders know how great the jobs market here is the better for us.

Kerryhemsley1:18 pm 11 Jan 11

Jobs are still there. Why worry about it?

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