Rating:
The Jobster Facebook Application combines career changes with networking on Facebook. When I first added it to my profile, the initial screen was prompting me to do something that I thought was weird.

As you can see in the first screenshot below, it asks “What companies would you like to connect with?”

And I, in my finite wisdom said, well, I want to connect with ALL companies. Isn’t that what people who are searching for jobs do these days? Not my smartest hour. But luckily for me, the application lets me make up for it later, which we’ll come back to later. For now, I’ll take you a little further along on my journey.

The next question was, “What types of jobs can they contact you about?”

There was space to then add keywords, locations, and a space for my email address in case I wanted updates. I opted to cancel and continue on to my “job search”.

It was the next page that helped Jobster “click” for me. Like any job search, the search box wanted to know what kind of job I was searching for and where. But just below that, the three jobs I had listed in my Facebook profile showed up.

I’ll warn you now. This will look a bit comical in the screen shots, as I listed positions I have recently held as “Help Desk Slave”, and Owner , so if you’re being at all tongue in cheek about employment in your profile, you’ll want to fix that to help the Jobster app serve you better.

The really sexy part came next.

Just under the jobs listings, Jobster goes in and finds what your friends have listed in their Career section, if it’s public. Jobster seems to recognize what many people discount when searching for a job, a referral or a freelance gig - it’s who you know as much as it is what you know.

So it provides a quick and easy way for you to connect with your friends about past employers they’ve had. You can also join networks of companies you’re interested in - though that takes you out of the app and into Jobster’s site.

It was soon after this that I ran into a snag. I was curious to see how many “Help Desk Slave” jobs there were in Fort Washington, MD, as the auto search was under the heading “Jobs Found For You”. For a split-second, I thought about making an exception in my rule to be the person hiring people for jobs, and not looking for one, that I made back in 2004.

Any company with a listing for Help Desk Slave was likely to have enough of a sense of humor for it to be worth it, at least for a few minutes.

But alas, it is no longer my destiny to be chained to a computer help desk, asking my beloved callers to stop reading me the entire screen of warnings and just press next, for goodness’ sake before I choke the ever-living…

Sorry. Flashback.
Anyway, upon clicking the link, I came to find there were no results for only one of the four searches. Not a big deal, but Jobster should change that heading to “Auto-search jobs you’ve had in your area” or something of that ilk.

At that point I went back to the initial screen to see if I’d missed anything. Indeed I had. There was a link that said “Join Talent Networks.” That link took me back to the first page I saw when I added the application. So my opportunity to connect was not lost forever when I decided to go onwards to the job search. I love it when apps take user ignorance into account.

My Jobster journey was mostly over at this point - until I saw the box on my page, telling guests to ask me about my experiences at the companies I had worked with in the past. Overall, I’d give Jobster four stars based on that experience, for design, utility and ease of use.

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