News about the site upgrade…
Firstly, our thanks to all of you that have visited and commented about the relaunch over the past month.
So…Why bother with the blog?
Simple…its good to talk. We were keen to provide this facility so that users of Jobsgopublic can voice their experiences with each other, and most importantly give us here at JGP the opportunity to get feedback - in real time - from our valued community of jobseekers.
Err… why did we change something that was working perfectly well anyway?
Since we launched in 1999 this is the fifth time we’ve upgraded the Jobsgopublic software. Yes it’s a challenge (delivering a project of this magnitude typically is), but if we are to continue improving our service to you and the hundreds of employers that use the site, we needed to embrace new technologies and software engineering methods that will keep us ahead of the game for years to come. We’ve spent 18 months re-developing the site, and this is just the start of a series of improvements that you’ll notice over the coming months.
The story thus far…
As you can see from users comments there have been a few recurring themes focussing on a handful of (often frustrating!) issues. The headlines:
- Server issues: these seem to be happening at particularly busy periods and result in a page saying ‘we’ve had a wiring error’.
- This has been significantly improved, but we still get occasional occurrences. If you witness one – try again in a few minutes.
- This has been significantly improved, but we still get occasional occurrences. If you witness one – try again in a few minutes.
- No longer being able to search by date the job was posted (we used to offer this)
- We’re on the case with this too, and hope to get this reinstated over the next couple of weeks or so
No longer offering a multiple employer / regional search (we used to offer this too)This is a bit more complex, but rest assured will beback soon- UPDATE: This has now been rectified. The region search (i.e. ‘London’) is back!!!
- Not receiving forgotten password reminders
- This should now largely be resolved
- A lack of access to previously ’saved’ application forms
- We tried to give users plenty of advance warning about this and sent a number of emails to registered users to this effect. Unfortunately, a few users overlooked these mails, or didn’t receive them for various reasons – we’re sorry if you were affected by this.
- Last but by no means least, design: there has also been quite a few comments about the new look and feel and how our old design was better – especially with some people witnessing an ‘overlapping text ‘ issue in some browsers…
- You can’t please all the people all of the time I guess.. initial feedback pre-launch was positive, but we’ll continue to improve the asthetics and general usability of the site from hereonin.
What we’re doing about it…
We care about getting it right, so the team here at JGP were busy working away throughout the Christmas holiday and during weekends to make the above improvements to the site.Rest assured we’ll continue to work tirelessly until the snags have been resolved.Naturally we’ll keep you posted with developments as and when.
So that’s it for now. Once again, thanks for your ongoing feedback and support over the years and please keep the feedback coming (you can post a comment here) , with your help we can continue improving.
Wishing you a prosperous 2008.
Co-Founder, Jobsgopublic
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Hi,
Well done on a good website. I having been using it for last year or more. It’s good to see improvements such as the numbering of results pages as well as a way to give feedback!
I have a couple of ideas :-
1) the contrast between the highlighted job could be more noticeable
2) on other sites when returning to search results it goes back to the last job not just to the top of the page
Hope this is useful.
Brian.
Did a search from the home page for “Lancaster City Council” - got a display titled 6 out 6 vacancies for Lancaster City Council - below were 2 vacancies for Lancaster and 4 for Birmingham City Council!!
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your comment, the way that the search engine works is that it picks up the relevant search terms and searches for any entry that has ‘Lancaster’ and/or ‘City’ and/or ‘Council’. The right hand column (on the jobsgopublic search) indicates the relevance to the search term and as you will see, Birmingham only has 16% relevance as it is only picking up ‘City’ and/or ‘Council’.
It is searching for keywords within the text of the job description on our website, the more times the keyword appears, the higher the relevance in the search results.
If you were to search on any large search engine like Google, Yahoo or Ask you will see they use the same criteria with the most relevant searches appearing in your first few search pages.
I hope this helps to clarify your question, thanks again for your comment.
Haylee
Please please please can you delete my account?! I have already requested this in an earlier message but have received no response! I still can not log into the site to unsubscribe from receiving automatic Emails - I keep getting ‘your account is not yet active’. I no longer need (or wish) to use this webiste so I would be really grateful if you would stop clogging my inbox with Emails!
I can see no other way of contacting you other than via this horrid public ‘blog’.
Thanks.
Hi Holly,
Sorry you are having trouble with your account. I have put your request directly through to our support team who will delete your account first thing in the morning.
If you want to search again in the future you can activate a completely new account. Again, apologies for this issue, and thank you for responding via the blog as I can ensure these issues get resolved.
Haylee
Forgive me, but is it possible to communicate with you people any other way apart from this public forum?
I see no phone number, no contact form!
@ L Howard,
Thank you for your comment, we do have our contact details under ‘Disclaimer’ and ‘Privacy’ at the bottom of the page. However your post has highlighted the need to have this information available more clearly on the jobsgopublic website.
I will devise a page and liase with our development team to ensure this is easily accessible to all our job seekers.
Thanks for replying via the blog
Haylee
I find this new page harder to use.
If I make a selection of jobs and then click on one to see more details, when I click to go back to the list I am shut out and have to make my selections again. I much preferred the old search.
Hi Liz,
Thanks for your comment on our blog. In terms of going back to your specific search results, there is a direct link under Job Vacancy Details that allows you to “Return to search results”. Alternatively you can click on “next” or “previous” to scroll directly through your chosen search vacancy list. This link is also at the very bottom of all job vacancy pages.
I hope this makes it easier for you to search and scroll your chosen vacancies.
Thanks
Haylee
I cannot register or log in. I filled in the details and was sent a BLANK verification e mail. When I try to log in it asks me to check the e mail. I tried resend to see if the resent e mail will have something in it. The e mail will not resend. If I try and register again it says my e mail is registered……check for verification email….big circle and can’t get a job application in
Helen,
Sorry to hear that you are having a problem with the verification email. It’s possible that your email reader is not displaying the email correctly. Are you using Lotus Notes by any chance? I have seen issues with this mail reader before.
Please forward your blank email to support@jobsgopublic.com and we will look into this for you.
You can still apply for jobs even when you are not logged in or a member.
Cheers
Eben
I used to be able to search by advertiser as I know the particular companies / establishments locally I would be interested in. However this option seems to have been removed from the new site which is very frustrating and I can’t seem to find any way of doing this.
The site is much harder work than the old one!
@ Sarah,
Sorry to hear you are frustrated by the lack of ’search by advertiser’ feature. There are others that share your frustration and I believe we have addressed this feature omission in previous replies to user comments. Happily this feature will be re-introduced in an upcoming release over the next few weeks. I will post an article specifically about it once we have the feature ready.
Cheers,
Eben