A few months back I read an article on how to build the ultimate iGoogle job finding dashboard. I found this article to be extremely helpful, but geared more towards people in the United States. After a recent move I’m currently in between jobs and I’ve created an iGoogle dashboard that completely simplifies searching for jobs online. I use a similar method of grabbing feeds to get updated on my favorite news and tech sites, but why not do it for job listings too?
The great thing about sites like Kijiji, craig’s list, monster, etc is that they all have RSS feeds for any search results.
Here’s a list of sites that I use to populate my iGoogle job dashboard, all of which offer RSS feeds of specific searches and categories. Feel free to add your own. Note: these are all catered to people in Canada.
- Kijiji
- Monster
- Craig’s List
- Workopolis
- Wow Jobs
- Career Builder (This one’s a bit tricky for Canadians, I’ll explain later)
Building the dashboard
The guide on how to build the ultimate iGoogle job finding dashboard has most of the specifics you will need to actually create the new tab and sign up for a Google account if need be, this article is more about getting the right feeds for your interests.
Adding The Feeds
Most of the sites offer their feeds in plain sight when you do a search or browse a category. Adding the feeds to iGoogle is easy once you have the link to the feed. Simply click on the “Add Stuff” link on iGoogle, then in the menu on the left there is a “Add feed or gadget link”. Click on that, paste the URL for the feed, and your set!
Finding the Right Feeds
Obviously you are going to want to use feeds that target the area you’re searching for a job in, and also the types of jobs you are interested in. For most of the sites it’s a pretty straight forward process. Go to one of the sites listed above, type in a search for the type of job you are looking for, then on the search results page click on the RSS feed icon and copy the url. Paste the URL into iGoogle. Here’s a quick example of doing it on Kijiji.ca.
- Go to kijiji.ca, select your location, click on a category. You can also do a keyword search if you prefer that method.
- Click on the RSS feed link towards the bottom of the page of results.
- Lastly, copy the URL of the feed, and then paste it into the “Add a gadget” section of iGoogle.
- Rinse, wash, repeat for the other sites!
Getting a feed out of Career Builder
On the Canadian Career Builder site, there is no link to an RSS feed in the results (unless my eyes are deceiving me). So, I had to find a bit of a work around to get that one to work. The US site has an RSS page where you can get feeds. If you go to this page and type in a search, or select a category you will received a feed. However, that feed will be for somewhere in the United States most likely. In order to get Canadian results you have to manipulate the URL a bit. Here is the feed URL for the Information Technology category:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/RTQ/rss20.aspx?rssid=RSS_PD&num=25&geoip=false&ddcompany=false&ddtitle=false&cat=JN008
Now, to make that give us Canadian results we can add the following parameters to the url:
&country=CA&city=Edmonton (put in whatever city you want here)
Which gives the full URL to the feed as
http://www.careerbuilder.com/RTQ/rss20.aspx?rssid=RSS_PD&Country=CA&city=Edmonton&num=25&geoip=false&ddcompany=false&ddtitle=false&cat=JN008
Then paste that URL into iGoogle.
Finishing up
Once you have your feeds all added you can arrange them however you see fit, and adjust the number of postings each one shows. Here is what mine looks like:
Happy Hunting!
Discussion
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