Finally I managed to get to listen to one of Jason’s teleconferences, but only just and on the third attempt. What with the differences in the time zones, and not being able to make it to the UK when Jason was over last, this post/review has been a long time overdue and nearly didn’t happen at all.

I think it was around 12 months ago when Jobster was first looking to break into the UK market and I was almost tempted to join them at that time. Luckily I didn’t, as soon after Jason made his famous retreat back to core values, always a wise management decision, although he was given a hard time when making it so public.

Since then Jobster has been more focused, and as a result they have evolved their product, which now gives a much better service to candidates and clients using technology and social networking.

This change is most obvious on your profile page, as you are fed with much more relevant information, rather than just a few tags and comments from other members about their company. The site is much more informative with many ways to promote you or your organisations impact. I particularly like the the fact that relevant vacancies are now dropped on to your profile, just to tempt you to visit.

Like many I have been watching Jobster’s growth and until now have not paid too much attention, as it was not aimed at the UK market. So with their announcement a couple of weeks back of their launch on to our shores and their recent application for Facebook, I thought I would take a closer look.

I have to admit I have not got to grips with Facebook, maybe that’s because I am over 40, none the less I have an account and proceeded to set up the Jobster application, which I am pleased to say was very easy and seamless. I also took its recommendation to upload ones cv, which is where Jobster falls down. You expect after attaching the cv the boxes on your profile are populated automatically, as in Linkedin. This doesn’t happen and what’s worse you expect the cv to be searchable, but it isn’t, which is very poor.

Although I do like the idea that ideal vacancies appear next to your profile, its a shame that they are 1,000’s of miles away! So when it says improve your profile by putting on a location and you cannot, it’s not a good sign for a company that looking to takeover the UK. It cannot be that complicated to have the regions set at the start, surely Jason.

Next I thought I would do some searching, and suddenly I thought I had found a superb free recruiting resource, as I was able to search for recruiters who may be interested in a role and came up with over 700 candidates, mostly American but that was to be expected, even yours truly appeared (me).

Then it all goes horribly wrong as I start to dig deeper, when I search for candidates who are tagged “recruiter and United Kingdom”, the result was 15 and as far as I could tell nearly all were not from the UK, and what’s worse I didn’t even come up in the second round “a recruiter and located in the United Kingdom!” What else can I say.

So in the end I really wanted to write a positive review for Jason and Jobster, but when you take away the hype Jobster is hugely lacking, certainly for the UK. I really wanted them to do well, as I believe their goals are good for all clients and candidates and they take recruitment from the Jobboards to the next level.

I cannot think of anything better when it comes to looking for your next career move, and to be able to see who you know has worked for the company and can ask them questions and get honest answers about the organisation. I can see users of Facebook really benefiting from this application, and anything that makes it easier for clients to tap into this resource has a huge advantage. But unfortunately there are fundamental flaws that raise questions and impacts on Jobster’s paid applications for clients in the UK.

So in the end I hope Jason sees my critique, as more of support and exposing areas of weakness that he and his team can improve upon. And if Jason or others want to add to this, I am more than happy to accept comments too.