US & Canadian teens job site review: GrooveJob.com

[Pauloz]

If you've been having trouble finding sites that cater for teens, it's because there are hardly any around. It seems to be the Lost Demographic, in the employment industry.

Having spent years trying to help our teen members find jobs, I've searched around the world, and the best description of teen job search capabilities is "pitiful", or "non-existent". Nobody, apparently, wants to know about teen jobs.

So GrooveJob.com came as a bit of a surprise. http://www.groovejob.com/

If you're a teen, under or over 18, you might find this an eye opener, to see what's possible. This is a specialist US/Canadian site, and the pity of it is that there aren't sites like this elsewhere. There's definitely a market in the UK, Australia and Europe.

For the US and Canadian members, however, GrooveJob.com might be just what you need. This site is designed for both teens and employers, another nice change from the "Find the site, then try and find the job ad despite the search engine" approach.

Job Searches

This site deserves a bit of attention for that reason. For one thing, the search engine, which for once is located on the front page, not lost somewhere in the site, actually works.

You type in "New York" as your home city, then select New York as the state. Hit "Continue" and you get a page full of advertisers.

The good news is you hit the advertisers, and go straight to the job ads! I was quite stunned. I was expecting to be sent to a basic landing page, and have to wade through the ads from scratch.

Just to try a tough case, I picked "Bloomberg," the big NY financial news site, as the advertiser. This is a huge, prestigious employer, and if you have "Bloomberg" on your CV or resume, you get a lot of respect in the industry. They can and do pick the best, and these are real career maker jobs.

The very top job ad was "Entry Level Financial Training Program." It has a salary logo ($) and the age bracket (18+). In finance, that's the equivalent of finding gold for people trying to get into the industry.

I checked out the job ad, and sure enough, it's a start-from-scratch position.

Registration

At the bottom of the ad was a login. Obviously, you have to join GrooveJob.com to apply. This is the signup page link:

http://www.groovejob.com/jobseeker/account/new/

There are seven steps in the registration process, all pretty basic. Not much of a hardship when you're getting direct access to job ads, and not having to flounder around with search engines for hours.

Membership

GrooveJob.com has a "Membership Benefits" page which is also worth a look, particularly if you're finding the US job market an acquired taste lately.

The synopsis of benefits is:

Apply Directly

You can apply directly from GrooveJob.com, which is a lot simpler and a lot less traumatic than the usual ultra-bureaucratic ad > employment agency > employer approach. That's how a lot of applications get lost in the snowstorm, and you don't have to wind up with a screen full of windows, either.

Job Alerts

You can get job alerts from GrooveJob.com, too. Sites like Monster.com have these alerts, and if you've ever used them, you'll know that you need to keep your searches simple but effective. Any job alert needs to be fine tuned, to filter out the stuff you don't want. The advantage in this case is that you and get the alert and make the application on the same site. No fuss.

Resume Builder

There's also a five step Resume Builder. That is particularly useful for organizing your CV or resume into some sort of shape, and having it available when you're making your applications. The One Stop Shop idea is probably the best and simplest approach with these things.

Resource Center

So far, so good, in my opinion, as far as GrooveJob.com's services. By this time, wandering through the site, I'd decided to check it out thoroughly, so the next stop was the Resource Center page.

This turns out to be a series of advisories, all of which are well worth a look, if you're in your very first stages of job hunting. It's got all the basics, the sort of stuff you may or may not be told in any job training classes. We've found on CV Tips that some teens get little or no useful information about basic job hunting, let alone interviews, or even presentation.

This is the material you need, if you've been getting lost in the job market. It's simple, it's free, and it's all about things you do need to know.

Student Resources

There are also student resources, like finding a student loan, and one link leads direct to a calculator from Simple Tuition.com :
http://www.simpletuition.com/landing...T.mc_id=141203

There's a Financial Aid link, http://www.groovejob.com/resources/s...ege/financial/ with some advice and links to the FAFSA application page, (which GrooveJob.com rightly tells you to read through and check out first), and a link to Find A Student Loan, which requires you to provide some info to access it.

I have to say that after years of looking at truly dismal, utterly ineffective job sites, most of which have nothing even vaguely useful for teens, GrooveJob.com came as a pleasant surprise.

I'm as sick of plowing through hours of useless, badly constructed, disorganized, searches as any teen would have to be. Just trying to find basics, to answer Forum questions or even point someone at something worth considering, can take ages.

CV Tips can't endorse products or services. But as a personal opinion, I have to say that if you want a look at how the teen job market should be approached, GrooveJob.com is definitely the benchmark. It's efficient, it's clear, it's quick (this site loads pretty fast, unusual for a job site), and you can find what you want, with a click or so.

I'd be interested to hear any feedback from our members on this site. What does it need, in your opinion? Anything missing? Or would you like to see the whole idea expanded?