I recently made the transition from freelancing and consulting to full-time employee, taking a marketing communications position with Prudential Northwest Properties, here in Portland. While I was looking for a full-time gig, I relied almost exclusively on RSS feeds to help me get the jump on any new job postings. I even wrote a post about how to do this on my personal blog.
To sum it up though, most of the major job sites (Monster, Hotjobs, craigslist, etc.) offer full RSS feeds of their listings. By using a feed aggregator (I recommend Bloglines) you can easily pull all the newest listings into a centralized location where you can begin to sort through them all. There are even job site metacrawlers like Simplyhired.com and Indeed.com that go out to all of these job sites, find what you’re looking for and create a brand new, unique feed based on your search criteria. Beats the heck out of scanning the classifieds pages every morning, that’s for sure.
Does anybody else see a clear parallel with the online real estate sites here?
I want my RSS feeds. Move.com, why can’t I subscribe to my search results? Redfin, you too. Trulia.com, you’ve got the right idea… but, you’re not live in Oregon yet. Boo. Point2Homes I like your minimalist design and use of XML and Google Earth feeds (more on this later), but you’re a closed ecosystem and your inventory is limited, so you’re not much good to me.
And finally, where’s the Simplyhired for real estate, someone that’s going to search all these sites automatically and report back to me on what it’s found.
There’s a huge opportunity here for someone to take the lead. Just remember I told you so.
Technorati Tags: RSS, Real Estate Search, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Blogging, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate, Realty Blogging
