UJob Portal – Apply for jobs through your cellphone
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Ufone, always a first for innovative VAS services, starts another very interesting service for the Pakistani public.
Partnering with Rozee.pk, they’ve recently launched a mobile interface to the popular job portal. Ufone users can now get mobile alerts, and if they have GPRS enabled, even apply right there through the Rozee website.
How to use it is available on the Ufone website here. Read on after the jump on some views on how this service might be beneficial or distracting.
Now for some critique. Being a regular employer from Rozee, i’ll share two tips from my own experience.
1. Normally, the first 20 (usable) applications are the ones from where shortlisting is done. It is very rare that someone applying 2 days after a job has been posted will be shortlisted. Also, i mention usable as those applicants that actually have the qualifications and experience, and not just applying for the sake of applying.
2. A CV may be very well defined, but a readable and understandable cover letter is what will get you through the second line of defense of resume sifters, the managers who will be directly managing the new recruit. A CV doesn’t really tell them much, and an interview is a long and boring process. The cover letter fast tracks much of this process.
With these two points in mind, the UJob portal is very useful for ensuring the first part for an employer. Instant applications as soon as the job goes live. Normally, i’ve recieved the first 20 applications within the first couple of hours from rozee, however, there is a lot of noise in that applicant pool as well. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people who just send out their resume wherever and whenever they can, without even realizing what they applied for. I hope the introduction of a mobile method of application doesn’t increase the noise to a crescendo!
Second, personally, i don’t think typing out a cover letter, using SMS-speak (lol, l8r etc), will do much good to an applicant’s overall profile. And it remains to be seen how many people would actually go the route of writing out a cover letter anyway. On my last job posting, out of the 250 applications i received, only 5 had cover letters. Apart from one guy, whose cover letter itself was generic (why do people do that!!!), the other four were called in for interviews, and the final selection was from among them. So yea, the mobile application might become a new reason for not submitting a valid cover letter in the first place.
So all in all, the service is both a good step forward and will bring it’s own challenges for the rozee team as well as employers. The end result however, as always, remains to be seen.
1:14 am
Not to mention that – knowing UFone through UTunes – they’ll probably auto-subscribe me to the service for some random category and insist that I should be applying to front-desk officer jobs
Sorry, but stay away Ufone – or atleast research us out first?
4:32 am
osama: lol! they’ve left a bad taste in your mouth
by the way, ufone has a pretty impressive list of VAS services they’ve “quietly” been launching. you should check out how many have u been subscribed to ‘automatically’ 
3:08 pm
If there is a filter to weed out people with ujob enabled, I’d like to get THAT!
This sounds like a service for the desperado’s. Its obvious that the sms’s from rozee will be spam since the categories are extremely highlevel and for me to be reviewing each job opening on rozee for my category, I’d have to be real desperate and with lots of time to waste. Either way, as a prospective employer – I’d like to stay away from such folks as experience shows they’re generally low productive people.
10:08 pm
what a useless piece of technology. Who in their right mind would apply for jobs using their mobile phones? I mean imagine all the spam “candidates” who would just apply for “testing” out the application.
Somethings just dont’ belong on a cellphone. This is in the top-5 of that list.
12:22 pm
@Obaid, how about those with bulk sms packages thinking i still have 10 sms left to consume for the day, lets apply for jobs LoL
3:21 pm
As an employer, I give zero importance to cover letters — they do not correlate to successful hiring. I’m not sure why the author feels they need to be sent through an SMS job service.
In India, which has a similar young Internet population, applying for jobs is the second most popular activity on the Internet after email. I suspect a similar trend in Pakistan which would explain Rozee’s very high traffic rankings. Ufone is simply capitalizing on a consumer trend in its target market.
It would be certainly be much more useful if candidates could zero in on more specific job searches as opposed to the broad criteria, like they can on Rozee’s own website.
2:09 pm
Mobilink already have a similar service I think Rozee Job Alerts. See: http://www.mobilinkworld.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=125&Itemid=276
2:50 pm
hi my name is jibran saghir
i want a good jobe
i m a studient for class bba preston university
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