A few weeks ago someone pointed me in the direction of a fairly new website called JobFact. The premise is quite straightforward, you register and enter details of your salary and benefits and your job, company etc and then you can compare what you are getting with what others doing similar jobs are getting. Of course there are the usual add-ons, you can upload your anonymous CV and with luck an employer will come along and offer you a new position complete with one of those higher salary packages you’ve been drooling over.
I’m not exactly sure I’d call it revolutionary, for years there have been companies offering the same service. In fact the same week I was told about the site I had received a letter from Croner who were trying to entice me into buying their annual salary survey results. I have to say I wish Croner would stop asking me, for the last 5 or 6 years it’s always the same. Why do they think I want to spend £600+ to find out how much I’m not making?
That is one aspect of JobFact that appeals, it’s free and because it’s anonymous you don’t have to worry about people inflating their salaries although of course there is no way to know if someone is inflating their own worth. My only main gripe with the site is it’s a pain in the ass to navigate around. Whilst there is a search facility for both workplace reviews and salaries it’s not as easy as it should be. Case in point, I work in the third sector so I’m not really interested in the jobs in banking and financial services, of which there are a lot of entries but do you think I can easily find out how to narrow my search to just other third sector/charity results? No, I can search under company name or job title but not sector. Bizarrely they show a list of the most popular sectors on the site but you can’t list or search within them.
There is however a way to do but it’s far too cumbersome. If you register a profile and add your salary details you get to select the sector you work in. Then, if you click on your own salary review you will see that your company, preceded by the sector. Click the sector and then you get a list of companies in that sector. Sadly for me there were only 2 entries under non profit/charitable organisations and one of them was my current one! That said, there are only entries from around 150 companies so far, as I said it is new to the UK and with more entries I can see it being quite a good site BUT I can’t help but feel that one of the reasons it’s not as popular right now is the search facility. Yes, some people might like to search under job title but these vary so widely even within companies let alone sectors so it can’t really be trusted and so a sector listing/search is a must in my opinion. At least I now know I get paid more than the other non-profit worker on the site!
Overall a visit to the site might be beneficial, at the moment I’d say it would be if you work in banking, financial services and of course IT as these seem to be the most populated sectors so far. No doubt their heavier use of IT and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook word probably spreads quicker and as they also tend to be sectors with high employee mobility as people seek to climb the ladder they’re more likely to benefit from what’s on offer!
However if anyone from JobFact reads this, tweak your search and navigation a little and I think you’ll find sign ups will increase if you make it easier for people to search for what they want, rather than the restricted search on offer.
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