The tool has been developed to broaden the number of roles jobseekers can apply for by helping them to identify their core skill sets and pair them with various industries.
The findings also revealed 85 per cent of employers will consider an applicant with a different career background to the advertised role if they have the right skill set, despite 63 per cent of jobseekers seeing lack of experience as the major barrier to applying for a job.
Gumtree.com’s new tool helps to identify core competencies by asking jobseekers to choose a score from 1 – 5 to reflect how they rank themselves against each skill. The tool then analyses the scores and uncovers what job sectors suit people best based on the skills they’ve highlighted.
Commenting on the site’s new career advice section and career finder tool, Sam Taylor from Gumtree.com said, “Not many people know that Gumtree.com is already one of the UK’s biggest jobs websites. In July of this year alone 2.7 million job seekers used the site.
“The research we commissioned showed there is a need for jobseekers to distil their skills and broaden their job applications beyond the fields they have direct on the job experience in and into sectors where their skills are valued. The new tools we’ve built on Gumtree.com help people to do just this.
“Our new career finder tool helps to identify people’s key skills, the kind of jobs they could be applying for and directs candidates straight to jobs listings on the site that match their results. We hope this will help get people one step closer to securing their ideal job.”
The new resources follow a study of HR professionals and job seekers which revealed that the most valued online services when searching for a job online were suggestions of jobs that matched ones skills (77 per cent) and practical advice on getting a job (63 per cent).
