Jobbatical

Site's statement

Jobboard Finder’s opinion

Summary: Founded by Karoli Hindriks in 2014, Jobbatical is an Estonian based job board with a global outreach. They currently have 139 989 Facebook followers, 4 417 Twitter followers and 4 776 Linkedin followers. Despite the good marketing (partially thanks to the founders experience in television), the job board is far behind CVkeskus in visibility (with 285 000 visits per month) but there idea is original.

Design: The website is very attractive, with large visuals, videos, ten different articles about the company. It is also relatively easy to navigate. However, the actual job search process is confusing since there are no filters. The job offers appear based on the information provided in the jobseeker profile. Furthermore, instead of featuring the company brand, the job offers focus on the location (which is also the case for the logo) almost as if they were holiday destinations. The job offers, which appear in a grid, indicate the job title, the company, the location and how long you have to apply. When you open an offer, you see the keywords, the responsibilities, the requirements, the compensation & benefits, the job description and about the company.

The job board objective: What is in a name? In this case, the entire job board objective. By combining “job” and “sabbatical”, the website conveys the idea that you can work while feeling like you are on a break. The design encourages travel.

Recruiter observations: To create an account, you need to request a demo. Information on the packages is available but not the cost.

Jobseeker observations: It is easy to create an account (with an e-mail address, Linkedin or Facebook). When you create one, you can choose one of three options: actively looking for a job, open to offers and not open to offers (which makes one wonder about how many people use the job board for other purposes). You can only use keywords to browse the job offers but it’s handy to know if the company offers visa sponsorship (Jobbatical also offers immigration support). A pop-up window helps narrow down the suggested job offers. If you apply to any job offers, the apply button indicates if you will be redirected to the company website or you need to answer a range of questions before submitting your CV. You can even see expired job offers.

The job offers: Since there are no filters and you scroll through offers which progressively appear on the screen, it is difficult to have an exact idea of what is on offer.

Reactivity: They are a bit slow to answer. If you request a demo, you need to speak to the team on the phone.

Special features: The blog; immigration support; the “where to recruit tech talent in 2018” review (which is basically a list of job board posting costs); the touristic photos for job offers; the feedback survey; info on the destination (cost of living, of movie tickets, gym membership, etc.).

Verdict: Jobbatical encourages jobseekers to travel and recruiters to attract foreign talent. Despite the pretty layout, it is ultimately rather difficult to see just how many job offers are actually available. Even if this allow for more exposure for the current openings, it also makes the offers seem quite limited. Furthermore, the website chooses what will suit you, which doesn’t leave you with a lot of freedom when searching for a new career.

Written by Ali Neill

As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website's social media pages.