Zeit

Site's statement

Jobboard Finder’s opinion

Summary: In the 40s, Zeit first appeared in Germany as a newspaper published by Gerd Bucerius, Lovis H. Lorenz, Richard Tüngel and Ewald Schmidt di Simoni. Since then, it has come a long way. The online version was created in 1997 and a job section was added in 2004 (just click on “jobs” at the top of the page). Since then, the job section has managed to attract quite a few people: it gets 179 970 views a month according to SimilarWeb. It also has its own social media: 1 780 followers on Twitter and 5 569 on Linkedin. The Facebook page, however, belongs to the entire website and 851 662 people follow the activity.

Design: The backdrop image is of people chatting, reading, and walking. The design is subtle so, at a first glance, you don’t even realise there are people. The search engine (keywords) is in the middle of the page, with top jobs and some keywords to help search the offer just underneath. You can sign up for job alerts or you can simply look through the companies. All the job offers on Zeit Online are for high profile positions and the companies are mostly big companies (a lot of institutes, hospitals, universities, etc.). The information in the company pages is clear and broken down into a number of sections. If you prefer to browse the job offers, you can narrow your search thanks to the filters (the branch, the type of work, the positon, the location, the type of employer, the type of hours). If you have trouble with the language, the same filter design is used for the Academics website in English. The company name, logo, the posting date and the location are visible in the listing. Once you open the offer, most of them have a very long description and a customised page.

The job board objective: Zeit Online Jobs is for professionals, who are looking for new job opportunities.

Recruiter observations: To advertise, you simply click on “advertise” (or “insertieren”) at the top of the page. You can then fill out the form about how you want to receive applicants, the job offer (which is displayed as it will appear on the site) and the contact information. The website confirms the publication later.

Jobseeker observations: It couldn’t be easier to create an account: you simply use your e-mail address to generate it. The application process for the job offers is different for each one. Some would rather candidates sent an e-mail, others would like them to fill out an application form and, in some cases, other instructions are in the job offer description.

The job offers: There are currently 1 014 job offers on the site. Most of them are in science, IT and engineering. Most of the job offers are recent ones, but we did find some  that were over 6 months old.

Reactivity: When looking for the contact information, it might be a bit confusing. It leads to a page with articles and catalogues, but the contact e-mail addresses are also there at the top of the page. After creating a job offer, they contacted us very fast.

Special features: The newspaper; the blog.

Verdict: Depending on what you are looking for, the Zeit Online could very well help find the right job opportunity. The website is easy to use for recruiters and for jobseekers. Clearly, the kind of job offers you’ll find in the job section are addressed to the kind of audience that reads the Zeit newspaper, which would be businessmen mostly. The new design could be an attempt to attract a broader range of candidates.

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.