The traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, is pretty bad. What the commute is like is a serious consideration for anyone looking for a job. Let’s take a look how LinkedIn job posts treat locations – posted and searched for.
LinkedIn has 1) “area” locations and 2) specific cities as locations. The city locations are part of the “area” locations. For example, San Jose, California; San Francisco, California; and Berkeley, California (which are at a distance from each other) all belong to the San Francisco Bay Area.
When we post a job, we are given both “areas” and cities as location choices.
When we search for a job, the same location choices are available:
Given the commute times, we can expect job seekers to enter the city closest to where they live when searching for a job.
However, when we search for jobs, LinkedIn treats all Bay Area location the same. Even that I have entered San Francisco in this search, the second result is in San Jose (quite far from San Francisco). (This is not very helpful!)
Conclusions.
- When posting jobs on LinkedIn, it is best to enter a specific city name (e.g., San Mateo, California) vs. an area name (e.g., San Francisco Bay Area. When potential applicants see the post, they will know what their commute is going to be.
- When people search for jobs near their locations in the Bay Area, they, in fact, see job posts from all of the Bay Area, even if they enter a city name as location. The same LinkedIn rules apply to other “areas” and cities. Quite inconvenient for job seekers! But it is how it works.