Pizza makers, diesel technicians, and shoe shiners = Internet/New Media?

Speaking of job-hunting, the usefulness of our local newspaper's online job listings took a major hit five months ago when they "upgraded" the website. It still provides a search by (ostensibly) "job category", but it's now virtually useless.

Before the advent of the new-and-improved site, a search in, for example, the "Internet/New Media" category returned a list of jobs that almost always had some reasonable relationshup to the Internet, presumably because whoever placed the ad selected that category as being relevant to the job and the search engine selected any job that had been tagged with that category.

No more. Here's just a sampling of some of the jobs that are currently turning up in an Internet/New Media category search (and no, I am not making any of this up):

• HVAC Service Tech and Maintenance
• Pizza Maker, Delivery Drivers & Dishwashers
• CUNSTRUCTION [sic] TERRITORY MANAGER
• Diesel/Technician
• Live-in Auipair [sic] /Nanny
• Bankruptcy Paralegal
• Respiratory Therapist
• Firefighter
• Shoe Shine
• Sophisticated and savvy fashion buyer
• X-Ray Technician
• Pet Cremation Aftercare Coordinator
• Nurse Practitioner

When I first noticed this phenomenon, I didn't know what to make of it; it seemed so astonishingly random. Then I noticed two things: first, the problem seemed to be most acute in this specific category (Internet/New Media) and almost as bad in the Computers/Technology category; and second, various words in the job descriptions were highlighted in yellow, such as "computer", "online", "internet", and "yahoo.com".

Thus it dawned on me that the search engine was no longer looking for jobs tagged with a category (or at least not just those jobs), but was in fact performing a keyword search! Apparently someone got the bright idea not to simply rely on the category that the employer (who arguably would know best) said the job belonged to, and instead thought up a list of keywords to help identify jobs that would fit the category. Apparently it never occurred to them that, in an era when a large majority of job listings are likely to require an applicant to have "computer skills", to be able to "use the internet", to "apply online", or to email their resume to someyahoo@yahoo.com, those keywords might not be all that useful in distinguishing jobs that belong in the Internet/New Media or Computers/Technology categories.

Of course, these are just the categories of most interest to me. Other job categories aren't affected quite as much, but still get some pretty tenuous matches. For example, the Environmental/Agriculture category turns up a listing for an epidemiologist (due to a reference to "environmental health programs"); a Recreation/Sports category search yields jobs for a Line Cook (for a sports bar), a Firefighter (probably because it refers to "physical training" as part of the training), and an office assistant for a car dealer (the job includes "running errands"); and the Restaurant/Food Service category lists a Technical Support Representative for Canon (they have an "on-site cafeteria"), a janitor for a church (work hours specified to include a half hour "for lunch"), and even a truck driver for a contractor located on "Cook Blvd". (Oddly enough, the Healthcare/Medical category seems to be virtually free of this kind of false positives; I fully expected to find it loaded with jobs that specify benefits including medical/dental insurance.)

Clearly, this keyword business needs to be given some more thought. I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to change, though; I emailed the website's customer service contact about it five months ago, and as yet have gotten no reply.