The collaborative initiative "Ecosystem for job ads" means that advertising and matching actors open up and share job advertisement data in a common digital ecosystem. On the one hand, it aims at making it easier for job seekers to navigate among job advertisements, regardless of the job board/platform, in order to find jobs. On the other hand, it aims at providing Statistics Sweden's labour market statistics with a broader material.

“We must welcome and face the digital and transformation restructuring, which means, among other things, that people are currently forced to navigate through a variety of advertising platforms, while searching for job, without knowing if they have the full range of job ads. Neither the Swedish Public Employment Service, nor any other actor can solve the problem on their own, since no one has the access to all job advertisements. Therefore, we do this together.", says Maria Dalhage, Project Manager at JobTech Development/Swedish Public Employment Service who is coordinating the work behind the technical solutions, required for joint management of job ads data.

The companies, which have joined the collaboration initiative and thus have chosen to share their advertising data, are Blocket, CareerBuilder, Jobbdirekt, Monster, NetJobs, Offentliga Jobb, OnePartnerGroup and Studentjob. Together with the advertisements that are already displayed in Platsbanken, this constitutes approximately 80 % of the market's job advertisements.

"Following the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have more candidates looking for jobs, while at the same time, there are fewer ads out there. Now more than ever, it is highly important to facilitate job search, and as one of the largest commercial job boards, it feels natural for us to be part of this collaboration initiative”, says Matilda Adelborg, PR Manager at Blocket Jobb.

Per Wadell, Country Manager at Monster, a leading global employment website, comments as well:

“We at Monster look forward to joining and fostering this collaboration that will make it so much easier for job seekers to find a new and exciting job. This is completely in line with Monster's goal, which is to create the right and proper match between candidates and employers."

The technical solution, the API "JobAd Links", is initially tested as a pilot project in Platsbanken.

“With the pilot project, we will be studying and investigating how the API works in practice and evaluates how the users perceive and welcome the interface. We will also be following how our partners experience our collaboration and ensure that we have a sustainable model that benefits all parties involved. We will be working for welcoming more companies to join, aiming at covering 100% of the job ads on the market.", says Maria Dalhage.

In the long run, the solution may become an open API that can be used at any time to access all job advertisements and links.

"Our intention is to create an open API, but the main focus at the moment is to foster a successful collaboration and to find a sustainable model that we can scale up", concludes Maria Dalhage.