W

orking near home, especially in Jakarta, saves time and keeps tension at bay.

Lamentably, you don’t get a job just by wanting it, applicants need to pass through the lottery of recruitment processes.

One recently launched portal, joblocal.me, has setting to help you find openings nearby.

“Basically it is similar to jobsdb.com and jobstreet.com. The difference is visitors can search for occupations in smaller areas,” chief executive officer of the website, Khresna Utama says.

He said that joblocal.me lets users expand or contract the area of the search using familiar locale names.
For example, job seekers in the capital might prefer to lump the the official subdistricts of Sunter Jaya and Sunter Agung together and just call it “Sunter”, North Jakarta.

The portal already lists 300 openings in several areas of Java and aims to have displayed 10,000 openings by the end of 2012.

Joblocal.me was co-founded by Khresna Utama and Willy Ekasalim. The idea arose from the daily grind through the gridlocked urban sprawl. Curious about what other Jakartans thought about living close to the office, early this year they surveyed 70 professionals who use their own cars to get to work.

About 55 percent of the respondents said that spent 2 to 3 hours in the traffic everyday; 90 percent of them said that they work in their current offices because there is less information of nearby job opportunities; and 90 percent of them answered that they would prefer offices near home, all other factors being equal.

“Based on that result, we emphasize openings based on smaller areas,” Khresna said.

His company uses several marketing methods to gather job openings, such as networking and introducing the portal to companies directly.

Julius Iskandar, one of joblocal.me’s registered employers, recently posted an opening from his company, Bandar Djakarta, for its new branch in Surabaya, East Java.

He was sure that there would be no disadvantages to posting the opening when Willy Ekasalim offered him the chance. Unfortunately, he said, so far there hadn’t been any applicants

“Since it was only developed and launched recently, there are still not many employers who have posted openings and only a few job seekers browsing them,” Julius said.

He said that the system could be a significant new approach for job hunters.

“I think that wasting time in the horrible congestion [in Jakarta] is ineffective and unproductive for the workers and their companies. Besides, it can be bad for their health because of the pollution and stress,” Julius said.