Email plan for jobseekers

Jobseekers who register with Work and Income may soon get weekly emails listing all the new jobs listed in their area on the Trade Me website.

Trade Me, New Zealand's second-biggest jobs website after Seek, came up with the idea after officials approached it in the lead-up to the recent job summit in Manukau.

Trade Me commercial head Mike O'Donnell said it could be implemented quickly as soon as privacy issues were sorted out with Work and Income.

"Anybody right now, if they are a member of Trade Me, can set up highly specific searches for whatever it is they are looking for. They [Work and Income] have 50,000 New Zealand jobseekers who have internet access, give or take, and we are looking to search them up by region and income and send them out a little reminder, so if you are in Timaru we will just start saying, 'Hey, there's 10 new jobs listed in Timaru in the last few days'."

He said privacy should not be a problem because anyone listing a job with Trade Me had already put their details in the public forum.

Trade Me would develop software enabling it to send its jobs database to Work and Income and let Work and Income pass on personalised emails to its clients, so Trade Me would not have direct access to the list of jobseekers.

Jobseekers would also have a right to opt out of receiving the emails.