Hi everyone,
I'm so excited, some of my sites finally have PageRank! Of course, with this great position comes great responsibility. From now on I will only link to good sites. :)
Anyway, some updates. The project with Ian, which is called JustConfirmed.com, is in the process of being redesigned by a web designer I met on CraigsList. Once he is finished, I will implement his design across the existing pages and we will be ready to go live and start getting our first customers. We actually have some interest already as Ian brought in some testers to demonstrate the functionality; the asked him when it will be ready, always a good sign. Stevesleads.com now has a second developer, a friend I met through work who was interested in learning Ruby on Rails. That site would probably be done already, but I decided it would be best to get a real professional design for that as well before putting it out for public consumption. We'll be finishing up the functionality in the next few weeks, then recruiting a designer for that as well.
I recently started working on a new site, BlurbCurb.com. It is meant to tie together all of my different websites by giving them a common way of signing up advertisers, and will function something like AdBrite.com. I'm also going to try to work in something for cross-promotion, so I can use my existing traffic on one site to build the others.
There was an interesting article on Slashdot the other day about "the perfect job website." That's something I've thought about a lot since it was going to be one of my next projects around the time I started SneakyFeelings.com.
Job websites (at least the major ones like Monster, Dice.com, and CareerBuilder) have basically been struck by the same problem that has been plaguing Google: Too many middlemen. Granted, it is different than Google, where nobody pays for listings and cheating the system has become an industry. Job boards are populated mostly by recruiters and other staffing firms who try to recruit people for their "benches," either to be placed in slots at actual hiring companies or to be kept on the hook for anticipated future needs. As stated in the slashdot forum, this is a source of endless frustration for job seekers who would rather speak directly with interested hiring managers.
I get the impression that when these sites were first envisioned they were pictured as a way of streamlining the HR industry, uniting job seekers wih open positions and making the world a more efficient place. Originally they may have even acheived that goal for a little while. Then job posters realized that putting an ad up on monster resulted in 500 resumes coming your way, many of whom were woefully unqualified for the position at hand. It was better to instead deal with staffing recruiters, who could cull through this mess and find the handful of resumes that at least matched the job requirements on paper. The problem then was that recruiters generally have no idea of what is required to do the job, and recuit mostly based on easy-to-quantify criteria (like education/GPA, certifications, years at jobs, etc) rather than more subjective criteria, such as competence and quality of experience.
One of the best job sites I found back in the day was Guru.com, because they actually had short written tests that you could complete to qualify you for the skills you said you had. This gave potential employers a powerful tool to better qualify you outside of the resume. I think that Guru had some problems and was eventually bought out by a competitor, who kept the brand but reoriented the site to a more short-term gig-based bidding site. In any event, the larger sites never really found a way around this independent-qualifier problem and now still have the middlemen running the show.
To make job sites better, I think they need to be made more attractive to employers. The internet is an interactive medium, yet all of the sites basically behave like newspaper classified ads. Instead of having a list of responsibilities and desired qualifications, why not add a short 5 question multiple-choice test on the end where the applicant would need to prove themselves a little? Instead of going through 500 resumes, they could then focus on the 40 who answered everything correctly. Then you could send each of those people a written essay question to see how they would solve a particular workplace problem and receive a manageable number of essays to read through. It would be impractical for recruiters to do this since they do not know the job well enough (usually) to craft a good series of questions and essays, so we have then achieved the goal of more direct employers, fewer recuiters, and more qualified candidates.
Hopefully someone will take this up and run with it soon, or I may need to start this site once I get a few weeks free. :)
Til next time.
I'm so excited, some of my sites finally have PageRank! Of course, with this great position comes great responsibility. From now on I will only link to good sites. :)
Anyway, some updates. The project with Ian, which is called JustConfirmed.com, is in the process of being redesigned by a web designer I met on CraigsList. Once he is finished, I will implement his design across the existing pages and we will be ready to go live and start getting our first customers. We actually have some interest already as Ian brought in some testers to demonstrate the functionality; the asked him when it will be ready, always a good sign. Stevesleads.com now has a second developer, a friend I met through work who was interested in learning Ruby on Rails. That site would probably be done already, but I decided it would be best to get a real professional design for that as well before putting it out for public consumption. We'll be finishing up the functionality in the next few weeks, then recruiting a designer for that as well.
I recently started working on a new site, BlurbCurb.com. It is meant to tie together all of my different websites by giving them a common way of signing up advertisers, and will function something like AdBrite.com. I'm also going to try to work in something for cross-promotion, so I can use my existing traffic on one site to build the others.
There was an interesting article on Slashdot the other day about "the perfect job website." That's something I've thought about a lot since it was going to be one of my next projects around the time I started SneakyFeelings.com.
Job websites (at least the major ones like Monster, Dice.com, and CareerBuilder) have basically been struck by the same problem that has been plaguing Google: Too many middlemen. Granted, it is different than Google, where nobody pays for listings and cheating the system has become an industry. Job boards are populated mostly by recruiters and other staffing firms who try to recruit people for their "benches," either to be placed in slots at actual hiring companies or to be kept on the hook for anticipated future needs. As stated in the slashdot forum, this is a source of endless frustration for job seekers who would rather speak directly with interested hiring managers.
I get the impression that when these sites were first envisioned they were pictured as a way of streamlining the HR industry, uniting job seekers wih open positions and making the world a more efficient place. Originally they may have even acheived that goal for a little while. Then job posters realized that putting an ad up on monster resulted in 500 resumes coming your way, many of whom were woefully unqualified for the position at hand. It was better to instead deal with staffing recruiters, who could cull through this mess and find the handful of resumes that at least matched the job requirements on paper. The problem then was that recruiters generally have no idea of what is required to do the job, and recuit mostly based on easy-to-quantify criteria (like education/GPA, certifications, years at jobs, etc) rather than more subjective criteria, such as competence and quality of experience.
One of the best job sites I found back in the day was Guru.com, because they actually had short written tests that you could complete to qualify you for the skills you said you had. This gave potential employers a powerful tool to better qualify you outside of the resume. I think that Guru had some problems and was eventually bought out by a competitor, who kept the brand but reoriented the site to a more short-term gig-based bidding site. In any event, the larger sites never really found a way around this independent-qualifier problem and now still have the middlemen running the show.
To make job sites better, I think they need to be made more attractive to employers. The internet is an interactive medium, yet all of the sites basically behave like newspaper classified ads. Instead of having a list of responsibilities and desired qualifications, why not add a short 5 question multiple-choice test on the end where the applicant would need to prove themselves a little? Instead of going through 500 resumes, they could then focus on the 40 who answered everything correctly. Then you could send each of those people a written essay question to see how they would solve a particular workplace problem and receive a manageable number of essays to read through. It would be impractical for recruiters to do this since they do not know the job well enough (usually) to craft a good series of questions and essays, so we have then achieved the goal of more direct employers, fewer recuiters, and more qualified candidates.
Hopefully someone will take this up and run with it soon, or I may need to start this site once I get a few weeks free. :)
Til next time.
posted by Mike at
8:45 PM
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