So I was presented with a predicament this week when our teams needed to post a few titles that could actually be filled from nearly 50 various cities. Filling the jobs wouldn’t necessarily be a challenge as much as quickly and easily (and cheaply) getting the word onto the various job boards. Pushing a job posting through to as many cities on two or three main boards can be expensive. And unfortunately if individual postings were made on the in-house Applicant Tracking System any boards where scraping is based on volume would result in some rather high numbers. (The math: 2 job postings x 50 cities x 3 boards = 300 posts)
The issue wasn’t really a show stopper but rather the catalyst for a conversation about a smarter way to post. Of course, the problem really isn’t the subject of my post today – the idea this brought back to me however, is.
Months ago I was sitting around with a few of my favorite thinkers and talking about what a job board would be like if I could create one from scratch. For a few years I’ve toyed with the idea of making a job board that would be a blend of social networks and traditional job boards. Here is a quick blast from the dark and scary place within my head that overflows with "Hey we could.."’s and "How hard could it be?"’s.
In summary (and in keeping the 3 page list I keep adding to each week for my own reference…) everything on this job board would be socially driven. From the recommendations of members to the live chat with employers to the profile pages that host a quick video resume for sharing. Company rankings and reviews, easily updated blogs, news alerts, and Single Sign On options. Open Social integration, sponsored events or groups, easily incorporated widgets, and RSS for everything. And the item that brought this brewing idea up again this week? Tags for everything – including work locations.
The idea behind using tags as opposed to being forced to select a city or state from a list may be flawed, but it’s certainly interesting to think about. Imagine if the employer had a programmer title that could be filled in either Boston or Dallas or Los Angeles. Posting the job to this ‘Talent Network’ would allow said company to make a single post and include tags as such: "programming, dallas, boston, los angeles, c++, perl, company name"
Now imagine how easy it would be for a job seeker to find these jobs – I’d liken it to how easy it is lately to work through blogs for relative topics. (Pipes, anyone?)
Of course now you see how my idea was tied (although loosely) to the issue that came up this week. The natural question to most of the thought trains rolling through the windy tracks in this thing I call a brain usually meet somewhere around ‘socialville.’ I’m left to wonder when more job boards will truly incorporate the features found within social networks that seem to keep the visitors coming back for more. More interaction. More dialogue. More traffic.
