Archive for the ‘feeds’ Category

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Comments (0) 09.21.2010
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Fire & Forget Recruitment

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

When using older technologies many military organizations had to acquire and keep eyes on target until the target was no longer a threat. Today, using more advance technologies they have the ability to acquire multiple targets, then fire and forget while acquiring new targets or moving forward with the mission. This technology has greatly improved the military’s effectiveness in completing the mission.

In recruiting there are many types of “Fire & Forget” weapons in the war for top talent, but today I’m going to focus on one which has started to become more prominent in our community.

Job Feeds

It’s a rather easy premise really. Instead of posting your jobs to job boards, have them use your job feed (not by unsupported scraping) instead by using a supported xml feed. This cuts out the manual process past posting the job to your corporate career site and saves your company from paying for further transactional distribution costs and drives the candidates to your resume database no a third party. Having all your vendors using the same feed will consolidate your efforts tremendously and maximum provide control and metrics.

Using niche jobs sites?
If your organization uses a nursing specific job board just have the vendor parse out all of the non-related nursing jobs instead of transactional postings here and there. If the niche board is not technically capable or feels the need to charge you extra for this added “ability“, let them know they can have your business when they are capable and/or it becomes a standard no cost offering. I bet their technological and negotiation capabilities advance rather quickly.

Gather Analytics Data
You have now gained the control to properly direct all job seeker traffic to your corporate career site which will allow the compilation of analytics data regarding job seeker behavior from all job sites taking your feed. This behavioral information is integral in better understanding occupational / geography / skills / education gaps, keyword search behavior for specific occupations providing great SEM, SEO and other marketing insights as well.

Source to Hire Tracking
Since your jobs are consolidated into a single feed you have the ability to dictate the flow of job seeker traffic into your ATS. Armed with this control you have a new found ability to hardcode all of your vendors and candidates providing source to hire tracking data. This is an extremely necessary component of fire and forget tracking through job feeds which may work fluidly with the systems you already have in place.

Shameless self-promotion
DirectEmployers Association has helped many member companies manage this process at no additional cost because it abides by our mission to help member hiring companies cut costs, improve efficiencies and drive innovation.

Are you armed with smart bombs or sticks and stones?

Posted in feeds, recruiting | No Comments »

 
 
Comments (11) 06.24.2009
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Job Cross Pollination Duplication

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

The internet has been experiencing a massive amount of duplicate job content over the past couple of years. No question this content has been used to help job seekers find jobs, unfortunately it has also been used to leverage traffic using duplicative content, extract job seeker information and create many other issues not intended in the free flow of job information.

How did this start?
Quick history.. In 2002 iLogos Research (now Taleo Research) performed research which illustrated that less than 30% of Fortune 500 companies’ jobs were listed on the big 3 job boards. This research validated what most of the industry already knew and our Association had already acted upon. The predecessor to JobCentral, DirectEmployers Employment Search Engine, was created to index/spider 100% of the job content only from corporate career sites providing job seekers a clean path to ALL of the original jobs, not just a small chunk. This pure job content became very popular among job sites soon after DirectEmployers started providing a series of company xml feeds at no charge. The feeds were initiated to provide better content to job sites everywhere, moreover better market penetration for companies everywhere. Many job sites receiving this clean job content would then mix it with their own making it seem organic to their site (cross pollination).

The War for Content Heats Up!
The job search engine model seemed to be reinforced when Indeed and SimplyHired sprang onto the scene, and was fully validated when many new search engine-like sites, hungry for more and more job content, were soon to follow. Job boards needed to find a way to receive more content to keep job seekers returning, while exploring ways to game the young upstarts.

The War for Traffic Strives Through Duplication.
More job sites everywhere started mixing the corporate feeds with their very own content, cross pollination was happening everywhere. Job boards were also providing this mixed, now majorly duplicated content, to SimplyHired and Indeed. Why? If you provide thousands of jobs as traffic accelerators, through verticals,
you will no question receive heightened traffic results. But if you provide the cross pollinated content of hundreds of thousands of jobs your traffic could be accelerated 10 fold, or more. Why is this problematic? Duplication, moreover job seeker experience.

Where things went wrong.
Well you cannot expect everybody to play by the rules when there really weren’t any. Although you do expect site owners and designers to think about job seeker experience, and the use of content that didn’t truly belong to them. Reports of sites using interstitial ads to capture job seeker information, required registration for application, and then repackaging the exact same, now highly duplicated, content and submitting it to other job sites as their own has become an issue for job seekers, employers, and many of the verticals.

End result, it’s gotta stop.. Terms of Service to come..

Will the answer to this problem be a popular remedy? Magic 8 Ball says “Outlook, not so good“..

Posted in feeds, job board, verticals | 11 Comments »

 
 
Comments (0) 02.25.2008
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JobCentral Jobs API is Official

Monday, February 25th, 2008

After months of testing with numerous partner sites DirectEmployers Association makes their JobCentral jobs API available to the public.

The JobCentral XML API can provide FREE and EASY job content to websites without the need to bulk up on servers or develop search technology. JobCentral’s API will run in the background providing search and job content seamlessly through the partner’s domain. JobCentral’s feed contains original jobs, no spam, no duplicates, only current openings, and direct application connections for jobs seekers to the corporate Applicant Tracking Systems.

For more information contact api [at] jobcentral [dot] com

Joel aka ‘Cheez’ was the first to spring JobCentral’s new API on the world during our final testing back in November with the following interview. He asked all of the right questions so I thought, what the heck?

Cheez- Why open an API?
Chad- Hundreds of sites have been taking JobCentral’s XML downloads for years. Unfortunately most of the smaller sites could not handle the size of our files, so an open API was the next logical step in helping smaller companies/sites fully embrace JobCentral’s National Labor Exchange efforts.

Cheez- How do you choose who gets access and who doesn’t?
Chad- The API will be open to anyone. Interested parties will request an API key and JobCentral staff will review their site to ensure the JobCentral content is not used in a questionable manner.

Cheez- Do you plan on monetizing the API (if not already)?
Chad- No.

Cheez- For sites currently using your API, what has been the early feedback?
Chad- The feedback has been incredibly positive due to the ease of set-up, flexibility, and the cost (FREE) doesn’t hurt either. [Note: Partner site DisaboomJobs.com represents a live example of the JobCentral API.]

Cheez- How about customization? If an association in New York just wants NY content, for example, will you parse their database as such?
Chad- Yes, participating sites will have the flexibility to geo-target for local jobs, military crosswalk capabilities are available and much more.

For more information contact chad[at] jobcentral [dot] com

Posted in feeds | No Comments »

 
 
Comments (0) 09.11.2007
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RSS for Beginners

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

This post is dedicated to all of the people still “surfing” for information on the web. Common Craft does a great job of explaining how Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and RSS readers can save time and deliver relevant content without breaking out the Sex Wax.

Other relevant RSS posts:
- Jobs are Free! Oh, were you sleeping?
- Yahoo! Lays out the Pipes!
- Peter fights a 98lb weakling in RSS battle
- Long time listener, first time caller…

Hat tip

Posted in feeds, video, web 2.0 | No Comments »

 
 
Comments (4) 04.17.2007
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Long time listener, First time caller…

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

This morning’s post is simply a reader with questions.

Chad,

I’m building a job board for Cincinnati as a hobby. A few years ago, I realized that the big 3 job sites showed less than 20% of all the job openings in Cincinnati. I think job seekers would be a lot better off if they had a job board that showed two or three times that amount.

To stay informed on the job market, I started reading your blog. I’m hoping that you can answer two questions for me:

1. How can I get access to the XML feeds that you provide to other job sites?
2. Why has the recruiter’s adoption of RSS feeds been so slow?

It seems to me that using an RSS feed is the most effective way to post jobs. I don’t understand why such a small percentage of companies show it on their websites.

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

John

*******************************************

John,

You are absolutely correct; research was completed by Taleo Research, formally iLogos, a few years back that showed about 30% of major F500 company jobs were posted on the big boards, nationwide. Why you might ask? Companies cannot afford to post all of their jobs to just one of the big 3, let alone all of them. So where can all of the jobs be found? Easy, the corporate career site, which is why the JobCentral technology was first created, back in 2001, to index 100% of those jobs daily.

Answering you questions:
1) We can provide the jobs in an XML format, refreshed daily by JobCentral
2) Our industry adopts new technology slower than most, although once it’s adopted it’s extremely hard to change.

My prediction is RSS/XML will catch like wild fire and reach mainstream adoption, no question. RSS is extremely flexible, simple, and most companies don’t even realize the power of simply adding it to their career site. Job seekers are plugging these feeds into their RSS reader, desktops, etc.

In the end, RSS will be adopted mainstream after companies understand the power of these really simple feeds, the benefits to the job seeker, moreover the practical application. I also believe these feeds will be more than a pick-up point for job seekers, rather a trusted feed for partners and vendors.

Best regards,
Chad

- Any other ideas or comments for John? -

Posted in feeds, web 2.0 | 4 Comments »

 
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