Any suggested features for new job site?

rogerg

We're planning to set up a new recruitment website - arising out of being fed up with the offerings out there. We've given ourselves 2 weeks and we just started yesterday. It's called the Irish Job Market. We're looking for suggestions of what people would like to see on a good website.

gustavo

Only have jobs that actually exist.

DonkeyStyle \o/

A seperate section for roles that require additional languages... so many job sites litter their IT listings with 'German tech support', or even worse, let you read down through the whole description and only tell you half way into it. (oh and by the way, fluency in 3 european languages is essential)

Similarly, jobs that require your own transport should be marked clearly.

I'd like to be able to filter search results based both of the above criteria... I mean you either speak fluent Dutch or you don't... you either have your own car or you don't... there's no wiggle-room, so I don't know why these little details are left so obscure.

And of course as gustavo mentioned, having jobs that actually exist is my top priority... there are certain job sites that I've completely abandoned because of thier CV harvesting, time wasting ways.

Being able to filter by career-level (ala monster.ie) is handy aswell.

WhiteWashMan

rogerg wrote:

We're planning to set up a new recruitment website - arising out of being fed up with the offerings out there. We've given ourselves 2 weeks and we just started yesterday. It's called the Irish Job Market. We're looking for suggestions of what people would like to see on a good website.

why dont you just go through the job sites that are out there at the moment, have a look at what you like, and what annoys you, and then put in the bits you like, and leave out the bits that annoy you?

fatboypee

Take the Jobserve.co.uk approach and use the And / Or concept of searching the whole ad, also have a drop down to choose contract and perm separately.
Search as I would do:

".Net and London and NOT Bank and Not Hedge and Not city"

can also use brackets for sub searching.

IMHO the easiest, most accurate method of getting results I want to see.

Fatboy.

rogerg

A separate section for roles that require additional languages... so many job sites litter their IT listings with 'German tech support', or even worse, let you read down through the whole description and only tell you half way into it. (oh and by the way, fluency in 3 european languages is essential)

Similarly, jobs that require your own transport should be marked clearly.

We can put separate check boxes for these when people are submitting. I foresee potential issues though if agencies want to automate entering jobs into the site. There legacy system may not have these fields.

And of course as gustavo mentioned, having jobs that actually exist is my top priority... there are certain job sites that I've completely abandoned because of thier CV harvesting, time wasting ways.

Yeah, that's seems to be a theme that we are getting in the feedback. Some of the agencies seem to be earning a bad reputation for their industry. So should we ban agencies that score poorly on this. Again if we want to automate systems so that there is api for integration with agency systems - this could be tricky. They would have to stop their practice, not just on our site, but across the board. Perhaps we could use some sort of feedback loop and a score be attached to an agency - then users would know how reliable they were or not....something along those lines?

rogerg

Take the Jobserve.co.uk approach

Will have a look at that, thanks Fatboy.

why dont you just go through the job sites that are out there at the moment, have a look at what you like, and what annoys you, and then put in the bits you like, and leave out the bits that annoy you?

We're doing that alright, but it is useful to have a wider perspective than our own narrow subjective one - particularly from people who might have first hand experience / peeves.

thror

hey,
not sure if anyone else has noticed (or cares about!) this problem but it really ticks me off so might as well let you know! Usually on most job sites when you search under the title of 'Media and Creative Arts' or a similar title a load of ads come up for sales jobs... Nothing against sales jobs per se, it's just that it gets fair annoying when you do a search and something that I have absolutely no interest in comes up! This happens on quite a few sites in Ireland. I know that there are always very little actual media jobs to be advertised but if the option is there it might as well be done properly!

Then again it might be just me!

Oh also I would definitely check out jobs that keep getting updated day after day, one Limerick recruitment agent has updated the same job every day for the last 3 months and noone I know that applied got a response... it's probably automatic but I think it says a lot about the agency in question that they wouldn't even take down the ad for a few days to cover up their CV gathering techniques!

rogerg

you search under the title of 'Media and Creative Arts' or a similar title a load of ads come up for sales jobs..

Who said that Sales wasn't a creative art?... We'll look at this and make sure sales do not go under Media and Creative Arts - or our equivalent.

We will be able to do arbitrary boolean expressions i.e. use "AND" "OR" "NOT" on a text search - we just have to set our query parser to be able to do this which should not be difficult.

Oh also I would definitely check out jobs that keep getting updated day after day, one Limerick recruitment agent has updated the same job every day for the last 3 months

This is a recurrent theme. We'll have to see what mechanisms we can come up with to control the agencies. Our focus will be on the user. This project is borne out of frustration - mainly at cost to employer.

I advertised a job once on one our websites. An agency came along and lifted the ad almost verbatim, without permission, and placed on irishjobs - and then started phoning me up and emailing responses they received to that ad. When I questioned them about it, the girl had a brass neck that would put Dublin doorknockers to shame - sure what's wrong with that.

egan007

When i was looking for a car i searched for cars between 10000 and 150000
It would be great if you could do the same for jobs.

You may find some interesting careers you may not of thought of otherwise.

Make results relevant - I don't want to know about Accounting jobs where I search for Environmental Science.

AS another poster said - Only show actual jobs. Most just clollect DV's and bulk mail.


Have seperate categories for EVERYTHING.

Enviromental Consultant is not the same as Health and safety
and is not the same as pharma!

rogerg

When i was looking for a car i searched for cars between 10000 and 150000
It would be great if you could do the same for jobs.

The problem here is that not all jobs post the salary.

Make results relevant - I don't want to know about Accounting jobs where I search for Environmental Science.

This seems to be a garbage-in, garbage out problem.

Have seperate categories for EVERYTHING. Enviromental Consultant is not the same as Health and safety and is not the same as pharma!

Categories are very tricky to set without some overlapping. I here you and we will do our best to address all observations.

This is great feedback - just what we need at this stage.

rogerg

We're considering the CV functionality:

1. Do you ever upload/fill in form for CV to a site?
2. If you were to guess - what %age of people put their CV details on a job site?
3. Do you prefer to upload a file or fill in form?
4. Would you be happy if a file was full text searchable - if an employer searched for your name / current employer - your CV would come up. If informed of this would you remove these details before uploading the file and would you think that this was better than filling in a form that basically created your CV for you?

...at the moment we are thinking of offering both but not forcing it. Most sites do not have full text search on .doc and .pdf files so this could be a differentiating feature - whadya think?

the_syco

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

A seperate section for roles that require additional languages... so many job sites litter their IT listings with 'German tech support', or even worse, let you read down through the whole description and only tell you half way into it. (oh and by the way, fluency in 3 european languages is essential)

Check out nixers.ie THey have a "Call Centre (English Speaking)" tab, which I found handy, as I've no language aside from English.

OP, check out nixers.ie Also, for Dublin, have a North, South, City Cantre, and All Dublin sections. I find this handy when looking.

As you're only starting off, I'd advise you to do only one area for now. Eg: Dublin only. This will allow you to concentrate on one area of the market, so you may have 50 jobs in Dublin, and not 5 jobs in Dublin, 4 in Wicklow, 18 in Sligo...

DonkeyStyle \o/

the_syco wrote:

Check out nixers.ie THey have a "Call Centre (English Speaking)" tab, which I found handy, as I've no language aside from English.

Yeah I liked Nixers alright, but I'd sooner gouge my own eyes out than work in a call center again as long as I live.

fatboypee

rogerg wrote:

We're considering the CV functionality:

1. Do you ever upload/fill in form for CV to a site?
2. If you were to guess - what %age of people put their CV details on a job site?
3. Do you prefer to upload a file or fill in form?
4. Would you be happy if a file was full text searchable - if an employer searched for your name / current employer - your CV would come up. If informed of this would you remove these details before uploading the file and would you think that this was better than filling in a form that basically created your CV for you?

...at the moment we are thinking of offering both but not forcing it. Most sites do not have full text search on .doc and .pdf files so this could be a differentiating feature - whadya think?

I've uploaded my CV once and checked the box which said something like CV for this post only.

My industry (IT) in this country is too small to bandy around your details (IMHO of course) and I would never allow my CV to be fully available for searching or otherwise.

If you offer a section for general synopsis / career to-date / experience then it's usually sufficient.

Also, those ad's that say "Click this link to apply" and then off you go to some pre-ordained form filling destination ? NEVER, NEVER, NEVER... I would rather go to work in a supermarket stocking shelves than go through that pain....

FBP.

rogerg

Check out nixers.ie THey have a "Call Centre (English Speaking)" tab, which I found handy, as I've no language aside from English.

Nixers is just another face for jobs.ie, both of which are now owned by irishjobs.ie (I think). I think the nixers.ie/jobs.ie is the best interface out there at the moment.

OP, check out nixers.ie Also, for Dublin, have a North, South, City Cantre, and All Dublin sections. I find this handy when looking.

Yeah we decided we'd split Dublin up - since commute times are now so long.

s you're only starting off, I'd advise you to do only one area for now. Eg: Dublin only. This will allow you to concentrate on one area of the market, so you may have 50 jobs in Dublin, and not 5 jobs in Dublin, 4 in Wicklow, 18 in Sligo...

We were planning not to exclude anyone - we'll think about it - but we're likely to do all counties - because there's not too much too much more to concentrate on....just adding in counties into a drop down....maybe I'm missing something.

Also, those ad's that say "Click this link to apply" and then off you go to some pre-ordained form filling destination ? NEVER, NEVER, NEVER... I would rather go to work in a supermarket stocking shelves than go through that pain....

This is something we haven't finalised yet and I'm interested in getting more advice here. How would you like the "Click here to apply" to work - what should happen in your opinion?

Thanks again for all advice.

DonkeyStyle \o/

rogerg wrote:

How would you like the "Click here to apply" to work - what should happen in your opinion?

Personally I'd prefer a contact email address & phone number for the position... none of this form-filling nonsense :rolleyes:

rogerg

Personally I'd prefer a contact email address & phone number for the position... none of this form-filling nonsense

That sounds reasonable. Presumably from an employers perspective it is easier if they receive their applications through the one channel - and receive either a CV or the results of a form questionnaire. If you could upload your CV and "send to this employer only" - and didn't have to fill out a form - would this work?

Cantab.

How are you going to get customers? Why would a customer advertise with you when they can ring up loadzajobs.ie or monster or irishjobs.ie? There is no credibility unless you have some experience in the recruitment area? How are you going to establish the critical mass of jobs? Have you got a marketing budget? How big is this in comparison to the backing behind the large recruitment website.

You are entering a mature market. If your product is essentially a "me too" type offering, you'll find it very difficult unless you can bring innovative ideas to the market place.

Anyway, just my general observations. I wish you well. Don't focus on the technical solution to the detriment of the business model (The business graveyard is full of bright techies who had to learn this the hard way)

Owen

Best bit of advice is don't advertise a Sales Job as a "Sales Job, 3 years experience necessary, etc.". I want to know what I'm selling ... it is toothbrushes, tampons, bread, cars, PCs? It's the reason myself, and most of my colleagues don't bother with recruitment sites.

rogerg

How are you going to get customers? Why would a customer advertise with you when they can ring up loadzajobs.ie or monster or irishjobs.ie? There is no credibility unless you have some experience in the recruitment area? How are you going to establish the critical mass of jobs? Have you got a marketing budget? How big is this in comparison to the backing behind the large recruitment website.

We have many challenges ahead of us alright. This project is borne out of the belief that employers are being ripped off by the major players in the market. The technology behind these sites is not rocket science (all though we may be proven wrong on this). We're on day 3 of our challenge to have something built within 2 weeks. Have you tried to advertise a job with loadzajobs.ie or monster or irishjobs.ie? It can cost up to Euro 3000!!! We're planning to be free for the foreseeable future - we will not have huge costs to recoup. So there's one reason to advertise with us.

On the issue of "credibility" - who has any credibility in this marketplace. It is a pretty simple database of jobs and CVs held centrally - I don't see why we shouldn't have as much or more credibility than anyone else. Indeed since we do not have high overheads to pay for swanky offices and sales teams - we do not have to pander to agencies who may be posting non-existant jobs - particularly since we're not charging them anything.

The critical mass issue is the biggest difficulty - we've a few plans on this and also hope to leverage traffic and search enging ranks from some of our other sites.

Aoife-FM104

I think you're kidding yourself with 2 weeks! Job websites are more complicated than you think. But getting the jobsite online is the easy bit...

onedmc

should be able to remove companies from lists eg remove google or HTM or both

Kivun Sotilas

gustavo wrote:

Only have jobs that actually exist.

I was just about to point this out. I am sick of the "fake" fishing for cv jobs that agencies post on every website. I would actually visit a job website exclusively if I knew the jobs on there were not fake. It would be hard to police I guess.

Cantab.

rogerg wrote:

We have many challenges ahead of us alright. This project is borne out of the belief that employers are being ripped off by the major players in the market. The technology behind these sites is not rocket science (all though we may be proven wrong on this). We're on day 3 of our challenge to have something built within 2 weeks. Have you tried to advertise a job with loadzajobs.ie or monster or irishjobs.ie? It can cost up to Euro 3000!!! We're planning to be free for the foreseeable future - we will not have huge costs to recoup. So there's one reason to advertise with us.

On the issue of "credibility" - who has any credibility in this marketplace. It is a pretty simple database of jobs and CVs held centrally - I don't see why we shouldn't have as much or more credibility than anyone else. Indeed since we do not have high overheads to pay for swanky offices and sales teams - we do not have to pander to agencies who may be posting non-existant jobs - particularly since we're not charging them anythin

g.

The critical mass issue is the biggest difficulty - we've a few plans on this and also hope to leverage traffic and search enging ranks from some of our other sites.

Mmm. You say it can cost up to 3k to advertise on your competitors sites? Ok, but how many potential applicants does the prospective employer get for this 3k? Lets say they get 100 cvs, 80 of which are screened out by the recruitment agent. So, the prospective employer gets 20 high quality CVs specific to their needs. Employing new employees is critical - the right one is worth their weight in gold, the wrong one costs you a fortune.

Now, seeing as it is crucial for an employer to get the right employee (and is willing to pay you 3k to minimise the risk of a bad egg as much as possible), how will these potential employees find out about your job adverts when you've to compete with monster (a global organisation), loadzajobs.ie (backed by independent newspapers) and others? How big is your advertising budget in comparison to theirs? Say you have 10% of their advertising budget - for every 100 employees they get, you'll only get 10. So you'll be giving your client mediocre CVs and your established, credible competitor gives 20 top quality CVs.

The only way I can see this business idea proceeding is if:
a) Your marketing budget is as big as your competitors
b) You have some innovative aspect to your service offering that makes up for the shortfall between your budget and that of your competitors
c) You focus on a niche area (this has already been done very sucessfully by other recruitment agencies, and I'm not sure if there's any space left in that area)

(my critical opinion based on not much information... Free advice though!)

rogerg

Mmm. You say it can cost up to 3k to advertise on your competitors sites? Ok, but how many potential applicants does the prospective employer get for this 3k? Lets say they get 100 cvs, 80 of which are screened out by the recruitment agent.

In this particular case irishjobs.ie were not going to screen out employees for us. They hold 2 databases - CV's and Jobs which are provided by 3rd parties. Euro 3000 seemed too much to me to provide them with their stock.

You are right that the biggest challenge is to reach some sort of critical mass - this is something we're a few ideas on.

lostexpectation

ned78 wrote:

Best bit of advice is don't advertise a Sales Job as a "Sales Job, 3 years experience necessary, etc.". I want to know what I'm selling ... it is toothbrushes, tampons, bread, cars, PCs? It's the reason myself, and most of my colleagues don't bother with recruitment sites.

well said, most ad agency jobs give you as little detail as possible about the job, maybe cos they don't want you to figure out the company and apply directly... but please give more details about the area its in at suburb level within the job description and also must have start and finish times for shift work. and also the type of work, not just manufacturing but manufacturing cds vs manufacturing food with in the full description... alot to ask I know.

does a job involve getting there at 5am or does start 9am big difference , start and finish times must be stated for all jobs!

could be good to have advanced search option on shift work, or hours whatever, nobody has that...

who is behind alljobs.ie its a job site
because loadzajobs.ie is very difficult to use now cos you can only search sector by sector and you have to go back and reset the search terms everytime, also multiple (ctrl) choices is good to search in a couple of different sectors or areas at once like jobsireland

how about a clickable rating feedback system for the response and handling from the agents...?

invite more situation vacent type jobs...


wasn't blacknight blogger michel supposed to be doing a job site?

Redrocket

Only have jobs that actually exist
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

rogerg

well said, most ad agency jobs give you as little detail as possible about the job, maybe cos they don't want you to figure out the company and apply directly... but please give more details about the area its in at suburb level within the job description and also must have start and finish times for shift work. and also the type of work, not just manufacturing but manufacturing cds vs manufacturing food with in the full description... alot to ask I know.

does a job involve getting there at 5am or does start 9am big difference , start and finish times must be stated for all jobs!

could be good to have advanced search option on shift work, or hours whatever, nobody has that...

We'll take this on board. There has to be a balance between the amount of info and the amount of form filling that needs to be done. We're planning a different style of search feature that will be more Google than regular mysql searches. So if you search for sales - we'll pick up related words/phrases and included them (on a weighted basis) within the search.

who is behind alljobs.ie its a job site
because loadzajobs.ie is very difficult to use now cos you can only search sector by sector and you have to go back and reset the search terms everytime, also multiple (ctrl) choices is good to search in a couple of different sectors or areas at once like jobsireland

alljobs.ie seems to be a search page for jobs.ie/nixers.ie (also their category structure is v. simiilar). In fact I just looked it up - there owned by the same people (who are now irishjobs.ie) - domain: alljobs.ie
descr: Jobs.ie Ltd.
descr: BODY CORPORATE (LTD,PLC,COMPANY)

We're taking you other comments on board - its really useful feedback for us to know what people want (BTW we're planning on using the CTRL feature for selection - although our plans are still fluid at the moment).

rogerg

Only have jobs that actually exist

This seems to be a common theme and may have to be related to an agent feedback loop - where we can find out about agent's who are posting non-existant jobs.

samtanham

ned78 wrote:

Best bit of advice is don't advertise a Sales Job as a "Sales Job, 3 years experience necessary, etc.". I want to know what I'm selling ... it is toothbrushes, tampons, bread, cars, PCs? It's the reason myself, and most of my colleagues don't bother with recruitment sites.

hey try this niche site for sales jobs i its just for sales so you shouldn't have a problem.
http://www.salesjobs.ie :cool:

samtanham

just saw their sister site http://wwwBLAH.ie same deal.
a really well layed out site which is easy to use with 1000's of jobs for computers and IT in all sectors and for all of ireland
have a look

eth0_

Banned

Aoife-FM104

alljobs.ie is the ugly twin of dole.ie

Flukey

A lot of job searches give up jobs that you have not looked for. You'd do a search for a jobs in a particular profession and in Dublin for example, but you end up getting jobs in other parts of the country too. All of the criteria should be met, unless the searcher specifies otherwise.

Another annoying thing is seeing a whole load of jobs listed and then seeing that many of them are the same job, just by different agencies. OK, each agency is looking for the successful candidate, so they want it advertised separately, but it would be better for the seeker to see the job listed once, and then see a list of the agencies that are advertising it, if that were possible.

Jobs often get left up long after the closing date or even when they are filled. There should be a way for them to automatically be removed instead of having them still sitting there because those that put it up have forgotten to remove it.

You'll sometimes see a job being advertised as "Full Time" and then when you go into it, you'll see it is only 2 hours a day or something like that. That can hardly be categorised as being 2Full Time".

I could go on, but there are so many annoying things about jobs on websites, and agencies, that I will leave it at that.

rogerg

Flukey,

You raise a number of problems with Job websites. Most of them are along the lines of garbage in garbage out....the problem lies mainly with those putting in the data who are usually 3rd parties.....These problems are difficult for the job site to overcome.

The main way we could have of overcoming this is feedback from users along the lines of ..... "Report this job" ...."Report this agent"....as a way of correcting errors.

Jobs often get left up long after the closing date or even when they are filled. There should be a way for them to automatically be removed instead of having them still sitting there because those that put it up have forgotten to remove it.

This happens because there is no downside cost to agencies for having inaccurate data up there. We could have a model along the lines of ...the site is free to use....but if you put up non-existant jobs or leave up jobs that have been filled...or you say the job is in Dublin when it is really in Cork ....then we will charge you Euro 5 for every error (max 1 per job). Let's create a little cognitive dissonance.

lostexpectation

Flukey wrote:

Another annoying thing is seeing a whole load of jobs listed and then seeing that many of them are the same job, just by different agencies. OK, each agency is looking for the successful candidate, so they want it advertised separately, but it would be better for the seeker to see the job listed once, and then see a list of the agencies that are advertising it, if that were possible.

thats very interesting, I don't know of agencies would like that? THe emphasis should be on the job not the agency. ou could have other sections on companies and agencies like the big sites do, but the same job should only come up once .

rogerg

Another annoying thing is seeing a whole load of jobs listed and then seeing that many of them are the same job, just by different agencies. OK, each agency is looking for the successful candidate, so they want it advertised separately, but it would be better for the seeker to see the job listed once, and then see a list of the agencies that are advertising it, if that were possible.

The one thing we are good at is "search" - from our work on scrudu.ie and also from our clustering in "the buzz" on irishblogs.ie. So it may be possible for us to identify similar jobs - especially if there has been a cut and paste job done from some text sent to the agencies by the employer. We're planning to rely more on search and only have a loose categorisation by job type.

fatboypee

Two things occur to me on a blurry Monday morning ....

1. Niche Market & Critical Mass.
I have for a long time been tempted to do something similar with the property market, but thats another story , my suggestion is about the ethos to take with regard to hitting critical mass. It seems to me (and this maybe obvious), that there are too many fingers in the pie with recruitment and the pay-dirt in this respect is to get Employers to use your site over Agencies. I'm not sure if it makes financial sense but most of the irksome issues people have encountered are to do with rogue-ish Agency practices, in terms of their own CV Gathering, database-building antics etc, in a way, this is your competition, not your custom ?

Therefore, making the site easy to use by the employers' HR, safe to use in that you offer a bespoke "Responses" Email for all applicants of the job, maintain an "Applied for" list of Emails that you can use to weed out the serial tyre kicker applicants etc... basically offer the service to the employers first, any agency that wants to also use the site must sign up to a different set of rules and criterion... but IMHO, the focus for the critical mass should be the employers, not the Agencies..

2. Searching.
Not sure on your policy on using Cookies, not sure on people's personal banning of them but one of your search offerings could include a check box that you could ignore any "reviewed" jobs in further seaches ? This could cut down the Chaff of ads that change / get updated that make the searcher think they're looking at a different job (assuming the JobID does'nt change).

Fatboy.

lostexpectation

so they say it took em 2 weeks and 2 days, they only have one job on it so its impossible to test?

Aoife-FM104

These guys are living in fantasy land. Lots of companies with many employees and large budgets take a number of years for their jobsites to become successful.

With a little budget and a very immature, naive outlook (which these guys have) they won't get anywhere.

Any fool can get a job website up and running in 6 - 12 months, but getting customers and jobseekers is an entirely different matter.

rogerg

Jeez, I'm glad Aoife-FM104 is not on our team. It's almost like you had a vested interest in us not succeeding.

You're right about one thing - the challenge is huge.

....although we're not total newcomers as this may show:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=medium&compare_sites=ryanair.com&y=t&url=www.blogsome.com#top

BTW the name and url have been changed to:
Find Irish Jobs

Aoife-FM104

Hang on - is your jobsite powered by blog software...?

rogerg

Hang on - is your jobsite powered by blog software...?

No. I was showing Blogsome (a site we own and manage) as an example of our experience in managing an exceptionally busy platform over a number of servers. Having said that it would be entirely feasible to run a job website using blog software. In fact Press Release Ireland runs of blog software and has all the features you might want in a job site - alerts, uploading pdf's, search, categories etc. So there would be nothing wrong with running a site of "blog software" because after all they all manage content and use databases. In this case however we chose to build from scratch using another content management system.

I agree that there are many pieces of the jigsaw required to come together to have a successful job website. I disagree that some of those pieces include many employees and wads of cash. There are many examples of success stories where money/fuding was not the key ingredient. There are also examples of failures by companies with many employees and a nicely funded burn rate.

lostexpectation

you don't have an all dublin selection, you spectacularily failed to do any of what you said you do.

rogerg

you spectacularily failed to do any of what you said you do

Hmmm. Right now we have a functioning site which can be used at no charge.

We RSS on categories and locations.
We have boolean search "test AND deluxe", "test NOT deluxe" (not fully tested are phrases searches, searches with "title:"Job Title"")
We have saved searches, alerts (although if you haven't set up an account you wouldn't see that).
You can upload your CV in a range of formats. You can also input your CV.

Coming...RSS feed for search results.

We'll do an "all Dublin" section.

..of course there are some bugs as would be expected with a newish site.


..."spectacularly failed" ....I'd say is a bit harsh.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

lostexpectation wrote:

you spectacularily failed to do any of what you said you do.

purpose of rogerg's posts are to get feedback on the website. Until it is out of beta, seems a bit premature to describe something as a 'spectacular failure'!

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

although, i do think you are going to have your work cut out for you. It is hard to see any innovation in the website (being honest).

I'd suggest that an innovation you could introduce is to totally ignore Dublin. This is an over-serviced market from the other job websites. Maybe specialise in somewhere like Munster or Connaught (sic).

Also, if you could reach out to employers who normally don't advertise on these job sites (e.g. small retailers who may not have the web-savvy) you could create a niche for yourself. Although, this would require real-life advertising, maybe a mail-shot.

As a possible marketing strategy (but, quite costly), you could mail all businesses in a particular town and give them a form they can fill in and mail back (and you then type the ad into the website for them) which allows them their first job vacancy advert for free. This will get them familiar with the business. You could follow this with a small advert in the local town newspaper to alert potential employees.

Small non-web-savvy businesses, and outside-Dublin areas, seem to me to be the only underserviced sections of the online recruitment business.

Cantab.

Roundtower2 wrote:

although, i do think you are going to have your work cut out for you. It is hard to see any innovation in the website (being honest).

I'd suggest that an innovation you could introduce is to totally ignore Dublin. This is an over-serviced market from the other job websites. Maybe specialise in somewhere like Munster or Connaught (sic).

Also, if you could reach out to employers who normally don't advertise on these job sites (e.g. small retailers who may not have the web-savvy) you could create a niche for yourself. Although, this would require real-life advertising, maybe a mail-shot.

As a possible marketing strategy (but, quite costly), you could mail all businesses in a particular town and give them a form they can fill in and mail back (and you then type the ad into the website for them) which allows them their first job vacancy advert for free. This will get them familiar with the business. You could follow this with a small advert in the local town newspaper to alert potential employees.

Small non-web-savvy businesses, and outside-Dublin areas, seem to me to be the only underserviced sections of the online recruitment business.

Agree with much of this.

I must also say that there seems to be too much focus on the technical solution. The website must be the result of a customer need, not a technical solution in itself.

The website is text-book and works. Great + well done. Anybody with a degree in IT from one of the technical colleges could rattle a similar site together without too much pain. It does not seem to me that the site fits in to the overall business model (if there even is a business model?)

You need CVs and customers, pronto. I said on this board over a week ago that this is your biggest challenge, but you seem to have ignored the hard challenges and wallowed in the comfort of what you know best (I assume you guys are all techies). You're now in the position where you need to get customers fast - the longer that site stays up with zero jobs on it, the quicker you are going to lose credibility. Now wasn't credibility one of the critical factors important to the sucess of the business? I wouldn't write you guys a cheque, when I will get a guaranteed level of service from the established recruitment agencies who have a professional track-record (technical website skills being a by-product of their core profession).

It appears to me that you've fallen into the trap of focusing in on the technical ins and outs - above this implementation level, there seems to be a void of real innovation, customer-focus and sound business planning. Might not all be a waste of time though - at least you've learned (albeit the hard way). Before starting on your next venture, I'd recommend learning the easy way by picking up the most elementary of text books about developing new products/services and you'll see all the traps that so many people have fallen in to before.

the_batman

Have to agree with previous posters. Developing the technical solution isn't really difficult. The challenge is to attract and retain customers.

There are thousands of companies who have developed great technical products, but never made any money out of them.

There are also thousands of companies who have developed poor technical products, but marketed the products really well and made loads of money out of them.

You guys appear to be focusing on technical solutions. Without a good business plan there is no point.

the_batman

Just had another look at the site. Should it be called FindIrishJob.ie rather than FindIrishJobs.ie?