So What is .JOBS?

Remember a few years ago when companies were encouraged to register (COMPANY NAME).JOBS for their career sites? It never really caught on as most companies included their recruitment pages as part of their regular websites.
Now it is back.
Here is an article by Bill Warren explaining why:

Top Employers Announce a Transformation in Online Recruiting
By Bill Warren January 18, 2011
Leading U.S. Employers Launch New Job Listing “.JOBS Universe”

Indianapolis, IN USA - January 18, 2011 – Over 500 leading U.S. employers, including some of the largest companies in the world, are joining forces to transform how people use the Internet to quickly and efficiently locate valid employment opportunities.

The catalyst is the unique dot-jobs (.JOBS) Top Level Domain (TLD). The new platform, called the .JOBS Universe (www.universe.jobs), is a stunning transformation comprised of tens of thousands of geographic, industry, and occupational web sites ending in the intuitive .JOBS suffix. Examples of web sites in the .JOBS Universe include www.boston.jobs, www.atlanta.jobs, www.insurance.jobs, www.technology.jobs and www.usa.jobs.

Leading employers have rallied around the ambitious plan that allows all companies, regardless of size or industry, to list jobs free of charge, automatically upload new listings on a daily basis, and intelligently distribute job listings to relevant web sites. For example, an IBM listing for an engineering job in New York will be distributed to multiple relevant websites, such as www.newyork.jobs and www.engineering.jobs.

The .JOBS Universe is led by Bill Warren, Executive Director of DirectEmployers Association, a former President of the Monster.com job board who is widely regarded as the founder of online recruiting. Approximately forty thousand of the .JOBS domains, including 126 international locations, will be functioning in January with tens of thousands more planned by the end of the year.

Mr. Warren states “The very largest of employers in the world have pooled their resources to build this recruitment vertical. They want greater efficiencies from the Internet and are taking matters into their own hands to invest in the outcome. With the recent advances in cloud computing, the scalability of the .JOBS Universe is off the charts. The potential for cost savings is natural, real and sustainable as well as available free of charge to every employer worldwide regardless of industry or size.”

Benefits job seekers will find include intuitive web site entry points, verified job listings and the ability to connect directly with employers. "I'm excited about the .JOBS Universe because it's going to revolutionize the way someone will look for a job. Right now the process is very difficult. It takes so much time and there's so much duplication of effort. With .JOBS, candidates will be able to go to one, intuitive location and know that the opportunities listed are straight from employers," says Randy Goldberg, Vice President Recruiting, Hyatt North America Operations.

Job listings in the .JOBS Universe are fully integrated with social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and others. Job seekers can build their own profile and identify which of their friends or connections are working at a particular company of interest. They can also find and follow companies and recruiters on the various social networks and share job listings with their friends on social news sites. The .JOBS Universe platform has also been optimized for easy access on mobile browsers. Its “open source” approach allows industry vendors to develop apps that will result in even greater efficiencies in the future.

Mr. Warren adds “Building out the .JOBS TLD, owned and managed by employers through a non-profit association, is revolutionary for the Internet and a gigantic step for both employers and job seekers. It provides employers low-cost advertising and branding opportunities while reducing recruiting costs. It also provides job seekers a direct connection to employers and a trusted, reliable source on the Internet to locate employment opportunities.”

The .JOBS Universe is the result of a proposal made by DirectEmployers Association to Employ Media LLC, the licensed operator of the .JOBS TLD.



Will .JOBS be the next panacea for online recruiting? I personally don't think so.

I beleive that .JOBS is one more grasp my the big job boards to remain the main source for online recruiting by connecting everything with social media. That is a good thing, however companies are already doing that, so why bother placing their ads on yet another website?

Time will tell.
Thanks for reading!

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy