RSS Job feeds & Job rolls - Solomon Duskis reaches out to tech readers at RunningWithBulls.com

RSS Job feeds & Job rolls - Solomon Duskis reaches out to tech readers

Published by bbt March 24th, 2006 in bernard

My recent post about job sites offering RSS feeds of jobs (including keywords related to the job) has generated some response from bloggers and RSS feed grazers.

I am happy to say this feedback has not gone unnoticed in our office. I am not getting a bad response, lets say that.

This morning I received two interesting comments one from John McClean, and another from Fergal Burns, CEO of Nooked.com (the RSS marketing company).

John mentioned Solomon Duskis, a Java/J2EE consultant based in New York, picked up on the post I made, via James at eirepreneur. (Thanks James!).

Solomon has added an XML feed and OPML node for jobs available at his company, after picking up the idea from my post. (Does that mean I did something good? I’ll take the praise now, and worry about the specifics later ).

You can see the OPML node on his site.

While he says I got the idea from Indeed.com, he is partly right. Indeed.com are a jobs search engine who index other jobs sites, and jobs sections on companies sites. They present this to the job seeker as a search engine. Yes they indeed do provide RSS feeds of the search results.

I would be hoping that we could build on the really useful service Indeed.com, and of course SimplyHired.com provide. But either way, RSS feeds would be good.

James says:

If you could incentivise it by offering something back to web site owners to display your feed (e.g. bloggers) - some along the lines of a referall fee - you could be on to a winner. Irish Java bloggers may display listing for Irish J2EE jobs etc.

The second would be really good to do. The first, well, that costs money ;). But it may be a flier. The thing I want to do is provide as many ideas to management and discuss them, why or why not they are not viable.

Syndicating a certain number of jobs would be a good idea (syndicating all would be possible, but there could potentially be thousands of results.)

The second comment, from Fergus, was equally as interesting. The original comment he left on Tom Raftery’s post was useful, showing Pros and Cons.

Pros include:
– additional service for employers and job seekers (esp in IT sector)
– rss feed should be at all levels (categories, locations, keywords, and combinations of all)
– usage choices - branded RSS reader, branded mobile rss reader, etc
– marketing opportunity - extend reach of your job database through. see http://www.jobster.com/myjobster/manageFeeds.html

The first pro is a definate. As RSS feeds and OPML directories become more and more prevalent (Windows Vista, IE7, Firefox, My Yahoo!, and more etc) more of the IT sector (lets face it, the more tech savvy and exposed to new technology) will come across RSS feeds quicker.

RSS feeds at all levels would allow a certain number of services to be brough out (syndication of categories would come to mind).

Marketing opportunity. Hmm, Fergus can you expand on that?

Of course, there are always cons too.

Cons:

- by RSS enabling content you enable potential mis-use (which can be guarded via policy, t&c, etc)

There are a few others too, but the services that we currently offer have their associated T&Cs so they could be formed easily enough.

Fergal continues:

“in relation to tracking the feeds, i would recommend using unqiue feeds - this way you have the opportunity for enhanced measurement in terms of job seekers, job category interest, etc [just throwing out the feeds would be a nightmare in terms of measuring the business value of an rss implementation)”

This is the meat that is most important. How does a company communicate RSS feed traffic to clients? Its not possible to track individual “posts” in each feed.

With regards using unique feeds, this is the best way. The feed would be relevant to each job seeker who requested the RSS feed.

If anyone comes up with any more feedback, please do contact me.

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9 Responses to “RSS Job feeds & Job rolls - Solomon Duskis reaches out to tech readers”

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1 Solomon Duskis Mar 26th, 2006 at 3:37 am

Thanks for mentioning my post
I haven’t really gotten too many responses yet, but that’s OK… most of my audiences is in Las Vegas: http://javasymposium.techtarget.com/

I’ll also give you a little secret about the marketing angle… My basic premise in making my post was: “Marketing through innovative recruiting.” I have a few more ideas about that subject.

Hey… Even hard-core programmers like me can do marketing
You did mention my post, didn’t you? My management noticed.

I got my ideas from the amazing way Google has been recruiting. The marketing and recruiting prowess of a software guy named Joel Spolsky is also pretty amazing - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/.

My reading list (which probably should be in my OPML feed) on the recruiting in the programming space: http://jroller.com/page/Solomon?entry=recruiting_the_best

Specifically, I would recommend this fascinating read: http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/google-secret-weapon.html

It was written by a recruiter/programmer at Amazon who praises Google despite the fact that Google was in the process of poaching Amazon’s employees.

I also posted a semi-related follow up: http://jroller.com/page/Solomon?entry=javablogs_and_job_searching
2 Solomon Duskis Mar 26th, 2006 at 5:18 am

The big US tech job search agencies, at least Dice and Monster, have RSS feeds including top searches and individualized search agent results…

I have a techie friend who’s looking for a job here in New York. He told me that he aggregates those RSS feeds to conduct his job search.
3 Jimbo Mar 27th, 2006 at 12:38 am

I’ve just developed a job-related web-app which has built in RSS feeds. It works by monitoring company jobs sites for changes. When a new job is posted on, for example, www.google.ie/jobs/ you will get an email notifying you of the change. You can tag your various ‘watches’ so you don’t get flooded with responses.

I’m looking for beta testers if anyone is interested, drop me a line at jkennedy at smartnote.ie
4 Solomon Duskis Mar 27th, 2006 at 1:35 am

I think that there is a more fundamental change that can be done in Job Search market. I spoke at length with recruiters. They said that I’m more marketable when I’m employed… It makes a certain degree of sense, but those kinds of notions might be dispelled with education about the recruitment process.

Prosper.com and Zopa.com have found efficiencies in the banking business by applying social networking, consumer education and openness. I have a feeling that similar types of efficiencies can be performed in the recruiting industry.
5 Steve Apr 10th, 2006 at 4:04 pm

I run the Irish jobs website http://www.dole.ie. We spider and display the jobs from all the main job websites in Ireland.

We have an RSS feature - we have feeds by category, location, keyword(s), job website, and all jobs.

Any opinions on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

PS Sorry for the mild spam
6 bbt Apr 10th, 2006 at 4:14 pm

Hi Steve,

Thanks for comment firstly. Yeah I have seen dole.ie, nice site.

I don;’t think you guys index jobs from IrishJobs.ie, buit maybe I am wrong.

RSS feeds would be nice alright. You guys are going on the indeed.com model?

You can contact me here: http://www.runningwithbulls.com/blog/contact-us/

Won’t put out my e-mail address as I get enough spam already.

Drop me a line and we can have a chat!

thanks,
bernard
7 bbt Apr 10th, 2006 at 4:15 pm

Oh PS: I didn’t class the comment as spam at all! Happier you sent it. cheers
8 Steve Apr 10th, 2006 at 5:03 pm

Hey Bernard,

Thanks for the kind words!

You are indeed correct, we don’t display the jobs from either jobs.ie or irishjobs.ie - but that’s a story for another day…
We’re not really modeling ourselves on anyone. When I set up http://www.staff.ie the motivation was always to create a simple, user friendly website. I’m trying to apply this philosophy to Dole.ie as well. (I’ve always thought the job websites in Ireland are too corporate/employer focussed.)

Anyway, I’ll pop you off an e-mail tonight.

Cheers!
9 paul Apr 26th, 2007 at 9:13 am

It is indeed an interesting debate. I guess a company would need to look closely at what details they put in the RSS, to avoid skimming of their data. It would be more exposure for the major job sites. I like the idea of the referral concept too.