JOBMATCHBOX

We live in web 2.0 world where data is free, but clicks are not, but that doesn’t mean that you should engage in shady business practices.  My beef here is primarily with ecnext because they are engaged in a shady business practice that I would liken to splogging.  However, both Indeed and Jobthread can put a stop to their shady business practice or at least make it easier for publishers and hiring teams to avoid beign tangled in your spammy web. 

Indeed needs to find a way for users of their job search widget to report spammy practices like the one that I encountered today.  If they don’t want to go that far then they should take the time to verify that publishers using their job search widget are not using it for spammy purposes.  Guidelines for publishers would be a good start.  For example: creat a policy that prohibits widget publishers from grabbing company names from their (Indeed) API and then listing ads that look like jobs or for just plain jobs from companies other than those associated with companies.

Here is what I’m talking about:

This is not ok:
Indeed Job Search [ Enter Keyword]  [Enter Location] Search
Acme, Inc. (pulled from Indeed’s API)
Ad Job - Work from Home
Ad Job - Job at Sprint

This is an ok use case:
Acme, Inc. Jobs(pulled from Indeed’s API)
Acme, Inc. Job #1
Acme, Inc. Job #2
End Acme, Inc. Jobs.

Ad…

This is an ok use case:
Acme, Inc. Jobs (pulled from Indeed’s API)
No listings found.
End Acme, Inc. Jobs.

Ad …

One such user that is currently abusing the Indeed Jobs widget is a company called ecnext that is based in Westerville, Ohio.  Their phone numbers are 614-682-5103 (main line) and 614-682-5105 (customer support).  They are an an online advertising company owned by Hoovers that publishes sites like Goliath, Manta and Standards and Poors.  They have a B2B relationship with Indeed.com that allows them to pull data from Indeed job listings (via API). 

What ecnext does with that data is identical to what sploggers do with the content that they lift from other publisher sites. ecnext pulls the data from Indeed’s listings, creates company profiles, then puts ads under the name of the company.  The ads are for other jobs - work from home, competitors, etc.  My example above is from their Goliath website. 

The company doesn’t get a voice in this and this is really bad because it makes it look like the company is either a staffing agency or worse - a scam operation selling work from home opportunities.  The case that showed up under one company that I looked at today (on Goliath) included work from home opportunities and jobs at Sprint like in the example above.  The company that I looked at had no affiliation with either work from home opportunities or Sprint.  This is very misleading and is used to improve the site’s SEO and ad revenue.

I called Indeed and they said that they would consider giving companies and opt-out option, but gave no promises.  This is a major headache because Indeed gets their jobs from other companies like Jobthread, a site that doens’t tell publishers or job posters that their content is going to be leveraged by a 4th party (ecnext).  The content is so far upstream by the time a company is hit with the problem that someone would have to contact a variety of publishers independently to get the problem resolve.

In any case, ecnext goes up in my hall of shame right next to the sploggers that shamelessly rip content from publisher sites and then attempt to re-monetize it.  I’ve been supportive of both Indeed and Jobthread because they provide much needed tools to job seekers and help hiring teams by simplifying the job posting process, but if something doesn’t change (on both ends) then they are going to lose my support.

I’ve been critical of big job boards, but this is out of control.  It’s official, Wal-Mart has entered the online classifieds business.  Does this mean that their next mark is Facebook?  Craigslist eat your heart out.

Before I launched my own company I had to recruit a lot Java developers for HUGE companies all the time.  There were endless Java developers and endless teams hiring them.  I guess this was good for business.  The problem then is pretty much the same problem now - there are too many bad Java developers out there.  And by bad Java developers I mean people who treat technology as if it was their VCR.  They really don’t care about the technology that they work with and could care less if they were writing code or selling real estate, as long as they get a big paycheck.  I wish that I was making this up, but I’m not.  One of the reasons why I got so excited about Ruby on Rails several years ago (before it became the big phenom that it is now) was because I spent time in the Java and Ruby communities.  I found that the people who were into Ruby were into technology.  They cared about technology.  Java people just did whatever paid the most.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are Java people who care about technology, but they are just really hiding out somewhere.  If I had to guess I’d say that they are hiding from staffing agencies who pester them.  But that can’t be it - these people have to exist.  So why don’t they come out and play with the rest of the technology community?

If you know any good Java developers or happen to be one, let me know.  I’d be happy to introduce you to others.  Here is my email address: email@jobmatchbox.com

When I post a job and I get candidates in response who are in high school with three page resumes!  True story.  Seriously, I just spent 3 hours going through resumes from job board listings. 

A few patterns:
More than 80% (my best guess) of the resumes that come in from Craigslist are from spammy job seekers - the kind who don’t include a name, address, or a cover letter indicating which job they are responding to. 

Any time you post an engineering job on Linkedin you will get consultants, project managers, sales reps, and anything but engineers.  Engineers just don’t use LinkedIn to job hunt. 

Engineers DO use Craigslist, but not the ones who you want to talk to.

Job descriptions are for wimps!  I don’t really have time to count, but if I did I’ll bet that 90% of people who respond to jobs DO NOT read the job requirements.  It isn’t that they miss the title, it is that they read the title and skip the rest.  The part that really concerns me is that I’m not even talking about the people who are out there submitting their consultants for jobs manually or by script…I’m talking about the people who just don’t think they need to read the descriptions.  If you are a recruiter and you call one of these people back you should kick yourself.

The longer the resume is the less likely it is that the person is qualified for the job.  It isn’t that more pages is bad or frowned upon, it is a universal signal to hiring teams that you are hiding something (or just can’t find a job so you’ve hedged your bets and applied for all of them).  Don’t worry if you have a 2-3 page resume if you have 10-30 years of experience, but if you have 10 years of experience and 23 pages of resume then you may want to seek professional help (I’m not talking about the resume writer kind either).

At least 30% (again, my best guess) of people responding to jobs online don’t feel that it is important to include their NAME.  At least 60% (”) skip all or part of their last name.  This isn’t just engineers (althought that part really concerns me - aren’t engineers supposed to pay attention to detail?).

We don’t usually plug corporate YouTube videos, but the Terry Tate, Corporate Linebacker series is too much fun not to share. This series reminds us yet again why startup culture appeals.

A class at MIT has developed some Android applications that offer some insight into the types of applications that are to come (click here for a list).  One of them uses geolocation to allow employers to track where their employees are in real time.  This sort of tracking is already used on rental cars and tractor trailers, but could be used more widely if applied to mobile devices. 

A few months ago my biggest concern was over whether or not it was a good idea for someone to create a social network aggregator.  I spent some time looking at social network aggregators and even more time considering the implications for user privacy involved with them.  I also considered the subject of OpenID, a possible alternative.  But since then it seems like the need for a social network aggregator has been resolved by efforts of competing companies to replicate each other’s services and also each other’s hubs.  In other words, if you have a list of contacts in one place you can a) interact with them elsewhere without re-creating the wheel or b) import them wherever you go or c) interact with them up to a certain point without re-creating the wheel. 

The problem with all of these is generally the same - if one company allows you to pack up your contacts and all of the data associated with them and all of the data involved with your activity inside of their universe then you can leave them behind and not look back.  Companies have a vested interest in preventing this.  In a company’s early stages it may be advantageous to allow data to play well elsewhere, but over time this becomes a problem.  And with this problem social networks become much more like traditional service providers - think big telco’s that have learned to make it extremely difficult for you to leave them for another carrier.  

In the mean time, we all have to deal with the service and feed pluralism while the major players battle it out for our already short attention span.  Take Plaxo - they have re-introduced the “USERNAME is …” status indicator to us.  I guess they didn’t get the memo about the “is”.  Plaxo is suggesting people who I might know just like Facebook now too.  And then there are Linkedin and MySpace - both of them are working hard to replicate features and the UI of Facebook.

We all have to make personal choices about how we interact with the social graph, but with all of these different companies offering similar services it is getting increasingly difficult to do so.  In this increasingly competitive market the winners will be the established players, not the newcomers.  Google and Facebook will continue to dominate, but Yahoo might be in a position to re-gain some ground if they can work on improving their ui and product/content integration. 

“Research In Motion (RIM) (TSX: RIM; NASDAQ: RIMM), RBC (RY: TSX; RY: NYSE) and Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI; TSX: TRI; LSE: TRIL; NASDAQ: TRIN), today announced plans to launch the BlackBerry® Partners Fund, a US$150 million venture capital fund, to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry® platform and other mobile platforms. The Fund is to be co-managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners.”

The compeition in the mobile marketplace just continues to heat up, and so are efforts to entice developers to build applications on their platforms.  With all of the money on the table and so little infrastructure in place today, there are some terrific opportunties for new and existing startups to get a solid footing the the Wild West of Mobile application development.  If you need more incentive, check out what the platform creators are offering:

Google is offering $10 million in awards to developers who come up with applications for the Android platform - “no strings attached”.
 
RIM just announced a partnership that will invest $150 million in companies who are building applications for mobile platforms (you can bet that they will require efforts toward the Blackberry too).

Kleiner Perkins recently announced a $100 millon fund that will invest in iPhone related startups.

I have been to far too many creative, technology and startup company related events where I’ve left scratching my head as to why the crowd has so few women in it.  If I started looking for Women who have founded startup companies the number decreases yet again.  In the the recent Mid Atlantic Business Plan Competition there was a single team comprised solely of Women.  In all of of my recent interactions with startup company founders from around the Washington, DC area I’ve only met one.  That is why I’m glad to see efforts like DC Web Women and Women 2.0 happening.  I hope to see a lot more women joining our ranks very soon. 

If you got excited about the iPhone then get ready for the next roller coaster ride, the Android Phone.  If you haven’t been following lately then you probably haven’t missed much.  But now that summer is near, so is the debut of the Android Phone, which will be based on a new open source operating system called Android.  Android represents Google’s stab at Windows, Linux and Mac OS.  Oh, and according to Google’s website there isn’t going to be a Google Phone, just phones that run on Android.

To make the things interesting, Google is working to make sure Android phones will not be limited to traditional wireless networks.  To this end, Google is backing a new company (I would say startup, but this is going to be huge) called Clearwire that will provide WiMAX as an alternative to traditional cellular.  They aren’t alone, according to Google’s blog “Google, Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners have entered into an agreement to invest $3.2 billion in a new wireless broadband company.” - talk about big deals.

The essentials include a merger of Sprint and Clearwire WiMAX networks.  Google is invested in this deal because they plan to leverage the new network for the Google Phone.  This definitely has broader implications such as a better alternative to wired Internet connections and wifi. 

Definitely check out the video and the next generation phone.