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DirectEmployers Featured on THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online

Monday, January 24th, 2011
Since 2001 DirectEmployers Association’s mission has been to create a more effective and efficient labor market for employers and job seekers to connect easier, faster and freely. This article on THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online highlights how The .jobs Universe launch is building on this mission to revolutionize online recruiting for employers and job seekers.

A New, Trusted Source to Help You Find Jobs and Connect With Employers

By: Ed Ward

Finding and competing for employment opportunities in today’s job market is extremely challenging for entry-level job seekers. It doesn’t take new job seekers long to discover that the sprawl of jobs sites can sometimes make finding and winning their dream job harder still. Bogus job postings, stale postings, identical opportunities posted in duplicate or cross-posted on multiple sites—all of these can add up to frustrating dead ends and lost opportunities.

DirectEmployers Association, which is owned and managed by over 550 leading employers through a nonprofit employer trade association, has formulated an interesting plan to build and develop the .jobs Top Level Domain (TLD) for the human resource (HR) community, which includes college recruiters. The Association’s plan will greatly improve labor market efficiency and make it much easier for entry-level job seekers—particularly students—to find employment opportunities and connect with employers. The new .jobs project aims to bring order to the Babel of online recruitment and connect employers with job seekers in a more efficient manner.

The Association, which maintains alliances with both the National Association of Colleges and Employers and the American Association of Community Colleges for college recruiting, has a stated mission “to provide employers an employment network that is cost-effective, improves labor market efficiency, and reaches an ethnically diverse national and international workforce.” It has proposed the buildout of the .jobs TLD in a manner that is consistent with its mission and in response to a Request for Proposal by Employ Media, the domain’s licensee and registry operator.

With an intuitive domain extension that appears at the ends of Web addresses like .com (commercial), .edu (education), .gov (government), and .mil (military), .jobs has already been adopted by numerous employers, making it easer to find opportunities through easy-to-remember URLs that take job seekers directly to the jobs sections of large employers’ Web sites. Compare, for example, www.ibm.jobs to www.ibm.com or www.att.jobs to www.att.com

The Association’s number one objective is for the .jobs TLD to become a trusted source for both employers and job seekers. First and foremost, it should offer real jobs from real employers. It must be free of scams, duplicate job listings, and old or expired jobs. All employers worldwide, regardless of their size or industry, would be allowed to list their jobs free of charge. Another objective is to provide job seekers with direct navigation from the job listing to the application process in the employer’s applicant tracking system.

Contrary to some reports, .jobs will not comprise millions of job boards, but rather one dynamic platform serving only relevant jobs to the job seeker community. These domains will be used merely as entry points to vetted, trusted, and relevant job content. Furthermore, the Association plans to create meaningful and useful domains within the .jobs platform which will connect job seekers from special interest groups—such as minorities, people with disabilities, and military personnel re-entering the civilian workforce—with hiring employers.

A good example of this is the .jobs Military Occupational Classification (MOC) crosswalk, which will help transitioning military personnel locate jobs in the civilian workforce. The MOC crosswalk utilizes the latest available Department of Defense job-matching information to link military occupations to related civilian occupations. Transitioning military personnel can enter their MOC along with .jobs (e.g., 42F.jobs, 25B.jobs, 2891.jobs, etc.) into their browser and immediately find civilian occupations requiring the same or similar skill sets as their previous job in the military.

Under the Association’s plan, Employ Media will retain ownership of all geographical, occupational, and country-name .jobs domains for the purpose of creating an environment of seamlessly integrated employment domains. As the licensee and registry operator, Employ Media will remain free to continue accepting ideas and proposals from interested parties in the human resource community. Such ideas and proposals must be in accordance with the provisions of the .jobs charter in order to serve the needs of the international human resource management community.

The .jobs initiative has received overwhelming support from Direct Employers Association’s member companies, which include HR practitioners from some of the largest U.S. and international employers in the world. In an effort to provide transparency and keep the HR community informed, the Association has done the following:

  • Formed a 40-person .jobs Advisory Panel composed of HR practitioners from leading companies in the human resource community in order to provide suggestions, guidance, and feedback for the .jobs TLD environment;
  • Invited industry experts, including CEOs of leading job boards, to .jobs informational meetings earlier this year;
  • Announced an open-door policy at the meeting with industry experts to discuss any and all matters relating to the .jobs beta test;
  • Made several presentations, including webinars, throughout the past eight months to member companies regarding the .jobs initiative;
  • Made both the Association’s representatives and those from member companies available to answer questions about the .jobs build-out during the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS) Congress held earlier this year; and
  • Provided videos and other supporting materials on www.universe.jobs to inform interested parties and help the entire HR community better understand the .jobs initiative.

As outlined in the Association’s proposal, all employers worldwide, regardless of their size or industry, will be able to post jobs at no cost. Since this is not a compilation of a million different job boards but rather one dynamic jobs platform, it will provide a single interface for posting jobs to niche, targeted locations. Automated job feeds and single postings will only be accepted from vetted employers and, when the .jobs TLD build-out is complete, all jobs will automatically appear in the appropriate city, state, country, and occupational .jobs URLs. Job seekers, including students and alumni, will be able to enter a desired city, state, geographic region, country, or occupation along with .jobs (e.g., Atlanta.jobs, Georgia.jobs, etc.) into their browser for immediate access to relevant jobs.

The .jobs platform offers distinct advantages for both employers and entry-level job seekers. It will provide the only search engine on the Internet with which you can search for jobs across all employer career sites with results that are guaranteed to be real jobs from real employers and are free of scams, duplicate job listings, and old or expired jobs.

Job seekers will have a quick, easy, and direct connection to the hiring employer, resulting in a faster and more efficient hiring process. Only employment related advertising and content will be allowed in the .jobs universe.

Employers with their own companyname. jobs URL as well as those who list their jobs in the .jobs universe will provide job seekers with direct access to their jobs. It is the fundamental intent of the .jobs universe to drive job seeker traffic to employer career sites. At no cost to employers, the .jobs universe will provide greatly needed efficiency for all employers, especially those with smaller budgets and more urgent hiring needs.

What may be of particular interest to students and graduating seniors is employers’ ability to leverage their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube accounts with the .jobs platform, which is fully integrated with social networks. This will provide job seekers with the ability to share job listings with their friends and follow corporate recruiters on social media sites.

By making their jobs available on a nonprofit, public service employment network, employers can increase their recruiting reach and extend diversity initiatives with consistent and aggressive programs to make employment opportunities available to individuals from all cultures and population segments.

Ray Schreyer, Program Manager of Internet Recruiting Strategies at IBM Corporation, states, “Leveraging technology to reduce sourcing time and recruitment cost is a core mission for IBM’s talent acquisition team. We acknowledge the new .jobs platform as a revolutionary initiative for the recruitment industry as well as the Internet, removing barriers and improving the candidate experience.”

The Association has a blog at www.universe.jobs, where you can find additional information and answers to any questions that you might have about this exciting initiative.

View original post on THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online by Ed Ward.

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Veterans are Talent STRONG!

Friday, January 15th, 2010

SEARCH & EMPLOY JAN/FEB 2010

LAST JANUARY, before demobilizing from the Army back into civilian life, I was honored to speak to a group of over 200 Wounded Warriors at Fort Benning, Georgia.

I talked about their transition to civilian life and what they should convey to prospective employers when trying to separate themselves from the mainly civilian pack during their job searches.

Luckily, the week before, I had been asked to give a presentation to the Continental Airlines recruiting group about the advantage of hiring prior military. John Whalin, Continental’s Senior Analyst, Employment Compliance, is ahead of most when it comes to understanding just what former military bring to the table. But unfortunately, most employers cannot relate to military experience unless they were former military themselves.

So I started my time on the floor, in front of the Wounded Warriors, with the Continental presentation and spoke to why they are great candidates. I covered the following points:

LEADERSHIP

In the military, as you propel through the ranks, you are required to attend several leadership schools. If you fail to attend classes or pass the courses, you are stripped of rank—demoted. Thus, leadership is not an option in the military. Everyone is trained for leadership and expected to become a leader at an early age.

UNDERSTANDING THE RULES

Military personnel are held to a much higher standard than civilians, and are even governed by a more strict set of rules—the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

DIVERSITY

The United States Armed Forces, considered as a single entity, are the largest employer in the nation, and one of the most diverse. In combat, the color, gender, or religion of the individual to your left or right does not matter. What truly matters is the person’s proficiency in his or her job. Are there cases of discrimination in the military? Yes, but they are dealt with swiftly under the UCMJ.

TEAM PLAYERS

A single soldier cannot watch his/ her own back—meaning the solitary soldier cannot efficiently complete the mission. That is why on day one of basic training in the Army, every trainee is issued a battle buddy before being issued anything else. Soldiers are trained to travel and work in teams, and if individualism is spotted—well, let’s just say it’s frowned upon.

EDUCATION AND TECH SAVVY

Military personnel can attend college, when not deployed, and have Uncle Sam pick up a big portion of the cost. So when personnel leave the military, they commonly have degrees or are working toward them. And after they leave, they have ample opportunity to further their education via the GI Bill and other readily available funding programs.

The military also invests in and utilizes state-of-the-art technology, and has close to a hundred technical positions. The Air Force and Navy are extremely technical. Their personnel are extremely well trained in anti-cyber-terrorism and are responsible for protecting America’s cyber borders, so to speak.

PERFORMANCE UNDER PRESSURE

Imagine doing your job every day knowing there are lives at stake—and knowing that the preservation of those lives depends on your performance. The pressure of performing in what could quickly develop into a grave situation is merely a part of everyday military life.

DRUG-FREE AND HEALTHY

Military personnel regularly receive drug tests and physical examinations. The military thereby keeps its personnel drug-free and physically ready, to ensure combat effectiveness and their ability to fight and win on any battlefield.

Military personnel are accustomed to urinalysis once a quarter, daily fitness training, and physical fitness testing—which includes upper body, core, and endurance events at least once a quarter. Imagine what our health insurance rates would be if every company implemented such programs.

SECURITY CLEARANCES

The military conducts in-depth background checks and provides security clearances to personnel who come in contact with certain levels of information. Those personnel are cleared and vetted well before hitting the civilian market.

QUICK LEARNERS

One of the words best describing military personnel is adaptability. To train for the War on Terror, soldiers are taught to be adaptable and think on their feet—unlike 20 years ago, when soldiers were taught not to think. The battlefield has changed, and so has the training of U.S. soldiers. The new kind of training blends well into the civilian market.

WILLING TO RELOCATE

Military personnel are accustomed to moving once every three years or so, but this does not mean they are job jumpers. Uncle Sam religiously rotates troops to give them the ability to adapt and overcome in any situation or environment.

I have listed just a handful of the traits of our talent strong military personnel—characteristics that employers desperately need in any type of economic environment. And in these tough economic times, it makes especially good sense to recruit military!

Chad Sowash Chad Sowash is Vice President of Business Development at DirectEmployers Association, where he leads VetCentral and several other veteran-centric employment projects. Chad was an Infantry Drill Sergeant in the United States Army. Contact him at 371-874- 9003 or chad@directemployers.org.

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U.S. loses 85,000 jobs, but hopes grow

Friday, January 8th, 2010

The Christian Science Monitor

By Laurent Belsie, Staff Writer

December saw losses of 85,000 jobs, but Friday’s labor report also showed a small
employment gain in November, the first since the recession began in December 2007.

The job market isn’t improving – not yet, anyway. But signs of future growth keep popping up.

To begin with, the US actually gained 4,000 jobs in November, according to revised data released by the Department of Labor on Friday. That upward revision in November makes December’s unexpectedly big loss of 85,000 jobs look all the more stark.

Still, the November total (which is still preliminary) marks the first time in 23 months that the US has actually gained jobs.

Another hopeful sign is temporary employment, which typically turns up before full-time employment does. Since bottoming out in July, that sector has grown by 166,000 – 47,000 in December alone.

“Companies, when they come out of recession. they tend to hire temporary workers first to do critical projects that they need to get done,” says Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice Holdings, which runs specialized career websites in the technology, financial services, and healthcare industries. “As their confidence [in the recovery] builds, they shift over to full-time hiring.”

Mr. Melland is seeing the same improvement in his own business. On its its database of technology professionals, searches by recruiters were up in the fourth quarter, he says. The number of job listings on the company’s websites has also been growing.

Other recruitment services are also seeing an increase in activity.

“2010 is going to be brighter than 2009, no doubt,” says Nancy Holland, a vice president at DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit human-resources consortium focused on recruiting by Fortune 1000 companies. In a recent survey of its members, all 60 companies that responded planned to hire this year.

The hiring was across the board in terms of industries and types of positions, not merely to replace workers but to add to corporations’ head counts, Ms. Holland says. “It’s not a boom. It’s not a wow … but it’s definitely getting better.”

Even American workers are more optimistic, according to a telephone survey conducted in December by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of SnagAJob.com. One in four working Americans said they believed the job market was improving; one in three hadn’t yet seen an improvement but was optimistic that things would improve soon.

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