CircleID

There have been several posts over the last 48 hours in response to the new dot jobs domain on both sides of the argument.

John Sumser from The Electronic Recruiting News provides a balanced view of the new domain and in the end determines that then new domain will not help job seekers. Gerry Crispin has a slightly different view on The CareerXroads, which is not surprising as Gerry was a advocate of the new domain from the beginning. Joel Cheesman provides a fantastic top 10 thoughts on the new domain as well.

There seems to be agreement that the main winners from all of this are SHRM and EmployMedia, as there is going to be the traditional land grab as we all rush to get our domains. Jason wants recruiting.job, in reading Gerry's post he views that Jason won't get it, but he should. Gerry also mentions we won't be seeing domains like blow.jobs, but what about Blow Off in the UK at http://www.blow.co.uk/, they might want blow.jobs I can't see why but there is the possibility. This land grab will result in more money going to EmployMedia, SHRM and ICANN.

Let's look at the whole global aspect of the new domain. Most US based organisations struggle to provide consistent recruiting approaches to all countries around the globe. Look at Microsoft as a good example. The corporate careers site is at http://www.microsoft.com/careers, the Australian/New Zealand site is at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/careers/. Are we going to end up with microsoft.jobs and microsoft.jobs/australia or microsoft.jobs.au? How are the subsidiaries going to be catered for? Another issue, take National Australia Bank one of the largest banks in Australia have the domain national.com.au, however if you look at national.com you end up at National Semiconductors in the US, so who should have national.jobs? Are job seekers going to have to learn new domains just to see the careers site, nationalaustraliabank.jobs? How will SHRM clearly and evenly promote this new domain around the globe, or will they promote it first to their members, primarily US based and then to people outside of the US as an after thought? Maybe they will need to partnership with similar groups like AHRI around the globe.

Then there are the technical issues. As John mentioned any tech person can point microsoft.jobs to http://www.microsoft.com/careers, so where is the value? Joel brings up the idea of the registration process needing to be very easy for non-technical people. If only a qualified candidate can apply, i.e. someone who complies with the same code of conduct as SHRM members, then it will have to be very easy because many HR people are still trying to come to terms with technology as it is. Joel also talks about search engines and the waiting they give, the quality of the data so that .jobs does not end up like .net. There is speculation that .jobs will mean organisations will want to post jobs firstly to their own sites so job seekers can find them quickly. I feel this is missing the take up of vertical search with sites like Indeed, however dot jobs will make things much easier for Indeed and others to join the market place.

Now if these items, and others, can be addressed then dot jobs might have value to add in the internet, unlike dot tv. EmployMedia and SHRM could learn a thing of two from how the .com.au domains have been handed out, i.e. you must provide a valid government identifier to show that you are a valid business. But even this process has been full of headaches around trademarks, brands and other identifiable attributes that companies have wanted to use preceding the .com.au.

By Michael Specht, Manager People Systems. Visit the blog maintained by Michael Specht here.

Related topics: DNS, ICANN