Talent Management
Jobster Makes Networking Fun
There’s something wrong when you wake up in the night thinking about a website. Especially if it’s something work-related.
But what Jobster has done with the social networking site has made it easy and fun to not only add yourself, but broadcast yourself–and find other people you may be looking for.
The site absolutely has a professional tilt (uhh, the name *is* “jobster”) but it lives out beyond the dusty, stodgy territory of most business networking sites, and plants itself squarely in the realm of “cool” (uhh, the name *is* “jobster”).
In the summer, when Jobster relaunched, Mashable called them the MySpace for jobs.
The site is now an open social network similar to MySpace or Friendster - it allows you to create a profile page, tag yourself, list the companies youve worked for and answer questions on your work-related experiences. You can also add faves (coworkers and collegues you admire or would like to make contact with) and see who has favorited you in the fans section. Additionally, you can explore the site based on tags and add tags to describe other users.
Use their tagging and browsing/search tools to both see and be seen easilly. Want to find a Web 2.0 Guru? Someone with Start-up Experience? A Recruiter in Utah (ahem).
Plus, I like the plentiful RSS feeds and lots of other networking tools–and though there are services they provide which cost some bucks, if you’re Jo-Ann Jobseeker, it’s all flowing to you free. Sweet.
Now for some feedback for the jobsters:
- Find me:
- I put a link to my profile in my blog sidebar, and I had to break out a can of geek-fu to figure out what my own URL on Jobster is.
- I’d like a personal URL that reflects my name/username, too–like jobster.com/robertmerrill or whatever it takes to get my name in the URL (so I can remember it and share it).
- Network Me:
- Do my faves and fans have a blog or website? I wanna know, please.
- Are my faves/fans doing anything interesting? Let me know that, too, please.
- Feed Me:
- I can search for people tagged “Utah”, for example, but I’d love to be notified via RSS (or at least email) when there are new people that match my search. Gimme some feeds!
- If my faves/fans have blogs, let me get to their feeds, too.
- If my faves/fans have blogs, gimee OPML for that so I can import/save ‘em.
- Share Me:
- I’d be interested in putting a badge on my blog that shows my faves and fans in the sidebar, or lets my faves/fans chat with me like a tagboard or a meebo.
- Publish my blog URL for people to see from my jobster page.
- Allow people to subscribe to my blog feed from my jobster page.
- Pay me:
- If I find a company or a job that I like, and I am willing to promote it from my jobster page “companies I like” or “jobs I like”… and people click through and generate revenue for Jobster because of it, allow me to get a piece of that pie (if I want–or you can keep it, or donate it to charity).
All in all, I can’t complain. I am sure a lot of this is in the works already.
Jobster “gets it” and I like that. Keep it up!
Checkout accounting jobs, UK at AccountantCareers.co.uk.
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Tags: Apps, Attracting Talent, Awareness, Creative Ideas, Job-search Tools & Tricks, Social-Networking, Trends Discussion
3 comments for “Jobster Makes Networking Fun”
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Hi Robert, thanks for all the great feedback! We’re working on many of the above features for upcoming versions of the site.
Best,
Joe Goldberg
Software Developer, Jobster.com
I got a note from Jason Goldberg at Jobster telling me most of my feedback is coming in December
Brainstorm:
Another idea–put my most recent blog post (maybe just the headline or a summary) on my jobster page (or, let me create a blog on Jobster if I don’t have one) along with maybe 3-4 of my most-recent headlines…