.JOBS - Good product or searching for $$$
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The .jobs domain extension has been mentioned on several other sites already, but I haven’t really heard too much discussion about the reality of the new extension. There are some blurps from the some of the media players looking to make cash on the deal-
“.Jobs has the potential of sparking some changes in the online recruiting industry,” said Tom Barrett, president of EnCirca. “Forrester Research Inc estimates that businesses will spend $4.5 billion on job classified ads in 2005 with an efficiency of only 60 percent. This means that over $1.8 billion dollars a year will go to waste. .Jobs promises to eliminate much that waste by providing business with a direct connection to job seekers via the Internet.”
If .Jobs is promising to be a direct connection via the Internet- then they basic idea behind the .jobs is flawed. Providing *another* avenue of listing employment information about your company doesn’t mean it is direct. From a Yellow Page advertising perspective this type of methodology is called “growing the book”- I.E. simply offering another heading to the end advertiser to sell another product.
A very costly product. Several registrars state that these domains will be $125 to $195 annual cost. This is a clear and apparent money grab aimed at companies who are almost desperate to reach new employees and good candidates. This price range makes the .jobs extension one of the most expensive domain types there is (take a look at www.namereality.com to see a quick list of various domain costs).
The fact that SHRM has endorsed a new extension that cost millions of dollars in registration fees rather than a simple extension to a current .com system is very interesting. How many HR professionals are going to rush out and buy a $195 .jobs extension and feel somewhat disheartened by the fact that they could have had jobs.yourcompany.com for free? (sub-domains are typically a free or minimal charge service with most hosting companies). With some planning and communication SHRM could have simply led a campaign for companies to have a consistent HR address across the board.
Rather than .jobs being the answer to a lot of companies needing a solution to recruiting- it seems .jobs is an answer for the domain companies to provide a product that functions nearly identically to some of the other less expensive options already available.
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i linked to this post of your on my blog today
Jason
Jason- Thank you for keeping me up to date. Always good to know where my words are reaching. :)
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Michael- Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but the .jobs domain doesn't promise any solution to searchability from what I've seen. The search engines of the world will have to adapt some search parameters for .jobs just as they would jobs.yourcompany.com. The real issue to this domain is that like several of the other domain specific industries, once there are sites using it there will be almost no way to control it's continued use.
In addition, rather than specific jobs information many companies will buy this domain simply to protect intellectual rights and direct it to the homepage of the .com site or perhaps the /employment extension they aleady have. Job boards will also likely register "jobboard.jobs" and again start listing thousands of posted jobs.
If companies want to rely on the search engines to index job postings and employment info, there will have to be a quicker way to submit and index postings to the primary engines or by the time a posting gets indexed it will have been filled and taken down.
Here are some companies that I quickly pulled sub-domains for-
http://www.jobs.monster.com
http://www.jobs.hp.com
http://jobs.irs.gov
http://www.jobs.agilent.com
http://jobs.volt.com
The domain cost may be completely reasonable to larger companies as well, but there are going to be a large number of small and mid size companies that won't buy a .jobs domain simply due to cost.
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By the nature of the rules set up by SHRM and EmployMedia job boards cannot register a dot jobs domain to just publish other company jobs, they can register and publish their own jobs. This will limit the takeover of the TLD by job boards and keep it focused just on direct company jobs. Yes most companies will initially just point to their existing jobs area but the really innovative ones will take full advantage of the new TLD.
I agree with you on the cost, a large company like HP will have no issue but smaller SMEs might have some hesitation around the extra cost and hassle associated with yet another domain.
Great to see the conversation progressing.
