You may or may not have heard about #hirefriday.
If I’m not mistaken, #hirefirday was started by Margo Rose with the intention of focusing on job seekers rather than job postings. Here’s the guidelines for hirefriday as written by Margo Rose.
So if all goes well with HireFriday, job seekers will post information about themselves and the type of position they are looking for. This is excellent for job seekers who are in the position to publicly broadcast their job search intentions.
The flip side of this is that I think we need something official for people posting jobs. While #hirefriday has caught on like wildfire amongst job seekers there has been no hashtag to rise to prominance for employers posting jobs. Most use #jobs.
By using #jobfriday we can capitalize off of the immense popularity of #hirefriday without infringing on it by posting jobs, since that’s not the point of #hirefriday. It also has fridays be all about jobs.
So here’s what I propose…
The birth of #jobfriday
Do you have a job to post? Well have we got hashtag for you?!
Post your job using the guidelines listed below. If you see a #jobfriday post in your twitter stream, RT it. We need these postings to spread in order to help more people get back to work and doing something they love.
Guidelines
Post with the following information (in this order):
- Job Title
- Company (if you want)
- Job Location w/hashtag
- a link- this should lead to a posting with job description on a website, or an email address or any other way of applying
- #jobfriday
- additional hashtags
For example: “Director of Marketing – Acme Marketing – #Philadelphia – http://bit.ly/LiNk – #jobfriday #marketing”
I implore you to stick to this format. If everyone uses this format, it will be much easier to discern what postings are real and which ones are auto-posted or spam. It is also simple, conveying only the necessary information.
Don’t:
- Post links to job boards.
The Outcome
Do a twitter search for #jobfriday and start job hunting. Try [#jobfriday marketing] for marketing jobs or [#jobfriday attorney] for law positions. You can even do an Advanced Twitter search and take it even further. Go get ’em!
Shawn Farner says
I dig it. If I see one, I’ll RT it.
JGibbard says
Thanks Shawn. Everyone can help make this unemployment problem get a little better.
Samantha for RSI says
As someone who works with recruiters, I know that would be helpful. The only thing is, whats stopping #jobfriday from becoming just like #jobs – full of job spam & jobs that are posted on every other medium? (monster, tweetmyjobs, LinkedIn, indeed, etc)
JGibbard says
Oh there’s nothing stopping it at all. In fact there’s no real way to stop it from happening anywhere. #followfriday is spammed, #hirefriday is spammed, #musicmonday is spammed, it’s par for the course. I think the idea was that if #jobfriday existed it could at least remove some of those job feeds from #hirefriday and instead move it to a new stream.
As far as jobs being posted in numerous places, I think that’s a good thing for employers provided that the demographic for that job would be on Twitter otherwise it becomes noise.
I think the format should be the indicator. If everyone sticks to the form of my tweet above, it will be easier to identify real posts from autoposts and spam.
Samantha for RSI says
Right, thats the nature of spam. I’m just trying to think if there are ways to avoid a chat from becoming spammed to the point that it becomes pointless to tweet your job to BOTH #jobs and #jobfriday.
For example, we have one twitter account specifically for jobs. It is updated automatically through an RSS feed. The second I see that people are checking out #jobfriday for jobs, I would just add the #jobfriday hashtag to all my jobs and never have to think about it again. If every other twitter account that posts jobs does that, whats the point?
Obviously there’s no stopping me from doing that, but I’m just wondering if there is another way to go about #jobfriday – for example, instead of posting a link to the job, you just post a short job description. This way, people are forced to message the recruiter about the job, and that forces people to build relationships with recruiters, as well as provide referrals. I’m just sort of rambling, but I don’t really think we need another job stream that posts jobs. I think we need something that adds another dynamic to job posting and the interaction between job seeker and recruiter/hiring manager. –end rant–
JGibbard says
I totally get those concerns and they are totally justified.
My thinking was that an autopost from an RSS feed will likely not end up in the same format as I laid out above. By having a standard format, a job seeker could identify the posts that are just pulled from an rss feed and those that are manually and thoughtfully posted.
For instance a post like this:
“I’m hiring: Sr. Manager, Business Performance at eBay – San Francisco Bay Area #jobs http://lnkd.in/K7MFiR #job friday”
while similar, is different from:
“Sr Manager, Business Performance – eBay – #SanFrancisco #SanFran – http://lnkd.in/K7MFiR #jobfriday”
The #jobfriday hashtag should follow a standard format.
I also think that if #jobfriday catches on as #hirefriday did it will reduce the number of postings on #jobs #careers #hiring by creating a common hashtag. Right now it’s fragmented. Creating a standard agreed upon and simple format in conjunction with one hashtag, we can reduce fragmentation and isolate the good posts from the spam.
It might work, it might not, but that was my idea going into it and I’m totally open to suggestions. As long as it fits these goals.
A hashtag for employers to post jobs.
A simple, clean and standardized format.
Samantha for RSI says
Well you can’t decide if something is going to work until you try it, right? I’m sure if #jobfriday catches on it definitely has the potential to become successful!
Usually I feel like the first formate you provided (I’m hiring this at this company in this city here is the link) is less spam-looking than job title – location – link (which is how it’s extracted from our RSS feed). But I do agree that a standardized format would hopefully decrease spam and it does make the idea more appealing. You never know what you’re going to get when you search for jobs in Twitter.
Looking forward to a successful endeavor.
JGibbard says
Fingers crossed. 🙂
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. People are already using it but keeping the format consistent is challenging. What are ya gonna do?
Let’s hope it helps someone.
Cheryl Savit says
Good idea to make things standardized and easy to use, without crushing the creativity of our Twitter souls. (Watch your typos…)
JGibbard says
Thanks Cheryl. Let’s all work together and get that unemployment to start falling.
Guest says
Actually, putting it in the *exact* same format makes it easier to spam…all the spammer has to do is get it right once and then drop whatever URL they want in the bit.ly. And some of us can’t divulge the client’s name.
JGibbard says
I wrote in the “guidelines” that you should list the company (if you want). It’s not a requirement.
The whole purpose of this idea is to try and be helpful. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I’m open to suggestions but again my thinking on a consistent format is that it’s easier to search. We want to make sure that certain vital information was included; job title, location and a link, company optional.
Someone could try selling laptops and viagra using #jobfriday if they wanted. No format, stanardized or not, will stop that. So I’m accepting that this #hashtag can be spammed. The goal is then to activate the #jobfriday community to flag spammers. We would have to police our own thread.
Much like #hirefriday which someone started and a community adopted, #jobfriday could be a powerful way to finally organize Twitter for job searching. We just all have to do our part.
Carmen Jr says
Hey this is a fantastic post. Margo Rose really appreciates it. She works very hard to keep the HireFriday stream non-commercial, and pristine for job seekers. That’s why it isn’t another spammy job stream. Margo works tirelessly to use social media for social good. Thank you very much.
JGibbard says
I love the fact that the #jobfriday community is so tight knit and works so hard to keep that hashtag valuable. It’s actually one of the reasons I started this idea in the first place.
Thanks for the comment and the feedback. I really appreciate it.
Margo Rose says
It’s Margo Rose here, I’m the founder of HireFriday. If you have any further feedback, or insights that you think would make HireFriday more effective, please email me at [email protected]. We can only improve by knowing what the professional community thinks. Jeff, I’d like to arrange a brief teleconference soon. Will you please contact me? I really appreciate this favorable post.
JGibbard says
Sorry for the delayed response. I’ve been a little buried lately…it’s actually a good thing. It really is true that being helpful and providing value leads to business 🙂
I’m emailing you now. Thanks for the comment. So glad we can be part of the solution together.
Jeff Tincher says
Jeff, thanks for RT your post today. I saw it and this is good stuff. Since I’m leaving my current position I think I’ll have my current company tweet out a job posting. thanks for the idea!