I recently sat down with Ray Fassett of .jobs to get some insight into the recent launch of the domain. Enjoy.
1. You’ve just completed your first week of launch of .jobs. How’s it going so far?
A. We had a number of concerns leading to the launch date, not least of which is the fact we needed to take every reasonable precaution that new applications could be accepted, from anywhere in the world, and through a network of registrar re-sellers without any sort of hitch. I am quite pleased that the technical interoperability of .jobs has launched smoothly and take my hat off to both our development team as well as those of the many registrars cooperating with us via the technical back end functionality.
2. Are you seeing a lot of interest? It’s not clear that the global HR community is aware of .jobs.
A. I think that there is some truth to this, and not unexpected. Speaking to a global audience of different cultures and languages is a daunting task in and of itself. The important thing for us right now is to deliver a clear and consistent message about the companyname.jobs product and continue to broaden this messaging to the wider audience through the course of time. This isn’t a horse race. For example, we are now in our Trade Name period, a specific period of time to accomplish specific objectives that is really of most interest to large corporations while also not exclusionary to any employer large or small. We’ve seen a high amount of participation by large employers from around the world so I think we’ve done an adequate job on this front so far, and will continue to improve as we go along.
3. When you say “high amount of participation”, do you mean that the volume of requests you have received thus far are what you had expected?
A. Well, it’s only been the first week but I can say I have lost our internal pool of how many would apply in the first week. I undershot. But I have another chance for the end of the first month and, to be honest, I hope I lose that one too for the same reason. The registrars participating with .jobs have really done an outstanding job thus far, communicating directly with customers about the companyname.jobs product.
4. Can you name some of the employers applying for .jobs in the first week?
A. You know I am looking at this constantly…but to name a few household names off of the top of my head…Hard Rock Café, Sheraton Hotels, General Motors, Intel, Exxon, FedEx, Audi, Bloomingdales, Kraft, Amazon, Mitsubishi, Google … a real wide assortment crossing many industries and geographic regions.
5. I didn’t hear you say Monster or Careerbuilder. And I know you have incorporated a job board use restriction for companyname.jobs. But are larger players in the e-recruiting industry showing any interest?
A. Like you say, we have the use policy restriction for companyname.jobs as this pertains to job aggregation type strategies, which can also vary depending upon whether a staffing agency or more of a bulletin board. But, probably more importantly, our mission is not to compete in the e-recruiting space. We are in the DNS space. I think some miss this point because the string itself, being .jobs, is so logical for the e-recruiting arena. Meanwhile, the e-recruiting arena has itself evolved to become over a billion dollar industry in really a very short period of time. The Internet has had this kind of effect upon employer recruitment strategies. Large market players such as Monster and Hot Jobs quickly come to mind on the surface. We’ve talked to some of these larger players, some more formally than others, in the e-recruiting industry. For one thing, most are SHRM members and I think they understand that .jobs is in the DNS space. Is there opportunity to achieve mutual objectives? Well, I’d have to say that of course there is. We are often talking to the very same audience. And the structure of .jobs has been designed to be agile with the ability to adjust or evolve with market conditions, to serve the best interests of the HR community, rather than be fixed or set in stone based upon only what we know today. Packaging win-win relationships are out there in some form. On the other hand, we are just getting started.
6. Can you explain how .jobs interprets a staffing agency vs. a bulletin board?
A. Yes. A staffing agency or placement firm hire people for jobs on behalf of their client employers. Simply put, these people are on the payroll of the placement firm. A bulletin board that simply lists jobs, or whose mission is to aggregate jobs, of other employers on the Internet is an entirely different motivation and a distinction to the spirit of the companyname.jobs product at this time. We have based a few of our policies around this distinction.
7. So, staffing agencies and placement firms are allowed to register their company name in .jobs and post the jobs of other employers?
A. Sure. The jobs might be physically located at other employer locations but it is the staffing agency that is performing the hiring function and paying the wage. They are the employer organization. The use policy is for the specific purpose of ensuring that those charged with the responsibilities of hiring people are able to communicate their companyname.jobs destination to job seekers using the Internet. Staffing agencies perform the hiring function, pay the wage or salary, and have historically served an important purpose in this regard. Thus, they are the employer organization and eligible to register their companyname.jobs. In comparison, Internet bulletin boards – often called job boards – are not the employer organization. That’s the simple distinction and the .jobs registration and use policies are designed to be very consistent in this manner. If you are performing the hiring function and responsible for the wages earned, then you are eligible, regardless of where the jobs are physically located. This is acting as the employer to the job seeker in the most pure sense.
8. I see. But this doesn’t answer how third party recruiters – sometimes termed as headhunters – can participate with jobs. Don’t recruiters serve an important role as well?
A. Absolutely. Recruiters do play an important role as this pertains to outsourcing strategies of an employer organization. There is nothing in the .jobs registration and use policies that prohibits a recruiter from acting as an agent on behalf of the employer organization to register its companyname.jobs. But they will need to obtain these permissions in order to make it through our companyname.jobs validation process. And assuming this, then subject to the use policies of posting employment opportunities and other HR related information specific to that company name. This is completely in line with the companyname.jobs product subject to the registration and use policies. Proper permissions of the employer organization are required and not an insurmountable hurdle for a recruiter. Many medium and small businesses in particular may prefer this outsourcing approach.
9. So, your crystal ball foresees recruiters actually encouraging small and medium business to participate with companyname.jobs?
A. Personally, I see this as a tremendous opportunity for independent recruiters specializing in serving the hiring needs of employers that prefer to utilize an outsourced hiring strategy that, also, is generally regional or locally focused. This will catch on. I’ve owned and managed small businesses and my own experience is that recruiters know their business of hiring better than do small business owners often challenged with limited time constraints. Meanwhile, it is small and medium business that is usually in the most urgent need of new hires to fill vacancies. Recruiters specializing in serving small and medium business can promote the companyname.jobs URL on a local and regional basis and help to correct the balance. Savvy recruiters will turn this into a business opportunity, such as developing candidate pools based upon the specific job characteristics of a given small or medium sized employer organization, working with the employer as they know how attracting candidates to the companyname.jobs site…by implementing many of the proven Internet strategies that have worked so well for large employers with formal human resource departments. It is important to note here however that the registrant of record must be the employer organization for all companyname.jobs registrations, and not the individual – whether a recruiter or the employer’s own internal hiring manager. So, this policy is also very consistent for the product. But the concept that independent recruiters are excluded from the companyname.jobs product is really quite the fallacy to be proven out, I think, as we move along.
10. Lets move to the registrars for .jobs. Your web site shows about 11 registrars selling companyname.jobs right now. Are you satisfied with this result, given ICANN lists as having over 400 registrars currently selling .com?
A. I think we will have as many as 16 registrars formally signed up and through the test phase real soon. .com is an entirely different product than .jobs, and certainly far more mature in the market place. Interest from new registrars to sell .jobs are coming in each day. I never thought we would get to 50, at least not for a long while simply because of its unproven position, but I may be proved wrong. We are not turning any registrar away and the agreement is downloadable from our web site to sign up to sell .jobs. We’ve made the process pretty painless. And I think others will be coming along but need to fit the technical integration work into their own internal work schedules. Still others might be taking a wait and see approach, and we can understand that. But we have, right now, registrars up and running selling .jobs that are located in the UK, Europe, Asia, Canada, and India, in addition to the United States. We are really very pleased about this.
11. Can you summarize why an employer should use companyname.jobs?
A. It’s about communication to job seekers. All employers have someone tasked with communicating employment opportunities on behalf of the employer organization. It’s really a core mission of every employer, often of more urgency for the small or medium sized employer. The Internet has become an integral tool of this mission and purpose crossing many demographics both geographical and industry. URL’s play an important part in general Internet communication strategies and have mostly underserved the recruitment industry. It’s really not feasible for the hiring manager to communicate companyname.com as the destination for job seekers to find employment opportunities at the company. At best it is a one click away strategy and on average today is 3 to 4 clicks away. The format of companyname.jobs provides the hiring manager the ability promote – and continue to brand – their company name in the form of a URL associated with the highly intuitive .jobs extension. It can truly be a zero click strategy. The intuitive format of companyname.jobs is a very memorable approach for use in employee referral programs, classified ads, promotional material, e-mail communications, and other strategic methods a hiring manager can perform to drive traffic directly to the exact online destination of their employment opportunities while continuing to brand the company name. It’s a direct route. And, as you know better than most, a real opportunity for HR to begin maximizing the practice of search engine optimization. But we will leave this for another discussion.
12. And how is your relationship going with SHRM?
A. SHRM is just an outstanding organization of real depth and knowledge. As you know, we kicked off the launch of .jobs at the 57th SHRM annual conference just last week with the president’s key note address. There was a lot of excitement about .jobs at the conference of some 15,000 HR representatives. SHRM is a great partner to help evolve .jobs and we are fortunate for their formal support reaching out to the HR community.
13. Things seem to be going smooth given this is a launch of a brand new TLD to the Internet. Are you surprised?
A. Surprised is really not the right word. The launch of .jobs has been well thought out, both from a technical and policy perspective. I think the key is that these two factors need to work in unison and then it comes down to the proper messaging. And this can be tricky because we have multiple parties, including registrars, assisting with this messaging to the consumer audience. Meanwhile SHRM is also communicating to its constituency, 200,000 members strong, as well. So the policies need to be well understood by many parties. We have quite a few policy restrictions, both for initial registration and in actual use. Some have voiced their concerns to us about a few of these policies. But the policies are consistent for the spirit of the companyname.jobs product being offered. The policies are fair and equitable regardless of where you sit and I think the credibility for this lies in that no one is claiming to be individually “harmed” by these policies. No easy trick to accomplish for a new, global TLD. Then we built the technical functionality centered around these policies…and this then is what funnels the results – by way of companyname.jobs applications – into our validation process. Validation is a process that we need, from a business point of view, to be able to reasonably control our costs for this all to work as designed. It begins with the policies and then the technical functionality in support of these policies. We also have the benefit of learning from other TLD’s that have launched in the past few years and, our using hindsight, avoid a few of the pitfalls with the launch of .jobs. We are not perfect and will make some mistakes along the way, but the launch period for .jobs has been thought out, including our making some very difficult near term policy decisions to get this thing up and running producing manageable results. We’ll see how this progresses but for now I am pleased more than surprised. With the Internet, you never know what’s coming tomorrow.
14. Tell me about the company name validation process. And have you started this?
A. The validation process serves a very simple purpose: To validate that an employer organization – applying for a companyname.jobs – is who they say they are. That’s really it. If you look at the Internet landscape today, there are literally millions of employer URL’s put out by HR folks in an effort to try to direct job seekers to their company jobs or careers page destination, generally defaulting to a sub-directory URL format of the home page URL. And when used by a job seeker, the end destination is what a job seeker would expect. In other words, a high degree of trust is in place. The reason for this is that HR people, being hiring managers, manage the content that resides behind the employer’s URL. Of course they are going to promote employment opportunities and benefits of their employer organization, just as a job seeker would expect. In the short history of the Internet, this happens to be one proven outcome…and really not rocket science. So, our mission with the validation process is simply to ensure these same results upon use of the companyname.jobs product. By validating that the employer organization is who they say they are when applying for their companyname.jobs, then there is a proven, very high probability that the HR person or hiring manager is going to manage the expected results to the job seeker audience by way of their use of this product. The companyname.jobs product is a faster, more memorable way for hiring managers to communicate the desired destination but the value of this resides in the degree of trust job seekers place into it. Our validation process is about serving this purpose in both the near term and long term. We have indeed initiated our validation procedures and this is going quite well.
15. I have heard some comments about the price for a .jobs registration, being over $100 per year vs. about $15 per year for .com. Why is companyname.jobs so much more expensive?
A. The two products are really quite different. But one commonality is that each is cost driven. People forget that in the early days of .com, the price was $70 for a 2 year registration and those wishing to register their name in .com had to show themselves as a commercial entity…and is what we are calling today as a validation process for companyname.jobs. And of course the Internet has changed quite a bit in the past few years as this pertains to identity protection, and the many phishing and pharming tactics going on. Identity theft is a real problem today and URL’s are quite frequently a tool of manipulation in this regard. This places far greater stress today on the operator to evolve a trusted name space by way of registration validation – and associated costs – if this is a goal of the operator to achieve as it is for .jobs. It drives to overall DNS stability, a core mission of any new TLD operator. So, it is not just about price but instead a cost driven, value equation to a particular target market, in our case the HR profession. Our due diligence analyzed the cost-benefit relationship including in the form of extensive surveys of our target market audience. The results have been quite overwhelmingly favorable time and again and continue to be…not focusing on the comparative price to .com but instead the value equation for the existence of .jobs. And therein lies the difference, the two products are entirely different. Once the mission for the companyname.jobs product is understood by the particular niche audience, we have found that price is not a barrier across all demographics of employer organizations, both large and small indicating that the value equation exists. So, here we are.
16. What do you see as the near term challenges facing .jobs?
A. Well, certainly our ability to efficiently scale the business based upon demand comes to mind. There is the possibility that validation could bog us down. While there is an understood inherent delay from when an application is submitted to when it “goes live” for reasons of validation, people generally want a pretty fast turnaround in today’s world. So, knowing when and how to allocate the necessary resources with appropriate timing is certainly a challenge for us to be mindful of. While nothing on paper ever works completely as expected, I have a high degree of confidence in our compliance program and documented procedures to scale as needed in a manner that achieves desired objectives while also minimizing customer dissatisfaction with any time lag. One thing not to lose sight of is that we are a start-up business, facing many of the same challenges as any start-up business. Of course, I personally happen to enjoy these challenges. Other than this, we have quite a bit of scheduled maintenance over the next few months to get the validated .jobs domains actually resolving into web sites on the Internet. This is our next big launch, expected around the September/October time frame. We are working closely with VeriSign on this front. For obvious reasons, they are not worried. Lastly, as the message about .jobs continues to reach a wider and wider audience, we need to do our best to maintain the consistency of this messaging.
17. What does ICANN expect of .jobs?
A. ICANN expects us to run a clean ship. They expect us to have integrity and honor their own mission of managing the technical stability of the DNS, incorporating methods of privatization. We don’t think that this is too much to ask and we are proud to serve it.
18. I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me about .jobs. I wish you the best of luck in the coming weeks and months.
A. Thanks, I appreciate your updating your audience about .jobs and look forward to doing so again in the future.
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