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A new, dedicated website for recruitment in the Lotus/IBM field

Category
About a year ago, staff in Bluewave/BE Systems were discussing recruitment sites in general. Although mostly positive, the problems associated with them typically centred around inaccurate job specifications and vague applicant details. Also we noticed that there was a general inability to ask questions relevant to our specific areas of interest.  We toyed with the idea of creating a dedicated careers site in the Big Blue field, focusing on finding the right people for the right jobs in our professional area.  This led to staff here kicking the tyres on a site and a design.  This led to a few meetings, a domain name ordered, and a more formal approach taken.  This led to a slightly more serious plan, and a timeframe to get it ready in about six months from then.

Recent changes in the job market encouraged us to fast track our idea.  There are many great skilled people now out of work, and there are still advertisements for skilled positions.   So, we give you www.blueskills.net a dedicated IBM skills recruitment site.  This site is FREE to use and is especially for people looking for positions in these fields and for people with positions to advertise.  Go for it.. Go nuts and take a look about.  Its still beta, but functional and we are still working on it.  Tell your friends about it. Blog it!  Let people know that if they are in this area, they can look for new jobs, or even post positions to get the "right" person here, for free.

There is some work to be done on this site still, so enter Ideajam.  Bruce has kindly setup an ideaspace for us and it is linked on the homepage.  If you want to improve this site, place your suggestions there, and we will review and implement them.

We are hoping to make this a community effort - if you want to help with the design of this site and put in a few hours to add functionality, contact me and I will try to get you access.

Update:  I know there are some registration issues with the site.  We are working on it!

Comments

1 - what is a special character

won't accept 1Applesoft_200 as a password

Sean

2 - Count me in as a pair of hands if you need any webby HTML/JAVASCRIPT or AJAX stuff done.

3 - @13 Dave - makes you lose interest, or are you thinking of user interaction

I wanted to keep it as a niche area, with required authentication to view/search stuff that interests the domino browsers, hence the authentication.

Anyone else think that is a bad move? We are open to suggestions.

4 - I agree with everyone else on this what Mr Bradbury did was uncalled for. I understood that the site was "Beta" and had no problems registering my information to provide feedback, and will do so again when it is back online. I have nothing but respect for Paul and what he has done for the Lotus community, and I hope that this doesn't leave a bad taste in his mouth.

5 - Just realized my previous post could be misunderstood. I typed "<Expletives Deleted>" to express my opinions about mr Bradbury's actions. I have profound respect for Paul Mooney and all his efforts for the Lotus community. I also great difficulty remaining civil about mr Bradbury (that line wasa rewritten 12 times). Dont let the bad ones get you down Paul. There are more people with you than an insensitive clod can spoil.

Cheers mate!

6 - Unable to post on ideajam......

'years of experience' on registration form doesn't allow people with more than 10 years experience to truthfully register. People who have been working with Notes since R3, say, need to be able to select >15 or something like that.

7 - @16 I know what lesson I took from it: Ian Bradbury has difficulty with the English language, given his clear inability to understand the word 'beta' or follow instructions about how to identify issues with the site.

8 - A few items for dev:
US or other countries should be listed for registered people.
10+ years of experience, or at least 10-5, 15-20 Emoticon
Diploma and Degree mean the same thing to your average American. try BSc, BA, PHd, MBA..
Also you should have a space for certifications as this can be a requirement from some clients.
Skills include migrations, Sametime, Quickr, Connections, Domino.Doc Emoticon

9 - 404 error on login page, so Q/A is helping out.

10 - @9 Not yet, but the aim is to make it work for anywhere people want to use it. Again, if anyone wants to help out on the site, just contact me or leave a comment.

11 - Just realized my previous post could be misunderstood. I typed "&lt;Expletives Deleted&gt;" to express my opinions about mr Bradbury's actions. I have profound respect for Paul Mooney and all his efforts for the Lotus community. I also great difficulty remaining civil about mr Bradbury (that line wasa rewritten 12 times). Dont let the bad ones get you down Paul. There are more people with you than an insensitive clod can spoil.<br /><br />Cheers mate!

12 - <Expletives Deleted>

13 - Great work...please pretty please allow us in the States to sign up as well.

14 - @13/@14 - A key issue for some in the "employed but wouldn't mind a change but don't want the boss to know I'm looking elsewhere" crowd is discretion. Making jobseeker profiles open to anyone is a non-starter for pretty much all job sites. It's usually possible to keep one's profile anonymous too, but when your blog and other community activities are a big part of your potential appeal, that's not particularly helpful.

On the flip side, recruiters sometimes don't post their job because they want to avoid being inundated with (mostly unqualified) candidates. Instead they look at profiles that match their requirements, except many interested candidates don't post their profiles out of discretion. The narrower focus of Blueskills.net might encourage more submissions from recruiters.

15 - Great work

16 - Most jobs site do not require login just to browse jobs... makes me lose interest, honestly...

17 - I just signed up to the site and got an email back saying that the site is not secure:

from ian Bradbury:
"I just signed up to the Bluewave job site. Being an inquisitve type I decided to have a look under the hood - from my browser. Supprise supprise it seems the site has no real security.

Please visit the site and remove your personal details - just over type your details with rubbish. The site security is so poor - I could edit your profiles myself, however I just don't have the time.

I've emailed the site and I've emailed all the profile owners. Good luck.

Ian

ps. A lesson for us all here...."

18 - Great idea - but don't discriminate against the people who don't live on the British Islands ... I will enter your address as a cover otherwise. Emoticon

19 - Need any help QAing it? :D

Speaking of: the 'login' link on the home page (under Find a Job) doubles the 'blueskills' directory path, so the link doesn't work. It's this:

{ Link }

but it should be this (taken from inside the 'Register' section for Job Seekers):

{ Link }

Also, the 'Status' value being passed on the url is different (Seeker vs JobSeeker), but presumably shouldn't be.

Oh, yeah, good idea. Cool site. Kudos. We will now return you to our regularly scheduled criticism...

20 - Does this site work for India based Domino professionals.

21 - Excellent idea!