JobCoin Tips & Announcements

The Joy of Matchmaking

We're incredibly excited to see how well the new JobCoin software has been working!  I want to thank everyone who has sent in their feedback and suggestions. Frankly, finding new employees and finding a job shouldn't be as hard as it is. We are working hard to help employers and job seekers connect with one another, everyone who is using JobCoin is helping with this!

Some of the most gratifying comments we hear are that someone was hired, those are the successes that benefit everyone involved: the employer, job seekers, website publisher, and JobCoin.  I thought I'd share a random sampling of these comments:

"Lots of response. I did hire one. Thanxs!"

"We had 3 quality people reply, one of them we will be working with on a long-term basis."

"There was only one response, but it was high quality, and it looks like we will be working together."

"We got about 10 relevant resumes which is not bad for the kind of job we where looking for."

"We were able to make a hire.  Thank you for your services."

"We got somewhat fewer applicants than we'd hoped, but the one we ended up hiring did come through this ad.  So we'll probably use it again should the need arise."

"GREAT EXPOSURE!"

"Great response, about 25 applicants, pretty much everyone greatly qualified for the job."

JobCoin Network

JobCoin Launches JobCoin Network

Websites add highly relevant job listings to their site and get paid

CHICAGO (March 29, 2007) – JobCoin announced today the launch of the JobCoin Network—a service for employers to post jobs and reach millions of passive job seekers by targeting them on the websites they already visit and for website publishers to earn revenue by easily including relevant job listings on their site. This is perfect for blogs, industry news sites, and trade association sites. In minutes, website publishers can add the JobCoin widget to their site. JobCoin includes relevant jobs in the site's widget and then pays the website when their visitors apply to these jobs. Indeed.com, the most comprehensive search engine for jobs, is providing its job search results to the JobCoin Network. The website's visitors benefit from job listings that are highly relevant to their interests and publishers maximize the revenue potential of their websites.

The JobCoin Network offers employers an unprecedented ability to target passive job seekers. Employers simply visit www.jobcoin.com and post a job; the process of targeting candidates is entirely automated. Through a detailed analysis of our partners' website's visitors, JobCoin places the posting in front of targeted professionals resulting in an extremely high percentage of qualified applicants.

To get started, website publishers can visit www.jobcoin.com to create an account. Accounts are activated instantly. To start receiving revenue, the publisher copies and pastes a small piece of HTML onto their web pages. Once the job board is up and running, publishers may customize their job board as much as they like, even creating an entire new section of their website. Publishers always have full control over the jobs displayed on their site, both by removing individual jobs and creating rules to filter by keyword or geography. To monitor performance, JobCoin provides traffic and earnings reports.

Once website publishers create a JobCoin account, they have instant access to the millions of jobs included in the Indeed search engine enabling website publishers to select the perfect jobs for their sites. JobCoin continually monitors each website to optimize the relevance and effectiveness of job listings to provide a 100% automated solution for website publishers.

“In providing job search results from the Web to the JobCoin Network, we are helping JobCoin's partner websites give their users a superior job search experience," said Paul Forster, CEO of Indeed. "JobCoin's custom job board offering is an attractive option for publishers that we are glad to be part of.”

“We've been working closely with hundreds of website publishers, both large and small, to create a service that is incredibly easy for publishers to use, yet provides all the flexibility and control that website publishers want,” said Keith Schacht, Founder and CEO of JobCoin. “By creating a revenue-generating service that website visitors actually appreciate, JobCoin strengthens the long-term business potential for millions of online publishers, and provides an incredible new tool for employers.”

To further increase the effectiveness of its service, JobCoin has implemented FeedFlare, a popular social media feature created by FeedBurner Inc., the leading provider of online media distribution and audience engagement services. JobCoin's customized FeedFlare makes it easy for more than 377,000 FeedBurner publishers to display and share relevant JobCoin job listings within their feeds. Millions of online consumers choose to read their favorite website's content via RSS feeds and this lets them read JobCoin postings via this feed.

In addition to creating an account at www.jobcoin.com, website publishers with more than 5 million page views per month may be eligible for premium JobCoin service which includes a dedicated account representative and personal assistance setting up and optimizing the website's job board.

About JobCoin

JobCoin helps employers reach their ideal job candidates and provides website publishers with a new source of revenue by including highly relevant job listings on their site. Ultimately, JobCoin seeks to change the way candidates and employers connect. JobCoin is a privately held, privately funded company based in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit http://www.jobcoin.com.

About Indeed

Indeed, the most comprehensive search engine for jobs, has pioneered a radically improved approach to job search. Job seekers now have free access – instantly, in a single search – to millions of jobs from thousands of company Web sites, job boards, newspapers and associations. Indeed.com makes it easy for job seekers to drill down by keyword and location to find exactly the right jobs. Job seekers may also save searches and have jobs delivered by email alert or RSS. Indeed.com was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the "50 Coolest Web Sites" and by PC World as one of the best 50 Web sites. Indeed is a privately held company based in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan. Shareholders include The New York Times Company, Union Square Ventures and Allen & Company. For more information, please visit http://www.indeed.com.

Contact:

JobCoin
Keith Schacht
773-936-4945
keith@jobcoin.com

JobCoin gets two thumbs up from WebWare

It was great to meet Rafe Needleman at the STIRR event last night. Rafe was MC for the event and is the author of WebWare, a great blog covering web apps for the masses. Rafe tries out a ton of web apps so it was great to hear his take on JobCoin. He just finished testing it and gets right to the point:

"You tell it how much you want to charge for a posting, upload your logo, and bam, you've got a board."

Maybe we should add a step #3 to the sign-up process, "Bam! You're done" :)

Read the full review

Customizing your domain

We get a lot of questions over here about how to completely customize the look and feel of your job board so that it appears to the users as a normal part of the site.  Here is a more detailed step-by-step of how that works.

After following these steps, you will in the end have a job board at "jobs.yourdomain.com" "www. yourdomain .com" that looks exactly how you want it to.

An example:  Check out www.illinoistech.org and http://jobs.illinoistech.org.

1. First, you need to register a domain
2. Next, figure out how to create a CNAME.  This going to be done in the DNS. There are two options for where you do this. Sometimes the company that you bought the domain from (e.g. GoDaddy or Network Solutions) is manging the DNS for your domain.  In this case, contact them and ask for help creating a CNAME. Other times it's the company that is hosting your existing website. Try contacting them as well.
3. After you figure out which company, tell them to create a CNAME for "www" or "jobs" (you pick) that points to "www. jobcoin. com" .
4. Login to your JobCoin control panel and go to Configure Job Board > Advanced Configuration (take me there)
5. Enter your desired CNAME. Here you type the full domain name, such as jobs.yourdomain.com

This completes the domain portion of your setup. Now customize the look & feel of your site.

1. In your JobCoin control panel, go to Configure Job Board > Customize Style (take me there)
2. Check the box "I would like to use custom CSS and HTML"
3. In the Job Board Layout section that appears, click the link "View your generic layout". This shows you what you'll be styling. To get beyond this point, you need to know a thing or two about CSS and HTML.
4. View the source of this page and look for "Begin Header" and "End Header", and likewise "Begin Footer" and "End Footer". The HTML code you enter into these two boxes will be inserted into these respective places.
5. Any CSS you enter into the box above will override the default JobCoin CSS, so you have full control over the appearance. If you want to restyle anything you see on the generic layout, just find the name of the CSS element and create your style.

If you have any questions, contact us, we're happy to help.

JobCoin at #6 -- Duly Noted

A quick thanks to BeeTooBee (a new site for me), for culling through a hundreds of start-ups discussed on the TechCrunch forum and putting together the "Peoples' Favorites." JobCoin was named as a runners up,  holding firm at #6. Watch out #1 through #5! Congrats to everyone for the recognition.

Bay Area meets JobCoin

Next week I'll be traveling to the Bay Area and making an appearance at two great events. Wednesday evening I'll give a 60 second pitch at the Founder's Mixer put on by STIRR. I attended STIRR once a few months back and have to say Sanford Barr, Sean Ness, and Dan Arkind put on a great event!  Good coverage of past ones at bub.blicio.us.

The quick one-two punch will be finished off by SF Beta. I'm proud to run the Chicago Beta and have heard a lot of great things about the work Chris Perry has done with SF Beta. Great coverage on bub.blicio.us, PavingWays,  WebWare, and Laughing Squid. I'll be setup to demo.

If you're in the area, stop by and introduce yourself!

JobCoin Development Efforts and New Features

If you have any questions about features you see here, feel free to contact us. We're happy to help. And if you have any feedback or ideas for JobCoin, let me know!  You can e-mail me personally at keith (at) jobcoin.com. We prioritize our efforts by listening to all of you. Tell us what we can do to make JobCoin better for you!

Regards,

Keith Schacht
JobCoin CEO

Release 1.3

Latest new features:

• Full customization: You can completely customize the look of your job board (HTML/CSS and custom domain names). To get an idea of the possibilities, visit example #1 vs example #2. Go ahead and customize your job board.
  
  
• Track job applications: You need repeat customers. When a company posts a job, whether they post again or not is determined by the response they receive. JobCoin now tracks how many people apply to each job on your board. Search by job name to see the statistics.
  
  This figure started tracking as of 1/15. It's not 100% fool proof, people can always write down an email address on a piece of paper and apply from a different computer. But if they click on anything in the "How to apply" section of a job (email addresses or links), it's being tracked.
  
  
• Auto-collecting feedback: Every time a job expires, your job board emails the poster to: (1) let them know, (2) give them the option to post it again, and (3) to ask them to provide feedback about the results they received. We're trying to help you run a successful job board. Feedback from your customers is essential.

The Chicago Tech Buzz

Eric Olson and Frank Gruber did a fantastic job with Tech Cocktail, the third installment. This was by far the best event yet. It's nice to see the Chicago Technology Scene out in full force.

I had a great time demoing JobCoin and meeting everyone who stopped by to learn more.  Eric's summary of TC3 covers things quite well.

Chicago Job Board Network Launched By Leading Chicago Web Sites

Companies can now recruit from a wealth of hard-to-reach local talent

CHICAGO (January 22, 2007) – The Illinois technology community is announcing the launch of the Chicago Job Board Network to help companies target hard-to-reach business and technology talent.

MidwestBusiness.com, the Illinois IT Association (ITA), Gapers Block, and Chicagoist have all added job boards to their websites and linked them up. Recruiters can post to any of these sites and instantly reach the combined audiences—more than 600,000 visitors and 2 million page views per month.

The Chicago Job Network is powered by JobCoin, a Chicago-based technology company. “There are a wealth of talented people in Chicago who are not browsing traditional job boards,” said JobCoin CEO Keith Schacht. “The Chicago Job Board Network helps Chicago companies reach these talented people through the Web sites they love and read daily.”

“Job seekers know that landing a quality position is a game of numbers,” said MidwestBusiness.com editor-in-chief Adam Fendelman. “With each job listing found and resume submitted, the odds get better. This network makes it easy to keep up with job opportunities while getting your dose of daily Chicago news.”

“Key to the future of the technology industry in Illinois is greater collaboration”, said ITA President Fred Hoch, “this network will be an integral component in bringing the community together and driving greater opportunities for both executives and new talent for companies.”

The MidwestBusiness.com job board can be found at http://jobs.midwestbusiness.com. The ITA job board can be found at http://jobs.illinoistech.org. The Gapers Block job board can be found at http://jobs.gapersblock.com. The Chicagoist job board can be found at http://jobs.chicagoist.com. 

About JobCoin

JobCoin is a new Chicago start-up powering this job board network. JobCoin is the easiest way for any website to add their own custom job board. This provides a new value to your visitors and allows employers to target an audience that was previously unreachable. Learn more at http://www.jobcoin.com.

About MidwestBusiness.com

Founded in Jan. 2000, MidwestBusiness.com (formerly ePrairie.com) is the largest source of business and technology news and information in the greater Midwest. MidwestBusiness.com is a user-driven community distributed via the Web, podcasts, RSS feeds, the wireless Web and free daily e-mail newsletters. Additional information is available at http://www.midwestbusiness.com.

About the Illinois IT Association (ITA)

With roots dating back to 1982, the ITA represents the interests of a diverse membership of more than 400 companies in Illinois that create, deploy and utilize IT as a core part of their organization. By connecting members with industry peers and by providing the latest information and research, the ITA is focused on building and developing the Illinois technology community through collaboration. Additional information is available at http://www.illinoistech.org.

About Chicagoist

Chicagoist is a Web site about the Chicago area and everything that happens there. Chicagoist, which launched in May 2004, is authored by a growing group of hard-working bloggers. We’re dedicated to documenting Chicago – and all its quirks – one small detail at a time. Visit http://www.chicagoist.com.

About Gapers Block

Gapers Block is a Chicago-centric web publication providing information on news and events around town. Founded in 2003 and voted one of the "Best City Blogs" by Forbes, Gapers Block invites you to slow down and check out all the cool things in the city. Visit http://www.gapersblock.com.

Press Contact:
Keith Schacht, CEO, JobCoin, 773-936-4945