Does anyone know more about .jobs than Gerry Crispin? He called me yesterday with a bone to pick about my blog post. It is not really accurate to say that SHRM has been championing diversity.jobs. He was right, that's too strong a statement.
Nevertheless, Gerry is opposed to the .jobs expansion. There are a number of striking statements in his opposition letter below but this one stands out above the others "Job seekers enter a toxic environment in their efforts to secure a position - everywhere in the world."
I think the presumption here is that if .jobs were managed well, it could greatly reduce the toxicity. That's a very interesting idea, but, I would like to point out that while some job boards pollute the waters with intent (yes, this is very serious), many employers do it out of neglect or blatant disregard for job seekers. That's a bit off topic but a very interesting subject. Now, give Gerry's letter a read - it's a gem:
Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman Members of the Board of Directors International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Dear Chairman Dengate Thrush and Members of the Board:
I urge you to reject Employ Media's request for authority to permit second level registration of strings that do not correspond to an employer's name in the .jobs sponsored top level domain.
My organization, CareerXroads, would NOT be directly or adversely affected by this request. In fact, I am in favor of the concept of developing the above taxonomy within the .dot jobs domain as a means to develop the original intent of ICANN to increase the 'safety' of the content that reaches the job seeker.
However, I strongly oppose Employ Media's history of dissembling, lack of transparency and willingness to enter into backroom deals and, am even more strongly concerned with SHRM's inability to choose to act as a trusted referee. It is for these reasons that I oppose the unilateral expansion of the .jobs charter to encompass regional and industry-specific second-level registrations under their auspices. The two entities you have trusted with the Charter have every intention to misuse it for profit and/or look the other way in a misguided notion of their role. The result will be disastrous for job seekers- not to mention legitimate job boards and real employers who cannot be differentiated from less ethical look-alikes.
As a 20 year volunteer leader with SHRM [including their national Board of Trustees in 1999], as an author of 8 published annual directories [CareerXroads, 1996-2003] detailing the early growth of the job board industry, and as a respected student, writer, speaker and observer of staffing here in the US and abroad that continues to this day, I believe the problems identified by ICANN nearly a decade ago are still present and growing worse. Job seekers enter a toxic environment in their efforts to secure a position - everywhere in the world.
SHRM and Employ Media have not achieved even a modicum of success in meeting the Charter they were given. Nor has any other stakeholder group. While the efforts of the International Association of Employment Web Sites (http://www.employmentwebsites), an industry trade association, as well as other collaborative trade groups are well meaning, they have had little impact and no influence on the problems that .jobs aspired to address.
However, due to misinformation, lack of interest etc. etc. it goes without saying that the community of legitimate job boards feels threatened by the proposed expansion of the .jobs top level domain. I've no doubt you are hearing from many of them. Some of it is due to their own myopic views but much is due to the failure of both SHRM and Employ Media to act as educators and facilitators. Missed opportunities in developing cooperative models to manage the .jobs domains were missed day after day after day over the last 5 years.
ICANN's original intent in getting SHRM to act as a trusted mediator in the development of .jobs 5 years ago was brilliant and innovative at the time but, in hindsight, they have not see their role as facilitating the key stakeholders [job seekers, job boards and employers] to understand the charter and facilitate some reasonable agreement- and they couldn't even represent the .jobs domain to their own members properly- relying instead on Employ Media's advertising which seldom if ever reflected the intention of the .jobs charter.
The proposal before you at the very least violates the spirit of the charter holder's contract with ICANN and has generated incredibly bad will among hundreds of decent firms that have invested billions of dollars in an effort to do the right thing with job seekers.
I encourage you to reject the proposal and pull the existing Charter from Employ Media and SHRM. I further recommend you issue a new Request For Proposal to manage the domain to meet the original Charter's intent.
Sincerely,
Gerry Crispin, SPHR (senior professional human resources) Founder and Principal, CareerXroads
