Mashable has a review of the new Recruiting.com site, and it's not a favorable one.
Pete Cashmore says the Digg-like properties of the new Recruiting.com are too similar to what everyone else is doing, but with a jobs spin to it.
But turning Recruiting.com into the clichéd “Digg for Recruiting” seems like a wholly uninspired move - there hasn’t even been an attempt to create a more innovative interface. Coming so soon after the relaunch of Jobster.com as “MySpace for Jobs“, it seems that they’re just cloning established sites and adding a job-related spin. These consumer-facing apps certainly help to generate some buzz around the company, but they’re unlikely to take off - the corporate side is where Jobster will continue to prosper.
Now, you can choose to take this reply with a grain of salt, but just remember I'm an author for Recruiting.com.
My reply:
Recruiting.com is not, nor has it ever been about jobs. It's about information and promotion of the recruiting blogosphere. Up until now, Recruiting.com has been the creation of four main people and a few part-time authors selecting information and presenting their viewpoint - now, with a Digg-type system, the online employment community has an opportunity to turn Recruiting.com into a tru community voice, and not just reptition of the people the main authors speak to.
Is this a positive thing? Well, it's positive if it works. If it doesn't work, it's because the online employment community is either too small or too immature to support a community site. I also take issue with there being something wrong with copying the success of digg. It's still really, really new, and most people have never heard of it, let alone read the site regularly.
One of the concerns with people on the cutting edge is how few of them remember what a small group that cutting edge covers.
In the HR space - most people have never heard of an online employment community. Most recruiters don't read Recruiting.com, or ERE.net, (but they should) or even bother to pick up HR Weekly or Staffing Digest or even get the newsletters forwarded from every publishing house. Words like Web 2.0 are for the tech guys, and blogs are just teenagers writing their friends.
Mashable by its very name is on the cutting edge. And like an addiction, they need the constant rush of something new. Most of the rest of the business world is trying to learn how to intergrate all of these new tools into their businesses.
That's a positive thing. Check out my view on Web 2.0
Although, let me just say that my contention all along has been the Recruiting community needs more growth to be effective. In my eyes, all Recruiting is local, which is why I've started SeattleRecruiting.com to complement StlRecruiting.com. CharlotteRecruiting.com and KCRecruiting.com are on their way.
