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The comment period to collect opinions on the future of the .jobs domain closes Friday. But a two-page ad in the recent Staffing Management magazine from SHRM seems to say the decision has already been made.

The ad promotes the use of the planned series of job boards by the DirectEmployers Association. Against a snowy mountain backdrop, the ad lists a sampling of 18 of the planned “thousands” of job sites, among them Tokyo.jobs and Governmentconsulting.jobs.

“Coming soon!,” the ad promises. “List your jobs for free at thousands of locations.”

Technically, however, both the promise and the Internet addresses in the ad are premature. Under the rules by which the .jobs Internet extension was authorized, such names are not allowed. The rules allow only employer names to be used with a .jobs extension.

Whether the thousands of job boards ever come, let alone soon, is still to be decided. A SHRM-appointed group (the nine-members are the Policy Development Process Council) is studying a proposal to open up the naming rules to allow Employ Media to sell or (in the case of the DirectEmployers plan) “loan” geographic, occupational, and combination names. keep reading…

If you haven’t already offered your opinion on the future of .jobs, the Internet address extension designed for corporate career sites, better hurry. Friday might be your last chance.

Then again it may not be.

The Society for Human resource Management is collecting opinions on the wisdom of loosening the restrictions on what names can be linked to a .jobs Internet extension. In a May 8th email, SHRM’s Gary Rubin, point man for the group’s .jobs involvement, said the comment period would last “about three weeks.” The period opened May 11.

However, on the website set-up by DirectEmployers Association, key beneficiary of changing the rules, the association’s leader says: “The open comment period is open for 10 days only, through Friday, May 21st.”

Who’s right? I don’t know. The SHRM public comment page is silent on how long input will be accepted. I sent Rubin an email asking about the duration, and a few other questions, including why comments are not being made public, but haven’t gotten a response.

DirectEmployers is pitching hard for the change. Its launch last year of several dozen job boards was the catalyst for changing the rules. keep reading…

Have you checked out the ERE groups lately? We’ve got almost 100 groups in as many industries and geographies as you can imagine! If you haven’t stopped in lately, come post a discussion or join in on one of the many discussions going on already!

Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. Our members speak out on the .jobs issue
2. Personal branding is NOT evil
3. Are you on the no brain picking list?
4. Autoposting software for LinkedIn advertising
5. Do you know anything about Co-Sourcing?
6. Featured group of the week: New York Metro ERE

1. Our members speak out: What does .jobs mean to you?

We’ve had some great coverage on the recent .jobs issue from our editorial staff here at ERE. In response to the situation, several members posted some insightful opinions to contrast what has taken place over the last week: keep reading…

The SHRM .jobs council conference call, proposed for today, has now been scheduled for Thursday.

Today’s call was moved to Thursday after scheduling issues were raised, I’ve been told. I sent the council’s manager, Gary Rubin, an email seeking to confirm that, but have not yet heard for sure. Rubin is SHRM’s chief publishing, e-media, and business development officer, and point man for its .jobs affairs. keep reading…

A conference call Friday on the future of the .jobs domain ended with a consensus that the SHRM group considering the issue needed more information.

The nine-member council is scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider specific next steps.

In an email sent by Gary Rubin, SHRM’s chief publishing, e-media, and business development officer, he reported that the council “determined that more discussion will be necessary, including reaching out to the HR community for input, before voting on Employ Media’s proposal.”

His email didn’t provide any details on the two-and-a-half hour discussion. Nor did it say how input would be gathered. A previous discussion period, that was opened on the Policy.jobs site in late March, appears to still be accepting comments, although the site originally said the comment period would end last Friday. The page has been changed since.

In a subsequent email, Rubin declined to provide additional information. keep reading…

Ever since John broke the news yesterday on ERE.net that a committee of the Society for Human Resource Management was meeting tomorrow to consider amending the .jobs charter, several people have asked for a simpler explanation of what the stir is all about.

In this post, I will attempt to explain the facts of the situation and then explain why I think that if SHRM approves this amendment it will be doing a disservice to the HR community.

But first a little history.

SHRM & Employ Media’s Roles

In 2004, SHRM and Employ Media submitted an application to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to sponsor and manage a new top level domain (TLD) called .jobs. In 2005, this application was approved and on May 5 the .jobs charter was published. As the sponsor of the TLD, SHRM’s responsibility was to set policy and establish registration requirements, while Employ Media took on the more traditional business responsibilities of managing and marketing the new domains names. keep reading…

A SHRM executive said this afternoon that the organization has taken no position on proposed changes to career site addresses, nor did it have anything to do with a call for public comment.

Gary Rubin, SHRM’s chief publishing, e-media, and business development officer, said he was unaware of what content is published on Policy.Jobs adding, “There is no public comment period. That is not something SHRM did.”

He says the site is owned by Employ Media, SHRM’s partner in the .jobs domain project, and the content there was posted by the company. Rubin called up the site while we were on the phone and sounded surprised when it came up. “Oh,” he said, “This is interesting.” He said it was the first time he had seen it. keep reading…

A SHRM advisory group is being asked to approve changes allowing non-company names to be awarded a .jobs Internet address.

The approval is a crucial step in opening the door for the .jobs extension to be used with occupational, geographic, and other names, which a private organization wants to use to launch tens of thousands of new job boards.

There’s no announced meeting date for the advisory group — officially known as a Policy Development Process Council — but a public comment period closes Friday, April 9. There is a discussion board for comments.

Although the plan by Direct Employers to create a “Universe” of job boards has been the subject of ERE articles and a special meeting at the organization’s headquarters in Indianapolis in January, there’s no evidence of a public announcement of the amendment.

Indeed, the only mention of the amendment and the call for comments is on www.policy.jobs, a website that was first registered on Feb. 16th. The Society for Human Resource Management, which is responsible for ensuring compliance with the .jobs registration eligibility requirements, has a link to policy.jobs, but it’s deep on SHRM’s “Copyright & Permissions” page. That may be why there isn’t a single comment on the discussion board. keep reading…

Where have all the .JOBS job boards gone? Gone to enhancements and improvements every one.

DirectEmployers took down its job boards a few weeks ago, while it makes changes to the platform.

Bill Warren, executive director of DirectEmployers Association, blogged about the changes his team is making to the platform listing four specific areas — social media integration, accessibility, job posting — tagged for improvement. These are in response to feedback DirectEmployers has received since the first sites launched last October.  A fifth reason he cited was “Building out tens of thousands of additional domains.”

In a conversation this morning (Pacific time), Warren told me the original expectation that January would be the official debut was a little too ambitious. As late as meetings January 28 and 29, Warren was still predicting the imminent launch of 25,000 .jobs domains.

But refinements arising out of discussions at those two meetings, attended by a handful of recruiting leaders, including Peter Weddle and Gerry Crispin, postponed the launch.

“It’s quite a project, as you can imagine, ” Warren told me. keep reading…

US.Jobs site with social elements displayed

In a blog post about yesterday’s DirectEmployers meeting, publishing industry analyst and consultant Peter Zollman called it “a valuable information session.”

Recruitment consultant Gerry Crispin, who attended this morning’s second session, described it as a useful meeting that left him “very satisfied that the intent (of the creation of the dot-jobs domain) I have consistently written about … is reflected in what DirectEmployers is doing.”

The meetings they and a few others — perhaps a dozen in all — attended in Indianapolis were called by the DirectEmployers Association to answer questions and explain the non-profit recruiting consortium’s plans to build-out tens of thousands of recruitment sites all with an Internet address ending in .jobs.

Zollman reports in his blog post that next week 25,000 of the sites will go live. The “number will increase exponentially on an ongoing basis,” writes Zollman, until every community in the U.S. over 5,000 population has a job site for itself. keep reading…

A group of recruitment and HR leaders and professionals has been invited to a meeting in Indianapolis to discuss the Direct Employers plan to build tens of thousands, maybe even a million, of new job boards using the .jobs domain.

Although the program has been underway since October, the meeting later this month is described as an informational session. The invitation that was emailed last week says the intent is to answer questions that have come up.

In an email Q & A, Direct Employers Executive Director Bill Warren says the Jan. 28th meeting will show some of the sites, describe the analytics that are built into the job board platform, and answer questions.

Bill Warren

Warren asked me not to disclose the names of the 29 invitees, but it includes many easily recognizable names of recruitment leaders, as well as several job board CEOs, a few industry writers, and others, including ERE’s CEO David Manaster.

Since industry launches and new product introductions are commonly handled by webinars and previews in advance of launch, I first asked Warren what he’ll be showing and doing at the in-person event. keep reading…

When Chad Sowash said tens of thousands of new jobs sites were on their way, he wasn’t kidding. Millions of new job boards is the goal, says a new website from DirectEmployers and Employ Media, the registrar and driving force behind the .jobs addresses.

“Soon hundreds of thousands (and, eventually, millions) of geographical .jobs domain names will come online,” boasts the website, Universe.jobs. It’s home base for what the partners are calling The Dot Jobs Universe, a heady name for the job boards that will officially make their debut in January.

These boards are powered by the DirectEmployers Association, a recruitment focused consortium of employers that includes many of the top brands in the U.S.  The job boards will have occupational or geographic Web addresses or addresses that are a combination of the two.

Some of these are already launched. There’s NewYork.jobs, Boston.jobs, India.jobs, and more. A video on the Dot Jobs Universe site offers other possibilities; FloridaNursing.jobs, for instance. keep reading…

In a joint venture with the manager of the .jobs domain, DirectEmployers has launched the first of what might become tens of thousands of new geographically and occupationally focused job boards all sharing a .jobs extension.

The new sites, identical in design and structure, made their appearance earlier this month. Among them are Atlanta.jobs, Boston.jobs, Mexico.jobs, and India.jobs.

“We just started pushing them out,” says Chad Sowash, VP of business development for DirectEmployers, a non-profit HR consortium, that has recruiting as its focus. Among its services is the Job Central job board, to which members can post jobs without additional fee.

“It’s a new playing field,” Sowash adds. “What this is going to do is allow thousands more, perhaps tens of thousands more” sites where job seekers can look for jobs. keep reading…

The manager of the dot-JOBS domain is weighing the possibility of opening up the registry to allow regional and occupational names.

“What would you do with it if you had nursing.Jobs,” wonders Tom Embrescia, CEO of Employ Media. He says he has made no decision. But his question is not idle musing. Embrescia tells us he’s been doing a sort of informal survey of opinion as he talks to corporate recruiters and others.

“I’m just talking to people in a very low, quiet way. The way I’m talking to you. Asking them what they think,” he says.

Internet addresses could be issued for regions — say California.jobs or, to use Embrescia’s example, Malibu.jobs. Or, he says, “We could give anyone who has a business plan one for their zip code.”

More likely is that the addresses would go to job boards, social networks, or other organizations, he says. keep reading…