A public comment period will open this week to collect opinion on a proposal to expand the use of .Jobs Internet extensions.
A website will be announced Monday where HR professionals and others can comment on the plan to allow the .Jobs domain to be used with occupational, geographic, and a combination of geographic and occupational addresses. Right now, only companies can get a .Jobs extension and then only to advertise their own jobs.
In addition to a website, the Society for Human Resource Management will also conduct a survey to garner opinion on the plan.
Gary Rubin, SHRM’s chief publishing, e-media, and business development officer, announced the public comment and survey in an email Saturday. He said the comment period would last about three weeks.
The location wasn’t ready when he sent the email, but it will be when the details and address of the website are reported in SHRM’s HR Week newsletter.
The public comments and the survey will help the SHRM-appointed council decide whether to endorse the proposal by the registrar of the .Jobs domain. SHRM is involved in the process because it was a sponsor of the request to create a .Jobs Internet address in 2004.
The proposal that was eventually approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers limited the awarding of .Jobs addresses to companies for their own use in hiring.
However, the registrar, Employ Media, now wants to broaden the usage. Last year it “loaned” addresses like Boston.jobs and Nursing.jobs to the Direct Employers Association, which launched several dozen job boards using occupational and geographic addresses. The group had plans to launch tens of thousands more until ICANN, the Internet’s address authority, stepped in.
(Details of the Direct Employers plan and background on the history of the .jobs domain are available here. A complete list of ERE articles and blog posts can be seen here.)
An earlier SHRM group was created in February and opened a comment period, but never announced it publicly. That group was replaced after protests about the nature of the group. The manager of that first council was Bill Warren, executive director of Direct Employers, the private organization that stands to benefit if the domain naming is broadened.
Now Rubin is the council manager.