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.
SHRM is involved because it sponsored the creation of the .jobs domain as a way for employers to help job seekers find the jobs and career sites of specific companies. Five years after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved the creation of .jobs, only a few thousand of the addresses were sold. So Employ Media began looking for ways to broaden the appeal of the domain. That’s where DirectEmployers got involved.
The history of this is detailed in multiple posts here.
Gary Rubin, SHRM’s chief publishing, e-media, and business development officer and point man for the .jobs policies, said the ad was “most likely” placed by Employ Media. “Ads for .Jobs in SHRM publications and websites are placed and paid for by Employ Media,” Rubin wrote in an email. He speculated that it was created before SHRM formed the advisory council.
I sent an email to Tom Embrescia, CEO of Employ Media, asking about the ad, but have not yet heard back.
In an earlier email Rubin offered clarification on the comment period (comments can be posted here) and how SHRM is collecting HR community sentiment about the use of .jobs. He said the comment period would close Friday. Meanwhile, he reported that SHRM conducted a survey of its members to plumb their opinion on .jobs and its future.
The survey, Rubin wrote me was sent “to a sample that included approximately 1,400 HR generalists and 1,500 employment/recruiting professions. This quantity of HR professions sent surveys are sufficient to represent the views of the community. It is a scientific survey, and the results will be tabulated for the Council.”
“The public comment application is for the sole purpose of informing the members of the Council on the perceptions of anyone in the community who chose to comment,” he added.
