Hi everyone,<p>About a year ago I created a web site to help people stay organized when looking for a job. Since then I've refined it to the point where I feel like it's now a viable product. I'm lacking two important things, however: a) a business model and b) time to market it.<p>My preference is to sell it, and I would greatly appreciate advice on selling a niche site like this. In the meantime I want to try and get some traffic to it, so advice on optimizing the 30 minutes a day I have to do marketing would be awesome.<p>Incidentally, I've been using the site to keep track of some of my marketing efforts. As I search for people to contact regarding the site, I'm storing their information and keeping track of the "next action" - review their site, email, etc. Do any of you feel you'd benefit from using a site like happyjobsearch to keep track of your marketing efforts?<p>A little more about the site: Its main benefit is providing a tool to approach job searching systematically. I got laid off twice in three months last year, and I found that it was very demotivating to approach job seeking in a sloppy, reactive manner. So I tried to take a GTD approach and do things in stages: collect, review, and respond. The idea with the site is to spend some time collecting job listings each day without spending a lot of time reviewing them, and definitely not spending time responding. Then, to spend time reviewing listings further and taking the time to send a proper cover letter and resume.<p>Separating these different processes and being able to keep track of which stage each job opportunity was in really helped me feel more in control and made me feel like I was actually making progress, because I could see what I'd gotten done. In the end that's what I hope it does for other people - help them with their job search on a practical level, but also help in some way to keep people motivated, because looking for jobs can really suck :D
Hi. I used your site about 9 months ago as my main tool for organizing my job search. I was the guy who emailed you with the suggestion to have links open in a new tab versus navigating away from the site (which you implemented a few hours later!). I am happy to say I am now gainfully employed as an Oracle DBA at a large company. I have recommended your site to friends and they have used it as well.<p>AAA+++ would use again.
Hi everyone,<p>About a year ago I created a web site to help people stay organized when looking for a job. Since then I've refined it to the point where I feel like it's now a viable product. I'm lacking two important things, however: a) a business model and b) time to market it.<p>My preference is to sell it, and I would greatly appreciate advice on selling a niche site like this. In the meantime I want to try and get some traffic to it, so advice on optimizing the 30 minutes a day I have to do marketing would be awesome.<p>Incidentally, I've been using the site to keep track of some of my marketing efforts. As I search for people to contact regarding the site, I'm storing their information and keeping track of the "next action" - review their site, email, etc. Do any of you feel you'd benefit from using a site like happyjobsearch to keep track of your marketing efforts?<p>A little more about the site: Its main benefit is providing a tool to approach job searching systematically. I got laid off twice in three months last year, and I found that it was very demotivating to approach job seeking in a sloppy, reactive manner. So I tried to take a GTD approach and do things in stages: collect, review, and respond. The idea with the site is to spend some time collecting job listings each day without spending a lot of time reviewing them, and definitely not spending time responding. Then, to spend time reviewing listings further and taking the time to send a proper cover letter and resume.<p>Separating these different processes and being able to keep track of which stage each job opportunity was in really helped me feel more in control and made me feel like I was actually making progress, because I could see what I'd gotten done. In the end that's what I hope it does for other people - help them with their job search on a practical level, but also help in some way to keep people motivated, because looking for jobs can really suck :D
Brilliant! I've been using Highrise to similarly organize my job search, however your approach is fantastically elegant and will probably begin using the two in tandem.<p>I've found that the networking aspects of jobseeking are not only critical in breaking past the resume firewall but are also among the hardest parts to manage, particularly trying to balance several open opportunities and inquiries.<p>The approach of systemizing all open opportunities, though, is brilliant. I'd suggest finding a way to integrate contacts & contact history within the site, almost making it more CRM-like, to make it a jobsearcher's dashboard.<p>As to a business model, I'm not sure it's immediately robust enough to begin as a subscription service and I'm no longer sold on advertising as a sustainable revenue stream, particularly with niche web apps.<p>Frankly, partnering with a LinkedIn might be the best outcome, but it's a real longshot. With the market for unemployed jobseekers outnumbering employed jobseekers, it's going to be a tough opportunity to make money on.<p>That said, best of luck - it's really quite brilliant.
I worked in the job space for a while, and I would recommend shopping this around to sites like TheLadders, Indeed, SimplyHired, etc, who are all always looking for competitive features. If they could just buy something rather than build it in-house, I'm sure they would (speaking as someone who worked at a startup which got sold to Monster.com for 72.5 million).
This is great! It mirrors the approach I've taken to job hunting in the past -- but on a webpage instead of a text editor.<p>Business model options (non-exclusive):<p>- Advertising: You have a wide range of options for sponsorship, display or performance advertising. I could write all day about them. Happy to give you more info.<p>- Subscription/"Freemium": Pay to use. Pay to use certain features. Pay not to see ads. Tip jars. Tons of options.<p>- Leap of faith: Focus on scaling up the user base (with or without other revenue) and sell it to a monster/dice/etc<p>Good luck!
I think this is a great idea. First impression, I would reconsider the colors. I think there's something to be said for being playful, however I'd like to see colors that are a bit more businesslike. The colors say toy, but this is a tool.<p>Granted, web 2.0 has proven that a pastel color scheme can work, and I do think it can work for you too but you either need to pull back on it or take it a step further and support it with some more stylized design elements.<p>Specifically, if your site name in the header felt more like a logo and felt a bit playful, you'd be signaling that this lightweight, airy feel is part of your brand identity.
Right now there's some disconnect there.<p>The dark blue you are using is nice, I think maybe just making that a bit more prevalent in your design would serve to ground the overall design a bit more.
Several other people have commented on resume functionality, but what I'd like to see is a targeted resume builder -- one where you can list the sum total of all your skills and experience, tag each line item with specific job categories, and then use that to build targeted resumes aimed at specific markets.<p>I've never seen a site with that feature.
Awesome idea and clean execution. I organized my last job search in excel and retained a lot of the same information.<p>One suggestion: It would be useful to cache the job listing the user links to. During my last job search I remember finding a lot of my bookmarks to be invalid because the original post had expired and the recruiter reposted it.
THis is something I was hoping to find. It becomes really hard for me to remember which jobs I applied to and to save jobs that I would like to apply to later. This is ideal for me. Thank you !!
I haven't dug into it yet, will try to tonight, but one thing struck me.<p>When I run across any sort of site like this normally, one of the first things I look at is news items (in this case the blog) and the forum. If there aren't any posts in either in the last couple of months, I usually assume it's been abandoned, so I don't dig any deeper.<p>Even a one or two line post every month or two reassures me that some sort of active maintenance is going on.
You're getting some porn spam on the demo account. If you're not already, it'd probably be a good idea to reset it with known good data every couple of hours.
Yikes - what's up with the spam here? <a href="http://www.happyjobsearch.com/opportunities" rel="nofollow">http://www.happyjobsearch.com/opportunities</a>
This looks very nice from what I saw in the demo account. Very clean interface.<p>I actually have a project I had made initially for B2B sales leads, but there are certain features of automation that I've been thinking lately could really be used for job search. Perhaps we should talk?
Very cool site. One thing I would upgrade.<p>You have your "interview reminders" section. Very cool. The data is entered in a * / * * / * * * style, very intuitive for entry. However, I would RENDER the information in a set of nested ul tags.<p>Just my $.02
The name feels odd -- like an unedited Chinese translation. Monster only works because they could afford a Superbowl ad. Maybe something that highlights the organizational aspect? MyJobSearchManager.com is open.
not to be a negative-nancy, but is this that much better than tracking things in something like a Google docs spreadsheet with a few tabs?<p>Seems like a solution to a non-existent problem.