why you need to routinely review and upgrade your technical infrastructure – Job Board Doctor

: fiberI live in a small col­lege town in the US Mid­west. If you know any­thing about the US, you know what that means for inter­net access: mediocre inter­net speeds, high prices, lim­it­ed provider choice, and unpre­dictable upgrade paths. In oth­er words, you have to take what the provider gives you. In my case, that means mid­dling DSL at rel­a­tive­ly high prices from a sin­gle provider.

Well, until this year. My town’s city coun­cil knew this was an eco­nom­ic growth prob­lem – mediocre inter­net means mediocre growth! So a year ago, they began look­ing around for a solu­tion. (Believe me, this will be to our indus­try in a bit – just hang in there!). They found it in a rel­a­tive­ly local tele­com com­pa­ny who was lay­ing fiber in oth­er small towns and pro­vid­ing high speed inter­net at a rea­son­able price. The coun­cil invite the com­pa­ny to look at our town and…well, I can look out my office win­dow and see them lay­ing fiber as I write.

Good news for the Doc­tor, eh? You bet!

But what does this have to do with your ? Well…

Job boards and recruit­ing ser­vices depend on a sub­struc­ture of tech­nol­o­gy to serve their cus­tomers – specif­i­cal­ly, things like sophis­ti­cat­ed search tools, pars­ing, tech­ni­cal inte­gra­tions with client , and so on. This tech­nol­o­gy is in many ways hid­den from can­di­dates and employ­ers – but how well it func­tions is crit­i­cal to client sat­is­fac­tion. If a can­di­date runs a search for tech­ni­cal jobs in Mia­mi, and she gets retail sales job list­ings in Oma­ha – well, you’ve got prob­lems!

Think about it – just like my town’s upgrade of its inter­net infra­struc­ture in to sup­port eco­nom­ic growth, you need to upgrade your tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture to keep your cus­tomers and your busi­ness com­pet­i­tive. In my opin­ion, the time is long past for a job board to rely on a search tool that only match­es spe­cif­ic fields, instead of tak­ing into account con­text and rel­e­vance. Many job boards have moved to such search tools – but many have not.  The inat­ten­tion to tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture is like a hid­den, pro­gres­sive weak­ness. Much as a dete­ri­o­rat­ing threat­ens the entire struc­ture of a build­ing, so too does a sta­t­ic tech­ni­cal struc­ture on a job board. One day you may wake up to find a col­laps­ing build­ing.

That’s not good.

So what’s the answer? Well, this is not an ‘one size fits all’ affair. Some sites rely on a ven­dor to main­tain and upgrade their . Oth­ers have inter­nal tech­ni­cal staff. Regard­less of your sit­u­a­tion, the first step is a reg­u­lar review of your tech­ni­cal foun­da­tion – in my opin­ion, once a year is a good fre­quen­cy. Look at the core func­tions of your . For many, this will be job search, resume or pro­file search, match­ing of jobs to can­di­dates or vice ver­sa, resume pars­ing, post­ing opti­miza­tion, API (if you have one), data inte­gra­tions with clients, inte­gra­tions with ven­dors, and report­ing (both inter­nal and for clients). You prob­a­bly have more! Set bench­marks if you haven’t; if you have, how are you doing? Are you see­ing con­tin­u­al improve­ment – or degra­da­tion? Look at your com­peti­tors – what are they doing? Have they made inno­va­tions that you haven’t? If so, should you con­sid­er them? Look up the lad­der, too – what is doing? Or Seek? Or Google? Is it time to ‘steal’ some ideas from them? Look at your tech­ni­cal providers, whether they are exter­nal or inter­nal. Are they func­tion­ing as well as they could or should?

I think you get the .

Do it once a year. Be hon­est with your­self. Be open to change. And be rig­or­ous. ‘Lay­ing fiber’ is an invest­ment in the future – your future. Don’t avoid it!

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