When I asked if there was any central list of Irish startups who are hiring, and suggested I'd start one if not, an interesting conversation ensued. Paul Sweeney of VoiceSage thought it was a great idea (with provisos) while Alan O'Rourke of SpoiltChild felt that regular jobs sites, like Monster.ie are the best option.
On the other hand Conor O'Neill of Argolon felt he'd wasted €200 in advertising with Monster.ie and not done much better in spending €800 with the Irish Examiner -
"This may be a reflection of almost total employment of people in our technical area in Cork but we were deeply disappointed with the response. We could not afford to be doing this on a regular basis..."
Conor feels that its actually a two-way problem and a simple free aggregation system would be ideal for small companies like his. Therefore I've created a new sub-node called Startup Jobs & Applicants under the Business & Economy -> Employment & Recruitment node of the Open Irish Directory. I hope this will serve double duty in providing a 'reading list' (dynamic OPML file) of bloggers who seek startup employment, along with a reading list of Irish startups seeking to fill positions. I've also setup a QuickTopic messge board to which any startup company can post positions. Those with blogs can alternatively filter postings to those blogs about new positions to an aggregate feed by Technorati tagging them OIDsjp. I'll splice the QuickTopic and Technorati feeds together using a service like Feeddigest as soon as we've got a few in there. And jobseekers can then subscribe to that feed or give a quick scan by browing the OID through Taskable.
I posted previously that I won't vote in the next election except for a candidate who blogs. I'm a startup founder myself and though we're not currently looking to take on employees, I'll take the same hardline approach when we are - unless you blog we won't be employing you. If a picture is worth a thousand words a blog is worth a thosand resume pages. You might say that beggars can't be choosers but I'd be very disappointed if I had to look outside of active bloggers to fill a position.
And to put the shoe on the other foot - if I were a jobseeker looking to join a dynamic young startup I'd certainly want to get to know what it might be like to work there by following their blog.
In summary, while the OID is not going to replace other jobsites it might help to solve two problems -
- How do people like Des Corbett, who specifically want to experience the buzz of working for a startup company, easily scan the positions available and learn about startup life within those companies? And...
- How do companies like Argolon who only have a startup's budget to work with easily find the entrepreneurial jobseekers and get to know more about them than a CV could convey, before interviewing them?
Technorati tag: OIDsjp
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