Listening, Learning, Adapting 

Ok, so the last couple of blog posts have been about what we've been doing with ourselves for the past couple of months.  Specifically we've talked about some of our failures and oversights.  Now I want to talk about how we have adapted to the feedback we've been given. 

As you will recall from my prior post about the goings on at Cool Hand Nuke, Dorene Facteau of Bechtel was concerned about the low visibility that her jobs were registering.  In a new effort, traffic and views is  always going to be a concern.   In fact, this was actually one of our early problem spots that we had identified.  Namely, employers who post jobs will want traffic but as a relative newcomer, how do we give it to them?

There were numerous permutations that could result in an answer but for Cool Hand Nuke we decided on a combination of social media - linkedin, facebook, twitter and job aggregators; but our prioritization schedule had the aggregation piece occurring at a later dat.  However, after speaking with Dorene, we immediately fast tracked it in order to account for her needs and, in fact, the needs of all our employer partners.

The Result.

We now have our jobs indexed by Simply Hired and Indeed, the two largest job aggregators in the U.S.  And we are currently in the process of having our positions indexed by DiversityJobs.com, the #1 diversity job board on the web, as well as the newest aggregator to launch JustJobs.com. These last two are expected to come online by August 1st.  Our feeds have been built and were sent to them almost two weeks back now, so we are in the queue.

The whole reasoning behind having our jobs aggregated is to do right by the client, the customer, the community.  We actually take a bit of a hit in search engine rankings by using these aggregators.  (Long story, don’t ask.)

But we decided early on that we would not do something just to keep from having to work a little harder; especially if it’s to the benefit of the community.  More exposure to Jobs equal more candidates, more candidates equal more jobs, more jobs & more candidates equal a stronger community.

And I can tell you that we have been very happy with our decision thus far.  The job views have increased significantly as has our overall site traffic and as expected our search engine rankings have plummeted.  But we’re happy with the result, we’d do it again and when the time comes we will do it again. 

Community First.

This goes for all members of our community.  Jon, a jobseeker and nuclear professional, wrote us to say that he had registered but wasn’t all that thrilled with the process.  In order to show is areas of interest, he wanted to be able to select more than 1 job category.  And though he did not explicitly say so he seemed to be a little discouraged thinking a new cover letter was required for each job application on Cool Hand Nuke.

We thought he had good points and we changed the system to allow for up to 3 job interest categories to be selected.  So you can now select Operations, Training and Engineering if you so desire and all will be searchable by employers.

We will also remove the requirement that a cover letter be completed and sent with each application.  While we still believe that these can help you to differentiate yourself, they should not be a burden and may very well not be necessary for any number of positions.  Because of the site design and because of a few of the change requests and enhancements already in the works, this request had to be consolidated with another group of changes that we have in the queue.  But we expect to have done within the next 30 days or so at most.

Final Point being that top to bottom, job seeker, employer, community member.  We value you, we value your feedback and we are working to make a better site for you.

Let us know how we’re doing & what you want, we’ll do our best to give it to you.

There’s more to come and we’re getting better every day.

Until next time,

Stay Cool!

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