Re: Requirements feedback for jobs.postgresql.org. - Mailing list pgsql-www

Francisco,

cc'd to the list so that I don't have to have this discussion twice.

> I found the first page a little confusing.
> If you send me the text I could re-write it and send you back what I think
> may be a bit clearer and perhaps shorter.

Maybe after we've resolved the actual issues with the planned functionality.
AFAIC, nobody but the www list and maybe core needs to understand this spec.

> On the first page I would like to better understand what you mean by
> "Applications will be received by the jobs... and forwarded
> on to a specified email... to prevent email spiders? I wasn't clear after
> that what will be emailed to users? The contact info?

In other words:
Employers will enter jobs and their contact info.  The jobs but *not* the
contact info will be made public.
Applicants will fill out a form, and the system will e-mail its contents (and
any attached resume) to the employer.

There are a few reasons for doing things this way rather than simply posting
the employer's contact info and letting people contact them on their own.
These include:
-- Protection for employers from being bombarded with spam every time they
post an ad;
-- Protection for our job listings from being "mined" by an agency or online
job web site;
-- Preserving the possibility of eventually turing jobs.postgresql.org into a
revenue stream to support postgresql.

> -Publicly accessible jobs search screen
> You mention a job type there. I was thinking that maybe we may be better
> off such option. This can be restrictive and cause some confusion. For
> instance prospective employeers may not be sure which category a job
> should go under. Or someone may miss out a job because it was
> miss-classified.

I disagree very strongly.  If this site gets as much use as we want it to, we
need some kind of categorization to let searchers filter.   Pretty much every
other job listing service in the world has job categories; I don't see
bucking the trend on this one.

Certainly we want to stick to a small number of easy-to-understand categories.
For example, I was thinking of:
Database Administrator (DBA), Software Development, Performance Tuning,
PostgreSQL Support, General System Administrator, Training, and Other.

> From company to company, local to local, country to country views on a set
> of job duties may vary and type may just be a point of confusion.

Or may not.   Look, from my perspective, I don't want to even see jobs in the
"General System Administrator" category; they don't apply to me.   Other
applicants may *only* be qualified for training.  They should be allowed to
filter by this, just like applicants will filter by Full-Time, Part-Time, or
Consultant to match their availability.

> You mention in there "Resume Upload". I don't think this is the right
> place to upload a resume. I think people looking for jobs should be able
> to upload a resume for their profile.

We will not be storing applicant profiles on the system.   This would entail
about 30 hours of additional work, half of which for security, and we're not
going to do it.  Also, in the current economy, applicant profile storage
would bloat the database and become and administrative headache.

> ps. It put a smile on my face the requirement to support 10,000 users per
> day. I can only hope for the site getting that busy. I would have a better
> chance of working with PostgreSQL for a living if the site ever because
> that busy. :-)

Actually, I was thinking 10,000 *applicants* per day; if we got as much as 100
employers per day, I'd be ecstatic.   I doubt DICE.com gets 10,000 employers
per day....

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco