Flex Job

Seeking Flex/Flash developer with strong graphics/web design skills for unique and exciting project. Must be expert in Flex CSS and Cell Renderers and comfortable with OOP development. Reply must include work samples produced IN FLEX by *you alone* as well as your preferred developer/designer tool-set and your availability.

Location: Phoenix, Arizona area. Telecommuting OK.

Compensation: Mutually agreeable project fee. Immediate opportunity

Email: mlipsky@gabsight.com

Did you purchase Taleo Business Edition?

If so, demand your money back. Then, give me $70k, and in 3 months, my team will have something better than they do. This will allow your company to have better job applicants: those that do not have negativity towards you.

Out of the 67 jobs currently on FlexJobs, at least 6 had this horrid system implemented as their job applicant & recruitment system. Of those, 5 out of 6 sabotaged the interface implementation in some shape or form. By this, the HTML & JavaScript they used to embed Taleo’s system had too much control given to those who do not belong having that level of design control, and thus made it unusable to those using the site. I think Brightcove was the only site that actually implemented it correctly into their branding and kept it clean.

Furthermore, each site used the same system, yet I had to input my information & re-parse my resume each time. It is the same system… why am I having to repeat myself multiple times? This doesn’t include the other sites that didn’t use Dice, Monster, or their own system which included it’s own registration system. I had to create a new user name and password for each job application. The registration forms themselves were not well designed, making me write my email 4 times vs. the needed once. Weirder still, probably because of too much freedom in implementation, Taleo’s registration differed from site to site! The worse was 10 pages of questions on some of the implementations with a 10 point, bold font; really hard to read.

I’m willing to bet money the same problem that plagues badly written e-commerce sites with abandoned carts plagues companies that utilize this system. I came EXTREMELY close to abandoning two sites, one of which wasn’t Taleo but some other badly designed interface with an unusable system. “As a software developer, do I really want to work for a company who can’t even implement 3rd party web application?” A resounding “NO!”.

There are 2 types of job hunters, active and passive. Passive people put their information out there in an easily accessible fashion on sites such as Monster, Dice, and various other job / recruiting sites. In late 2002, things started to pick up. Instead of 3 recruiting firms calling me for the same job posted at IBM attempting to be first in, I’d have 5 recruiting firms contacting me about different opportunities. If you were a passive job seeker towards the beginning of 2003 for Flash work, the opportunities would flood in. The websites suddenly provided good value to their users in forcing them to input their information into the web site systems through not-so-fun interfaces: employment opportunities. To their credit, Monster has improved over the years, and Dice was very active in their community seeking user feedback.

However, one thing that hasn’t changed in 5 years is for the active job seekers, those who seek out work from various companies & individuals, is the process and thus experience of looking for & applying for new jobs is still horrible.

The same websites of companies or their middle-man recruiting firms all had horrific systems, all varied, all requiring unique registration that you’d never use again, and all having stone age abilities at parsing resumes. For those larger companies who have set systems in place with questions & processes for legal issues as well as controlling the influx and type of information sent to HR, these systems were built for those goals in mind, and in the end fail. They result in the job seeker having a negative impression of the company (if I’m applying for a web application position, you already look pretty bad), frustration in what is supposed to be a positive endeavor, and built up expectations derived from those negative experiences that may be unreasonable compared to what they had set before starting to apply. If you are hiring, you want someone who wants to work with you because you offer work that they will excel at. Having the applicant demanding more than usual to compensate for a negative job application experience is ridiculous, but I bet accurate. I’d go so far as to say that their answers have the potential to be flawed in the job application process because of the negativity built up during the process. Just because they are the ones applying for a job from you doesn’t mean they have to suffer to work for you. Job hunting is supposed to be a fun and exciting experience to the benefit of both parties.

5 years people… 5 years and things are WORSE now than they were before!

You have 2 options. If you are a small to mid-size company, use Dice.com. Their application form is the greatest on the Internet with Google-like simplicity allowing quick use for the user, a positive impression, and no implications or perceptions implied towards the company being applied to (vs. negative from the above):

dice.gif

If you are a larger enterprise with the need to filter applicants based specific questions, skill sets, and other legalese controllable in a CMS like system to prevent too many responses, see my first sentence.