Job-a-matic

Lunch 2.0 @ Simply Hired

It's that time again!

Simply Hired is honored to host the guys and gals from Lunch 2.0 and their loyal following. More details to follow, but great food, limited edition giveaways (maybe a new shirt?), and the opportunity to network. Everyone is welcome--bring your coworkers and friends!

Simply Hired was lucky enough to host one of the first Lunch 2.0 events, and now that both Lunch 2.0 and Simply Hired have grown, join us in our courtyard for free lunch and more!

When: Friday, June 29, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Where:  2513 Charleston Avenue, Mountain View, CA  (Google Maps)
RSVP: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/203440/

How to Hide the Ability to Post a Job

Q:  What do MySpace and Job-a-matic have in common?
A:  Both sites allow you to use CSS to customize your site.  (Oh, there’s also that Simply Hired powered MySpace Jobs site…)

If you don’t want to let visitors post jobs to your job board, you can hide the “Post a Job” functionality by adding the following CSS to your header on your Header & Footer Configuration Page:

<style>
#post_link_container{visibility:hidden;}
#no-jobs-message{visibility:hidden;}
#backfill-rule{visibility:hidden;}
</style>

CSS let you do all sorts of customizations to your job board to make it resemble your main site.  (See our Pimp Your Job Board post and this CSS cheat sheet for ideas.)

TypePad Integration

Cue the fanfare. We’ve officially partnered with SixApart, the people behind TypePad, to provide you with job board integration that’s quick, easy, and good-lookin'!

If you are the proud owner of a TypePad blog, you can now import the look and feel directly into your Job-a-Matic job board.  We’ve also made it oh-so easy to install a custom job board widget on your TypePad blog.

How to import your TypePad theme into Job-a-matic:

Go to your Job-a-matic dashboard. Select "configuration," and then "header and footer." From here, you can import the design theme from your TypePad site and further gussy up your site’s header and footer.

Now you’ve got that timeless, smart, shoes-match-the-handbag thing going. So professional, so effortlessly hip. (Caveat: if you have a really funky, super-advanced template, our best effort to match your site might not pan out...)

How to install our job board widget on your TypePad blog:

Go to your dashboard and select the "promote" tab and "create widget." Set the number of postings, and choose from our fancy-pants pre-defined color schemes (ooh! Aaahhh!) or get a Plain Jane widget, on which you can work your own CSS style-mojo. From there, it’s one click to install into your TypePad blog.

Even Dorothy had to click three times, so we think this is pretty darned efficient. Happy blogging!

Product Tour, Benefits and Reviews

If you are reading this blog, you are probably already a member of the Job-a-matic family. But if you aren't, we wanted to take a moment to point out the new Job-a-matic site. We now provide a Product Tour, Features and Benefits & even a Raves and Reviews section to help convince you that we rock. In case you didn't already know.

Job-a-Matic FeedFlare

FeedBurner provides web-based tools for bloggers, podcasters, and commercial publishers to help them distribute their content, monetize their sites and engage their audiences. 

FeedBurner’s FeedFlare product allows you to build more interactivity into your content, such as:
•    Display of the number of comments
•    Submit a story to Digg or Del.icio.us
•    Show the number of blogs that link to their item
•    …and now, display the number of job listings on your job site!

We've partners with Feedburner to offer you a Job-a-matic FeedFlare, which can help you effortlessly drive traffic from your blog to your job board by promoting your jobs automatically at the bottom of every blog post in your RSS feed and website. Very 2.0 if we do say so ourselves.

Example Job-a-matic FeedFlare:

We strongly recommend our FeedFlare for anyone who wants to expand their reach and invigorate the interactive experience they provide to their audience.

FeedFlare Installation Instructions:

1. Login to your FeedBurner account.
2. Go to your My Feeds page.
3. Select your blog's feed.
4. Click on the Optimize tab towards the top of the page.
5. Click on the FeedFlare link on the left of the page.
6. Select the "View My Jobs" Official FeedFlare and type the domain name of your Job-a-matic site into the field:
   
   
7. If you don't already have FeedFlares active, get the HTML code and add it to your site template.  Learn more
8. Click the "Save/Activate" button at the bottom of the page and you're done!

Rinse and repeat for every feed you manage.

If you want to enhance the power of your Job-a-Matic job board with FeedBurner, but you need more technical assistance, give us a shout. We’re here for you.

Spotlight on Stanford Publishing

Since 1978, Stanford Publishing Courses (SPC) has offered continuing education to working professionals in magazine and book publishing. SPC alumni include some of the worldwide elite of the publishing world, both in the traditional print media and in web publishing, as their Publishing on the Web workshop has been educating Web professionals in the art and business of content-rich online publishing since 1995. SPC even provides a Virtual Seminar Series, which allows cost-effective continuing education in the form of one-hour publishing seminars, delivered via phone and Web.

It’s no surprise that such a savvy, forward-thinking institution would be a proud user of Job-a-Matic.

The Stanford Publishing Courses job board (http://stanfordpublishing.jobamatic.com/) is a great example of a niche board that offers rich, relevant content for educated professionals looking for the right opportunity in both commercial publishing and related positions with academic institutions. As one of the elite academic institutions of the United States and in particular one whose long history of collaboration with the innovators of Silicon Valley has given them a cutting-edge reputation, Stanford needs to provide a rich, smart-looking, and usable interface for sophisticated users. This job board delivers it, with seamless design integration with the main SPC site.

They make their board visible and usable by linking to it right off the left-hand navigation on the home page, and all “child” pages have handy footer links so the job board is always easy to locate. At $40.00 per 30-day job listing, they’re selling modestly after about a month and a half, and making good use of the backfill feature to keep a steady flow of relevant job listings available for their users.

Holly Brady, Director of the Stanford Publishing Courses, is enthusiastic about the addition of an industry-specific job board for the SPC site and looking forward to the upcoming Job-a-matic features that let publishers further customize the look and behavior of their site. (Stay tuned!) Meanwhile, the SPC job board is already delivering great custom content to a highly discerning user base.

Do you have a Job-a-Matic job board you’d like us to feature? Drop us a line!

Job-a-Matic’s Got Your Back(fill)….

Backfill. We mention it a lot, but haven’t really explored it in detail. As you’ll recall, if you are running light on job listings, you can set your board up to populate with “backfill” jobs from Simply Hired’s database. You choose the search terms, and with five million listings to choose from, it’s a pretty sure bet you’ll find plenty that work for your site and your audience.

So, if sales are slumping, there’s no need to get that Glengarry Glen Ross feeling. Backfill listings appear as needed, making you look as busy as ever. Even if you’re selling job listings by the truckload, you can still use backfill to create even more relevant content for your users, and who doesn’t want that? What’s more, you still receive per-click revenue when your users click on our backfill jobs.

So, here’s how to make backfill work for you:
When you log into your Job-a-Matic account you simply select “configuration” and then “backfill” from the dashboard. Choose either “always show backfill” or “show backfill when 0 result” depending on your needs.

Below that you’ll see the fields for search terms. You can make this part as simple or as complicated as you want. Let’s say you put “Simply Hired” in the “with all the words” field. We’ll backfill your job board with listings that contain the word “simply” and the word “hired.” Which could generate a pretty wide variety of listings, and let’s say you actually want to show job openings at Simply Hired. Throw some quotes around “simply hired” or put it in the “with the exact phrase” field. Or put “Simply Hired” into the “within company name” field and you’ll get to us that way too. (See, this is actually pretty self-explanatory!). You can search for listings within a specific company (toss “McDonald’s” into the “within company name” search) or a specific profession (put “personal assistant” into the “within title” field and behold the wealth of Gal Friday opportunities that await you!). You can also exclude terms, so if you want your users to see veterinarian jobs but not large animal vet jobs, tell it to the “exclude” field.

You can apply the search terms in any combination, and you can return to the dashboard and change the terms at any time. 

Oh, and we can make your backfill listings location-based as well. Currently you just need to email us to make this happen – but soon you’ll be able to do it yourself, so stay tuned.

Site Maintenance on May 1

Hey Folks. We need to make a few DB changes to keep up with the growing publisher network, as well as roll-out a few patches. As a result we will be taking the site down on Tuesday May 1, sometime between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM (PST). The site won't be down for the full hour... we just like to give ourselves lots of breathing space. We are a bit claustrophobic.

Off topic: Office Pranks Contest

As loyal users of Job-a-matic, we wanted to take a break in your regular programming schedule to let you know that we have relaunched our humorous sister site, Simply Fired! 

Based on user feedback, we have added some cool community features that will make your time spent on Simply Fired fun and interactive, like voting, photos, videos and commenting. 

And since we can’t have a relaunch without a contest, without further delay…we present….The Prankies: The 2007 Office Prank Awards!  The inaugural Prankies allows you to submit stories, photos, and videos of your best Office Pranks for all the world to see!   

And since you know that we run a first class operation, it should come as no surprise that we have enlisted some top talent celebs to judge your submissions: 

• Comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Tom Papa
• Star of TV and the film Fired! Annabelle Gurwitch
• Writer for the Fox show “Til Death,” Vijal Patel
• Author of The Cubicle Survival Guide, James Thompson. 

As if you needed any more reasons, the prizes will be up to the usual Simply Fired standards—including a limited edition Simply Fired shirt that you can only get here. 

So what are you waiting for? Get your prank on!

Uploaded to Flickr by a_fake_mail

Pimp Your Job Site, Part 1: Customizing the Header

When you create your Job-a-matic account, your Job-a-matic job site comes with a default header that contains the name of your job site. It’s pretty simple and generic, so it should inspire you to bling it up to suit your tastes.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it matched your site’s look and feel?

In this tutorial we will walk through the process of adding a header to your job site to make it match your web site. If you are using Firefox as your main browser, it would be helpful to have the Web Developer Toolbar add-on installed. If you have Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar will make your life a lot easier.

 

1. First of all, you will have to identify the header that you would like to add to your job site.

Firefox: Using the Outline > Outline Current Element tool in Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar, hover your mouse cursor over the header of your web page. An outline should appear around the header elements.

IE7: Use the Select Element by Click tool in the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar, hover your mouse cursor over the header of your web page. An outline should appear around the header elements. Click on the area once.

Take note of the classes or IDs of the HTML elements that make up the header section.

2. Find the code for the header.

Firefox: Right-click on page and select View Page Source. Find the code for the header section by searching for the classes or IDs from the previous step.

IE7: Use the View Element Source tool. Scroll to the bottom of the window that pops up and you will see the code for the header.

Copy the code for the header. Login to your Job-a-matic account and go to the Configuration > Header-Footer section. Paste the code into the box labeled Header HTML.

3. Find the CSS for the header.

Firefox: Use the CSS > View Style Information tool and click on the header. The styles will be displayed in a split window. Copy the CSS.

IE7: Scroll back up to the top of the window that popped up in the previous step. Copy all the styles that pertain to the header.

Go back to the Configuration > Header-Footer section in the Job-a-matic dashboard. Paste the code into the box labeled Header HTML above the stuff that you previously entered. Wrap the CSS between

<style type="text/css">...</style> tags.

4. Firefox users may need to repeat the previous step for each element within the header section. Remember to remove line numbers and other mark-up that is not a part of CSS syntax.

 

5. The code should look something like this.
Click on Save Changes to apply your settings.

6. Click on View My Site in the top right to admire your handywork.

If the header does not include a link back to your website, it would be nice to add one so that visitors to your job site may find their way back.

A link can be added by surrounding any text or image with the following tags:

<a href="http://www.example.com/">...</a>

(Remember to replace example.com with the URL of your web site!)

If you have any problems with customizing your header, let us know! We have a crack team of HTML ninjas who can help!