Product Updates

One of the most requested features of Jobcast.net's Facebook App has been the addition of a Facebook "Like" button on job postings.  I'm excited to announce that it's finally here! Your jobs on your Facebook Page will now show the ubiquitous Facebook "Like" and "Send" buttons:

When a user clicks the "Like" button, your job will appear on the user's Wall and will be published on his/her friends' news feed...letting them all know about it. When "liking" a job, the user will also have the opportunity to add a comment so that s/he can add some context around the "Like". This is an effective way for your visitors to promote your jobs on a large scale.  However, often times it doesn't make sense to promote jobs to everyone in ones friends list.  For those times, the "Send" button is an effective way to selective notify friends about a particular job. Messages sent through the "Send" button will appear in the recipient's personal Messages list and can provide a more personalized experience:

I hope this drives more relevant traffic to your job postings. As always, we value your feedback, so please let me know how we're doing by sending us a message or reviewing our App on our Facebook Page. Please note that there's currently a bug in Facebook's "Send" button API that prevents the "Send" button from showing unless the "Like" button has been clicked. This bug has been submitted to Facebook, so I hope they fix it soon.

We now offer you the ability to only show job details to those users who have "liked" your Facebook Page. You may want to enable this to boost the number of "likes" on your Facebook Page, but be warned that if users are reluctant to "like" your Page, then fewer users will see your jobs.  To enable this feature, go do "Admin Options" and change your "Like Button Settings" as shown below:

Once enabled, users will still see a list of your published jobs, but viewing job details will require them to "like" your Page first:

Similarly, jobs will still be visible on your Facebook Page's Wall, but once users request details, they will be asked to "Like" the Page:

I hope you find this useful.  If you have any feedback or comments, please send us a note or add a comment.

After operating as Syndicruit.com for the past few months, we came to the realization that the name wasn't a good fit. The response we got to our name varied from "Syndi what???" to, "Is that an oil company?" So, for the past two months we've been working on a new name for Syndicruit that better reflects where we're going as a company. After much deliberation our brilliant designer Leif Parker hit on what we think is a winner, Jobcast.net!

Why Jobcast?

Many of you know us for our Facebook job app that we launched a few months ago. What you may not know is that this is just the beginning of what we plan to offer. In the very near future, we will be launching a platform for broadcasting jobs to many other social sites, classified sites and job boards. Hence the name Jobcast.net!

So, stay tuned for the official launch of our new web application coming this summer.

Our first release will include a job micro-site for employers and the ability to broadcast jobs to:

• Social Networks: Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin

• Job Sites: Indeed.com and Simplyhired.com

With micro-sites, employers will be able to:

• Customize a career page with their company logo and branding

• Create their own branded sub-domain on our system

• Publish and manage their jobs from an admin panel

To get the latest information on our upcoming launch, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter. Thanks for your support over the past few months. We're confident that the best is yet to come!

Last Friday (on May 13th), the 1000th job was published using our Facebook Job App! We ‘re really excited by the amazing growth that we’ve experienced since launching our App in February of this year and we’d like to thank you (our customers) for this growth. You early adopters have provided us with great feedback that has proved invaluable! As we add more features and reveal new services, we’re happy to have you all on-board as our valued partners!

We’ve got many things planned over the next several months to improve the recruitment experience on the web by leveraging social media so stay tuned for more updates soon. We can’t wait to share with you!

In the meanwhile, thank you all for helping us hit the first of many milestones to come and for your feedback along the way! If you’d like to share your thoughts with us, feel free to review us on our Facebook Page or leave us a comment below.

Thank you!

I want to share my quick thoughts on the Facebook Application Security issue that has been publicized by Symantec and picked-up by the media in a frenzy.  The Symantec blog post that describes this flaw is here:

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/facebook-applications-accidentally-leaking-access-third-parties

Anyone using the Syndicruit Facebook App is not impacted by the security flaw described by Symantec.  We've been using the OAuth 2.0 authentication system since November of last year, so the "access token" or "spare key" (as Symantec describes it) is never exposed and never at risk.  Also, while Symantec is bringing this security flaw to the forefront now, the problems with the old Facebook authentication system has been well understood and discussed for a while and Facebook has been proactive about addressing it.  Specifically, the two sources of the security problem (as described by Symantec) are:  exposed access tokens in the URL, and information leaking through the referrer HTTP header.  Both of these have already been addressed with Facebook's OAuth 2.0 authentication system.  Unfortunately, older Facebook Apps that are still using the old authentication system are still impacted by this security issue, so I hope they upgrade as soon as possible.  So while the security stories sound doom and gloom for Facebook Apps, all modern Facebook Apps (the Syndicruit Facebook App included) are safe from the problems described by Symantec.  So you can continue to use our app feeling confident that your information is secure. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to send me a note.

This is a quick blog post to let you know that we now allow you to customize the message that gets posted to your Facebook Wall when you publish a new job.  You will find this option under “Admin Options”:

And this is how it will look on your Facebook Wall:

Please note that this “Wall Message” is specific to each Facebook Page. This means that if you have our app installed on multiple Facebook Pages, then you can set a unique “Wall Message” for each one.  This also means that if you have multiple users that administers your Facebook Page, then regardless of who publishes a job, this “Wall Message” will be used.

I’ve had  several customers ask for this feature, so I hope you find it useful.

This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the enhancements in our updated Facebook App:

• Facebook Job Recruitment App Redesign (March 8th)

• Applicant Routing (March 10th)

• Customize Your Email and Empty Jobs Tab (March 17th)

We often heard from our customers that it’s sometimes hard to classify a job posting into a single category (e.g. Accounting, Administrative) or type (e.g. Full Time, Part Time). For those times, we now offer you the ability to select multiple categories and types from the “Create Job” or “Edit Job” form:

Also, if you have more than one administrator for your Facebook Page, you can select multiple recipients to receive job applications:

I hope you find this feature useful.  Also, we’re conducting usability tests in an effort to continue improving our Facebook App. If you can participate, please contact us. Together, I hope we can continue to improve the recruitment experience on Facebook.

This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the enhancements in our updated Facebook App:

• Facebook Job Recruitment App Redesign (March 8th)

• Applicant Routing (March 10th)

In today’s post, I’m going the cover 2 important enhancements that our customers have been requesting:

• Change the email address where job applications are sent.

• Customize the content of the Jobs tab when you’re not actively recruiting.

Both of these requests are now supported.

Changing Your Primary Email

By default, we use the email address that’s stored in your Facebook account when sending you job applications. This was convenient because this email addresses was pre-approved by Facebook and we didn’t need you to confirm the validity of it. However, we understand that you don’t always want to use the email address stored on Facebook for your professional needs, so we now allow you to customize this email. We still use the email address stored on Facebook by default, but when you first authorize our app, you will be given the opportunity to change this email address.

Also, you can click Admin Options from the Admin Panel at anytime to this change your email.

Please note that after you request your email to be changed, you will still need to confirm the change before it’s finalized. We will send you an email with a confirmation link that you will need to click on to finalize the change. This is to ensure that we don’t inadvertently start sending job applications to an unauthorized email address.

Customize Empty Jobs Tab

There are times when you may not be actively recruiting. For these times, we display a generic message to users in your Jobs tab:

You can now personalize this message as follows:

As always, we welcome your feedback on these changes. And if you’d like to participate in an ongoing usability test that we’re conducting, we’d really like to hear from you. Together, I hope we can continue to improve the recruitment experience on Facebook.

This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the enhancements in the new Facebook App Redesign:

• Facebook Job Recruitment App Redesign (March 8th)

In today’s post, I’m going  the cover our new “Applicant Routing” option.  In the past, we collected all job applications on Syndicruit so that you can retrieve them at any time from within the Admin Panel of the Job Recruitment Facebook App:

We also emailed these job applications to users who have subscribed to receive them. But we’ve heard from some customers that they would like to route users to their own website and collect job applications there. For those circumstances, we now offer you an “Applicant Routing” feature. It’s available when you create a new job or edit an existing job. You can now choose to route candidates to an external website by simply specifying any website address:

Please note that once you choose to direct candidates to an external website, we no longer collect job applications on your behalf, so you won’t be able to retrieve them from within the Facebook App.

As always, we welcome your feedback on this change. And if you’d like to participate in an ongoing usability test that we’re conducting, we’d really like to hear from you. Together, I hope we can continue to improve the recruitment experience on Facebook.

I’m pleased to announce that we recently completed a redesign of our Facebook Job Recruitment App. The goals of the redesign were:

• Improve the user experience for both our customers and job seekers;

• Make it easier for job seekers to find relevant and interesting jobs; and

• Add important productivity tools for our customers.

You will immediately notice that both the public facing Jobs tab and the Admin Panel where you manage your jobs have been redesigned.

Jobs Tab

Admin Panel

As you start using our redesigned app, I hope that you will find it faster and easier to use.  We know how busy our customers are, so one of the key design goals was to significantly reduce the time it takes to complete tasks. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing several blog posts that talk about some of these enhancements. As always, we welcome your feedback on these changes. Also, we’ve got an ongoing initiative to conduct usability tests with our customers. If you can help by participating in this, we’d really like to hear from you. Together, I hope we can continue to improve the recruitment experience on Facebook.