blog.jobsgopublic.com

We are aware that some of you have had issues with your accounts - ranging from not being able to log in to not being able to change passwords. We updated the software on Monday evening and some fixes for these issues were included, namely; if you had an account on the old system and were seeing errors on trying to log in to the new that should now be fixed, and we also modified the ‘Reset Password’ feature to work more smoothly.

If you are still having issues logging in (and I know some are) then please either email support@jobsgopublic.com with your details or describe them below in a comment and give your log-in email in the form – don’t worry your email remains private and only blog admins can see them.

Mondays are always the hardest, and when they coincide with the month of January they seem particularly harder. After a fabulous weekend (the sun was out in London), it was a struggle to get to work this morning in what can only be termed ‘the freezing fog of London’.

Anyway enough about the weather, we’ve got some great news. Last September you may have noticed a survey popping up when you were scrolling through our website. We were participating in the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey, which gives us a snapshot of who is using our website (demographics) and this is great in ensuring we get plenty of appropriate jobs on-site to suit the types of roles, qualifications and regions that you are job seeking in. In conjunction to this we had our monthly traffic figures audited and independently verified through ABC Electronic. This is industry standard (set by JICWEBS – Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards) and allows us to quote certified figures about who visits our website and network.

So what’s the big deal? For our clients and advertisers it’s an assurance of integrity, with the plethora of job sites popping up on the web, some making over-inflated claims (we know because our clients ring up questioning these sites) we want to remain as transparent with our users as we can. We can officially claim over 400,000 unique visitors! That’s huge for a niche jobs board, and officially the largest dedicated public and not for profit jobs board in the UK. We don’t list private sector jobs, and we don’t list recruitment consultancy jobs. You are dealing with the organisation, council, charity, housing association that you are applying for the vacancy with. How many job boards still retain that these days?

Anyway, as hard as January can be in dealing with the middle of winter, it’s also a booming time to apply for jobs as organisations review the last quarter before end of financial year, and many job-seekers are going through with their new years resolution to ‘get that new job’. So happy job hunting!

Firstly, our thanks to all of you that have visited and commented about the relaunch over the past month.

So…Why bother with the blog?

Simple…its good to talk. We were keen to provide this facility so that users of Jobsgopublic can voice their experiences with each other, and most importantly give us here at JGP the opportunity to get feedback – in real time – from our valued community of jobseekers.

Err… why did we change something that was working perfectly well anyway?

Since we launched in 1999 this is the fifth time we’ve upgraded the Jobsgopublic software. Yes it’s a challenge (delivering a project of this magnitude typically is), but if we are to continue improving our service to you and the hundreds of employers that use the site, we needed to embrace new technologies and software engineering methods that will keep us ahead of the game for years to come. We’ve spent 18 months re-developing the site, and this is just the start of a series of improvements that you’ll notice over the coming months.

The story thus far…

As you can see from users comments there have been a few recurring themes focussing on a handful of (often frustrating!) issues. The headlines:

• Server issues: these seem to be happening at particularly busy periods and result in a page saying ‘we’ve had a wiring error’.
  • This has been significantly improved, but we still get occasional occurrences. If you witness one – try again in a few minutes.

• No longer being able to search by date the job was posted (we used to offer this)
  • We’re on the case with this too, and hope to get this reinstated over the next couple of weeks or so

• No longer offering a multiple employer / regional search (we used to offer this too)
  • This is a bit more complex, but rest assured will be back soon
  • UPDATE: This has now been rectified. The region search (i.e. ‘London’) is back!!!

• Not receiving forgotten password reminders
  • This should now largely be resolved

• A lack of access to previously ’saved’ application forms
  • We tried to give users plenty of advance warning about this and sent a number of emails to registered users to this effect. Unfortunately, a few users overlooked these mails, or didn’t receive them for various reasons – we’re sorry if you were affected by this.

• Last but by no means least, design: there has also been quite a few comments about the new look and feel and how our old design was better – especially with some people witnessing an ‘overlapping text ‘ issue in some browsers…
  • You can’t please all the people all of the time I guess.. initial feedback pre-launch was positive, but we’ll continue to improve the asthetics and general usability of the site from hereonin.

What we’re doing about it…

We care about getting it right, so the team here at JGP were busy working away throughout the Christmas holiday and during weekends to make the above improvements to the site.Rest assured we’ll continue to work tirelessly until the snags have been resolved.Naturally we’ll keep you posted with developments as and when.

So that’s it for now. Once again, thanks for your ongoing feedback and support over the years and please keep the feedback coming (you can post a comment here) , with your help we can continue improving.

Wishing you a prosperous 2008.

Richard Tyrie

Co-Founder, Jobsgopublic