[This started as part of the brainstorming for the 'The JobOffer.php is not "HTML 4.01 Transitional" valid' thread, but it's probably better off separate.]
From a programming perspective, it's a lot easier to match user skills
with job postings if both employees and employers have to fill in values defined by us,
and keep them up to date. But for the users this is a major pain. I'll
bet most of them have already filled in several similar forms, with
their quirks and annoyances, and ended up with information stored on a
server somewhere which is useless outside that website. So how do we
provide additional value and convenience to the users compared to any
other job site? Simply by using microformats for input and output. Consider these possibilities:
Once the users have filled in their data, we can
generate
a hResume CV for them (I've used it for my own CV). They could essentially use our site as a repository for their
skills, and get a nice, printable, up-to-date CV any time.
We could import users' hResume based CVs into the system.
Users' contact information could be available as
hCards,
which they could then use on their website to improve their SEO, or as
vCard, which can be imported into most modern address books (Even
Outlook supports this).
Job offers could be shown as hCalendar events, which can be exported to Google Calendar (with the
Operator Firefox extension), or made available as vCalendar, which can be used by e.g. Mozilla Sunbird (it can even subscribe to them, like a web feed).
All this information would fit invisibly into regular markup, being as readable as any other site.
I've seen no other job sites which support this.
With
this, GNU Herds would be the most SEO-friendly and flexible job site ever.
-- Victor Engmark Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur - What is said in Latin, sounds profound