EmployTown Launches

[sbalster]

EmployTown capitalizes on the flip-flop in supply and demand for talent — particularly in the tech industry. Check us out here www.employtown.com. We created a revers job application that focuses on people and not the open slots at companies. Please let us know any feedback that you may have.

[shpen]

First thing I notice: the text. It looks terrible in Chrome, at least for me. http://i.snag.gy/bQQwc.jpg

[sbalster]

Thanks for pointing that out. We will need to make it so it appears better in Chrome.

[anigbrowl]

True that. Advent Pro is pretty, Exo is...strange.

[jcr]

The stuff that could be better:

If I'm an employer, why would I want to eliminate job descriptions?

If I'm a job seeker, why would I want a "reverse job application"

What is a "reverse job application"?

The "People are talking" phrase seems trite and insincere.

The exaggerated size of the quotation marks looks wrong. Since the text between the quote marks is smaller, the trailing quote mark is vertically aligned such that it looks like a pair of commas.

Other than the "Login, Signup, and email" links, there's no further information about your company or what you actually do?

Under a normal/modern browser, everything is black, white, and shades of grey save for the "SignUp" link. The result is drab, like a cloudy day.

The good stuff:

Without logging in, your site seems to hold up well under both plain text (terminal) browsers like lynx, and graphical browsers with modified/forced CSS (used by people vision disabilities). It would hold up well for the blind using audio screen readers.

Your HTML source is unusually clean. Nicely Done.

EDIT: Fonts in Firefox 9 on UNIX (OpenBSD) look fine. Fonts in Chrome on UNIX (OpenBSD) also look find, but I use custom fonts in chrome to make things legible.

[sbalster]

Thank you for the feedback. Building something is challenging and we are always working to improve. I think you brought up some good questions that we will need to address. Do you think a product video would be more beneficial than using text etc?

[anigbrowl]

I like the concept, but think you need to distill the benefits down more clearly, rather than just the shortcomings of the status quo. I don't think you need a video - they're time-consuming, rarely informative, and often annoying; things like music either clash with people's aesthetic sensibilities or are so bland as to dilute your message.

I would like a little more color. And show me some examples., so I know it's more than another 'upload your resume!' site.

[jcr]

It's important to you to realize that I'm not your user/customer. I no longer higher people, and no longer need to be hired. As such, I'm the wrong person to ask on value of your offering. I've never used a job site, so I lack the experience needed to point out more good things.

As for explaining the value to your users, both text and video are great ideas; different people find/consume/relate to information differently, so having both formats is a good idea. Some people won't bother with video, and other people won't bother with reading text.

The following text from your site could be improved:

> Save time and money and eliminate posting jobs on boards and sorting through poorly matched resumes.

I'd write it as: "Save time and money by eliminating posting to job boards and sorting through poorly matched resumes."

Using "and" three times in one sentence can be vexing.