For Tech Job Seekers and Employers, Joel Spolsky's New Site Is A Great Idea

I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Joel Spolsky. He just "gets" how to run a technology company and treat his Fog Creek employees. Well, he has just set up a new Jobs site that essentially aims to take the annoying marketing and recruiting out of job hunting, while providing high-quality tech listings. Are you tired of vague job listings that ask if you want to work for a "well established, leading online company," but get no more information than that until you talk with a recruiter? Well, apparently, so is Joel (and me too, for that matter).

He's not aiming for it to supplant the gi-normous job boards like Monster or HotJobs. Rather, his goal is to keep it as a niche site where you can get the real job details for a given position without any hassle. Unique features include:

• For candidates, the site is entirely free, including not having to register for anything.
• Listings expire after 3 weeks. As he notes, most candidates don't apply for jobs that have been posted for longer than that.
• All job posts must disclose the company at which the position is located. No "Company Confidential" listings are allowed. Since there are no recruiters involved, you can do all the research you want for a position without being hassled.
• For a small $350 fee, an employer can post listings on the site. In comparison to the 15%-20% of base salary that recruiting fees that many recruiters charge employers for placing a candidate, this is chump change.
• He offers his standard 90-day money back guarantee. If you don't find anybody to fill the position, hire the wrong candidate, if they quit just after starting, etc., you get your $350 back unquestioned. (Charities and non-profits can get in touch with their customer support reps about reduced fees.)
• The job posting form contains checkboxes for answering each of the 12 questions of the Joel Test, which is his measure of the quality of a software team. This is a non-marketing way to really gauge the type of team you might be joining.

Since this is an experiment on his part, you'll note that there is no search functionality or saved profiles or anything beyond the basic listings. (This might expand if the site proves to be successful.) However, from Google to Six Apart to BEA to MySQL, there are a number of big-name company jobs currently listed, along with a lot of other smaller companies who I have seen are doing some great work.

I'm not sure how the site will hold up, if only because recruiters will always find a way to post seemingly legitimate job listings, and there doesn't seem to be a screening process for who is posting the job. That being said, I love the idea of side-stepping recruiters with no tech background who are seemingly the gatekeepers to a lot of great jobs.

Here's Joel's official announcement.