Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Saturday 24 December 2011

Thoughts on job vacancies pages part two

I have a new plan. I am going to try and persuade all organisations to add a page - /jobs - to their website and for it to be the official page on which their jobs are posted. For some organisations new jobs will appear infrequently (some orgs are small and have a low turnover of staff) in which case it might say for several months in the year "there are no vacancies at present".

Not all organisations have a page like this, which would look something like http://website.org.uk/jobs or http://www.website.co.uk/jobs, presumably because they think it's pointless having a non-regularly updated page that doesn't have much on it.

I disagree.

1. If all organisations have such a page in existence (and we all agree to accept that some will be updated at slower rates than others) then it makes it an order of magnitude easier to find where that org keeps its jobs. Imagine if this was an industry standard. I've written about this before, sort of, in part one.

Also it would be very helpful if you could set your website search engine to point job, jobs, vacancy, vacancies, "work with us", "work for us", opportunities, recruitment, employment and any other synonyms you can think of to point to this /jobs page.

2. This adds an extra page to your website. By all means link it back to other pages in your site and do something clever with it for search engine optimisation.

3. You can add content about people you have working for you and what they do, thereby demonstrating that your organisation is a great place to work in.

4. Call me crazy but why not have some information about your jobs such as a few job descriptions, typical salaries and organisational structure, as well as copies of your application form and guidance on filling these in. I appreciate that job descriptions are very variable (as is organisational structure) but surely we can all agree that we won't hold it against you if you put this information there. Feel free to put a disclaimer. 

5. If it's an organisation that is likely to employ science communicators then I'll list it on my great big list (two and a half years old and getting bigger) of 'places where science communicators might work'.

So, please add a page to your site and make it easier for people to bookmark / link to / look at when they want to come and work for you.

Thank you :)

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