Job posting expiration

andre

Hi,

I was wondering what a sensible policy would be regarding Job postings. Usually, job postings have a limited time they stay valid. Alexandra recently added a comment to http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/3527/ to tell about the closing of one. However, I find that not a good way to deal with this, as it just puts this posting at the top of the list again. Only on opening it, you notice that it has in fact expired.

Perhaps, we should do two things:

Add to the rules a requirement to indicate when the posting expires
Add an [Expired] tag in the title to mark the expired postings

It would be nicer if such a thing could work automatically, but I don't know if the forum software would support such options. Alternatively, we could simply deleted expired postings completely. Or do we think there is value in keeping them around?

goetz

I would leave them around and do nothing. It shows the users, that some jobs are actually announced here :-)

And if someone reads a job offer in a forum he/she should look at the post date anyways. It's just like job offers in other forums (think of Xing in Germany).

andre

Problem is: the (original) post date is not visible in the overview of postings. You only get the date of the most recent posting, which is not that useful in this case, IMHO. Of course you can still see the date on closer inspection of the actual posting, but it would, IMO, be nice to have some overview.

dangelog

I agree with OP. An unposting date or something (if applicable) must be present.

goetz

Good point. What about adding the date of the original post in the list of threads? I personally won't miss the number of views and would replace this.

The other forums would benefit from this too, it's easier to spot if someone is necroposting.

andre

ACK. That might help. Though I still think adding an [EXPIRED] tag, just like we do for [SOLVED] problems or [CLOSED] topics would help as well.

goetz

I agree on that, but it would be up to the OP to change this.

Or we have the forum mods looking into the forum from time to time and add the expired flag manually.

mgran

An expired tag is clean and clear, +1 for that idea.

Alexandra will be back on Tuesday, I'll ask her to throw in her 2 cent here when able.

andre

Ideally, the OP should do that. However, I don't give that much chance of working out. A lot of them don't seem to respond to replies properly as-is. I think HRM people think of forums like this as fire-and-forget opportunities. Simply dump the add, and hope people respond by email or other means.

For mods being able to add a close tag, one would however need to have a closing date available somewhere. Hence the first point in my original posting: we should perhaps require one.

Of course, ideally, the form for job postings would be different from that for normal ones and simply include an entry box in which to put an expiry date. That way, the posters are more likely to actually enter something useful there, and the actual modification of the title or other ways of modifying the appearance could then even be automated. However, that is something for the longer term, I think.

troubalex

I think it makes sense to have job postings expire or at least somehow mark them as no longer relevant. A more prominent date might solve the issue already to some extent. But I agree that a mandatory expiration date would be ideal.

We'll discuss it some more within the team. Thanks for the suggestion! :)