Hi folks - I’ve been active on this group for a while and have seen many job postings. I have even applied to some of them. While the jobs (even the ones that are marked gratis) are very interesting, there are some issues with the channel and the experience overall.
Here are some observations I have:
the original poster is often unresponsive to those that respond to their post. Does the platform notify posters of replies?
Phantom jobs - Jobs that linger on the job board long after the poster has stopped taking applications and/or closed the post. This gives an incorrect picture to prospective applicants.
Can there be some moderation in this section? For example - if someone has contacted this group to post a job, they should be available for questions. Is there an admin to track this? Even if the poster cannot be contacted, they could track engagement and see whether the jobs section is effective at helping people find jobs.
Second, is there a way to hide or delete jobs that have been open past a certain point (1 month for example)?
Yeah, sounds like a 1 month expiration for all jobs would be good. If people are still looking, they need to update it, rather than us needing ti ask them if the role is filled and the offer can be closed.
Regarding responses, do you mean the posters don’t reply here in the thread of their job post on our forum, or to inquiries via email or other channels?
I might say, both. But I know that managing replies outside this forum might be out of scope for the moderators. I think getting more engagement just within this group would be a great start.
For example: I asked here whether this job was open and there was no response. Jobs - UX Designer
The job has since closed but the status has not been updated. To be a little forthcoming here, if a poster has chosen this group to circulate their jobs, then there needs to be a process for them to inform that the job is still open/closed and for mods to remove it. Otherwise, this will turn into an inactive jobs board.
The posters of jobs actually do not get notifications that discourse forum posts are automatically created when their job post is made. Some of them never know until they are closed and they are also not obliged to be present in the forum.
They are hopefully, obliged to reply to you via the method they stated on their job post page, be it by email, matrix chat room etc. but also we cannot force them to communicate with potential contributors.
We can consider removing job posts from un-responsive posters via a Code of Conduct violation though if they are rude.
I do review job posts at least once per year and i trained other maintainers/community folks to do this task to. I’m happy to train you if you’d like to help with volunteer maintainance.
I think what Jan is suggesting re. an optional end/close date that posters can add/select would be good or a way to signal that a job post is older and a bit stale. There are posts on our jobs board from years ago though that the posters are still asking for help with. I email each poster of jobs when i review the job postings.
it was also suggested we may no longer need the auto-create a forum post for jobs as it holds little value any more and posters can always create their own job forum topics
Maybe, alternatively (to disabling automatic thread creation), the forum post could be created on behalf of the poster (their email address, random username), so that they at least get updated via email of replies?