John Jonas (podcast host) describes recent product improvements to Onlinejobs.ph in episode 153. Key changes discussed: stronger worker verification (government ID upload, selfie with ID, address verification, phone verification), several design/usability tweaks, ongoing deep work to replace the search algorithm, ability for employers to upload a business logo, availability of annual subscriptions, and a change to job-posting rules (accounts previously allowed 3 or 10 concurrent posts depending on account type; policy changed so most employers can post three job posts per month with a once-weekly renewal to bump a post). The host also recounts recent travel (mid-May to mid-June Europe trip, additional short trips) and that the team implemented many changes while he was away.
Questions this episode answers
Government ID upload; selfie with government ID; address verification; phone number verification.
Previously accounts could have 3 or 10 concurrent job posts depending on account type; policy changed so employers can post three job posts per month with a once-weekly option to renew (bump) a post.
Ability to upload a business logo for job posts and availability of annual subscriptions (cheaper than monthly).
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 153, improvements on Onlinejobs ph for you. So in my last episode, I talked about going to Europe for a month. Let me add on to that. So we went to Europe for a month. I left mid May and came back mid June. I was home almost a week for six days before I left for five days for a youth conference, a big church youth event that we were helping out run. And that was five days. And I came home for one day and then I went to Lake Powell. I spent nine days at Lake Powell and I just got home this earlier this week and I'm recording this episode now. I just basically spent almost two months not working. And man, it was amazing. And you know what? It's time. It's time for me to work again. Like, it's time for me to get back. It's time for me to catch up. I miss it. I miss the productivity. I miss getting things done. I miss accomplishing a project at onlinejobs Ph. I miss publishing a newsletter and hearing back from people because for the last two weeks I haven't heard back from anyone because I haven't even had Internet. At least in Europe, I had Internet on my phone and I could get communication. For the last two weeks, I've had zero. I've had nothing. So here's some of the things that I'm excited about that we've recently accomplished at onlinejobs ph, which we accomplished them while I've been gone, which is in and of itself is a thing. So number one, we beefed up our verification system to improve the quality of Filipino job seekers. So I don't want to get completely into this, but I'll just tell you that people often ask me, do you vet the people in onlinejobs? Ph, no, we don't vet them. We have nearly 2 million profiles. We have vetted none of them. But we do do a bunch of things to try and improve the employer experience. So one of the things that a while ago we did, we started requiring people to verify their identity. We recently changed that and improved it. And so a couple of things that we're doing is requiring workers to upload a government id, to require workers to upload a selfie with their government id, requiring workers to verify their address, and require workers to verify their phone number. Now, all of this, it doesn't mean that a scammer can't get in and can't get into the system, but it makes it really difficult. And we are very fast to ban people. We ban IDs, we ban. We do a good job of providing, preventing scammers in onlinejobs ph and this is one of the things that I'm really proud of, that we've recently beefed this up and made it much better. We also made a bunch of design changes recently to improve usability of onlinejobs pH. And then the last thing is something that we're still working on, which is search. Our search at onlinejobs Ph sucks and it is so frustrating to me. And yet in order to improve the search the way that we wanted to, we had to go back to like the base base level of interacting with the server hardware on top, which there's like layers and layers and layers of programming code on top of that that we had to go all the way back down to the base and make changes, which is trickling all the way up. And we've gone through a bunch of that. And we're really close to implementing a new search algorithm which is really, really cool because it makes finding the right people easier. So those are two of the big things that we changed. And then one thing that we're still working on, it hasn't been changed yet, but I'm super excited about it and that project is rolling on without me being there. Then there's a couple of other smaller improvements that we've made that maybe you don't know about. We allow you to upload your business logo so that and it'll appear on the alongside your job post, which makes your job post appear more professional, like it'll be more attractive, it'll attract more attention. So that's an option for you. Now we are also offering annual subscriptions. We get a lot of people that they know they're going to be hiring multiple people over time. And an annual subscription makes a lot more sense because it's a lot cheaper than a monthly. And so that's an option now, an annual subscription. And then we recently made changes to job posts. How many job posts you can post a month? Here's what we found. So we allow people to have three or 10, depending on your account type concurrent job posts at a time. And so that means if you're allowed three, you can post three and then you can deactivate and post three more. What we found was most employers are super reasonable about this. They make three job posts and they're done. But a very few, very few employers were abusing it they would make three and then immediately deactivate them. Or every single day they would deactivate the three and repost the exact same three and then deactivate the three and repost the exact same three. Because it made their job post stay at the top of the job post search results all the time. These few employers were getting thousands of applications and we realized that sucks for 97% of employers using onlinejobs ph. So we recently changed it so that you can post three job posts a month and that's it. You can't put your job post back at the top except for once a week we allow you to renew your job post. It'll go back to the top. So you get more applications. But everybody should get similar number of applications now, which is really good for people who have come on and seen, man, I didn't really get many job applications. I would like to get more, but I don't know how to do that. Job posts will be more easily visible, more equitably visible across the spectrum. And we're pretty excited about this because we think almost everybody will have a better experience except for those few who are abusing the system. They'll have a worse experience. But you know what? I don't really care about that. So we're constantly making changes. Are there changes that you would like to see? Changes that we aren't doing? You know, I'd love to hear about it. Johnlinejobs phone.