Recent job listings

~ 27 November 2006 ~

Post a job or find one at Authentic Jobs. Some of the recent listings:

Full-time

(Anywhere) User Experience Designer at Wondermill Webworks
(Toronto, Canada) Associate Visual Designer at Yahoo! Canada
(San Francisco, CA) Senior Front End Web Developer at LoudDog
(Santa Monica, CA) UI Developer at JibJab Media Inc.
(Bloomfield Hills, MI) Interface Engineer at Organic
(Minneapolis, MN) Senior Specialist Web Design at Target Corporation
(Portland, OR) Senior Web Designer at Jive Software

Freelance

LAMP Developer at Pound Interactive
Freelance Flash Designer at Curio Partners

Having offered job listings on my site for well over a year, and for roughly two months on Authentic Jobs, I’ve learned a few things along the way:

I’m a bit surprised freelance listings don’t outnumber the full-time ones. Listers have no problem finding several qualified people within a matter of days, which makes $75 a pretty good investment for just about any project. Just last week I received this email from Michael Christopherson of Wishpipe Studios: “I found my ZenCart guy! I didn’t expect much for something as specialized as ZenCart, but I received several responses within the first few days. Thanks!”
In today’s job market, I question the usefulness of such vague titles as “Web Designer” and “Web Developer”. While that may be the official nomenclature supplied by the HR department, it doesn’t seem to facilitate job seeking, especially on targeted job boards. Something such as “XHTML/CSS Senior Coder” or “PHP Specialist” seem to speak more directly to applicants. And at least in the case of Authentic Jobs, position title seems to play a part in the success of a listing, as all new listings are displayed on a half-dozen partner sites using position title and company name.
So far two companies have used the money-back guarantee, and both were full-time positions in San Francisco. I had a good chat with one of the companies, who also listed on another prominent niche job board with little success. My guess is San Francisco may be its own job market beast, and therefore Craigslist, word of mouth, etc. may better serve this specialized market.
Occasionally I’ll see a freelance listing that requests a resume as part of the application process. That strikes me as a bit odd, as most freelancers are typically chosen based on such criteria as portfolio, standing in the web community, etc.
I can personally vouch for the superbness of Jive Software’s Senior Web Designer position (Portland, OR), having just wrapped up some contract work with them. Great company, challenging projects.

Lastly, if you haven’t subscribed to the RSS feeds, here they are for your feedreading convenience: All listings, Full-time only, Freelance only.

6 Comments

Veer: Visual Elements for Creatives.
Stock photography, type, and killer tees. Genuinely recommended by Authentic Boredom.

1 gb ~ 27 November 2006

re: the résumé thing, it’s kind of weird. the I’d also say the résumé is rather less important than the actual work (and often times it is misleading about the actual skill of the designer), but it seems to be a deeply ingrained habit among people/companies to just expect a résumé.

What gets me more, though, is the companies who want your résumé in “Word format.” Trying to make something in Word look like something you designed in Illustrator is not a fun task…

2 J. Jeffryes ~ 28 November 2006

It does strike me as odd that there are so few freelance listings. Is it that the freelance listing market is already well served by services like rentacoder and elance, or is it that in the current market it’s so hard to find good people that companies would rather just hire anyone they find permanently? Or maybe the market is so unstable, that there’s really no difference between freelance and perm, either way the job is probably over in 6 months…

3 Cameron Moll ~ 28 November 2006

Part of it’s the fact that freelance listings expire after 15 days (vs 30 days for full-time listings).

4 Bliss ~ 30 November 2006

Authentic Jobs site is one of the reason i have confidence going freelance in next 3 months. A personal question..

obviously it depends upon skills and abilities, but what an average freelance designer with experience of 3 years should charge per month? an advise would be highly appreciated.

5 reese ~ 08 December 2006

I found the resume issue strange, too, and it discouraged me from applying for those jobs.

Also, while I know a company may have hundreds of apps to go through, a very quick “we received your application, thank you” or “we found someone else for the position, thank you” would be appreciated. I know you don’t control this Cameron—I’m just musing from a business/customer service perspective. Is it really NECESSARY? No. But sometimes business should be driven by
more than necessity.

6 kraig55 ~ 05 March 2007

Not bad site. I’ve found there a freelancer for my free fonts project.