Alex Papadimoulis, the man behind the ever entertaining (and depressing) TheDailyWTF announces a new business venture to help connect employers fielding good jobs with good developers interested in a career change. At least that’s the hope.
The Hidden Network is the name of the venture and the plan is to pay bloggers $5.00 per thousand ad views (cha-ching!) for hosting pre-screened job postings in small ad blocks that look very similar to the standard Google AdSense ad. In the interest of full disclosure, I will be taking part as a blogger hosting these job postings.
I’ve written before about how hiring is challenging and that blogs are a great means to connecting with and hiring good developers. In fact, that’s how I recruited Jon Galloway to join my company, brought in Steve Harman (a Subtext Developer) as a contractor, and almost landed another well known blogger, until his own company grabbed his leg and dragged him kicking and screaming back into the fold giving him anything he wanted (I kid).
My hope is that somehow, my blog helps connect a good employer with a good developer. It’s worked for my company, it may work for yours. Connecting good developers with good jobs is a win win experience for all. My fear is that the ads will turn into a bunch of phising expeditions by headhunders looking to collect resumes. It will be imperative that Hidden Network work hard at trying to filter out all but the high quality job postings.
As Alex states in the comments of that post, blogs are the new Trade Publications, so paying $5.00 per CPM is quite sustainable and viable. It will be interesting to see if his grand experiment works out.