Some interesting websites

There's a lot of action happening in the recruiting and work related sites section. Here's my take on some of the ones that have come to my attention:

• Talentty: I got to know of them when they added my blog to their blogroll. No request for coverage via a mail or something like that. Smart. However the blog does not have any updates after April 5th. Not so good. The main website itself has tried to segregate according to industry, and specialising in the Tech and ITES domains. There are also tabs for "Hot Jobs", "Walk-ins", "Onsite Jobs", "Startup" , "Freshers" and "Freelancers". The software section has the most jobs, however overall the number of jobs at Talentty is low. While they have added bells and whistles like RSS feeds category-wise, unless they are able to ramp up the variety and number of jobs I don't see Talentty making much of an impact on the jobsite scene.

• Orglex - This site showcases itself as a place for Industry and Organizational hubs. Putting a different spin on business networking when you join a hub. A hub is basically aggregated content from across the web on News, People, Blogs and Jobs that fall under that hub. Orglex seems to be positioning itself as a place for recruiters to find and get talent. While the attempt at aggregating all this content from across the web on one site can help it get membership, I think the lack of original content and exclusive jobs can affect the growth. The net is going local, and there are no geographical based hubs that one can join. So if I join management consulting and if there was a India hub too that I join then the technology should be able to filter that anyway, since news can be filtered by Google News. Interesting proposition, but work needs to be done on it.

• Workology - Has just come out of its invitation-only testing phase and apparently has 1000 members. It's primarily UK based and one sets up an account and tags oneself. The system then throws up work and projects for people who are interesting in contracting and consulting opportunities. In fact the site is geared for the new way of working - portfolio careers - and therefore shouldn't be your stop for a career related job. They have a blog too at http://www.workology.com/blog/

• Zyoin - It bills itself as the Next generation Career Portal, and it seems to be a referral jobsite too, a la Reffster. They also have PayScale's gadget to calculate salary to help jobseekers find the salary suitable for them I presume. Their blog http://zyoin.wordpress.com/ talks about online learning and assessment to be also in the pipeline. I still don't think that India is ready for referral jobsites. Somewhere there has to be an integration from these sites into organizational Applicant tracking systems and they should be geared to organization's internal referral programs. The other mistake these jobsites seem to be making is that they think that building a website is enough. They have to invest in a sales team and sell the concept to corporates since the bigger jobsites are well entrenched and leverage their existing relationships. And unless there is a proof of concept of online assessment to go along with it, corporates will not choose to try a new innovation.

The other thing I don't see is a concerted effort to leverage social networks that Indians seem to be joining in droves, like Orkut and Facebook and hi5. Building a site and trying to get an audience is a tough proposition for new sites.