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After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

dropjobs.com

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Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#31
post #23

http://www.dropjobs.com/frontpage should be at http://www.dropjobs.com . This is probably a technical limitation, but you're hurting your SEO something fierce. Title tag of front page should probably be "DropJobs | Keywords Go Here" rather than "DropJobs | Tagline" Search for the word "features". Features do not sell software. Benefits sell software. You mention benefits, but only briefly, and they're given short shr…

minor note: Title tag should be "Keywords Go Here - Dropjobs" for maximum SEO benefit, of course it could potentially be more usable to have "Dropjobs" be the first word in the page title. Typically in my experience the SEO boost was more valuable.

Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#33
FAQ, Testimonials, and Sign Up links at the bottom don't seem to anchor anywhere. Actually, it looks like signup anchors to the pricing section, which is kind of confusing. Similarly, I feel like those links a the bottom should actually bring you to different pages rather than anchoring. It's a little awkward clicking the pricing link with the pricing already in view and having nothing happen. When I click that link I feel like it should bring me more information about pricing then whats already displayed. As a more general rule, I think anchored links are only useful in excessively long pages to ease navigation, such as with a table of contents. I think this page is far too short to necessitate having these type of links.

Edit: Also, I might avoid using email address as the login. It seems that in a business case like this you'll have multiple people accessing the same account, and it might not make sense if a hiring manager quits to continue to have to use her email address to login after the fact.

Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#35

the name... drop a job? drop the application? also, it's too similar to dropbox. something like jobqueue sounds better to me. but, now, it's probably too late for this.

I second this. Reading the name for the first time, not knowing the concept, evoked thoughts of dropping one's job or similar.

I know how hard this is, but if still possible, I'd brainstorms for another name.

Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#36
I don't know much about hiring, but my impression is that your tagline(s) also don't tell me much. "Dropjobs lets you hire better, faster, and easier." - that is the generic claim every software company has been making since the beginning of time.

Also I don't care that you are hosted in the cloud. Whatever - just provide a stable service, how you manage that is not my concern.

"Accept Word Doc, PDF, JPG, PNG, HTML, or XML Format Resumes"

Can't I do that with eMail already?

Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#37
post #24

The idea of allowing HR to post job vacancies without having to involve IT for every update is good. However, this isn't a problem the IT department are likely to search for, and this isn't the type of thing TechCrunch is going to be buzzing about. I'm guessing your business model is predicated on a self service solution where people click on your Google ads and sign up. I don't think this will work well for you. I'd…

"this isn't the type of thing TechCrunch is going to be buzzing about."

You say this like it's a bad thing. He's got a good idea here, and his audience is a much larger superset of TC's audience, so I wouldn't hold the lack of appeal in that regard against it.

Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#38
A good idea in a good market, probably the most important things in a startup. You have a clear path to revenue, and you are addressing a common problem, which I can attest to as a hiring manager.

One suggestion to potentially extend your market: a multi tenant version. I have been pondering to accept third party job listings on a topical website I'm running, which would allow hiring managers within the industry to post their jobs. If you could make this an option within your offering, I'd jump on it. If you could also provide the billing etc, it would be awesome.

It's probably a considerable change to your site architecture, but this would be a nice way to get exposure (e.g. on high traffic blogs), and an additional source of revenue.

EDIT: I just checked how this is done on Techcrunch. They use personforce.com.

Additional thoughts:

- A little bit about the company would increase users trust. If you have a real address, put in a Google map image.

- Demo of the site and widget.

- Consider a name change (as pointed out in another comment)

- Congratulations, the fruits of your hard work look great!

Re: After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques?

#39
post #24

The idea of allowing HR to post job vacancies without having to involve IT for every update is good. However, this isn't a problem the IT department are likely to search for, and this isn't the type of thing TechCrunch is going to be buzzing about. I'm guessing your business model is predicated on a self service solution where people click on your Google ads and sign up. I don't think this will work well for you. I'd…

"this isn't the type of thing TechCrunch is going to be buzzing about." You say this like it's a bad thing. He's got a good idea here, and his audience is a much larger superset of TC's audience, so I wouldn't hold the lack of appeal in that regard against it.

I think that comment was directed more at the appropriate way of generating potential buyer visits to the site - and I agree there is unlikely to be a quick and cheap spike generated by TC.

I agree that this will probably have to be sold via cold calling, also it could be the type of service that would go over well at HR conference, or conferences where HR types are likely to be, including labor law, wage and hour issues, recruiting, etc..

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