A couple of days ago, I wrote about Telonu (see my review here: http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/telonu/reviews/amyz). Essentially, Telonu has little going for it and since there was not much there, I wanted to see if their competitors might be fairing better or approaching this concept more intelligently. <br /> <br />I chose first to look at JobVent which has a similar mission to Telonu as evidenced by their tagline - \"Inside Information about the Jobs and Employers We Love and Hat... More >>

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Telonu (see my review here: http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/telonu/reviews/amyz). Essentially, Telonu has little going for it and since there was not much there, I wanted to see if their competitors might be fairing better or approaching this concept more intelligently. <br /> <br />I chose first to look at JobVent which has a similar mission to Telonu as evidenced by their tagline - \"Inside Information about the Jobs and Employers We Love and Hate\". BTW, next up is a review of Glassdoor - www.glassdoor.com. <br /> <br />First thing I did was go to JobVent and explore it a bit to see if it is better/worse than Telonu. Here are a few reasons why JobVent is better than Telonu. <br /> <br />JobVent Beats Telonu - Reason #1 - Site Layout <br /> <br />JobVent\'s site layout is markedly better than Telonu. For a site that aims to be about jobs, employment, etc, the site actually looks professional. This is no amazing accomplishment but at least they\'re layout is consistent with what they\'re trying to do and the image and brand I believe they are trying to project. <br /> <br />JobVent Beats Telonu - Reason #2 - Focused on Employer Ratings Only <br /> <br />JobVent, unlike Telonu, doesn\'t have aspirations of becoming JuicyCampus for adults and so doesn\'t promote ranting and raving about specific people. This is more in line with a professional site seeking professional content and where serious job seekers might go. <br /> <br />JobVent Beats Telonu - Reason #3 - Sub-ratings Offer Greater Insight <br /> <br />JobVent and Telonu ask for a breakdown of certain parameters they feel would be important to someone evaluating a job. Telonu\'s sub-rating dimensions are Pay & Benefits, Work/Life Balance, Culture/Environment and Career Growth. JobVent\'s sub-dimensions are Pay, Respect, Benefits, Job Security, Work Environment, Work/Life Balance, Career Growth/Potential, Location and Co-worker Competence. While JobVent may have too many dimensions, I think having more dimensions is better than less as it helps understand the company in more detail and inform you on dimensions that you may feel are very important. Telonu\'s high-level ratings are simply that - too high level to really be valuable. <br /> <br />JobVent Beats Telonu - Reason #4 - Content is Better <br /> <br />I read several reviews on JobVent and although it is possible, I accidentally picked good ones, I did find the reviews to be longer and more thoughtful than what I saw on Telonu. <br /> <br />While JobVent is better than Telonu on the above counts, it does suffer from its own deficiencies. Some of these deficiencies are JobVent-specific and some are business model related. <br /> <br />JobVent Problem #1 - Job Title and Salary Info Not Evident <br /> <br />As Collette mentioned in her review on JobVent, you don\'t know what title the person commenting is and also there is no salary information. When looking for a job, I want to hear from people in jobs that I\'d want to have, and I\'d also want to know if the money was in a range that I felt was appropriate. Reading about jobs and salaries not relevant to me is not useful. <br /> <br />JobVent Problem #2 - Lower-end jobs focus <br /> <br />Many of the reviews I read were from people working in call centers or as sales reps in retail outlets. This is a bit of an assumption since job title information wasn\'t available, but it seemed to be the case. While I don\'t think having these types of hourly jobs on the site is a bad thing, having your higher-level jobs would also be good so that the site is a destination for job-seekers of all types. Plus, I don\'t know how valuable the call-center worker demographic would be to an advertiser (I do not mean that in a derogatory way but am just pointing out an economic concern) <br /> <br />JobVent Problem #3 - Branding <br /> <br />The name JobVent inherently implies or invites venting. This is evident on the site as the negative ratings for companies far outweight positives. This as I mentioned in my Telonu review is an inherent bias of these online services. There is an inherent self-selection bias with irritated people gravitating towards these sites. <br /> <br />Looking beyond JobVent\'s specific issues, there are, of course, the business model concerns that I previously voiced in the Telonu review. Unfortunately, JobVent doesn\'t seem to address them either. (note: I\'m copying much of the same content from my Telonu review here so if you\'ve read that, 90% of this is duplicative): <br /> <br />Model Problem #1 <br /> <br />Anonymity reduces legitimacy of reviews - When you give people an open forum to post anonymously, you tend to attract the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Making things worse is the likelihood that these services will attract many more negative reviews than positive ones as I\'ve already said is occurring for JobVent. There\'s an adage that says \"Make one customer happy and they\'ll tell 1 person. Make one customer unhappy and they\'ll tell twenty people.\" The same thing applies to employees. If you\'re happy in your job, your not looking for places to write about how happy you are. Ultimately, the site will attract more negative than positive reviews, and the reality is that a site with numerous negative reviews is not very interesting to those looking for insights about an employer. <br /> <br />Model Problem #2 <br /> <br />There is no \'stickiness\' at such sites - When you are unhappy in your job or looking for a job, you may come to the site to read or write reviews, but once you are out of that predicament, why would you come back? What kind of relationships can these sites really build with users? It seems like any relationship would be pretty thin as there is nothing that would bring the same users back. <br /> <br />Model Problem #3 <br /> <br />Not another advertising revenue model - It\'s pretty unclear how these types of sites will make money. If the goal is lots of eyeballs clicking on ads, that is a risky way to go as many others have proven. Good luck with that. Perhaps they hope to turn into job board/job search sites but I\'m not sure what they offer is differentiated from the other players out there already in a crowded job market. <br /> <br />Model Problem #4 <br /> <br />Right now, employers have the leverage. The market is terrible and most people are happy to keep their job. Even people looking for jobs will likely ignore negative feedback if it\'s the difference between paycheck and no paycheck. Yes, it\'s the old \"beggars can\'t be choosers\" mantra. << Less