To: JTAL community -
To improve our work hiring and recruitment in the progressive movement, we are implementing changes affecting all who post jobs to JTAL beginning this coming week. We will now require employers first to post jobs to the GAIN POWER career center. We want to be fully transparent about this decision to our full community of users, as we heard from quite a few people this past week. This decision reflects our plans to scale our work for greater impact. The following touches on a few of the many reasons why consolidating career portals will help employers and job seekers in the progressive movement. It is long, but we hope those invested in this community read it in full. The shift will take a week or so to implement fully, but we are confident it will make our work better for employers, jobseekers, and users alike.
We are pushing jobs to our career center first to:
- Synchronize: For almost a year as GAIN Power and many more years as Democratic GAIN, we have hosted a more comprehensive career center. This has confused a lot of people who don't always know there is more than one. Until this change, we did not post jobs from one to the other. Now we will post jobs from the career center to Jobs That Are Left after they are on the job board, so all jobs are on both.
- Integrate our work: GAIN POWER is building out an app for Google and Apple devices that will feature the main career center, increasing job posts' potential reach. Google groups do not allow for embedding in third-party web pages.
- Standardize: Jobs posted to JTAL have no standard format, while jobs posted to the career center are in a form that makes reviewing, searching, querying much more organized. Google also implemented recent changes that make seeing some posts or emails problematic. Recently we've been bombarded with users writing to us about problems with Google Groups. We have no control over how Google shows posts, but we've been spending endless hours responding to questions about how to view or reply to them.
- Diversify: We share a deep concern that progressive campaigns, nonprofits, and consulting firms rarely reflect the diversity of our movement. While anyone interested can join this group, the group does little to expand its reach. Our Career Center has a more expansive reach. We all have a lot more work to do to open up our space and make it more inclusive. We strongly encourage everyone to post their jobs so that opportunities are made available beyond personal networks. We're also working to lift BIPOC consultants and freelancers by highlighting them in our directories, events, and more.
- Secure data: Google controls Google groups. We can not keep or protect the data entered, and we have no way of keeping a copy of the posts or contact information. This has been a problem on multiple occasions when Google - without warning nor explanation, has taken down our Jobs That Are Left group. One time this happened for four months. We had to deal with angry, freaked-out users and employers for weeks and could not get the information back until Google turned it back on.
- Subsidize & support. Our career center monetizes how we pay Jobs That Are Left staff and our other free programs. We are a business that provides a service - not a PAC funded by wealthy or corporate donors like some organizations who offer "free" job boards. We have a different model. We provide a service for employers we believe they should pay for, and they likely already do on other job listing websites. Our fees are lower than other similar sites. We hope some might pay more to help subside those who can not afford it.
- Exemption. We are committed to providing our services to all who want to use them regardless of their ability to pay. To that end, a free option is available for small campaigns, organizations, and firms based on an honor system. We reserve the right to change this if not used appropriately.
- Sustain: We provide a variety of services. Our goal is for those who use our services to pay while giving many free and low-cost services to all users - especially those looking for work or underemployed. Longevity is a mission. We've been doing this work for a long time because we're passionate about supporting talent and progressive politics. We've tried other models that have not been successful or sustainable. We've watched other nonprofit launches and ultimately fold because founders and funders lost interest and moved on. Also, we don't want to be beholden to fickle wealthy or corporate donors. The work we do (including administering JTAL) requires staff, and we believe in paying people for the work they perform.
- Syndicate: Our career center is distributed widely beyond our site. All jobs are now on our Facebook page and will feature in our upcoming app. The job board is part of a network of other job boards, is searchable and findable on Google, and offers upgrades which even can further distribute listings to a comprehensive and diverse set of different job boards. These include specialty Diversity job boards. Other than some users forwarding emails, - JTAL google group has no reach beyond the group.
- Utilize Better Technology. Search, better target: Jobs in the career center are searchable based on location, position, skill, and more. Job seekers can register to receive alerts about specific job types or locations.
- Segmenting communications: Google groups do not allow segmented communication. We can either email our whole list (which is over 40,000) or no one. You can not separate jobseekers from employers or search users but any criteria other than a name. We have unique lists based on user preferences in our career center.
- Expand Services: GAIN POWER is much more than a job board. We offer services and resources to market and network all who work in Democratic and Progressive organizations, including much more than just staff and organizers. We're building a platform to promote people and organizations that make up our progressive movement. Political consulting firms and freelancers, technology, and other products can list themselves to market their products and services. Organizations and campaigns can have pages to showcase their mission, issues, programs, updates, and more. There is much more to our vision and plans that focus on building a real community platform for progressive politics.
- Build Community: Our career center is integrated into our site and will be part of our community app. We want this community of users to be able to communicate directly with one another. We want to know more about who you are, how you make an impact, and how to do the organizations you work with support our democracy and grow progressive power. We have a full personal profile, organization pages, groups, events, and more to lift, network, and market all our users.
- Collaborate, not compete: We have always believed in the abundance over scarcity mentality, so we celebrate others who do similar work. We think more, not fewer, organizations to help with talent, so we try to live up to other job seekers' resources. Got a resource you want to add to this post? Let us know. Better yet - add your organization or resource to our political pages. We still believe, like Hillary Clinton, that we are STRONGER TOGETHER. We created GAIN POWER to market everyone who does this work. We're here to promote the people, campaigns, programs, products, services, events, and much more than just jobs.
Related to all this - we are in no way trying to kill/diminish nor limit access for JTAL users. Quite the opposite, we are working to improve and expand its usefulness while using other tools better for the work. Google groups are a terrible way to do this. Google groups are convenient and easy for some things but awful for others. While free to host, they are not open to moderate or manage. We have a full-time paid staff person, Kara Putnam, who manages this listserv. We review all posts and reply to all emails. We do appreciate the ease of communicating with all of you and for all of you. We will continue to share all jobs posted to the career center, events, and other appropriate announcements, and we hope all benefit from the best of both worlds as we synchronize these systems.
Our first announcement received some negative feedback because we were honest about charging a fee to post. We didn't want to lead with that here, but we don't want to hide it either. Most organizations who post can afford to pay and should for our services. This work costs us a lot to provide. We've offered a free job post to all who have not used our career center to help incentivize them to do so. We also offer a free option based on an honor system for those who can not afford to pay (small campaigns/orgs/firms). We appreciate all the concerns and share them. The last thing we want is to be a barrier to entry for any seeking talent campaign. Anyone who wants to post to our career center but can not afford to pay will always have a free option. JTAL has competed with rather than complimented our career center. This change will make both more powerful and increase reach, which is our ultimate goal.
Finally, we're sorry we did not manage last week's announcement well and fully explain these plans simultaneously. We did not anticipate concerns from the organizers who form this critical community's heart and worry that this change may somehow impact them. We're working to provide services that provide value to all, not just in finding jobs. We care about all of you and hope you know we listened to your feedback and that this message reflects that.
We're creating space to have an open conversation with anyone who has questions or concerns about these changes or wants to learn more about what we are doing. This coming week we will have an open "zoom" office each day from 11-12. You can register for a session here. And will continue to offer more regular open office hours. We have a user feedback/contact form. We are also recruiting users interested in being a team of advisors to this work. Sign up here if this interests you. This has been a tough year for us all, but we're excited about these plans and hope you are too. We aim to diversity, demystify, and democratize the work of democracy building while lifting and celebrating the essential players who lead in our spaces. Thank you for being part of this community and journey with us.
Amy & the GAIN POWER/Jobs That Are Left Team
Jobsthatareleft is a listserv owned by GAINPOWER.org and manged by our team. Contact us at JTAL@gainpower.org or Amy Pritchard at amy@gainpower.org if you have any questions.
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