I have been using an awesome job site called Doostang to look for Associate positions at venture capital funds.
Doostang combines social networking with job listings. You can only see the jobs that are in your network. And anyone can upload a job that their friends, friends of friends, and so on can see.
Their motto is “Better Jobs. Better People.” and the quality of the jobs on Doostang is really off the charts. It is not even worth comparing them to LinkedIn. (Can somebody send me a Jobster invite so I can compare it to Doostang?)
I have been pushing the founders to think about how they can use the innovation that is happening right now in social software (blogs, del.icio.us et al), collaboration (Wikipedia et al), and open profiles (tribe.net).
Doostang is currently in Alpha so it is invite only. If you want an invite, send Mareza (one of the founders) an email at mareza@stanford.edu. Feel free to pass this on to your colleagues as well.
The challenge for the company is to stick to their motto of “Better Jobs. Better People.” I wonder how many good jobs and good people there are and if you can build a good business around them alone.
Stictly from a marketing perspective, Doostang is a horrible name. Hopefully their tech is better than their branding.
Mareza may well be Iranian, in which case “doost” means “friend.” Now, why there is an “ang” involved is beyond me – at least in the idiom used by my family, the plural of “doost” is “doost-a,” with emphasis on “ah” sound at the end.
Stictly from a marketing perspective, Doostang is a horrible name.
Nearly as bad as Yahoo! or Google.
Nivi, Thank you for the invite. I am checking the site out now and will post a profile, probably tomorrow. At first glance it seems to be a “nested” version of LinkedIn, meaning it has some of the feature, but not all, and nothing that Linked in doesn’t do (except the job postings are free). Am I wrong? I’ve only spent 30 mins or so on the site so far.
There sure are a ton of new jobs sites…My long term feeling on this is that sites should just RSS enable their job posting page and let the world manipulate the data. It gets rid of paid listings and the need for sites to scrape.
I do agree however that a trust network adds a lot of value. What does Monster.com give me besides raw data? LinkedIn and Doostang start to give both sides additional “meta-data” about the other side, via mutually known parties.
On the meaning of their name, Doostang says this on their site: “Doostang hails from two Farsi words, “doost” which means friend, and “tang” a word used to symbolize the trust between a close group of people.”
I like it.
Mike
Michael, the thing I like most about Doostang is the quality of the jobs. LinkedIn can’t touch it there even if it has more features. Interesting thoughts on RSS job feeds.
Oh, yeah, “tang.” Tight. I usually hear that used in reference to constriction of the throat or feelings of tightness in the chest, not friendship!
Ok…yeah, the jobs are better. But why??? We posted a profile at http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=90. Thanks again for inviting me and giving us a heads up on this. Mike
Have just asked for an invite as I had discovered doostang on the social networking metalist over at weblogsinc – I have an interest in social/business networking sites and am very interested in finding out more.
I found this from a chap that commented on my blog http://www.webdudes.co.uk/blog
thanks Regards Julian
Hello
Doostang is a great networking resource. Nothing on the web can match it; it’s unparalled.
However, it could be of a better quality if:
They upgraded the community’s servers. If you invited a lot of people in one go, the community’s server would crash (and you would get booted)! Don’t ask me how many a lot of people is. I suspect that it’s any number ranging from 4-12, because I got booted for inviting 4 people. Mareza doesn’t say how many people are too many, as well. BUT he will tell you PERSONALLY, not to invite too many people.
My Message to the Honourable Mareza and His Business partner is:
“Upgrade your server! It no-longer copes with the size of your community.
If you don’t do that, you are going to end up booting people off, for inviting more than 2 people; and you’ll end up having a lot of “UNHAPPY” people.
I’m sure you wouldn’t wan’t to do that. OR you don’t care who you piss off as long as they are not your advertisers??
We’ll your advertisers won’t have anyone to advertise to, if you irritate and boot-out their target market!!!
Goodluck Friend!”
I heard that there is a big problem with Doostang customer service, is that true. People that used it say that no one replies to the email questions.
I recently joined DooStang only to get booted off because I invited too many people at once. The server will not even recognize my e-mail address, which it sent e-mails too minutes before. If someone could please re-invite me to DooStang I would greatly appreciate it. My e-mail address is drew.cesario@gmail.com