[uf-new] hListing vs hJob

[Chuck Allen]

Darren Bounds wrote:
> I represent Vurv and we definitely see value in defining a job
> requisition standard which may or may not leverage existing
> Microformats but could not be contained by hListing and hCard alone.
> 
Darren,

What you say is true, but I wonder if the reason it is true is that the requisition use case isn't necessarily equivalent to the hJob or hListing 
microformat use case. The latter is all about getting some semantics/structure in a browser so content can be indexed/mashed-up, etc. I think the 
requisition use case is a bit different.

In connection with the on-going HR-XML 3.0 re-architecture, our recruiting work group did a bit of survey work and analysis of the "PositionOpening" 
XML instances that came in under our certification program. We found a tremendous variation in the fields used by implementers. This variation is by 
industry, occupation, level of job, custom in the particular country or region, etc. My point in mentioning this is that our recent research tends to 
mirror some of the wide variation documented in the job-listing wiki pages:
http://microformats.org/wiki/job-listing-brainstorming
http://microformats.org/wiki/job-listing-examples

This recent review leads me to believe that the simpler hListing is likely a better path than the more richly descriptive hJob. If the Microformats 
community were to build out everything under the job-listing brainstorming page (something approaching what might be required in a requisition), you 
might be adding complexity and opportunities for variation without commensurate benefit. I think you'd have something closer to a "document format" 
than a "microformat".

The HR-XML recruiting work group kicked off its latest round of work just recently. This is still on-going, but the workgroup's current direction also 
may be informative. They are looking at splitting the existing PositionOpening spec into two different documents. One would be greatly simplified and 
primarily intended to communicate a formatted representation of a position (even a Microformatted formatted representation) to an advertising venue or 
recruiting partner. This responds to one usage pattern we saw a lot of -- implementers using a thin bit of XML for the administrivia that trading 
partners need to know about one another and for a bit of classification of the position, but passing most of the real job content as HTML within a 
CDATA section. The other document they are considering is a structured PositionProfile. This would be designed for the back office 
computer-to-computer provisioning of one system by another with very structured, discretely fielded information describing the position.

I hope some of the above makes sense. If there is interest, I can share drafts of some of the above as they become available.

Best Regards,

Chuck Allen
HR-XML Consortium, Inc.