White House launches Web 2.0 tools for veterans job search
The White House announced new online job search tools for veterans this week, with help from Google, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Driving the White House’s launch of a new veterans job bank, job search widget and other online tools this week was a major collaborative effort involving Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and other Gov 2.0 players.
The Veterans Job Bank and Job Search Widget debuted on Nov. 7 with more than 500,000 private-sector job opportunities for veterans.
With more than 12 percent of post 9/11 veterans reported to be seeking employment in October, President Barack Obama has said that assisting veterans find jobs is one of his priorities.
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The veterans job bank and widget work together: Employers tag online job listings pertinent to veterans to create the online directory, and the widget combs through job boards, social media networks and corporate sites to locate the tags.
The technology that makes the new veterans job bank possible is a new Web standard, the JobPosting technical schema, which is a structured data standard designed by private-sector volunteers and supported by the schema.org structured data group sponsored by Bing, Google and Yahoo.
“For employers committed to hiring veterans, “tagging” job listings in the JobPosting schema ensures that those listings will be discoverable through the Veterans Job Bank,” Aneesh Chopra, federal chief technology officer, wrote in a blog entry.
“Starting with Google’s custom search team, the Veterans Job Bank was conceived and then implemented in less than 90 days,” Chopra added.
The job search widget is available for free and can be added to any website.
Other collaborators in the widget and job bank project included job search companies SimplyHired.com, Monster.com, Military.com, Indeed.com and Taleo.com.
Other elements of the White House veterans job initiative include:
- LinkedIn is sponsoring Veterans HackDay on Nov. 11, inviting developers to create new applications that benefit veterans.
- BranchOut, a professional community Facebook application, is offering opportunities to veterans to utilize job networking tools on Facebook.
- Twitter, through TweetMyJobs, is providing a job search service on Twitter.
In addition, on Nov. 11, the Veterans Affairs Department is set to introduce its VA for Vets online job board listing more than 3,500 jobs at the VA. Also, the VA recently said it would add job-related data to its online Blue Button electronic health record application.