Want to help design BostonWorks?
We’re hiring a designer. Could it be you? Here’s the job description:
Ever want to transform a Web 1.0 company that makes money into a Web 2.0 company that makes money? Ever want to help people find jobs? Wish you could improve this very site? Here’s the opportunity. Boston.com is redesigning its BostonWorks site, and we need an outstanding interactive designer to help us dominate the Boston recruitment marketplace.
Strange things are afoot in the recruitment space. Monster.com is strong; Yahoo HotJobs keeps getting better; CareerBuilder does great things with its guided search; vertical search engines like SimplyHired and corporate-cousin Indeed are shaking up the industry business model. Many are experimenting with different ways of connecting job-seekers to employers, but no one has really nailed it yet. Chaos reigns.
But, in chaos lies opportunity, and Boston.com is well-placed to stake its claim as the powerhouse in the market. We have the most job listings in Boston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom and the ability to localize and customize in a way our friendly national competitors can’t touch.
We need someone who can think through an interactive design that will win, someone who can design a site so useful that job-seekers love it, employers will give us lots of money to be on it, a site that’s just so damn good it’ll shoot onto del.icio.us/popular when it launches.
We have a strong position to build from. We have the rest of the team on board. You are the final piece.
So, who are you?
You love the web and its endless possibilities. You play around with websites for fun. You’ve likely already done your own Google Maps hack, just to see what it could do. You have your own domain to show off your work. You don’t use a Hotmail address.
You like the idea of being able to help tens of millions of monthly visitors, help regular folks trying to improve their lives.
You were writing XHTML before it was all the rage. You know the ins and outs of box-model hacks. You curse IE, but make it work.
You have a strong presentation and design skills as well as familiarity with web usability. You know your way around Photoshop and know how to translate your designs to the web. You have an eye for design and a respect for the information you are trying to communicate. You can wrangle a roomful of opinions into a thoughtful, accessible and dazzling design. When you spill your coffee, your first thought is “command Z.”
You can spell. You write emails in full sentences with proper capitalization.
You believe in the power of the media (Boston.com, The Boston Globe, The New York Times) to improve our community.
You believe the Standells when they sing “Boston, you’re my home.”
You believe in doing right by the job-seeker.
You know there’s more than one way to do it.
So, what’s the job?
You’ll start by designing the BostonWorks.com website. The building blocks are all here, scattered on the living-room rug. You get to put the design the building and help put the blocks together. You’ll handle the visual design (with help from the rest of the design department) and plan the interactive design (with help from our developers and product people). You’ll get your hands dirty (in a good way).
After launch, you’ll keep working on BostonWorks, but we’ll also find you more worlds to conquer. Recruitment is only one of our many sections.
So, is this right for you?
Can you design an application that does right by the job-seekers and the employers? Can you design in a way that accentuates our unique strengths and differentiates us in the marketplace?
Can you do it in a collaborative atmosphere?
If you’re really interested, we’d love a thoughtful letter telling us why. Please write us a note, along with your resume and (most importantly) links to interesting things you’ve done. We run a job board, so believe us when we say we can smell boilerplate a mile away — it’s worth a few minutes to think it through 
