CCollegeJobs.com
by Chris Cumo and P.D. Lesko
DIANN SCHINDLER-ENDER, the founder of CCollegeJobs.com, did not
plan to become an on-line entrepreneur. An adjunct and then
an assistant professor at Lorain County Community College
in Ohio, and an administrator at community colleges in the
Midwest, she rose to become president of Minneapolis Community
College, in Minnesota. Then she married a man who himself
wanted to become a community college president, and when he
landed a post in New Jersey, Schindler-Ender decided one community
college president in the family was enough. She resigned her
position, but did not altogether leave academe. While helping
a college conduct an executive search, she became aware of
the dearth of on-line resources for community college job
seekers and employers. Four friends convinced her to fill
this gap by starting her own jobs page, and on May 1, 2000,
she launched CCollegeJobs.com.
Visitors may search jobs for free, and the site receives about 150,000
hits per week. The total number of jobs posted is relatively
small, however. As of June, 179 positions had been posted
by 71 member institutions. Visitors may post their resumes
for free, and currently, there are about 150 resumes posted,
a number Schindler-Ender attributes to the fact that job seekers
remain reluctant to post their resumes on-line. However, “user
reluctance” doesn’t ring true as an explanation. Millions
of jobseekers have posted resumes on-line at Monster.com.
A more likely explanation has to do with the fact that the CCollegeJobs.com
site has little content other than faculty and staff job postings.
Thus, the average user has little incentive to post a resume.
In addition, given the small number of colleges which have
signed on as members, the site is a far from geographically
comprehensive resource. This may change as CCollegeJobs.com
establishes itself in the marketplace. The question is, of
course, whether or not there really is a spot for CCollegeJobs.com
in the higher education jobs marketplace.
On the Web these days, a niche just isn’t enough. CCollegeJobs.com
is competing with some high rollers: The Chronicle of Higher
Education’s on-line job list (which has posted over 22,000
jobs already this year), as well as HigherEdJobs.com. Its
577 member institutions post, on average, 2,000 jobs each
month, and there are a good number of community colleges which
post to this list.
The Chronicle’s award-winning Web page is rich in employment-related
content; HigherEdJobs.com is rich in postings. A search for
adjunct postings on the CCollegeJobs.com site came up with
41 jobs, half of which had been posted by one college.
In addition, e-mail and Web page addresses are not linked on
the CCollegeJobs.com site. There are even places where the
site’s slip shows, if you will, and one sees the actual HTML
coding on the results pages. The former is a major inconvenience,
and should be corrected.
To register, a community college must pay an annual fee of $1,295,
which entitles it to unlimited job postings on the site. Colleges
that anticipate only a few vacancies pay $100 per 30-day posting.
The cost is comparable to most of the other higher education
on-line job posting providers.
Schindler-Ender said she particularly wants to attract underrepresented ethnic groups to her job site, and is exploring a partnership with
Kaleidoscope, an organization for minority women. To this
end, she mails a brochure advertising her service to historically
black and Hispanic colleges, puts ads in newspapers with minority
readers, and has linked her site “everywhere on the Web.”
Again, though, there is little content to draw minority candidates,
and in the United States it is illegal to recruit solely on
the basis of minority status.
Schindler-Ender sees the trend toward on-line job advertising as inevitable.
Job boards are a permanent feature of the on-line landscape.
“It won’t be a question of being on-line,” she says. “Everyone
will post jobs there.”
She is absolutely right. What remains to be seen, though, is whether
CCollegeJobs.com will be the on-line site where a large number
of community colleges post jobs, and where thousands of jobhunters
search for employment. As things stand now, CCollegeJobs.com
does little to differentiate itself from the well-established
competition, and in any business (on-line or off) creating
a strong and unique brand is crucial. Schindler-Ender’s site,
at this point, cannot be recommended as one to bookmark. There
are other, more comprehensive, sites available.
