Blog: The Shop

How We Advertised a Job on Facebook

When we needed to post a new job ad online, we started going through the list of usual suspects: Idealist, Craigslist, various DC tech job boards, and advertising on sites where we knew people might be. Then we thought, "What about Facebook?" We couldn’t remember ever seeing a good job ad on Facebook, but we figured we'd try it out. Here's what we found.

First, Facebook's combination of price, targeting options, and ease of use made it just about unparalleled from the perspective of the ad placement itself. But those of us who use Facebook are used to these ads being nightlife promotions, surveys to make quick cash online, or corporate ads. I even remember once seeing an ad for a plastic surgeon in the Midwest (they weren't making the best use of the targeting feature, unless they expect a 26-year-old male from Colorado to fly to Wisconsin for Botox ;). Would a reputable job ad work? We created one in order to find out.

We guessed that our best chances would be to target it to people who live in the Washington DC metro area and have interests in things we might look for in a job candidate. We used Facebook's ad placement tool to target people in DC, VA, and MD, and then listed out keywords that we thought the ideal candidates may have. Some of the keywords we thought of didn't hit any users' profiles, but others did. When they hit, the Facebook ad placement interface told us how many people used this keyword in their profile. In the end, here's what our list looked like – there are a couple odd ones, but it was what we had to work with:

Plug In Gives You the Best of Both Email and Web Forum Features

"Reply ABOVE this LINE to POST a COMMENT." This is how automatic email notifications from the teams' intranet blog posts look these days. And it's true! Now I can just reply to any email notification I receive and my comment will appear on our intranet. The only bad thing is that I don't have an excuse anymore for not replying right away ;-)

Typically there are two ways to carry on online discussions and to keep up with the replies - mailing lists (that may have a web interface) and web forums (that may have email subscriptions). Though each of one has its own advantages and drawbacks, trying to mix both usually ends up in long threads of differently formatted messages. Besides, mailing lists are usually exposed to spamming (worse yet if spam ends up on the web) and the "from" address is really easy to forge.

As usual, we wanted it all - the reliability and readability that come with authentication in a web forum and the ease of replying through a mailing list. Since we already had the Notifications and Messaging framework and an excellent mailhandler module to fetch incoming emails, it was just a question of putting the pieces together and adding some extra security/authentication into the recipe to get to this. 

Check the new "Mail2web" plug-in in the Notifications module. This first version is for Drupal 5. And by the way, we just released the Drupal 6 version of both Notifications and Messaging modules. The Mail2Web Drupal 6 version, however, will have to wait for the mailhandler module.

Being paranoid about security and spam, we added a more secure method for message authentication than the ones currently used. Our outgoing emails have some digitally assigned parameters that are checked when the reply comes back. Thus only emails posted as a direct 'Reply-To' operation will get in as responses. And replies to a given thread will get only into that thread, nowhere else. But best of all, these tokens are completely invisible for a regular user and should work with most email clients without the need to install any extra software. (You can set an expiration time frame for replies too).

So what do I need to to do to get it working?

Come Out to Meet Drupal Developers, Users, and People Interested in Learning More

This coming Monday on April 14th we'll hold the next Washington, DC Drupal Meetup at James Hoban's right on Dupont Circle at 7:00 pm. This is a great chance to come out and meet Drupal developers and users, and see what cool tools people have built with Drupal. 

We'll kick off the meetup with a round of 5-minute lightening talks focusing on real world solutions that have been built with Drupal. We all know Drupal does amazing things, so let's look at some of the tailored tools we've built to help our clients out. Here's what we've got lined up so far:

• Connecting a geographically dispersed microfinance network with an online portal
• Publishing content in right to left languages like Arabic and Hebrew
• Demo of the online community MothersClick (to be confirmed)
• Talk on how newspapers are using Drupal and what it's doing for them by Ken Rickard who will be town

Have something show off? Post it in the comments over in the Washington, DC Drupal group. Dan from 1 Well will also be there to talk about how he's helping (and how you can too) to build wells in communities that need them. 

Details:

James Hoban's at the back bar
1 Dupont Circle, Washington DC
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

A wireless connection will be available, and the first round of drinks is on Development Seed. Hope to see you on Monday!

Come On Out to Affinity Labs To Meet Other Drupalers

Tonight we're heading over to Adams Morgan for the latest Drupal get together at the Affinity Lab (right above the Diner). Tonight's event will be more of a sit down event - we'll have a great facility to look at a big screen together and talk in more detail about development - and less of a socializing, beer, and quick demo meetup. There will be some technical demonstrations on the big screen and
plenty of time to pull out your computers and get into code with other
Drupalers. This will be a great opportunity to show off and see what everyone is working on. 

More information is over here.

Here are the details:

Affinity Lab
2451 18th Street  NW, above the Diner
Adams Morgan (map)
7:00 - 9:00 pm

View Larger Map

Thanks to Mike for organizing the event. Also check out some photos of our last meetup shot by Alex.

Hope to see you tonight!