No, it’s not a late April fools joke.  The millions of pages online from other job boards and career sites apparently aren’t enough, as Direct Employers is moving into a joint venture with Employ Media and and will be adding tens of thousands of dot-jobs boards and pages.

In a post written 3 months ago, “Rest In Peace .jobs“, there were 10 reasons outlining the lack of adoption since the .jobs inception over 4 years ago.  Although there was no official funeral, one could classify the latest announcement as a rebirth given the rules of the game (.jobs) are changing completely from what it was intended to be.

Premium placement comes at a premium too.

I don’t think it’s a “new playing field”, and think this an interesting way “to see what the world wants” as stated by both Direct Employers and Employ Media Executives.

Some of the comments on the ERE article by John Zappe say it all. They include, “I laughed when I read this”, “I wish DirectEmployers the BEST of luck. I just ask you keep showin’ us what you got”,, and “this is a travesty”.

In the meantime, we’ll see if candidates magically start using the .jobs domain and if they ever become optimized for the search engines in comparison to other boards, aggregators, and MOST IMPORTANTLY employers taking charge of their strategy with their own sites.

We’ll also wait to see actual results that have positively impacted an organizations recruiting ROI.  That’s all anyone can ask for, is the proof.