Blog posts in “Jobplot news” ¶

We thought it'd be useful to provide a walkthrough showing the process for signing up to Jobplot and getting you or your company listed here.

It's a four-step whole process and, from start to finish, only takes 5 minutes.

• Step 1 - set up your username and password
• Step 2 - verify your account
• Step 3 - set up your profile
• Step 4 - add links and images/video

If you run into any problems while setting up your profile then please get in touch and tell us - we're continually improving Jobplot and can only do this with input from the people who use it.

To get started click here to sign-up to Jobplot

Step 1 - username and password ¶

For this walk-through we'll take the example of (the fictitious) Terry Mcelroy who runs a company in Hereford called Creative Media Limited.

After clicking the link above you should see the following screen:

This first screen should be quite self-explanatory. Don't forget to tick those boxes!

Step 2 - verify your account ¶

Ignore the boxes on the screen that you're sent to and head to your email inbox. You should have an email like this (check your spam folder if not):

Click on that first link to verify your account and you'll be sent to your Jobplot dashboard. Soon, this will be where you manage your profiles and any jobs or opportunities you list.

The next thing to do is to click on the green 'Get started' button on the right-hand side.

Step 3 - set up your profile ¶

Fill out all the information requested. There are tips to help you along on the right-hand side.

You can always edit this information later on if you like or if any of these things change.

Here's the screen as filled out by Terry McElroy to give you an idea of the kind of information you'll be providing:

If you don't have a logo or photo to upload just at the moment then don't worry. You can come back and do that later - in the meantime Jobplot will insert a subtle little placeholder (see the screenshot below for an example).

Click on 'Save profile' at the bottom when done and ta-da! Your profile will now appear in the Jobplot talent listings, just like the Creative Media one does here:

There's one more screen to help improve that profile…

Step - 4 - add links, images and video to your profile ¶

If you like, you can skip this step and come back to it at a later date. On this page you can add links to your work and images and video to show off that work directly on your profile.

If you insert a link without an image or video then it'll be shown in your profile's sidebar. If you include an image or a video then it will appear in a big box at the bottom of your profile.

And that's it!

Here's how the Creative Media profile looks:

Remember, you can manage your profile and change any of your details at any time by logging in and going to your dashboard. You can now also post jobs and opportunities that you may have.

There's lots more coming with Jobplot over this year. The site's going to keep growing and we'll be finding ways to promote the site, helping to get you more exposure.

Finally, just a reminder that Jobplot is still in a 'beta' version, meaning that we're still working on parts of it. If anything doesn't work then please let us know at team@jobplot.co.uk.

One thing I'm keen to do is occasionally talk a little bit about what we're doing with Jobplot - to reveal some of the thinking that goes on behind the scenes and to let you know what we're planning.

It's still early days for Jobplot but we're pleased with how it's gone so far. Traffic's been even better than we'd hoped, the number of jobs on the board hit double figures pretty early on and we've now got just over 60 talent profiles up.

There are two extra pleasing things I've come across:

1. I've never heard of some of the people who've signed up - it's great to discover people and companies; and
2. I know at least one organisation has used Jobplot to find a new web designer and another company has been offered work as a result of having their profile up

The latter, especially, is very encouraging indeed.

All that said, there's still plenty of work to be done on the site to get fully up to scratch, even before we contemplate the changes and features coming in phase 2.

The site's already changed a fair bit since launch. Having a look at the ticked-off to do items in Basecamp we've:

• Added a 'music' category
• Allowed freelancers to hide their home address
• Fixed HD video embeds
• Developed an email newsletter (first one to be sent soon)
• Changed the way talent profile logos scale
• Reversed the order of the jobs and opportunities lists (newest first)
• Amended the details required when posting jobs
• Rejigged the order of the navigation links

and tweaked many (many) more things besides. We're still finding more things we want to change, partly from direct feedback and partly as user behaviour shows us more about how the site's been designed (following the words of Joshua Porter).

For example, it was pointed out early on that the site currently skews towards employers and that we haven't made it clear how potential employees can engage with the site. That was useful and we'll be solving that.

In fact, we're currently going through a thorough rewrite of much of the site's copy. We want to make everything clearer and more concise, with better explanations where they're needed.

On that… 

Categories

This has been the trickiest bit from the start. People can discuss categories at impressive length, and it's something we've tried not to get bogged down in any more than strictly necessary.

We've gone for broad categories - music, architecture, design, new media, etc - with the idea that people can specify what they do via their list of skills and by tags. We preferred this over copying the standard DCMS categories.

By keeping things simple at this stage we're adopting a 'suck it and see' approach and waiting to see how people go about describing themselves. We may end up codifying some of those tags later on, perhaps by offering some suggested ones or by introducing sub-categories.

What counts as 'creative' anyhow?

This is another tricky one. After all, no-one wants to be told they're not creative. You might be surprised at how creative accountancy can be - and what about accountants who work as finance officers for arts organisations?

What seems to be emerging is that the ecology of the 'creative industries' is made up of:

• People and companies who you might consider to be the core creative talent (musicians, developers, illustrators, etc); and
• People and companies who work with and for that creative talent

With some blurring of the lines between the two.

The site is predominantly aimed at the former, but it would make sense to accommodate the latter in some way too (there seems to be a demand for it). We think we've come up with a solution for this and will be rolling that out shortly.

More feedback please

We still have a list of tweaks to make to the site to make it run that bit better. We'd love to hear from you if you've got any suggestions or if you spot anything wrong, so please let us know in the comments below.

Hi there and welcome to the relaunch of Jobplot! 

The new, improved Jobplot ¶

You may remember Jobplot as the creative industries jobs board for the West Midlands. We've rebuilt the site over the past few months and, as you may have seen, we've made a few changes.

Jobplot now features:

• Talent profiles for companies/organisations/freelancers
• A jobs board
• An opportunities board

We want you to find work and we want work to find you, so sign up and get yourself listed now.

This here blog ¶

As if all that's not exciting enough on this blog you'll:

• hear about developments to Jobplot, because there are indeed developments planned
• acquire the wisdom of our esteemed guest bloggers
• read interviews with some of the region's most impressive creative industries movers and shakers
• get some tips on how to land the creative, artistic or cultural job of your dreams 

Here's the link to the RSS feed.

Found a bug? Help us improve Jobplot ¶

As I said, we've got plans for improving Jobplot (this is just phase 1) and have got some exciting things in the pipeline.

In the meantime, we'll be tying up a few loose ends on the site but we wanted to get it out there sooner rather than later. If you spot a link that doesn't work, if there's something confusing in the sign-up process or if you think of any other improvements then please let us know. Use the comments on this blog post.