The advisory panel of the Society for Human Resource Management that was scheduled to meet Tuesday on Dot-jobs, didn’t. Instead, it’s meeting today to discuss a proposed charter change involving the registration of .jobs domains, ERE.net reported. The postponement was due to scheduling conflicts. 

In the meantime, commentary continues to trickle in on the discussion board SHRM created for feedback. So far, there are 15 posts in six topics by 26 members –and about 600 views of what’s being said.

One of the most interesting posts is an “open letter” posted by Gerry Crispin, co-founder of CareerXroads: “I’m convinced that the .job domain is still an unrealized potential because SHRM lacks the vision, the plan and the will to live up the the intent of the Charter. All talk, no walk,” Crispin wrote. 

“It saddens me because SHRM does have the resources but simply fails to see beyond its traditional  role, its generalist priorities and, equally, I lack the skills and knowledge and experience to get them to see what it could be. That is SHRMs right as a professional association (I’m but 1 member) and most of its members have not been educated sufficiently to complain and force the shift (or convince me I’m wrong).“

Crispin noted what he called a “fatal flaw” in the strategy behind the sought charter changes: the creation of a .jobs monopoly involving Employ Media, the exclusive registrar, and the DirectEmployers Association, which intends to build hundreds if not geo- and occupational-based dot-jobs domains and populate them with both aggregated and organic listings. The idea isn’t a bad one, Crispin contended, but the execution of it is:

“There needs to be a legitimate way for any firm who understands and agrees with the strategy to help build the infrastructure and share on the results. Large investments need to be made to educate employers and the job-seekers that .jobs has value so this deal should be structured to allow is, in fact made. 

“If firms are shut out, I believe there is ample cause for restraint of trade and, since I’m no lawyer, I don’t have to remind anyone about how feeble my opinion is. On the other hand, perception can impact what  real people do and I’m just as certain that there will be no winners here including SHRM if the Society plays no role. “ 

An advisory panel of the Society for Human Resource Management was reportedly scheduled to meet today to discuss a proposed charter change involving the registration of Dot-jobs domains.

This, after a conference call Friday ending in a consensus that the panel needed more information on the request, which was being pushed through by the exclusive registrar of top-level .jobs domains. Last week, ERE.net reported that the window for comments was to close last Friday. And while the window had been “open” since February, no one seemed to know about it. ERE discovered the proposed charter changes on a new SHRM Web site just 48 hours before the comment period was to end.

We wrote about it Wednesday night, and included it in last week’s Classified Intelligence Report to clients.

Although the comment window expired, SHRM is still taking comments on Policy.jobs, mostly from recruiters who express concern over the lack of adequate notice.

The change that Employ Media, the .jobs registrar, would like to make include allowing the creation of geographic and occupational domains, for example, “houston.retail.jobs.” Its partner, the DirectEmployers Association, has a plan to create thousands of geo-occupational domains and did launch dozens of them in an alpha test. It took them down in February, citing technological issues as the reason. It appears there was some concern whether it could create those site without first changing the charter agreement. Currently, the charter only allows companies to host their own job vancancies on a “companyname.jobs” domain, and only after they meet SHRM guidelines for doing so.

Here’s the link to the the policy forum.

Here’s more from ERE.net.