tl;dr
I have created a petition to ask Parliament to help encourage a few more organisations
to make it easier for jobseekers to find their vacancies by setting up a
/jobs redirect page on their website.
I need 5 pals or kindly disposed strangers to sign it before it will become public, please and thank you. Ideally a few might share it further. I'd be surprised if it makes 10,000 signatures but I hope, even if it doesn't get a day in Parliament, that it might encourage some organisations to implement this.
Encourage company websites to add a "/jobs" page redirect.
"Simplify
& harmonise job searching on organisations' websites. Organisations
might call 'jobs' by a variety of names: Careers,
Vacancies, Recruitment, Employment, Work for us, Work with us etc. A
/jobs redirect lets them call it whatever they like while making it
easier to find for jobseekers.
I think a central push might encourage implementation. Currently
organisations' websites are a bit piecemeal in terms of where they hide
their vacancies page(s). Some don't have a dedicated page at all and
instead put job adverts in 'news'. This seems a bit inefficient. It
seems daft not to make it as easy as possible for those seeking jobs to
be able to uncover them more easily. If voluntary it might not happen,
hence suggesting a role for parliamentary persuasion."
Sign the petition
I have finally created a petition on the UK Government's Petitions website!
Because I have spent an inordinate amount of time trawling various websites in order to share job adverts with various communities of practice (e.g. mailing lists, my TechDevJobs website, and in the past ScicommJobs) I've really noticed the disparities in the way organisations do this.
'Jobs' is not usually in the top menu items, it's usually a sub-menu somewhere. 'About us' is a good bet, I've found lots of vacancies pages in there but if not there then you may need to search the site for its page, assuming there is one. That's where it gets a bit frustrating as they might call it Careers or Vacancies or Recruitment etc (you might well find it if they include the word 'jobs' on the page).
This can be particularly fiddly on health charity websites where the health condition might impact on one's employability, so searching for jobs brings up stuff that's not about working for the charity but about people's rights and how to get support. All good stuff but no use if you want their vacancies page.
So I created this petition. Partly to see if it works, probably partly to make a fool of myself as it fails spectacularly and partly to try and raise awareness.
What I want to happen is
- that anyone visiting any website
- belonging to an organisation that employs people
- can type /jobs
- at the end of the homepage address / link / URL
- and go straight to a page about working for that organisation.
The organisation can call their page whatever they like. just please add a webpage redirect so that /jobs will point to wherever your page is or whatever you've called it - thank you :)
- - - - -
I won't know who has signed the petition (and I don't think your name or email address is made public on the petition page anyway) - this is the only notification I get.

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