Obama Votes for TweetMyJOBS in Dept. of Labor Job Challenge. Or Did He?

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- More than a month after the White House Job Summit at which business leaders were called to Washington to brainstorm on how to jumpstart the slowly rebounding job market, one company has identified significant flaws with the Department of Labor's Tools for America Job Seekers Challenge (http://dolchallenge.ideascale.com/a/panel.do?id=5847).

The Challenge, a result of the Summit, is intended to allow citizens to evaluate and vote for the top online tools that job seekers can use to find open positions. The winning tools will be promoted to various Career Centers across the country.

"While we applaud Washington's efforts to try and get open job positions into the hands of job seekers, there are some very significant flaws that need to be fixed in order for this process to produce results that will ultimately help America's unemployed," said Gary Zukowski, founder of TweetMyJOBS (http://TweetMyJOBS.com), the world's largest Twitter-based recruiting solution.

Zukowski cites some alarming examples.

"First, there's no validation of the votes. A person or company can cast unlimited votes with ficticious names and email addresses and dramatically skew the results," says Zukowski. "For example, we were able to vote using a non-working email with the name 'Barack Obama.' Five days later the name 'Barack Obama' was still listed under 'user activity'--a fact that should raise red flags. In addition to no validation on the votes, there is nothing preventing people in other countries from participating. The outcome could be determined by people who are not even citizens of the United States."

Here is what Zukowski would like to do:

1. Put the brakes on the contest to examine the process and resolve all major issues.
2. Do a site redesign that makes the process easier for users.
3. Use a rating system around several factors for the tools people are voting on rather than simply 'recommend' to move away from the 'popularity contest' situation.
4. Have the voting process validate email addresses before a vote is counted.
5. Develop a process to ensure only Americans are voting.

"I am confident that we could rally the resources of businesses and resolve this issue very quickly," says Zukowski. "Isn't it better to stop the Challenge for a short period of time to get things right than continue down a path that ultimately will not provide the help that the millions of unemployed people in this country need?"

Zukowski is also quick to point out that the Challenge does not actually create jobs, but simply identifies tools that jobseekers can use to identify opportunities - a disturbing observation since the number of available jobs is less than the number of unemployed individuals.

TweetMyJOBS has sent a letter to various individuals in the administration hoping to conduct this discussion prior to January 15--the date when voting and recommendations cease. "America is at 10 percent unemployment. We lost another 85,000 jobs last month," notes Zukowski. "It's not that we can do better than this. We absolutely have to do better than this."

About TweetMyJobs.com

Based in Charlotte, NC, TweetMyJOBS (http://www.TweetMyJOBS.com) is the world's largest and most comprehensive Twitter based recruiting solution. Using their SMART Tweet(TM) service, employers can post a job on one of 6500+ vertical Job Channels, which are location/industry specific, and a text message notification of the job will instantly be delivered to a job seeker's cell phone via Twitter. The company sends on average over 1 million job tweets a month. In addition to its targeted Job Channels, TweetMyJOBS provides the ability for employers to reach any of the 20-30 million unique monthly Twitter users who are searching for a job.

SOURCE TweetMyJOBS