Foundation Formed to Marry Open Principles with Job Search Tools

With economic problems lingering, many people remain in need of employment and that's true across the technology sector. Now, a group called DirectEmployers Association has announced a new foundation--DirectEmployers Foundation--that will purportedly leverage open source principles and technology to deliver improved job search and career marketing tools. In addition to standalone tools, the foundation will also focus on APIs and components that can be shared, delivering job search tools and listing to many online sites.

According to Rick Rick Wehrle, former Monster.com Architect and Vice President of Product Development, in a statement announcing the foundation:

"The Open Source model is defined by sharing code in a way that benefits everyone involved. By integrating the Open Source model, we are adopting a proven model for driving change and advancing the state of the art." When combined with a nonprofit foundation, "open source projects are able to marshal the resources, people and mind share they need to create new standards and break down walls that are holding back progress. In this case, those walls are driving up the cost of making hires and making it incredibly difficult for employers to find talent. It's 2012. It should cost employers virtually nothing to find an employee, and it should not cost job seekers anything, in terms of time and money to find a job."

The foundation will reportedly be staffed with top user experience engineers and developers, many of them with open source experience, but the community development model will also be leveraged to create tools and applications. These tools will include an API that allows job search and job postings to be added anywhere, development of a foreign language support feature and additional job distribution tools.

This sounds like a promising way to surface available jobs and job search tools in more places online. It's not clear exactly how the foundation will be funded, but more power to it if it can bring jobs to those who need them.