We’re often asked to write more posts about jobs in sports. Because the supply of jobs in sports can’t possibly meet demand (most of the payroll in the industry is devoted to the athletic talent), starting a career can be especially tough. So much of hiring in sports is based on networking; hence, former college athletes gain access to some of the best opportunities through strong connections with alumni and boosters. We’re out to help the average Joes, who don’t have an easy in, find new opportunities in sports and more easily navigate the hiring process process. Today’s jobs were found when some late night Facebooking turned up a recruitment advertisement for YardBarker, which is a blog and social network for sports fans and athletes, so always keep your eye on those Facebook Flyers.

Sports blogging is quickly becoming a major industry, and just as ESPN changed the game in the 80s, companies like YardBarker are seriously influencing the way sports news and opinion is disseminated. What we love about YardBarker is that they’ve brought a ton of pro athletes on board. From Dontrelle Willis to Greg Oden. From Cincinnati Reds prospect Jay Bruce to Donovan McNabb. That means you get inside perspectives from real athletes mixed in with sports news, opinion, and humor. Most importantly, YardBarker has far surpassed the critical mass needed for a successful social network – their site is extremely active. YardBarker also appears to be barren of advertisements — we imagine that it’s because they’re trying to develop a relationship of trust with their audience before they go down that path (that strategy sounds eerily familiar). So how are they going to pay you? They’ve got funding.

Before we talk about YardBarker’s entry-level job openings, let’s analyze the Facebook campaign that introduced us to YardBarker’s recruiting needs. We think using Facebook ads to recruit is really smart, but it must be done right. If YardBarker had hired us to help them with their Facebook recruitment advertising campaign, we would have given them a few tips. First, the logo in the ad looks like crap. They should take 2 minutes to make sure that it looks good. Second, they need to use an actual e-mail address. It looks unprofessional to say “address at company dot com.” Third, a landing page goes a long way. Clicking the ad takes you to YardBarker.com. It doesn’t take you to their Careers page, and it surely doesn’t take you to a page tailored to entry-level job seekers (they don’t have one). In fact, the web engineer position that they mention in their ads was listed as a Product Management job (now the listing calls for a Web/Rails Developer) on their Careers page – it was a little confusing. It seems that YardBarker is trying to be cheap and doesn’t want you to click on their ad; they want you to e-mail your resume without researching the company at all. They should just spend the 17 cents per click it takes to get qualified applicants, and then send them straight to a page with a strong entry-level recruiting message.

It almost looks like YardBarker renamed the Product Management job that we saw listed a few days ago and is now calling it Web (Rails) Developer. The other possibility is that they filled that job, and this is a new listing, which may be more likely – the requirements are more technical now. The Product Management listing had more emphasis on looking for someone who has been running his or her own blog and wants to take his or her web skills to the next level, while the Web (Rails) Developer listing is more focused on straight up software development. The word “experience” is/was used a few times in both job descriptions, but the fact that they’re targeting college seniors on Facebook and they say “You have designed and implemented software systems on your own, or as the leader of a team. -OR- You are super-smart and motivated, and can convince us that we should hire you anyway,” makes us pretty confident that this is an entry-level job.

You can send a resume and cover letter to jobs@yardbarker.com to apply. If you’re not quite sure about a job at YardBarker, and you’d rather run your own blog, you can join the YardBarker Network instead. It’s a great way for sports bloggers to make money.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• YardBarker’s Home Page
• Jobs at YardBarker
• About YardBarker
• Yardbarker’s Media Kit Overview Page
• Yardbarker’s FAQs

Spring Break is over. It’s time to get serious about your job hunt, so subscribe if you want to hear about more great jobs at companies like YardBarker.

We've identified YardBarker as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• California
• product management
• social networking
• software development
• sports

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2 responses to “YardBarker”

1. David says:

   April 9, 2008 at 9:32 pm

   email at company dot com is not at all unprofessional. it is quite professional. this is so that spam bots roaming the web for email addresses to harass don’t recognize the email address for what it is.

   Reply
2. Willy Franzen says:

   April 9, 2008 at 9:40 pm

   David, the point was that they were doing it in a “walled garden” where spam bots don’t roam. Moreover, when you’re marketing something (whether it be jobs or products), you want to make it easy for people to reach you. Formatting your e-mail address like that doesn’t make it easy. Maybe we were too harsh on YardBarker, since they were looking for people with a technical/web background – the types who shouldn’t be confused by this. We still don’t like it. That’s why we’ve installed a plug-in on our site that encodes e-mail addresses so that spam bots can’t read them. Yes, we get some spam, but that’s pretty much unavoidable unless you’re obsessive about keeping your e-mail address private.

   Reply