eBay As A Job Board

from the sign-of-the-times? dept

I've seen similar things like this before, and I'm wondering if eBay might not realize this is a trend they might want to build on. Sunday night, I received an email saying that the former staff of ZDNet's TechUpdate site had put themselves up for bid on eBay. The auction was taken down yesterday, because the ad mentioned that people would be expected to pay the salaries of the 11 staff members - and eBay doesn't let you say that there will be any additional costs outside of the auction. They've now put the auction back up, without that claim. They also removed ZDNet TechUpdate (replaced with Z---- T--- U-----) after CNET's lawyers got upset. Of course, people may be confused because the auction title suggests you're bidding on the staff, itself. The details of the auction say you're only getting their resumes. Clearly, this is mostly a publicity stunt (that may be working), since most people looking for jobs want their resumes spread as far and as widely as possible, and don't want the hurdle of waiting for only the highest bidder. Of course, it's not the first time teams of people have shown up on eBay looking for jobs, so I wonder if eBay shouldn't add a "jobs" board of sorts. Though for the reason mentioned above (why would you limit who your resume went to?) I imagine it wouldn't get much use.
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