I need a search producer to work with me at Boston.com. It’ll be an interesting job, helping to build the best possible search engine for Bostonians. Here’s my job description; if you’re interested, apply online!
Search Producer at Boston.com
Are you a proud Bostonian?
We at Boston.com know Boston. We’re from here. We love it here.
And we want to build the best site for Bostonians. We want to build a site where our readers can find news and information for living a better life. We want to organize Boston’s information in useful ways. We need your help.
Do you have at least a year or two of experience in the working world? Maybe working as a journalist or as a web producer? Maybe working as a librarian? Maybe you’re just wicked smart and want a cool job?
We have the job for you: Boston.com Search Producer.
What you’ll do
So, what’s a search producer?
We’ve invested a lot of time and money this year in building out Boston.com’s local search engine, a piece of software that will make it easy for our readers to find whatever they’re looking for in Boston.
We will succeed against our national competitors by emphasizing our relentless local focus and our sharp editorial voice. We can focus solely on Boston because we don’t care about anything beyond Worcester. We don’t care how search works in Peoria, only how it works in Plymouth. (Or Plimoth, as you remember from your grade-school field trips).
Our “sharp editorial voice” is where you come in. You’ll work closely with our search editors and the Boston Globe newsroom to ensure that our readers are getting the best possible Boston search experience.
More specifically:
You will tune the search engine to make sure it returns the best results for given queries. You twirl the right knobs and the search engine does your bidding. Don’t forget, though, with great power comes great responsibility.
You’ll also work to help manage our external crawl. This is where we pick worthy local sites and add them to our index. You’ll prospect for new sites and revisit old sites. If some bloggers are especially insightful, you’ll give them a little extra juice in the rankings.
You’ll also engage your mind-reading skills each morning. You’ll get a list of what our readers are searching and adjust how the search engine responds. If breaking news happens, you’ll work with the newsroom to make sure we’re delivering quality search results.
We’re also building out some specialized Yellow Pages and Shopping products. You will help set them up and ensure the data is accurate and pretty.
And of course, we also have “special projects and tasks as needed”. We’re making some of this up as we go, so if you need all the processes nailed down before you can do anything, this may not be the right job for you.
Who you are
Still interested? Great!
Here’s what we’re looking for:
You should be nimble. We’re inventing stuff in a fast-paced environment. Mistakes are OK (encouraged, even); apathy is verboten.
You like thinking things through, finding good answers to tough questions. We’ve already solved all the simple problems; you’ll work on the tough ones. You’re not afraid to think, brainstorm, dream. We’re hiring you for your smarts – and your backbone.
You enjoy mind-reading, divining intent from cryptic words in a box. (You’ll be surprised what people will type into a search box.) It’s your job to deliver our readers to what they mean, despite what they actually type.
You can handle the tools of the web trade, including text editors, content management systems, and Photoshop.
You can handcode HTML. We won’t be doing anything too outrageous, but you need to be able to do the basics. It would be fabulous if you also know some SQL and PHP or Python — you’ll have the opportunity to build your own tools, if you’re so inclined.
You can write in complete sentences with proper capitalization. We’re part of the New York Times Company – we expect you to be able to string a few words together.
Who we are
Millions of people come to Boston.com each month looking for news, sports, things to do — and sometimes quick diversions from the drudgery of their own jobs. These millions of visitors view billions of pages each year. It’s one of the advantages joining us — people will actually see your work.
How we can get together
Apply online! We encourage minority candidates to apply and are an EEO.
