Recently I read that almost 60% of IT workers are looking for new jobs, and that four out of five of those looking for new jobs say their job search is "somewhat" or "very" active. If true, then I hope these statistics bode well for our newest site. Today, I am pleased to introduce DZone Jobs, a new job site dedicated to helping real developers connect with great job opportunities. DZone Jobs is certainly not the first niche job site, nor do we expect it will be the biggest. Still, we feel it will provide value to DZone's uniquely developer-focused audience. Developers like you visit our sites over a million times a month, and DZone Network sites appeal more to sophisticated, dedicated developers than to beginners and dabblers. We hope the unique composition of our communities will allow DZone Jobs to become a place where genuine, hard-core developers look for their next gigs. You may want to add the RSS feed to your newsreader, so you can keep an eye on where the interesting opportunities are.

We built DZone Jobs with Ruby on Rails, which was an interesting experience. The popular Ruby framework certainly has a lot going for it, but I wouldn't describe it as a "silver bullet" that magically cures all developer headaches. Maybe one of the high-profile Ruby mavens could have written the whole DZone Jobs application in just 20 lines of Ruby, but I'm almost sure it took us more than 100 lines (cough, cough… way more than 100 lines!) I'll try to get Matt to write a serious article or give a presentation on what it was like to build a site quickly with RoR, and I'm sure Mike will want an opportunity to editorialize a bit, too! (Hint: Mike was not exactly the bluebird of happiness while working on this one.)