Get a jump start on hiring new employees and finding freelancers with our annual New Year’s promotion: 50% off all listings. But there’s a catch. You’ll need to visit the tweet streams or websites of our listing partners to find a discount code.

Here are a few quick links to some of their codes:

• @vpieters
• @jcroft
• @jessebc
• @khoi
• @elliotjaystocks
• @cameronmoll
• @sazzy
• @hicksdesign
• @swissmiss

We typically offer a discount this steep only twice a year, so take advantage of the promotion while it lasts. Expires midnight on January 11.

We’re confident we’ll hit our goal of raising $30,000 for a community + school in Rwanda before the deadline on December 31 (though we still need your donations to make it happen).

Once we hit our goal, we’re going to make a celebration video starring you, the champs who made it happen and who will bring clean water to an entire community and neighboring school.

So, join in and create a video as follows:

• Shoot a video with your phone, DSLR, mirrorless, iSight, or whatever camera
• Keep it to 3 seconds or less so we can include as many videos as possible
• Make it celebratory! Be creative. Examples might include “Go Rwanda!” or you creatively holding a sign with the number 30,000 on it
• If the file is less than 10 MB, send it to support{at}authenticjobs{dot}com, OR
• If the file is larger than 10 MB, post the video (any format) in your Public folder on Dropbox or Box, or use any of the apps for sending large files
• We’ll create a montage with your video and post it to the site, and we’ll also do everything in our power to show it to the community that receives water tap stands because of our campaign.

Get inspired by watching this 2012 recap from charity: water:

Founder Cameron Moll personally thanks all of you for contributing thus far to our charity: water campaign.

We’d like to especially thank Jeff Snider, Jeffrey Zeldman, Aaron Gustafson, Dave Greiner, and Jonathan Moore for their generous contributions. As we were uploading this video, another significant donation came in from True Themes.

More thank-yous to come!

Jobs for iPhone, a third-party app independently developed by LaTroupe Studios, is now available in the App Store. We think it’s pretty fantastic. We think we’re probably biased, too. But still, LaTroupe Studios did a terrific job.

Please support their efforts (and keep yourself gainfully employed while at it) by purchasing the app for just $0.99. (Well done, Jordi!)

On this day seven years ago, Authentic Jobs was born. Celebrate with us by enjoying 57% off any job listing. No limit. No promo code needed. Today only.

You’ve helped us raise nearly $50,000 for clean water. Let’s make magic happen again this year.

It’s our 7th birthday this month (can you believe it?), and we’re kicking off things once again by asking you to donate to charity: water, the non-profit, clean-water powerhouse that we’ve supported over the past few years.

Our goal this year is to raise enough funds to bring clean drinking water to an entire community and neighboring school. $30,000 will fully fund tap stands for up to 800 people, with water delievered to those taps through a series of electric pumps and pipes, and good old-fashioned gravity. No more trekking hours every day just to find water.

So, please join the cause by donating $7, $77, or $777 to charity: water.

Using a web font for icons is nothing new, but we’d like to share our experience using Pictos Server on our most recent release (job listing stats).

Pictos Server is simple to use. Sign up, customize the icon set you’d like to use, and serve it up. It’s that easy. With over 600 icons to choose from, you’ll probably be able to find what you need.

We needed only a handful of icons for the listing stats feature. So, our custom Pictos font was fairly lightweight, less than 12 KB.

One of the caveats of using Pictos Server over hosting a custom font file is a limitation in Internet Explorer 9, namely CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing). Drew Wilson, creator of Pictos Server, is fervently working on update. So, this limitation shouldn’t be around much longer.

In the meantime, we created a simple sprite sheet to replace the font in Internet Explorer 9:

Designing in the browser has been touted as one of the biggest advantages for using a web font for icons, and we couldn’t agree more. For example, shortly after launch, we began receiving support concerns about whether emails were being lost from applicants. We can only track when someone clicks the “Apply for this job” button, not if they follow through. So, we tried to make that clear in the interface. But, we knew we had failed by showing an icon of a torn piece of paper with a heading of ‘Clicked “Apply”.’

A clearer representation of what was actually happening was needed, and we landed on a mouse cursor with a title of ‘Clicked “Apply” button.’ The change took only a few minutes using a web font:

Not only do these icons look great on the desktop, but they look absolutely lovely on mobile devices and tablets, and especially nice and crisp on devices with retina displays.

We think using a web font for icons is swell. Give them a try if you’re not already.

–Adam Spooner (@adamjspooner), Authentic Jobs’ front-end ace.

We’ve lifted the covers on a new feature for employers: Statistics for any listings you’ve posted to the site. You’ll see overall views, referrers, email notifications sent to candidates, and so on.

You’ll also enjoy easy access to transaction data and PDF receipts.

Of course, we can track only data that resides on our end. So we can tell you how many people have clicked the “Apply” button, but we can’t tell you how many people have actually submitted applications after clicking it (that happens via the email address or URL you specify). In the near future, we’ll be able to provide you with that data once candidates can apply through our site.

So, give it a go. Post a new listing or view statistics for an existing listing by clicking the edit link we sent in the confirmation email after posting.

Over the years, we’ve received emails from candidates who told us they found an attractive job opening on our site, applied, and subsequently never heard back from the employer or client.

This results in an immediate sadface for us. We believe all candidates should be afforded the decency of a response. It’s difficult to encourage this because we don’t facilitate communication between companies and candidates; that happens off-site.

This will all change when Authentic Crew is available. Companies and candidates will be able to communicate directly with one another regarding job opportunities.

At that point, because we’ll be in the business of facilitating communication between users, we’ll ask both the company and the candidate to be responsible enough to respond. We’ll do this by conspicuously stating your response rate, something we’ve been thinking through for quite some time.

Here’s an example:

Companies and candidates will be encouraged to respond as their response rate will be clearly stated. The higher the response rate, the more willing you’ll be to make contact.

No more sadfaces. We hope.

Drop us your email and we’ll notify you when Authentic Crew is ready:

Adam Spooner is a rare find. He’s a master of front-end development with a strong understanding of both UI design and back-end development. His soft skills are terrific. And he’s an auto restoration geek in training.

Adam joins the company today as our first full-time hire. Among the many applicants that responded to our listing, his passion and experience led the pack. Folks like this don’t come along often, and we’re pleased as punch he said, ‘Aye.’

Please join us in giving Adam a warm welcome. The Twitters are probably a good place for that: @adamjspooner. He’ll help us continue to connect companies and creative professionals seeking to make a better web, and for that we’re grateful.

Welcome, Adam!