How long has the debate about the definition of talent community been raging? Here’s a piece from a decade ago that seems to continue to make sense today.
After all of the hype associated with the emergence of the World Wide Web, the winner of the most often overused term is clearly “Community”. Everything from Adult oriented chat on AOL to commodities exchanges has been referred to as a “community”. While overuse has obscured the value of the word, no suitable substitute has emerged to describe the kinds of communications and relationships that, impossible before the web, have come to dominate certain corridors of eCommerce.
In Electronic Recruiting, the high water mark is held by a cranky little operation called Craig’s List. The firm combines housing, roommate referral, general discussion, items for sale, a modest political orientation and general San Francisco demeanor into a hub for a certain, thin slice demographic. Often showcased as “the” example of how to run a community based job-advertising business, the little company has begun to believe its own press and is attempting to “go national”.Other examples include an unmentionably- named source of intrigue in the dot com world (Fu***dcompany.com), the Vault and Wet Feet. These companies make their livings by providing a variety of types of insider’s looks into a company. (It’s useful to understand that negative PR is a fact of life in today’s world of broadly distributed desktop publishing.)
The real benchmark for community based Recruiting is still the Well. The Well, now owned by Salon Magazine remains the archetype of online community. In order to recruit effectively among the glitterati that inhabit this discussion board, one must be a functioning member of the community with contributions to make beyond pragmatic business needs.
Developers.net, a quiet but influential technical job board, hosts the job offerings at Slashdot, the single most influential industry “community”. By delivering jobs directly into this highly credible but eclectic mix, Developers.net allows an advertiser to get even closer to the end target demographic.
The reason that community based recruiting (Internet Doublespeak for micro niche demographic targeting) is catching fire is that the discipline, in the final analysis, is all about precision targeting. Communities provide a great way to learn the basics.
