Our post from May 20 about Southwest’s cool branding site generated a lot of traffic. So we thought what better way to follow up on it by showing you how to create one of your own for very little cost. Creating one is actually very easy. The hard part however, will be filling it with content.
What’s great about the Southwest site is that it utilizes new media that already exists like Youtube and flickr. So you wont have to bug your IT department to set it up for you. Just head on over to Ning.com and create your very own social network.
Ning is a service which lets anyone create a community site for free. Or you can pay up to $45 bucks a month to customize it. That includes forwarding a domain to it and uploading logos, etc so that it matches your company’s branding. Another such service is Standoutjobs. They are a more recruiting focused service available for $149 month and come with features like an ATS. But this post will focus on Ning since we’re more familiar with it.
Setting up a Ning site is fast and easy, any web savvy person can do it. Its features include blogs, video hosting, a member directory, discussion forums, photo hosting and groups. They also have a variety of plugins you can use to enhance it. It also allows you to send broadcast messages to the entire membership so it doubles as a great marketing tool.
Using Ning, a company can create a site just like Southwest. Simply create your account and follow the instructions to arrange your page via a drag-and-drop interface. Here’s an example of the admin page for managing your Ning site.
What better way to showcase your company than through its own online community? Today’s corporate recruiters need to start making social media technology a priority in order to attract the next generation workforce. In this weeks Workforce Magazine, Libby Sartain, former Yahoo People Chief says the following about the challenges for todays HR leaders:
I think the talent marketplace in the last two or three years has changed so dramatically that almost everything we do in HR has got to change with it. The evolution on the Internet, social media, the global economy, the Gen Y generation coming of age creates a situation where you can no longer just think that you can have an opening, and recruit for the opening and get an employee.
The company used to be in the driver’s seat. Here’s the job I have. Here’s how much I want to pay you to do it. Come to work for me under my terms as the employer. I think those days are fading.
Basically she is stating that todays employers must shift recruiting dollars to a proactive, rather than reactive approach. Thats what web 2.0 is about. Its not about posting a job, its about communicating with prospective candidates. Its about engaging them on their own turf, whether thats on MySpace, Facebook or any other number of social media sites which they visit.
The problem that todays HR leaders face is that many are unprepared for these new technologies and have a hard time understanding their usefulness (as does company mgmt). But don’t let that be an excuse. If we were running an HR department today we would bypass job boards entirely and start by establishing a presence across the social media web, including creating a community of our own. And that where sites like Ning come in. As we said before, the hard part will be creating content for your own community site. But we suggest involving your employees to help fill it.
- Give your summer interns a camera and video recorder and send them out to document their experience.
- Consider doing some podcasts on Jobs in Pods and let us interview your hiring managers about their open jobs and management style.
- Take tons of photos and put them online.
- Start blogging. Get your recruiters to blog about new jobs, benefits and what sets your firm apart from others.
In short, stop talking down to job seekers and start involving them in the conversation. The companies who accomplish this will become an employer of choice among the next generation of workers.
June 5, 2008 at 1:32 pm |
[...] benefits plan rarely makes the difference between market leadership and failure. Okay, what about recruitment, performance management and retention? These certainly are critical activities, and ever more [...]