It seems like every organization is using social media to attract and engage interesting and qualified people in their opportunities. While they call this “community” building, I am not sure that is the best term. A standard definition of community is, “A group of people living together in one place.” It also implies that they are made up of a spectrum of people.
But corporations are striving to build groups made up of only people who have the same general interests and abilities. This is a special interest group – not a community.
Maybe that would be clearer to everyone if we got out of the community hype and began to build very specific SIGS. People understand that better and realize that they can belong to many SIGS at the same time. It is rather difficult to be part of several communities. One firm calls them “hives” and I like that term a lot as well – both corporations and candidates are after the honey. Much more descriptive an useful than the term.
Job seekers can now scan a vast array of possibilities and explore potential jobs they would never have been aware of prior to social media. The same goes for recruiters who can now touch thousands of people who were invisible before. To try and interest a subset in your opportunities makes good sense, but the place they go to needs to be organized and curated to match their general interests. This is what special interest groups have always done. Whether it was the Home Brew Computer Club in early Silicon Valley where Steve Jobs and Apple started or an Internet-facilitated virtual group, the end result is for like minded people to come together, share and learn.
I am not sure why we have begin calling these groups a community – I suppose to differentiate them from talent pools or a databases — but the term SIG has a long and noble lineage and should be used instead.
Recent Comments