The whisper networks helping workers get jobs – By Alex Christian (BBC) / Sept 13, 2022
Private online communities for like-minded professionals are growing in popularity – and they’re being used by employees to land their next role.
In 2015, David Feinman joined a new community of digital marketers on Skype. “It was 200 people bouncing ideas off one another,” explains the Pennsylvania-based video-advertising agency owner. “The founder had originally wanted to figure out an SEO [search] problem, so he brought a bunch of SEO workers into one group and had them work on it. After they solved the issue, people brought up other problems to fix; before you knew it, it was a superpower group.”
The community switched to messaging platform Slack. Membership soon swelled: thousands of workers began joining. Today, Online Geniuses has 40,000 digital marketers from all over the world. “We have different Slack channels for any type of digital marketing topic,” says Feinman, now a partner and moderator of the group. “Every day, people will share their questions, ideas and projects they’re working on; if you have a problem, you can be unstuck in minutes.”
Online Geniuses also acts as a job board, with a dedicated hiring channel. “Yesterday, we had six vacancies posted,” says Feinman. He estimates up to 40 roles are shared on the network every week, with members giving one another a “heads-up” on the latest opportunities at their companies. Contract work is also available. “It can be task-based, where someone is looking for a specific expert to run analytics, and the person who’s done it 200 times before replies and gets the work.”
CONTINUE > https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220912-the-whisper-networks-helping-workers-get-jobs
