It's free, it lets you embed multimedia, and you don't have to be a Web developer to set it up and use it. Squidoo, the brainchild of Seth Godin, allows you to create multimedia pages called "Lenses" that can be about nearly any topic you can think of.
I've known about the site for some time, but a few weeks ago I got inspired by the idea of creating a better online job advertisement. In past blog entries I've made it clear that I'm not enthusiastic about the vast majority of online job ads. Generally speaking, they extinguish interest rather than create it. Instead of recruiting interested people, they spout incomprehensible Human Resources department jargon at you. Instead of talking about the benefits of working for a company in a great city, they bludgeon you with laundry lists of requirements.
For a while, I thought that perhaps the antidote is to write intriguing, short job adverts in status updates like Twitter or Facebook with a link to an application or more complete descriptions. The 140 character limit for Twitter is perfect for forcing you to distill the essence of a job opportunity for a reader.
Squidoo lenses are something entirely different. Imagine being able to put together videos, pictures, copy, PDF's, PowerPoints--in short the best rich media experiences the Web can offer--quickly and simply at no cost. You can create something far more compelling and interesting than just text (that will cost you hundreds of dollars on a job board) and leave the reader with a call to action.
I put together a sample Lens here about some positions I'm sourcing for at a client in Springfield, Illinois. The big challenge of recruiting for Springfield is that it's not a big metropolitan market and has a pretty limited pool of technology professionals, so it needs to be appealing enough to draw in people from other parts of the country. I took a stab at showing some of the great things about living there like the beautiful buildings, information about cost of living, and even some video to show that it's not as small of a city as you might initially think.
I put about an hour of work into the site and I’m definitely not holding it up as a paragon of what could be done but as an example of what’s possible.
Do you have an experience using Squidoo as an employment branding tool? Have you used other similar tools on the Web? Tell others about your idea or experience in the Comments section!
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