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December 14, 2015

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How the #JobsADL movement started

I’d been eyeing @WeAreADL on Twitter for awhile. The concept was rather new to me. It’s a RoCur account, or in other words, rotating curation. Each week someone new takes over and hosts the community. As the name suggests @WeAreADL is themed around Adelaide and the people who live there.

JobsADL

Everyone who comes on board brings their own unique perspective – facilitating conversations and sharing topics that matter to them. For one person that was interesting sites around Adelaide such as food places. For another, it was their views on medical marijuana. For me, personally, it was jobs in Adelaide and helping those who were looking. Although I talked about many different things while I was on, the main theme of my week turned out to be jobs. Why jobs? As I’m currently searching for a new opportunity myself and know first-hand what it’s like to be unemployed – I wanted to use my platform to help others in similar situations.

How it all began…

Amy, one of the admins, invited me to host during the week of a pretty unpleasant heatwave in Adelaide (and looks like that’s not the end of that yet). Because I’d expressed interest earlier, I was eager to accept and began on Sunday the 6th of December (completing my term on the 13th). The moment I did my first tweet I was overwhelmed with the amount of interaction. The community was highly active and my notifications were going off the chart. It was a little hard to keep up at first! I spent my week pretty glued to the account engaging with everyone. As the week went on though I settled into the role and got into a groove with it.

On the 7th, I put out a tweet for anyone looking for work.

*Please note the account now has a new host*.

Chris Scriva suggested coming up with a hashtag so potential employers could see the tweets.

I thought that was a good idea, so I asked the community for suggestions.

People chimed in with suggestions, but my favourite was #JobsADL by Greg Barila.

Greg ran a poll to see what people’s thoughts were on a hashtag. Although my favourite didn’t win, the final say was still up to me.

I chose #JobsADL as the hashtag and began a campaign of tweets about it to get the message out. You can see some below.

The community were very positive towards the movement.

I was excited to gain the support of Seek, one of the best career websites in Australia. I use them all the time in my own job search. I also saw government departments and local councils get on board.

Notable players were:

  • The Local Government Association of South Australia
  • The History Council of South Australia
  • Aus Local Gov Jobs
  • The Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources
  • Australian Library and Information Association
  • Public Relations Institute of South Australia
  • SANE Australia

Not to mention the WeAreADL community and individuals who helped by retweeting, sharing and replying.

As the movement grew, I thought the best thing to do was secure the @JobsADL Twitter handle which also required coming up with a quick logo. I also bought a domain and a friend in the US helped me by providing hosting. I set up a very basic website overnight with an embedded Twitter feed of the hashtag #JobsADL. I had to remember how to write HTML / CSS and dusted off Dreamweaver which has changed a lot since I last used it. When I have time in the future I hope to do something more sophisticated. I also set up a Facebook page and Instagram account. I’d like to do even more in the future if time and resources allow. I have a lot of ideas. I am also open to suggestions from others.

I’d be interested if any government departments or local businesses wanted to talk to me about where we could take this.

If this takes off, I may not be able to do it all by myself but I am happy to see how this might evolve. I likely won’t be able to retweet everyone using the hashtag, but I hope interested people will use it and search it to keep it going.

What is #JobsADL? See this tweet for an explanation.

My aim of the #JobsADL movement is multifold.

It’s for job seekers and employers in Adelaide to connect with one another on social media. It started on Twitter but it may work on other platforms as well. It’s for people in our state to have a conversation about jobs and unemployment. It’s for people to help one another who may otherwise be in hopeless situations. It’s to give people hope.

A lot of people are on social media these days and it’s a great tool for connecting. Even if someone is not in the position to offer a job, they might know someone or something that might help. They can post a link to a job they’ve found online. They can let someone know about a company who’s hiring. They can connect the seeker to someone who might help. They can retweet and get a message out to a wider audience. Those looking for talent can search the hashtag to see if there’s anyone of interest or use it in their own job posts.

As you can see JobsADL has big dreams.

If you’re interested in getting involved please use or search the hashtag. You can also contact me here.

You can also follow along.

In summary, #JobsADL is a people-powered or social-powered movement for those looking for work or for talent in Adelaide.

It also includes the whole of South Australia. If you look closely you’ll see ‘SA’ in the name too.

Here are a few examples of job seekers using the hashtag.

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