[Foundation-l] Community Hiring banner

[Philippe Beaudette]

Hi all,

Just wanted to report back on the "Work at Wikimedia" banners that ran  
on the site the last few days.

The idea behind them was to uncover talent for the community  
department that doesn't necessarily haunt the "usual" places.  We  
specifically wanted to reach out to people who used the projects, that  
had new, interesting, or well developed and thought-out ideas for the  
community department.  We knew the banner usage was a little unusual  
but honestly believed that we'd cast a wider net and turn up some  
interesting candidates for positions in the community department.

I'm pleased to say that we're thrilled with the results.  After a few  
days of running the banner at a relatively low display percentage, we  
have more than 1500 submissions, many of which are very interesting.   
It's obviously going to take us some time to look through them, but  
from our perspective, the banners did what we wanted them to do.

With all that said, the comments about the "opportunity cost" of  
running those banners on the world's fifth most-viewed web properties  
is an important one.  It's one that we explored and will continue to  
explore.  You may have noticed that we actually tried out two  
different "sizes" of banners, as well.  I don't have any numbers yet  
to report as to whether the smaller size of the later banners made a  
different in the number or quality of the applicants; it's just too  
early to know.

While I'm about to turn off the banners, we want to continue to  
encourage people to go to the application page ( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:CommunityHiring 
  ), since we're actually turning the banners off in advance of the  
deadline that we set.  However, we continue to look for talented  
people, and the community hiring page will stay live for the immediate  
future.

Thanks, everyone, for your feedback during this trial.  Please look  
for people that would be interested in sending us their information  
for jobs in the community department.

Best,
Philippe


____________________
Philippe Beaudette	
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation

philippe at wikimedia.org

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