By Robert Kalesse
Special to Delaware Business Times
Since his election in 2012, City Council Member Darius Brown has been focused on Wilmington’s unemployment issue. Two years later, the Delaware Business Times 40 Under 40 honoree was pleased to see his vision come to life, announcing the launch of Wilmington.TweetMyJobs.com in his hometown.
“It is with great pride that we are able to bring this wonderful job recruiting campaign to a city and surrounding area filled with people still looking for work,” Brown said last week during a press conference at Franklin Fibre-Lamitex Corporation, one of the city’s last industrial plastics manufacturers.
TweetMyJobs, a national mobile job search platform founded in 2009, provides connections within job seekers’ existing social networks to produce job referrals and introductions with potential employers. Brown said that, with the support Mayor Dennis P. Williams, New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon, and members of Capital One 360, Wilmington.TweetMyJobs.com would help bridge the gap between employers and the unemployed.
“As of today, on the Wilmington.TweetMyJobs.com site, there are more than 3,000 jobs available in the Wilmington metro area,” Brown said. “To me, that says that there is opportunity for everyone out there, including job seekers and businesses from small to large, to solve the unemployment problem in this city.”
Overall, Wilmington’s unemployment rate has improved, dropping from 8.8 percent in January of 2014, to 6.4 percent by year’s end, according to the Delaware Department of Labor. However, despite the improvement, Brown sees only the harsh reality that 2,028 city residents are still without jobs.
Brown said that soon after he was elected in 2012, he “researching workforce development strategies that pair specifically with new technology and social media.”
Jae Sung, Vice President of Client Success for CareerArc Group, a leading social and mobile recruiting company that founded TweetMyJobs, was on hand Monday for the announcement, and compared Wilmington’s unemployment landscape to that of Allentown, Pa.
“They’re very similar in terms of demographic and size,” Sung said. “With each city, our goal is to see a three-to-ten-times return on investment on the TweetMyJobs campaign, which will offer local businesses a recruiting advantage that is typically reserved for Fortune 1000 companies.”
Sung explained that the return on investment is typically measured by the individual client, but value obtained by employers using the platform to recruit for their open positions is typically part of the equation. Brown, meanwhile, said success, in his mind, meant a minimum of 200 jobs filled through the program.
Brown also said that an investment of $50,000 was necessary to acquire the services of CareerArc and their TweetMyJobs campaign, including $35,000 from the office of Mayor Dennis P. Williams, $5,000 from Gordon’s office, and $10,000 raised privately through fundraising.
Despite the name of the campaign, job seekers will not need to have a Twitter account to access the TweetMyJobs.com campaign. Brown said all that’s required is access to a computer, wherein those seeking work can open an account.
“I understand that certain people don’t own a smartphone, or have access to a personal computer all the time,” Brown said. “The beauty of this program is that you can get connected through social media, text, email, or through the account itself. All it requires is access to a computer, which can be done at your local library.”
At the end of 2015, Brown said, he would like to see the TweetMyJobs campaign to have helped local employers and potential employees fill at least 200 jobs. “In my mind,” the council member said, “that, to me, would signify success.”
