NOTE: This is purely an idea I had and in no way represents an intended feature we're going to add. I'm posting it to see if it could be shaped into something useful, get feedback, etc. I haven't even asked the rest of the company what they think yet, because I'm not even sure this idea would work.
One of our core values is that anything we do to make money as a business has to benefit the community as well. This is the entire reason we put so much work into Careers 2.0.
I was thinking yesterday about how Careers can let you leverage the reputation you've built at SO into something tangible (hopefully an awesome job), but this doesn't help all the people who already have jobs they love. One of the companies we work with was lamenting the fact that there's no easy way for them to show off the fact that they have some really high rep, smart SO users on staff and that they are very proud of this. It could actually help them recruit people. And it would be valuable for the people who work there to shine some of their awesomenessTM on their company (if they wanted to). They could probably do it in an ad-hoc way but maybe we could assist.
I rolled up a bunch of my ideas into this mockup:
- The companies can sponsor (i.e. pay us for) a landing page. Maybe it's at company.stackoverflow.com or stackoverflow.com/company
- The landing page is company branded - logo at the top, they pick which questions show up by choosing their 'tag set', and they can show an ad as well as any job listings they are currently advertising.
- Employees can somehow set their current company which adds them to the 'employee' page for the company. Maybe this shows up as a piece of flair where their name/gravatar/rep appears when they answer questions.
- There is a spot of honor like our user leagues but specific to the company.
This gives employers a virtual place on Stack Overflow that they can point people to. You could go there and interact with Stack Overflow in exactly the same way you do now (except the tag set is restricted).
Questions:
- Is this appealing to employers? Is there anything we could add to make it more appealing?
- Is this appealing to happily employed SO users who like their employers? Is there anything we could add to make it more appealing?
- Is this a good idea? If not, is there anything I could change to make it better?