{"id":134,"date":"2017-11-09T13:46:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T13:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandhoot.com\/blog\/?p=134"},"modified":"2018-08-14T14:23:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T14:23:35","slug":"why-we-built-hubsource-and-became-chamberforce-workforce-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandhoot.com\/blog\/why-we-built-hubsource-and-became-chamberforce-workforce-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we built Hubsource and how it became ChamberForce"},"content":{"rendered":"

S<\/span>outheast Minnesota\u2019s business community is thriving, but something significant is holding us back: workforce.<\/p>\n

How can our community fill an ever-increasing shortage of workers, retain more graduates, better serve underemployed individuals, and better match current workers with open opportunities?<\/p>\n

For many years, community leaders have talked about potential solutions and made progress on workforce initiatives. Despite positive steps, bolder action is needed.<\/p>\n

In mid-2015, the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce reached out to my team and I to discuss some ideas. The concept was to create an online \u201chub\u201d of all things workforce that could be leveraged by businesses, nonprofits, community members, college students, outsiders, and locals alike.<\/p>\n

The new platform would also need to support and align with existing community workforce efforts.<\/p>\n

Is this just another job board?<\/h3>\n

Not really. Let me explain.<\/p>\n

Yes, the platform needed to become an excellent job board, totally free for chamber member employers and job seekers. We also needed to incorporate a workforce resources portal for our regional community and hiring tools for small and medium businesses.<\/p>\n

But what if we could create more than just an alternative job board? Something truly better.<\/p>\n

We spent close to a year working with our regional Chamber team to turn over every stone, digging into workforce needs and searching for answers.<\/p>\n

Our philosophy of \u201clisten first\u201d led us to invest hundreds of hours surveying over 200 local businesses and nonprofits, personally meeting with many of them, and closely collaborating with higher education and regional leaders.<\/p>\n

We dug through dozens of national job boards, off-the-shelf platforms, and other workforce tools. Everything we could find.<\/p>\n

One persistent issue, for example, was that the Chamber needed to purchase 1500 licenses (one for each chamber member). The few solutions we liked overall were not designed for this sort of volume licensing model, and after a couple of years it would have cost the chamber significantly more than just starting with a custom solution.<\/p>\n

Nothing fit.<\/p>\n

It was time to make a bold investment.<\/p>\n

Building a workforce hub from scratch<\/h3>\n

Every feature of the platform has been carefully planned and constructed based on community input. Our prototype-first approach enabled us to get early feedback on concepts and make agile adjustments before writing any code.<\/p>\n

Our community was extremely helpful in clarifying the short and long-term vision. More than just a piece of technology, this needed to be a platform<\/strong> for holistic workforce growth.<\/p>\n