CareerNetworkMinistry.org

CareerNetworkMinistry.org (hereinafter, the Site) is the official website of the Career Network Ministry (also known by its acronym, CNM; hereinafter, CNM) located at https://careernetworkministry.org

History

Earliest attempt

Gary Ihar installed the first instance of WordPress in early 2016. This instance featured a WP-Meetup plugin developed by Ryan Flannagan. This plugin fetched event information from the meetup group of CNM and created posts for each event. The plugin provided an event calendar for displaying upcoming events on an event page. 3-5 upcoming events were also featured on the Site pages as a widget.

The Site visitors could RSVP for the upcoming events while just clicking on the buttons published on the Site. If someone was not a user of Meetup.com, or not a member of the group, the plugin directed this user to the registration pages.

The plugin crashed the Site several times. Gary Ihar and Ryan Flannagan exchanged several emails, but when it became clear the plugin developers abandoned its development projects, leaders of CNM Digital Services at that time, Gary Ihar and Sergei S. decided to move on to other options.

First enterprise-level site

While being inspired by Dr. Mallard Owen's vision to equip CNM with enterprise-level technology, the team launched a new version of the Site. The version was built on a Liferay instance and featured the video introduction of CNM on its front screen. To ease the video upload, later just a short snippet of attendees walking in the Ministry's hallway was left; the complete video was available on the "Watch" click.

The version didn't survive the major crash of the technology in 2016.

Second enterprise-level site

In late 2016, Alex installed an instance of Odoo and the team configured email service using the Yandex.Mail product. The security was partially backed by a Let's Encrypt certificate.

Natly drafted a new layout based on recommendations of several attendees of CNM and requirements collected by Gary Ihar from Bob Korzeniewski. The landing screen featured a quote of an executive of the U.S. Department of Labor,

the Rolls-Royce of faith-based job clubs in the United States.

Natly also installed an additional component to manage files in order to allow for publishing and downloading presentations. Gary Ihar and Romanof worked on a project to integrate meetup event announcements into the Site until the project was abandoned in mid-2017. By that time, Dr. Mallard Owen left CNM and the need in enterprise-level technology had faded.

Purpose

The Site shall serve the following purposes:

1. To present CNM to occasional Site visitors.
2. To direct:
   • Those users of the World Wide Web who search for career-oriented resources in the Washington DC metro area to the Site. Content is very important. That is where Content Writing/Marketimg comes in as well as identifying and incorporating Keywords phrases to generate visibility to the site and ranking with the search engines.
   • Those visitors of the Site who are interested in CNM's services to CNM's meetup and LinkedIn groups.
3. To help those who plan to attend CNM to get oriented in its services.

Requirements

Top-level

Bob Korzeniewski:

I have a quote that stays in my mind - People don't care what you know till they know that you care. So not sure how to balance our expertise with our caring [...] my gut is the initial take away is that CNM is a warm - comfortable - caring place - then hit them with meetup and other info. Definitely open for debate/discussion - thanks for starting the ball as the initial impression is important.

The Site shall offer neither registration nor fill-in forms. All resources shall be available to every visitor without any credentials or requirements.

Functional

The Site shall provide its visitors with:

1. Link to CNM's meetup group. The Contact Us section shall also point to this group.
2. Link to CNM's LinkedIn group.
3. Downloadable PDF version of the CNM manual and key presentations.

Benchmarking

The Team will consider the following resources for the best practices to be incorporated:

1. Career Connectors - A Phoenix based group that runs their Jobs Club as a separate non-profit (501(c)3). They are active in multiple Churches - different model - some training but more of a Job Fair structure. https://careerconnectors.org
2. Roswell United Methodist Church (RUMC) - They have fully embraced their Jobs Ministry as a core part of the Church for the last 25+ years. Lots of media and print have covered their success story. They do no have a separate website that I know of - this link is part of the Church's website but worth reviewing. https://www.rumc.com/jobnetworking/
3. Neighbors helping Neighbors - Website is very busy - but these guys have been a very active Jobs Group and expanded their model to other locations. Might be something of value. https://www.nhnusa.org/index.html
4. Career Confidence - The local group run by Robert Brandeau. They keep it simple but communicate pretty regularly. https://www.career-confidence.org
5. 40 Plus DC - A Job's Group in the city - offers some free services - but then upsells paid services. Has been around for a long time! http://www.40plus-dc.org
6. Hired Texas offers some website of organizations similar to CNM. They have some simple but great stuff. It’s https://hiredtexas.org The website is not good, their info is.

Content layout

Landing page

1. Generally information on CNM
2. Featured workshop and services summary format pictures and/or short video intro to hook the user
3. A video of the Orientation Workshop - we just record it
4. CNM Manual PDF download
5. Evaluation Spreadsheet download given out in the workshop
6. User friendly picture links layout of the other workshop and resources at CNM.

Drafts

Bob -- Completely agreed, the website needs to demonstrate our both power and care. In my experience, the care can only be projected by something that Esperanza mentioned -- caring user experience or UX. And this UX, like a good resume or interviewing skills, needs some time and tons of efforts. I would suggest regular iterations, and I can see that we can find volunteer contributors, but the team would need some product owner's involvement -- if not you, there should be someone else who can make decisions.

Also -- I feel like we need to clarify the project. I would suggest to chunk it in several phases -- let say, to start with something better than we have now. Later, to benchmark and incorporate best practices from similar services. And so on.