When Rahm Emanuel won the mayoral election, he vowed to recruit people from all walks of life to be involved with his administration.
"If you ever thought of public service as part of your life, sharpen your resume," Emanuel said after naming his transition team co-chairs, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. "I want people. ... with a level of experience and background from the private sector, from academia, from our foundations and charities to be part of city government. This is a unique time in our city's future. It's a chance to make a new, fresh start. And that means bringing in talent and energy that we usually don't see in public service."
It appears that mayor-elect Emanuel was serious. On Tuesday, the Chicago 2011 Transition Committee launched its website, www.chicago2011.org. The site allows visitors to share their ideas for the city, and even apply for jobs. Transition team members hope it will help the Emanuel administration "attract a wide range of applicants from across Chicago and recruit the best talent available," according to the site.
Outgoing Mayor Richard Daley has been trying to move away from the old Chicago mantra of "we don't want nobody nobody sent" for some time, and Emanuel's site is similar to one Daley launched last year.
When looking to fill aldermanic vacancies in 2010, the Daley administration posted the $110,556-a-year government jobs online.
The Chicago 2011 site is just the latest online initiative Emanuel's team has launched. During the mayoral campaign, he had quite the web presence.
According to his campaign, Emanuel had 61,956 Facebook fans, 12,784 Twitter followers and a substantial amount of traffic to his campaign site, ChicagoForRahm.com by February 22.
"Most of the campaign's volunteers were recruited through online sign-up," an Emanuel spokesperson told HuffPost Chicago via email. "Over 6,000 people entered their information on the site's Volunteer form, and over 5,000 submitted 'Ideas for Chicago.'"
Check out Chicago2011.org here.