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A little of what’s new, from a “matching” site, to video, to job boards, a tool to find passive candidates, a place to review employers in Australia … and a look at what might happen if LinkedIn and eHarmony had a baby.

Let’s start with Jobdreaming. In short, here’s how it works. A candidate (U.S. only for now) puts in the type of job they want (let’s say a design job making $50,000 within a certain number of miles radius of a given zip code). An employer — right now for free — sends in a job listing to Jobdreaming. It gets sent to candidates who match, along with a question of the employer’s choice. The candidate is still anonymous at this point. But, if the candidate is interested, they can express interest, and answer the question. The employer receives the contact information on the candidate, as well as the answer to the question the employer posed.

Jobdreaming has under 10 employees and is funded by two VC firms. In response to my question asking how this is different than the laundry list of matching sites we’ve chronicled on ERE, the company mentions simplicity. Instead of starting with a specific job description and trying to match a long list of personal traits with it, this begins with the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” concept.

Entelo’s Passive-candidate Sourcing, and More keep reading…

With the acquisition announced today of Indeed.com, Recruit.com has taken a major step toward becoming a worldwide recruitment powerhouse, directly challenging CareerBuilder, Monster, and Indeed’s most direct competitor, SimplyHired, for a share of the global employment advertising market.

A curiously eclectic conglomerate with holdings in the B2C classifieds and direct sales marketplace, Recruit has been moving aggressively to expand its human resources market, and broaden its footprint from Asia Pacific and especially Japan where it is headquartered. In the last two years, the company spent more than $700 million buying American staffing firms, establishing its first U.S. presence while simultaneously become one of the top four or five staffing firms in the world.

Recruit already was the dominant staffing and placement firm in Japan, where it operates both job boards and employment agencies. It also owns a piece of 51Jobs, the leading publicly traded job board in China. Buying Indeed, the No. 1 or No. 2 most trafficked job board in the world (depending on what’s counted and how), Recruit leaves no doubt it intends to be a global player.

“I think that’s their goal,” said Paul Forster, co-founder and CEO of Indeed. “We are the No. 1  job site worldwide, which makes us a good fit with the company plans … They are looking to Indeed to be their tech platform worldwide.” keep reading…

Just a taste of what’s new of late: keep reading…

Once named a Red Herring top 100 tech company, today the very survival of job matching site Jobfox is in doubt.

The company into which venture funds poured $40 million is under attack from vendors and customers, and is facing down a class action suit alleging fraud and misrepresentation in connection with its resume writing and premium job services.

At this point, it’s not clear what the status of the company is. Calls and emails to the company, its VC backers, and founder and former CEO Rob McGovern have had no response. McGovern’s LinkedIn profile says he left Jobfox in June to launch Cobrain, which he describes there as “a mobile technology company operating in stealth mode.” Before launching Jobfox, McGovern founded and managed CareerBuilder, which was sold to a group of newspaper publishers.

One source said that as of several months ago, vendors with unpaid bills were being directed to Sherwood Partners, a firm specializing in corporate restructuring, and other services. A firm vice president confirmed there had been contact with Jobfox, but decline to discuss what role Sherwood now plays, if any. keep reading…

Today, talent-focused big data comes to small business. While in France, big data comes to big employers.

Both developments involve Monster’s cloud-based semantic search, SeeMore. Both are big news for the company, representing in the first instance a market push into the long tail of employers, while in the second, a broadening of its service offerings into non-English speaking Europe. But otherwise, the developments are unconnected.

Somewhat more than a year after Monster first launched SeeMore, Monster is now offering the service to companies with as few as 50 workers. It’s not a stripped down version, Javid Muhammedali, Monster’s director, Product Management, assured me. “We didn’t slim down the feature set.”

What the developers did do was to make some adjustments so employers without a technical staff could begin to use SeeMore right after they sign up. For instance, instead of using APIs, the SMB version of SeeMore is email-based. Send one resume, or Zip up hundreds. keep reading…

“Free” is the new “paid” in recruiting technology, and Work4Labs is joining that party, offering some of its product at no cost for smaller companies.

Work4Labs, which also announced it got $11 million in new funding, helps companies (like Intel, described briefly here) use Facebook to set up career pages, advertise to candidates, track results, and — as I mentioned last fall — get referrals.

The free version of its product, for small and medium size companies, allows companies to launch Facebook career sites and post jobs on the site, as well as generate referrals. It’ll cost extra to integrate the Facebook data with a company’s applicant tracking system, or to do certain customizations of the Facebook pages. keep reading…

iCIMS, a SaaS provider of recruiting technology, bought its social media partner Jobmagic, according to an announcement today.

Jobmagic had been an iCIMS partner, providing its customers access to social media sites where they could post their openings, as well as enabling them to build networks and attract candidates through social media job matching.

One of the key strengths of the platform is its versatility. It allows recruiters and employment marketers to integrate video links and blogs with the postings, and to include a direct link to recruiters should a potential candidate have questions. Besides posting to the big three — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter — Jobmagic has some 300 other social sites to which jobs can be posted automatically. keep reading…

a company page for iPhones

LinkedIn is launching a few changes. Some of the most interesting revolve around a mobile-friendly version of its company pages. Droid and iPhone users, rather than using a phone to view company pages like they do with a computer, will have a streamlined, mobile-optimized company page (see graphic at right).

Another change is that as part of people’s “Recent Updates,” the “jobs you may be interested in” will appear.

Below is an example of what those “jobs you may be interested in” looks like, also shown on an iPhone.

"jobs you may be interested in"

LinkedIn had been experiencing some pretty high bounce rates when smart phone users tried its non-optimized pages using smart phones, an issue it has wanted to address as about one of five users come to LinkedIn via a mobile device. Nineteen people-searches are done on LinkedIn every second from mobile devices, and 41 LinkedIn profiles are viewed every second from mobile devices.

Growth is particularly strongly coming from LinkedIn iPad users, who generally tend to be more in more managerial positions than other LinkedIn users.

This & That

Meanwhile, here are a few other recent tidbits about recruiting job boards, venture capital funds, databases, and more.

keep reading…

HireVue, the video interviewing company, got $22 million the other day, a combination of $17 million in new investment and $5 million in an expansion of its credit.

The announcement of the new funding says it “will be focused on strategic investments in research and development, sales and marketing, client services, and global expansion.”

The $22 million, plus $6 million HireVue raised in two previous rounds, gives the 60-person company a big chunk of change. Exactly what it will be used for wasn’t explained in the announcement, and when I asked, here’s what I was sent:

HireVue also plans to increase headcount in solution development, sales and marketing and customer success to maintain its position as the leader in the digital interviewing category.

Kevin Marasco, HireVue’s CMO, offered more detail in a conversation today. HireVue already has such global, blue-chip companies as Walmart, Starbucks, Conoco/Phillips, and Rio Tinto, so a logical step is to move into Europe and Asia/Pacific, he said, mentioning Australia, India, and China.

HireVue, though, is quickly becoming more than a provider of virtual recruiting services. Its digital platform can be used — and is by some of its clients — to deliver company and branding videos to candidates. Some are already using the digital video capabilities for internal conferencing, and candidate onboarding. Marasco explained that other “extensions of the application” for training and leadership are likely.

Video recruiting is a crowded space, with at least a couple dozen companies offering video interviewing services, which tells you that online video interviewing is growing, and not a tough field to enter. In fact, anyone with a webcam (and that’s almost everyone these days) can load Skype and conduct a live interview for free. keep reading…

Kenexa’s stock is up about 40% early today on news IBM’s buying the company for about $1.3 billion.

IBM says it’s buying Kenexa to bolster “social business initiatives.” IBM tells me that Rudy Karsan, the well-regarded founder and CEO of Kenexa, will stay with the new company.

Kenexa has a mix of products and services, from RPO to applicant tracking systems (through its BrassRing product).

Some of what’s new, what’s changed, or that you just may not have heard of before.

Today’s tools include Facebook recruiting, keeping track of job applicants, college grad hiring, startup recruiting, and in-house recruitment training. keep reading…

Source Mob helps you “plug into social media to sell your jobs.” This explains in brief how it works on Facebook; it also works with Twitter and other sites. Essentially, it’s pulling jobs from your applicant tracking system and spreading them onto social media sites.

Source Mob has about 18 contractors working for it, out of Minneapolis. It’s self-funded and plans on raising more money soon.

You Want More? keep reading…

Challenger, Gray & Christmas says good Americans should spend more and stay later at work.

Really.

That’s at least how we, in our own twisted way, read a press release this week from the global outplacement firm. Monday morning, after a full weekend of Olympics watching, CG&C sent out a note saying “many fans who want to watch live events will do so from their work desks.” You know what that means, accounting will be watching live ping pong instead of getting to month-end closing.

Not to worry, soothes CEO John Challenger, “In reality, it will have no measurable impact on the overall economy.” Why so, you wonder? “At the end of the day, productivity will be no worse for wear, as employees who slacked off during the workday, stay later to complete their projects or take work home…”

Los Angeles councilmembers evidently didn’t agree with Mr. Challenger, harrumphing that “City employees aren’t paid to watch the Olympics.”

If those slackers really want to step up to help the economy, they’ll do what you should be doing: SPEND MONEY WILDLY. “Cautious consumers may hurt the tenuous recovery,” the CG&C press release goes on to say. “Hiring going forward will, in large part, be defined by the demand of consumers,”says CEO Challenger.

Are Cyborgs Covered by The ADA? keep reading…

Here are a few of the new sites, updates, and other product-and-service vendor goings-on you may not have heard about.

Booyango

A new site, called Booyango, is aimed at what the company calls the “almost 80% of the professional market where their information is hard to find online due to lack of privacy.” So it’s a job site — sorry, the company says it’s a “career network,” which is more than a job site, that will offer career planning tools and more — for people who aren’t looking for jobs and posting their resume all over kingdom come.

Employers post a job, and Booyango lets them know when there’s a match based on factors such as skills, experience, and type of work the person is interested in. Later, the match will be based on more: for example, physical appearance such as eye color, for entertainment-industry jobs.

Right now, there’s no charge during what it calls an “exclusive access period.” Later this year, it’ll cost a monthly fee, rather than per post.

Three co-founders and a small group of Angel investors have funded Booyango (which is pretty much a random word they pulled out of nowhere, with no particular meaning, if you’re curious). It has nine employees, and is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

More Tidbits keep reading…

The site that “aims to do a bit of everything” is doing a bit more this morning. And it’s an interesting something more that takes its cue from direct hire recruiting.

Launching this morning, and only in metro New York, is GetHired‘s Job Seeker Spotlight. Five lucky, handpicked job seekers will get profiled in an email being sent to recruiters and hiring managers for their review. If they like what they see, they can reach out to the candidates and invite them to become applicants.

“The Job Seeker Spotlight is a conduit for job seekers to stand out and have hundreds of hiring managers learn about them in just a few hours, at no cost,” says Suki Shah, co-founder and CEO at GetHired.com.

It’s more of a macro match-up than anything really granular. Candidates are selected because of the thoroughness of their GetHired profiles, their locale, and their varied industries. Up to five a day will be featured, and, says GetHired’s Allison VanNest, all are quality candidates. keep reading…

Beyond what I mentioned yesterday, here are some more bits o’ news and chatter from the SHRM conference in Atlanta.

Beyond.com, which runs local and niche sites like Phillyjobs.com, launched its version of “communities.” I’ve grown a tad skeptical of that word as its meaning has become as broad and vague as the word “empowerment.” But regardless of whether what Beyond is doing is truly a community, the portals/pages associated with them are actually pretty impressive. Here’s the one for the legal field, which involves articles, job listings, links to similar communities, and the ability to “follow,” a la Twitter. Beyond’s CEO tells me he’s trying to establish a third place — with LinkedIn being a professional site, Facebook a personal site, and Beyond.com a career and personal development site.

Speaking of communities: keep reading…

Out here in Atlanta, the Society for Human Resource Management is having its annual conference. SHRM’s event, in case you’ve never been, is a big one, drawing more than 13,000 people, and featuring speakers like Condi Rice (fresh off her show-stealing Utah event) and Malcom Gladwell.

Here’s just a taste of the chatter from a few of the HR/recruiting vendors here. keep reading…

Bullhorn, the software company that powers much of the staffing and SMB recruiting market, has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners. The Boston-based tech firm announced the deal this morning.

The financial terms were not made public; however, sources, including TechCrunch, said the sales price was in the “low nine-figures.” That would be a near tripling of the company’s valuation since 2008 when it got a $26 million VC fund investment.

“It’s a big day here,” CEO and founder Art Papas said. “The employees are really pumped up.” There are two reasons for the excitement, Papas said. Because of stock options, many employees will see a financial windfall, but as important, he added, is that Bullhorn will remain independent and growing.

“I work with some incredible people. And with this acquisition, no one is leaving. Just the contrary, we’ll be growing.” keep reading…

Technology prowess in Nashville; purpose at work; StrengthFinders; Mom! I Got a Job, Bamamba, and much more. Yes, it’s this week’s roundup.

Nashville: A Tech Power

Seriously? Forbes says the home of the Grand Ole Opry and its environs is one of the hottest metro areas in the U.S. for tech jobs. Umm. OK. If you say so. (We liked the pictures.) The Forbes list includes all the usual suspects, in addition to the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee area, and the equally unexpected Jacksonville, Florida area.

They made the list because Forbes ranked cities on their percentage of growth, which gives an edge to areas with few tech jobs that see a spurt. That may be why Austin, Texas, and metro Boston failed to make the list.

A new “matching” site, a new social media/employee-referral site, and the negatives of stripping.

Yes, it’s our regular roundup of recruiting and HR happenings, below.

Social Referrals keep reading…