The emails in your inbox may be fewer in December and your phone less busy, but not all’s quiet. Here’s what’s turned up in our mailbox so far this month:
Halogen Software is making hay over the acquisition of SuccessFactors by SAP.
Suggesting that some SuccessFactors customers “may be disadvantaged” by the deal, Halogen is luring them with a special deal: Switch now and Halogen will waive “any software fees for the remainder of the customer’s current term of their SuccessFactors contract.”
CareerBliss has named the happiest companies in America, with Hilton, Fluor, J&J, Nordstrom, Centex, and the Air Force among the leaders. CareerBliss examined about 100,000 employee reviews, evaluating work-life balance, one’s relationship with their boss and co-workers, their work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, their daily tasks, and job control over the work that they do on a daily basis.
Taleo CEO Mike Gregoire told Dow Jones News that the company is going to stay independent for now, despite the “tire-kickers coming around all the time.”
He sees the SuccessFactors acquisition as creating opportunities for Taleo and other HR vendors with SaaS delivery systems. “You’ve got this brighter spotlight that this technology is okay for the enterprise,” Gregoire is quoted as saying, predicting it will reassure companies hesitant about the safety of cloud computing.
“Unable to turn the site into a viable, self-supporting business,” VisualCV is closing up shop at the end of the month. Here’s an example of what one of these CV looked like; VisualCV says it will “destroy all user data” when the site ceases operations (unless, we suppose, a buyer swoops in).
As you can see from the countdown on its home page, a site called “It’s a Job Calling” is launching in about 80 days, possibly first in the UK, soon after or simultaneously in the U.S., and then in the rest of Europe. You record a phone message about your job offer; the message is called out to candidates (the site has more than a million UK CVs) who can either press zero to talk to you now, or call back later. It’s a Job Calling can call about 100 people in less than an hour. Managing Director Chris Smith says “the business is based on and around granted patents in the UK and U.S. This patent relates to ‘tags’ which candidates can use instead of giving out/or putting their number online; this then creates a repeatable and parasitic revenue that will mean we can make money from wherever, whenever they ‘use a tag.’ A tag grants the user absolute control over who can reach them and when … they give out their tag rather than their number.”
Adicio has a new offering to make classified job listings more mobile-friendly. It’s aimed more at job boards than corporate recruiting departments.
Climber — actually its parent company Mingle LLC — has acquired Affinity Circles. Climber, profitable since 2010, is a job site offering services both to employers and employees. You could call it a CRM for job seekers — used to manage your job applications, for example, or get sent a text message with directions to your job interview. Climber optimizes job seekers’ resumes/profiles to “actively market you to 70K+ recruiters through email, RSS, & Twitter.” Affinity Circles builds alumni networks and other networks for companies and associations. With the marriage, Climber, which says it already gets 60-70,000 new job seekers signed up monthly, gets access to millions of new job seekers. Mingle, the Climber parent, also owns Leadli, a site for managing social media recruiting and referrals.
EmployeeScreenIQ has been named one of the top five providers of background screening services by HRO Today magazine. The company ranked fifth for its quality of service, breadth of service, and size of customers based on a survey of over 700 employers.
For $1.95 a week a new site that launched just a few days ago will email job alerts tailored to a seeker’s specifications. For free, Indeed and SimplyHired will do the same. Jobogram.com says it “aggregates listings from all the major online job boards, and sends them to your email.” Indeed and SimplyHired do the same, only they aggregate listings from tens of thousands of corporate sites and job boards. Plus they offer a variety of other services. So why use Jobogram? No idea.
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