While in the middle of the U.S. Chicagojobs.com is celebrating its Daily Herald victory and a truck driver job site is officially launching, on the West Coast a once-well-known career site is quietly reviving itself for the latest Silicon Valley/San Francisco talent gold rush.
Andrew Gardiner started BAJobs in the 1990s as the job boom was escalating in northern California. “The right place at the right time,” he says about the site, which increased in popularity as the unemployment rate went the opposite direction. The proverbial tougher times, of course, lay ahead, and BAJobs was sold to the recruitment advertising agency CKR Interactive in 2010.
Gardiner left his CKR job recently and has without a ton of fanfare just relaunched BAJobs, making it more mobile phone and SEO friendly.
This is all the beginning of something more, something bigger. BAJobs is now part of a company Gardiner’s starting called The Hire Key. It’s — Hire Key’s — plans are still in the works, but watch for it to include future websites or other hiring initiatives for veterans, and maybe other populations, like women, or minorities, or college students. Working with Gardiner in one form or another — either as part of the Hire Key team, or as potential future partners/customers — are a group of talent-acquisition-field insiders, like some ex-recruiting leaders at California technology companies.