Odds & Ends From the Exhibit Hall Floor at SHRM 12 in Atlanta

Here are some more odds & ends of news and chatter from the annual SHRM Conference and Exhibition that is winding down here 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: CareerBuilder is launched some improvements to its communities for corporations, like this one for H&M or this one, in German, for BMW. Essentially the updates give companies better analytics, and integrate with CareerBuilder’s supply-and-demand portal. CareerBuilder also launched moneyjobs.com, a site — you guessed it — for financial-industry jobs.
iCIMS will in about three months launch a new talent community feature also, a tad like CareerBuilder’s. iCIMS has dabbled in post-hire products, but is now refocusing itself on just the recruiting process.
SilkRoad, a recruiting technology firm mainly for mid-size businesses (though it does count GM and Toyota as customers), has gone from 5 percent of revenue coming from outside the U.S. to 25 percent in two years. “Most folks in our business provide lip service to global …” CEO Flip Filipowski says. SilkRoad is making its products mobile-friendly from the get-go, as opposed to jerry-rigging desktop applications for iPads and smart phones.
Glassdoor has enjoyed a big influx in new traffic over the past approximately seven days through its new, better integration Facebook.
SHL launched a new feature related to hiring veterans.
TalentWise is in talks with both LinkedIn and BranchOut about integrating TalentShield into their sites. Essentially what this would mean is that a job seeker could, for a fee, add a TalentShield link or insignia to their profiles, saying that their education and work experience have been verified. TalentWise has been growing at a rate of about 40-50 percent a year for the last three years.
HireVue, one of the dominate players in the growing field of video interviewing, had five employees in 2009, and now has 60. I asked Business Development VP Josh Schwede if people still ask a lot about discrimination issues. “Not anymore,” he says. “The market’s way more educated now.” Plus, he adds, now that LinkedIn is so ubiquitous, many people already know what a candidate looks like and their rough age prior to an interview.