While you were at HR Tech, or spending your day sourcing a needle in the haystack or sifting through the 265 resumes that came in for that junior accountant opening, news was happening elsewhere in the recruitment world.
The headlines: The Human Capital Institute loses its long-time director; Yahoo cuts a deal with CareerBuilder in the UK and Ireland, and; another startup stumbles.
Now, the details:
Allan Schweyer, executive director of the Human Capital Institute for most of the last six years, has left to become a principal in the non-profit Center for Human Capital Innovation.
CHCI is a government human capital consulting firm that says its mission it to “improve the return on people throughout government.” It describes itself as a “trusted advisor, think-tank, thought leader, educator, analyst, and coach dedicated to advancing the science of talent management for organizations in the government sector.”
Author of Talent Management Systems (Wiley & Sons, 2004) and a contributor to HCI’s Talent Management Systems (Human Capital Institute Press, 2009), Schweyer writes and speaks widely on human capital management. In addition to his post as executive director, Schweyer also headed HCI’s extensive research division.
A labor economist by education, the resident of Montreal was previously a consultant with Reed Business Information and senior researcher, analyst, and consultant with HR.com. Schweyer was named one of the 100 top influencers in HR by John Sumser, who is writing a series of profiles for RecruitingBlogs.com.
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Those of you who attended the Spring 2008 edition of ERE’s EXPO may recall a presentation by an entrepreneur with an ambitious mission: to help people “figure out their next career steps using analysis of publicly available resumes and profiles, community powered advice, and personality assessments.”
Co-founder and CEO of Path 101, Charlie O’Donnell talked about its potential when he took the stage during the Expo’s Startup Panel and on occasions after would energetically describe the plans for the site, including how building a community would make its career mapping tools second to none.
But building a useful database by combing millions of resumes takes time, and then there’s the issue of developing a business model around it.
Meanwhile, the giants of the industry were making their own career tools available for free. Monster launched a major revamp in January complete with a career resource center that resembled much of what Path 101 was to be. That took a good bit of the wind out of the sails for Path 101 as it entered its public alpha stage in the spring. If O’Donnell or his colleagues, co-founder Alex Lines and developer Hilary Mason were discouraged, they never said so.
Until now.
In a post on his blog, This is going to be BIG, O’Donnell says he is taking a new job as Entrepreneur-in-Residence with First Round Capital. That will be his full-time job. Lines and Mason will also be moving to other positions.
However, Path 101 will continue. He, Links, and Mason will manage it during their off-hours and intend to launch the site’s first revenue-producing features soon. He candidly admits, Path 101 “isn’t going to be one of the shoot-the-lights-out deals, but I’m cautiously optimistic that it isn’t going to become a zero either — and may even have some upside.”
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CareerBuilder announced a partnership with Yahoo to power the company’s career site for Ireland and the United Kingdom.
The deal sends traffic from Yahoo’s combined UK and Ireland site to Careerbuilder’s UK job board. The careers channel link on the Yahoo is already in place.
At one point, Fish4Jobs powered Yahoo’s career center in a deal dating back to 2004.
Although Yahoo owns HotJobs, which is the company’s job site in the United States, its overseas properties have always been able to strike their own deals. In such cases, a site like Yahoo essentially sells its traffic. Depending on the traffic potential, such deals can command substantial sums. The terms of the deal weren’t announced.
