Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Job boards & Social Networking: more hybrids to come



Recruiters (asopposed to HR generalists) have always been early adopters of new Internet tools, especially when they decrease the distance between the recruiter and the candidate. Some jobboards have caught on and have merged their exisiting technology with the new tools that the Internet has to offer nowadays.

One of these sites is Jobster, which is very smart in offering social networking as part of their free package to candidates and clients. Jason Goldberg, Jobster's CEO, takes this one step further by interacting with his audience through the sending of so-called 'personal' mails. Jobster does this in a way that is fairly inoffensive (you don't have that annoying feeling someone is sending you bulkmail) but very effective. I think most people from across the ocean -meaning Europe- even 'know' Jason and his network.

A second player that has entered the market fairly recently (only two monts ago) is iHipo .

iHipo stands for International High Potentials and wants to be the online community aka jobboard where professionals and students with an academic degree can find quality jobs and internships. One of the nice features of iHipo is that every posting automatically gets a small flag attached of the country where the position is located. Another is the possibility for employers to create their own "talent pool" through the site, by creating virtual communities of their own with candidates who wish to receive new vacancies from that particular employer.

The site is privately funded for now and is the brainchild of a Dutchman, a German and someone from Singapore. A young trio which has a lot of ambition & more projects under wraps (coming out soon). At this point the site is freely accessible to candidates and employers alike- in future paying modules will be added.

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