Seems just like yesterday we were reporting the end of itzbig, the first of the eHarmonies to officially go bye-bye. Of the departure, then CEO Jim McGovern said:
We set out to build a next-generation service that instantly matched, scored and ranked jobs against candidates and candidates against jobs, without all the junk results. Our approach was to allow recruiters to post jobs for free and to interact with anonymous candidates in order to determine those who were interested, qualified and available (IQA). Recruiters would only be asked to pay to unlock the contact information of candidates in whom they were interested. Based on the very positive feedback that we received from many of our users, I think we were making good progress. Unfortunately, however, we have been unable recently to secure enough additional funding to continue.
Not so fast!
Back from the dead, former itzbig CTO, and now its CEO, Asad Khan sent me a message today proclaiming the company’s rebirth.
“I just wanted to reach out and update you as to the latest at itzbig,” said Khan. “We are changing our model to become more of a technology player for other job boards so as to deliver our superior matching and score card functionality to the widest audience possible.”
So, what I read into this is the company is now more interested in selling the shovels and pickaxes than they are digging for the actual gold. A smarter move and one practiced by start-up Jobstick. Oh, and it’s probably the last great hope of the eHarmonies lasting through this economy. Others aren’t doing so well.
Of course, the road ahead for the site with the still-quirky name is uncertain. When asked about examples of anyone currently implementing itzbig technology into their site, Khan said, “Nothing to announce yet, but we have several discussions pending, including one in the telecom market, one large job board network, a possible acquisition by a player making acquisitions in the space and a few job board aggregator sites.
“One of the big problems of our old model was the difficulty in driving traffic to the level required to really highlight the value of matching. With this new approach, we can slot in behind others with significant traffic and more quickly realize value from the technology.”
Yeah, driving traffic. An important component, indeed. For now, the site hasn’t changed much, but I suspect that to change if things take off. And that, my friends, is a big if from where I stand.
Popularity: 6% [?]
February 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I’m wondering why itzBig is offering their wares only to job boards and not a broader scope. Why wouldn’t they offer this IQA matching technology to employers also? I believe boards could be the low hanging fruit yes, but what about all of the employer prospects? Employers will be handling record numbers of applications (resumes), due to the economy, with less internal headcount to sift through them. So doesn’t it make sense to offer this to boards yes, but even more so to employers?
Just a thought…