Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

KODA.us recently secured an additional $1 million in funding from a group of private angel investors. So far, the company has raised $3 million and has marked the completion of its first round of funding.

Jeff Berger, co-founder and CEO of KODA, said the site has been in the making for about two years. When first created, the site leaned more toward job seekers, and the company needed funding to do more research and talk to companies in order to redesign KODA to focus more on candidates and job seekers at the same time.

Berger said the design of the site can be a big difference-maker, so the company spent a lot of time and effort to get KODA looking just right. The funding also was used to help build the technology that runs the site.

The site, which launched in May, is the first social recruiting site to bring the relationship-oriented process of social networking to job recruiting. KODA is an open site, meaning companies can see other companies’ profiles and job seekers can see other candidate’s profiles.

KODA, which is free to job seekers, is focused on employment, as opposed to friending or following other users. In designing the site, the company noted that Twitter and Facebook can be too overwhelming.

“KODA is more professional than Facebook but more personal than LinkedIn, letting both sides of the hiring equation get to know each other,” Berger said. “Using a job board is like searching for a needle in a haystack. KODA gives you more needles, less haystack, and we’ve developed proprietary technology that facilitates a smoother recruitment process for both candidates and employers.”

During the last two months, KODA has built relationships with more than 350 corporations, non-profit organizations and private businesses. KODA’s user profiles give employers the opportunity to list job openings within the context of organizational branding.

KODA is convenient for employers because it offers seamless integration with companies’ internal career pages, which means that recruiters don’t have to manually post jobs. Company profiles feature a company description, pictures and videos and additional information, such as how the company is different, its achievements, hiring information and any attachments the company may want others to see.

The site’s crawler technology brings up-to-date job listings directly from employers’ Web sites and features them on KODA.us. Although access to the crawler is currently free, it will eventually become a fee-based service for employers.

The site focuses on the entry-to-mid-level job market and caters primarily to Gen-Y job seekers. KODA’s user profiles give candidates the chance to pinpoint relevant life experience and personal attributes in addition to work experience.

“GenY job seekers don’t often know what specific companies and opportunities to explore, and KODA provides a pipeline that makes these job seekers more informed,” Berger said. “They’ll now have access to information about corporate culture before they even decide to apply for a position.”

Profiles allow users – many who aren’t active job seekers – to explain themselves in three points, as well as list their professional and unprofessional work experience, life experience, affiliates and certificates, awards and honors, Web presence and locations where they’d be interested in working.

Users who view company job listings can apply using a stripped-down version of their KODA profile. The site also allows candidates to “wave” at companies – a function similar to Facebook poke – and send messages.

The company plans to launch new functionality as the site’s beta period continues, including additional ways to publish opportunities, apply with profiles and use light networking features to connect with recruiters or candidates.

On top of that, in the future KODA plans to partner with more universities, increase its presence on campuses during the upcoming spring and fall semesters and reach out to college students and the college community in a more direct way. Berger said the company also is looking into partnering with others from the tech side of the industry, as well as other companies in the job space.

And on a side note, KODA has already gotten some attention for its efforts to help with the post-Katrina economic rebirth of New Orleans. While the company is headquartered in San Francisco, it has an outpost in New Orleans. New Orleans CityBusiness recently named KODA a 2009 Innovator of the Year. Berger said there are a lot of start-up companies in New Orleans and KODA is trying to level the playing field.

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