Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

The Staff

Joel Cheesman

Cheezhead founder Joel Cheesman is one of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world. He was the recipient of Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog for 2005 and received Best Recruiting Blog in 2007. He has been featured in Fast Company magazine, as well as Workforce Management, AIRS, Crain’s Business, BusinessWeek Magazine, Resumes for Dummies, U.S. News & World Report and The Wall Street Journal (print addition).

Joel’s blog is a daily chronicle of how the Internet and technology are shaping human resources and how organizations can attract the talent needed to thrive in tomorrow’s economy. As an employee and insider of some of America’s biggest online job sites since 1997, Joel founded HRSEO to help employers and companies in the recruitment space move to a world where search engines deliver high quality and cost-effective traffic.

Joel is an evangelist of search engine optimization (SEO), Internet marketing and other emerging technologies that help employers and like businesses drive targeted candidates to vacancies.

Joel also serves as a special consultant to the new, non-profit organization overseeing the development of the carefully regulated .jobs domain. He speaks at international events like the British Columbia HRMA conference.

John Sumser, a recruitment industry guru, adds, “Joel Cheesman has little respect for the way things used to be. That’s why we like him so much.” Gretchen Ledgard, former Staffing Marketing Manager at Microsoft, calls Joel “a crazy smart guy.”

Prior to working in the Internet recruiting space, Joel cut his teeth in the political arena in Washington, D.C. and managing congressional races around the US. Joel is a graduate of Ball State University.

In addition to being a closet SEO geek, Joel’s an avid fan of sports, music and good food. So don’t be surprised to see him relaxing some summer Saturday afternoon at Jacobs Field with a Stadium Mustard topped bratwurst and a Dortmunder watching the Indians, hanging in the Dawg Pound for a Browns game or enjoying a concert at The Agora.

Joel lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife Laura, son Cole and their three cats, Nacho, Nonami and Chili.

Vanessa Dennis
Vanessa is a writer for Recruiting Fly and Cheezhead, one of the most widely-read blogs pertaining to all things employment. She began her career out of college as a recruiter at a staffing agency in Austin, TX, where she learned the ups and downs of temporary and full-time placement. In 2006, Vanessa moved to Cleveland, OH, where she was hired as a corporate recruiter for Linde Gas.

She recruited for industrial, engineering, clerical, and sales positions for hundreds of branches and specialty gas labs across the United States. After most of Linde’s business in the U.S. was purchased by Airgas, Vanessa moved on to become a corporate recruiter at Applied Industrial Technologies, where she recruited for sales, management, and clerical positions at over 440 service centers.

Vanessa has a degree in English Writing from Loyola University of New Orleans. She originally hails from East Texas and returns as often as she can to enjoy barbeque and sour cream chicken enchiladas, Tex-Mex style. Vanessa loves playing pool, pilates, yoga, hiking, reading her favorite classics, writing short stories, and eating ice cream with her daughter while walking on the Lake Erie shore. She lives with her family in their new home in Lakewood, Ohio.

Jen Carpenter
Jennifer is a writer for Cheezhead, a blog dealing with the employment and recruiting industries, and has been compiling a database of job-related resources for those seeking employment.

She began her career out of college as a staff writer for The Evening Tribune, a newspaper located in Hornell, New York. During her year-long stint working in print, Jennifer learned the ins and outs of newsgathering and relaying information to the public. In March 2008 she moved to Cleveland to seek new opportunities, and was hired by Cheezhead in June 2008.

Jennifer has a degree in journalism and mass communication from St. Bonaventure University. She is originally from Wellsville, New York, and returns often to visit her mother and brother. Jennifer loves music of all kinds, writing, reading and relaxing with friends and family and her two pet bearded dragons. She currently lives in Lakewood, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb.

Jason Carr
Jason is the Director of Acquisition Marketing at HirePPC, Cheezhead’s pay-per-click management agency.

He is responsible for the ongoing management and optimization of client campaigns, as well as the growth and direction of the agency.

Jason started his career in PPC management when he moved to the Cleveland area to join eMergent Marketing. He grew with that team over the next several years, going through two acquisitions to become part of Rosetta. During that time he worked with a variety of clients ranging from local businesses to major national brands.

Originally from California, Jason went to school at BYU, in Provo, Utah. He majored in Political Science and minored in Portuguese after living in Brazil for two years. An avid reader, he enjoys novels and is always combing through the latest articles online (he even gets the daily paper). He keeps the spirit of his home state alive by playing Ultimate Frisbee on Saturday mornings, maintaining his chips and salsa habit, and wearing flip-flops whenever possible. He now lives in the Cleveland suburb of South Euclid with his wife and son.

Special Recognition

Testimonials

Here are a few nice things that some pretty influential leaders in the recruitment space have said about Cheezhead:

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