Busted!!: or, all the news that fits

May 10, 2016
JobBoardDoctor
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arrested It’s been a bit longer than usual since my last news roundup, so this missive may be rather packed. View it as your morning pick-me-up high density news sandwich. Or something like that. Ahem. Anyway, let’s get started:

Not so smart: David Kent, 40, was accused in a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court of stealing data on over 500,000 user resumes from Rigzone.com, which he had sold to DHI Group (Dice) for $51 million in 2010, to boost the membership of his new site Oilpro.com. The complaint said Kent tried to sell Oilpro, created in 2013, to DHI by misrepresenting that the new website increased its membership to 500,000 through standard marketing methods. DHI Group Chief Executive Michael Durney confirmed that his company was “in complete cooperation with law enforcement officials on this investigation.” I suspect they are. On the more positive side, DHI saw double-digit revenue and billings growth for both ClearanceJobs and Health eCareers, according to their Q1 report.
Tyba is bought: Tyba, the Madrid-based platform for startup and technology company recruitment today announced that it has been acquired by Graduateland, a leading career network for students and graduates headquartered in Copenhagen. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Tyba’s founders will now work exclusively on the Tyba spin-off, source{d}, which was born just over one year ago. After realising how difficult it was for their clients to find and connect with developers, source{d} was developed as a technology based solution to address those issues and improve the overall hiring process for tech talent.
ElevatedCareers launches: “This has been a long time coming,” says eHarmony’s GM Dan Erickson. “For me a long time coming.” He’s talked about the launch of ElevatedCareers, the job matching site from eHarmony. It’s out there in the wild and I of course had to put in my two cents.
Engineer genomes are now a thing: Technical recruiting platform Triplebyte, which has raised $3 million in funding, just launched its engineer genome project to foster software-driven, intelligent job-matching. Triplebyte’s engineer genome figures out a candidate’s strengths and automatically tells them the companies that will be the best technical fit for them. When they build one for JobBoardDoctors, I will be impressed.
TAtech partners up: Recruiter.com and TAtech have announced a partnership to leverage Recruiter.com’s audience for the benefit of TAtech’s members. Through the partnership, Recruiter.com will provide TAtech members with exclusive branding opportunities with a native integration in the member-only web portal. In addition, Recruiter.com will sponsor the upcoming “TAtech Conference & Expo” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Not bees, just blue collar: Beekeeper, the Switzerland and U.S.-based startup that provides a mobile-first communications platform for employers that need a better way to communicate with blue-collar and service-oriented workers, has beefed up its coffers with $5 million in new funding. “Typically we work with companies with large share of non-desktop, hourly wage and non-salaried employees who have limited or no access to desktop computers and corporate email addresses,” explains CEO Cristian Grossmann. Just not sure about that name.
A giraffe lands some cash: South African online job ads startup, Giraffe, recently closed a VC funding round from the Omidyar Network, founded and run by Pierre Omidyar, the man who founded eBay. Giraffe’s automated mobile recruitment app enables businesses to recruit medium-skilled staff and uses an intelligent matching algorithm to source, screen, and schedule interviews with qualified candidates within two days. Interesting.
LinkedIn is doing stuff: LinkedIn has launched an overhauled new version of its Recruiter platform, the interface and paid product used by those who mine the company’s database to fill jobs, which makes up a large part of Talent Solutions, LinkedIn’s biggest revenue stream. The new version includes a new interface and other enhancements, but perhaps most notable is the fact that it will now feature smart search and suggestions of similar candidates. In other LI news, the company has come up with a way to tell you what your chances of getting a job could be — and what you can do to improve them. Because it’s only a patent there’s no knowing whether success scores will be coming to LinkedIn any time soon. In (probably) unrelated news, LinkedIn surprised Wall Street on April 28th, with better-than-expected first quarter results. Shares jumped about 5 percent in after-hours trading.
Gigats in trouble: Thousands of job-seekers gave their personal information to websites and call centers run by an Orlando businessman, thinking they were applying for employment. But Ayman “Alec” Difrawi’s company Gigats.com was instead selling the personal data to education companies, the Federal Trade Commission said when revealing a proposed $90 million fraud judgment against the businessman. The FTC alleges that Gigats employees falsely called themselves independent education advisers, but in fact only recommended schools and programs that had agreed to pay the defendants, typically from $22 to $125, for consumer leads that met their enrollment requirements. Difrawi said the $90 million judgment is about how much money he made in one year from the business, but the FTC is letting him settle in exchange for $360,000, and agreements to stop committing fraud. Geez.
Toptal buys Skillbridge: Toptal, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed operator of a network of freelance software engineers and designers, has acquired Skillbridge, a London and NYC-based platform in the on-demand business talent space, for an undisclosed sum. Backed by 500 Startups and 37 Angels, Skillbridge has grown to more than 7,500 screened freelance business consultants in the last 24 months.