As of last fall, however, there’s a new kid that’s joined the playing field: Android. This mobile platform is available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Enter T-Mobile’s G1 with Google, the first smart phone to use the Android platform, and so far so good, as the product sold over one million units in just the first two months of release. While there aren’t as many apps as the iPhone just yet, more and more are being developed everyday. News is that T-Mobile should get ready for competition from the smart phone industry as Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung are gearing up for their own Android-powered devices later this year.

“Market enthusiasm continues to grow for Jobfox and its unique set of online services that empowers working professionals and connects them intuitively – based on the specific matching algorithms of skills and job requirements – to employers,” said Jobfox CEO Rob McGovern. “Employers are saving recruiting time and costs by turning to Jobfox and they are gaining access to hard-to-find employed candidates who don’t use traditional job boards.”

The 100 finalists will be announced at the Red Herring North America event, May 12-14, at The Fairmont San Jose. More information about this event can be found at http://herringevents.com/northamerica08/index.html. The event attracts leading entrepreneurs, financiers and corporate strategists.

“We can see the exciting evolution of the technology sector reflected in the quality and variety of exceptional companies that we had to choose from in putting our list together,” said Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring. “It was tough to choose just 200 finalists from such a large list of excellent contenders and we are very happy with the quality of the companies we selected as finalists.”

Earlier this year, Jobfox was recognized as an Official Honoree for the 12th Annual Webby Awards. Jobfox was also named a 2008 most promising start-up by American Venture Magazine. In December, Jobfox raised $20 million in its third round of financing. To date, Jobfox has raised $40 million in venture capital funding for global market expansion and continued development of services to help job seekers and professionals connect with each other.

VisualCV replaces the resume with an online professional profile and starting today, VisualCV.com includes enhanced features for professionals. Members can share VisualCVs directly with other members and participating employers, in addition to sharing with individuals and employers via email. “For many years professionals have networked online and offline using the resume as a means of communicating their credentials,” said Clint Heiden, CEO of VisualCV, Inc. “With our online professional profile and new professional networking features, they can bring this activity fully online via VisualCV.com.”

Professionals Can Network Using Their VisualCV to Advance Their Career

In addition to building an online professional profile and sharing that profile, individuals can now network using their VisualCV (or multiple VisualCVs). With the new features announced today, professionals can:

• Meet and network with other VisualCV members by sharing VisualCVs
• Privately manage and organize their VisualCV network in customized folders, such as coworkers, alumni, customers, etc.
• Securely and privately share VisualCVs with potential employers
• Track and manage views of their VisualCVs
• Manage all share requests, both received and sent

Based on early member feedback and requests, VisualCV has enhanced features and functionality to improve its members’ experiences. Overall usability enhancements include the ability to support external video (YouTube, Yahoo! Video and Veoh), the availability of a wider portfolio column for larger images and customization of a VisualCV, improvements to editing capabilities and more. To see a complete list of improvements made, please visit the announcements forum.

VisualCV Community Contest Highlights Member VisualCVs
After only a month of its public beta, the VisualCV Community has generated powerful VisualCVs. To highlight the outstanding VisualCVs created by the members of VisualCV.com, the company today announced the VisualCV Community Contest. The contest runs from March 20, 2008 to June 11, 2008 and will award winners in the following categories: (1) Best Job Seeking VisualCV, (2) Best Story Related to Using a VisualCV in the Job Hunt (3) Best Bio VisualCV, (4) Best Use of Portfolio in a VisualCV, (5) Most Creative VisualCV, (6) Best Undergraduate VisualCV and (7) Best VisualCV Overall. The winners will be highlighted in the VisualCV Community and a press release as well as awarded a prize. To learn more and enter the contest, visit www.VisualCV.com/showcase.

Employers Use the VisualCV System to Find Talent
VisualCV, Inc. recently announced that over 150 hundred employers have registered to directly receive VisualCVs and find, attract and evaluate talent at VisualCV.com. The number of employers registering continues to climb and there are now over 150 employers using VisualCV.

To join the growing list of employers participating at VisualCV.com, please visit http://www.visualcv.com/registrations/new. Employer access to VisualCV.com is free, and will remain so at the current level of service. Certain premium value-added services for employers will be added later this year.

On February 11, 2008, VisualCV announced its revolutionary approach to creating an Internet-based resume, building and managing an online career portfolio, and securely sharing professional qualifications with employers, customers, partners and colleagues. VisualCV.com is the first website to allow professionals to do this all in one place, with unmatched privacy and control, and for free. VisualCV also provides a comprehensive guide on how to write a resume for a broad range of professionals. Visitors can also find a number of stellar examples that can be used as templates for getting noticed and to stand out in this competitive job market.

The enhancements made to this new version will help clients to virtually eliminate hiring mistakes. And, as the economy continues to slow and revenues shrink, more than ever, companies cannot afford costly hiring mistakes. One bad apple can ruin the culture, drive the good people out and seriously impact the bottom line.

As a result, more and more companies are seeking innovative solutions to improve their candidate selection process. Interviews, resumes, background checks and traditional personality tests fall short when it comes to revealing the candidate’s true personality.

That’s where Candidate Insight comes in. The solution reveals hundreds of hidden personality traits, most of which have never been available to employers prior to hiring.

“Imagine the benefit of knowing, with ninety-five percent accuracy, that the candidate a client is about to make an offer to is argumentative, dishonest, moody and inflexible?” Ryan Vener, Written Inc.’s vice president, queried. “We can even tell clients if the candidate is violent. No other hiring tool or other personality assessment even comes close to our accuracy and insight.”

In their research, Written Inc. discovered that traditional handwriting analysis was too simplistic when examining the relationship between characteristics and traits. The one-to-one relationship that’s often used – for example crossing a “t” this way means “x” – resulted in ambiguous and inaccurate results. Written Inc. found that a person’s handwriting, or as they refer to it – “written body language” – is far more complex and requires technology to get it right.

This newest version of Candidate Insight incorporates artificial intelligence and a sophisticated relational database that keeps track of these complex relationships.

Candidate Insight is fast and easy to administer. Job applicants are simply asked to copy two short paragraphs onto a form that is then faxed to Written, Inc. The company’s handwriting specialists analyze the samples with the aid of a software application. The reports are then uploaded as a PDF file to a secure web site where clients can access them directly.

Business consultant and sales training guru, Patrick Cahill of MAC Venture Group in New York City, advises all of his clients to use Candidate Insight.

“After reviewing the numbers, we found that eighty-seven percent of our clients had made a serious hiring mistake in the last two years,” Cahill explained. “We estimated the average cost to each client to be upwards of $300,000. By adding this simple and inexpensive tool to their hiring process, they’ve virtually eliminated these hiring mistakes.”

Entry-level candidates, recent college graduates and college students can now visit one site for relevant IT job openings and internships with Microsoft partner companies. Unlike other job search engines, the Microsoft S2B site is comprehensive and housed within the Experience Network, giving Microsoft partners unparalleled access to technically-focused students, alumni and universities. The site also enables users to leverage Experience’s personalized guidance capabilities based on candidates’ interests, skills and career levels; a web-based career portfolio designed for students and alumni to showcase skills and talents beyond the typical resume; online professional networking and mentoring; and relevant insight into career paths and industries.

“Quilogy is always looking for exceptional students who display the necessary skills and passion for using emerging technologies,” said Manish Chandak, president of Quilogy, Inc., a leading nationally recognized systems integrator, professional services, and certified training firm. “We are excited that the new Microsoft S2B portal allows us to identify and bring onboard students that we can train, mentor and move through accelerated career paths.”

“With so many entry-level IT jobs available, the challenge has been finding candidates who have practical work experience,” said Sheila Gulati, general manager of Developer and Platform Evangelism for Microsoft. “Microsoft is committed to addressing the IT labor shortage, and one of our measures is to help entry-level job seekers acquire relevant skills. By partnering with Experience, a company that brings deep connections within the university community, we are building this Microsoft S2B portal to assist our partner companies in finding the Microsoft certified IT talent they need.”

Through the security-enhanced Microsoft S2B community, Microsoft partners can:

• Post jobs and internships to qualified students and recent graduates
• Search published resumes and profiles containing Microsoft competencies and certifications
• View recommendations identified through Experience’s proprietary data matching capabilities and receive and manage applications
• Search for additional candidates on the Experience Network and post jobs for other positions including sales and marketing, finance and other fields

”Experience has been in the business of managing robust communities that connect employers with students for more than a decade,” explained Jennifer Floren, founder and CEO of Experience, Inc. “The Microsoft S2B community is supported by a university-endorsed career management network with three million students and recent grads, giving Microsoft and its partner companies access to a large pool of available, skilled entry-level talent.”

“employeescreen University is pioneering. It’s an interactive learning tool designed specifically for human resource, risk-management and security professionals. Visitors to the Web site will have the opportunity to learn how to enhance their background-screening procedures with best practices, as well as obtain important information that affects their use of background checks. We are proud to offer this one-of-a-kind, free service,” said Nick Fishman, employeescreenIQ chief marketing officer and executive vice president.

Jason Morris, chief operating officer and president, added, “This learning resource is just another piece of our mission: to offer objective, intelligent and smarter background screening information to our clients and other interested professionals.”

employeescreen University went live at midnight on March 12. The site features employeescreenIQ’s free newsletter “The Verifier,” relevant employment screening news compiled from international sources, U.S. legislative news updates, industry white papers, background-screening media resources, industry research, upcoming industry events, and a background-screening blog, that updated daily by the employeescreenIQ leadership team.

Additional features, including online community-building tools, article commenting, Webinars and podcasts, will be added to employeescreen University in the coming months. Features also will be created and added from user requests and suggestions, making employeescreen University’s future truly driven by its users.

“There is simply too little innovation in the employment space that effectively connects with companies in a meaningful way,” said Joel Cheesman, author of the popular industry blog Cheezhead.com. “Not only is employeescreen University progressive, but it also speaks to the heart of an industry clamoring for useful knowledge delivered in a convenient, unfettered manner. It represents a positive step forward for a market that truly needs it.”

Although this new, interactive learning resource takes its name from its parent company, employeescreen University is designed to offer objective and educational background-screening information. As the first free educational resource of its kind, employeescreen University was created to become a primary resource for human resource, risk management and security professionals searching for any information regarding background-screening best practices.

“For individuals involved in the hiring process, it’s imperative to know the latest news as it relates to employee screening,” said Mike Sanky, publisher of BRB Publications, the nation’s premier publisher of sourcebooks used for locating public records. “employeescreen University not only provides news updates, but also an array of comprehensive learning tools for hiring professionals of all disciplines and experience levels.”

“Yahoo!’s continued momentum with the newspaper industry shows that current and new Consortium members value the opportunity to combine the newspapers’ own unmatched local news and deep local advertising relationships with Yahoo!’s leading technologies and extensive online audience,” said Lem Lloyd, vice president, Newspaper Consortium for Yahoo!, Inc. “We’ve already seen tremendous growth and have captured valuable local audience share across every major U.S. region through integration with Yahoo! HotJobs and the newspaper partners.”

Yahoo! has more than tripled the number of member companies in the Consortium since its inception in November 2006, significantly strengthening its Advertiser/Publisher Network and advancing its advertising strategy to be the “must buy” for the most advertisers.

“We’re in the infancy of a relationship between Yahoo! and our newspaper consortium that already exceeds our expectations,” said Jay Smith, President of Cox Newspapers, Inc. “Roughly one-third of the U.S.’s newspapers, including ours, believe a better day is here with this unique partnership of 634 newspapers and Yahoo!. We are seeing impressive results as our sales teams offer Yahoo! inventory to our local advertisers. As our consortium grows, so, too, will our success.”

Yahoo!’s partnership with the Newspaper Consortium spans multiple initiatives, including for many members, the adoption of Yahoo! HotJobs as their exclusive online recruitment solution, the distribution of headlines across Yahoo!, the adoption of Yahoo! Search on newspaper sites, cross-selling of advertising with newspapers’ local sales forces selling local advertisers’ inventory on Yahoo! and Yahoo!’s national sales force selling national advertising on newspapers’ sites. Many of the members also will be exclusively using the Yahoo! ad platform to sell display advertising on their sites.

To date, Yahoo! HotJobs has launched co-branded career sites serving more than 425 U.S. newspapers. By integrating with the newspaper partners and delivering better reach, relevance and performance, Yahoo! HotJobs has experienced 50 percent year-over-year traffic growth, becoming the fastest growing Web site among the leading job boards and surpassing Monster.com in the U.S.**

In addition to the Yahoo! HotJobs implementations, the first phase of advertising cross-sales has begun, with the sales staffs of several newspapers integrating Yahoo! inventory into sales packages for their local advertisers. The program will be expanded during the next several months, allowing Consortium members to target ads to specific audience segments. To date, 126 of the Consortium newspapers now also feature Yahoo! Search on their sites.

The newspaper publishers that have most recently joined the Newspaper Consortium are:

Shaw Newspapers, based in northern Illinois and publishing 25 daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Iowa, all of which will be implementing Yahoo! HotJobs on their sites. Of those newspapers, 13 of them will also participate in the Yahoo! Core Services components of the Newspaper Consortium-Yahoo! relationship, providing them with Yahoo! Search on their sites, as well as enabling their local sales forces to sell their local advertisers ads on Yahoo! and the Yahoo! sales force to sell national advertisers onto the newspaper Web sites. Additionally, these newspapers’ content will be distributed in key locations on Yahoo!, including Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo! and Yahoo! News.

The Buffalo News, which serves the Buffalo/Niagara region of the state of New York, will participate in all aspects of the Yahoo!-Newspaper Consortium partnership, including Yahoo! HotJobs and all the Core Services components.

The Times Publishing Company, which produces The Erie Times News in Erie, Pennsylvania, also joins the Newspaper Consortium to co-brand its ErieCareers.com classified business with Yahoo! HotJobs. The Erie Times News serves Erie County and surrounding towns on the shore of Lake Erie, including eastern Ohio, western New York and northern Crawford County.

The Columbian Publishing Company of Vancouver, Washington, publishes The Columbian and will join the Newspaper Consortium to incorporate Yahoo! HotJobs into their site. The Columbian serves the Portland, OR / Vancouver, WA area.

With the addition of these newspapers to the Newspaper Consortium, it now includes 26 publishing companies and has a presence in 42 of the top 50 DMAs in the United States.

* Editor and Publisher, 2006
** comScore Media Metrix Career Resources, 2008 vs. 2007

Denise Amato, Senior Vice President – Creative, said, “We are very proud of our achievement. To be recognized by the service industry, one of the fastest growing sectors in the workplace, is a real tribute to our clients, as well as our creative staff.”

NAS was awarded “Best in Show” for its newspaper series for American Eagle. Other clients among the 42 gold, 40 silver, 31 bronze and 78 merit award winners included Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, Busch Gardens, Tractor Supply, U.S. Army and SUPERVALU.

“The NAS mission is clearly defined as ‘Creating Demand. Delivering Talent. Changing Lives’,” said John Stepien, NAS Co-Chairman and Chief Revenue Officer. “With all of the talent we have on staff and all of the tools at our disposal, we help every client acquire new employees, as well as retain the talent they want to keep. The SIAA honors are a tangible indication of our success.”

As the Official Supplier of Online Recruitment for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), Workopolis is helping VANOC recruit 25,000 qualified volunteers to represent Canada at the 2010 Winter Games. As a complex and multi-faceted organization, VANOC requires a volunteer team with a variety of backgrounds and experiences to bring the Games together and reflect the diversity of Canada, its people and their capabilities. Job areas run the full range of the alphabet, from accommodation and anti-doping, all the way through to venue management and workforce.

“Workopolis is proud to be the gateway to all of the volunteer positions for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games,” said Patrick Sullivan, President of Workopolis. “Although the Games will be held in Vancouver and Whistler, they belong to all Canadians. That’s why Workopolis is hitting the streets today to engage with Canadians from coast to coast and let them know about all of the volunteer positions available.”

Workopolis has dispatched street teams in: Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Whistler, Vancouver and Squamish to share the excitement of the Games as well as provide details about the volunteer positions available at the 2010 Winter Games.

“In 24 short months the Olympic flame will arrive in Vancouver and today marks one of the most important milestones on the same road to 2010,” said John Furlong, Vancouver 2010 Chief Executive Officer. “Next to athletes, volunteers are perhaps the most important participants in the 2010 Winter Games. Volunteers will be the welcoming face to our guests, set lasting impressions and will play the largest role in actually staging the Games. It will be a proud, unforgettable experience.

Workopolis and VANOC have teamed up with Olympic medallists Beckie Scott, Russ Howard and Marc Gagnon to talk about the important role volunteers play from an athlete’s perspective.

“Not only do volunteers play a critical role in ensuring a smooth run of the show but they also act as unofficial cheerleaders to help keep athletes motivated,” said Beckie Scott, cross-country skier and two-time Olympic medallist. “I hope Canadians everywhere will step forward for a chance to be part of Canada’s Games so that all of our athletes will have the chance to experience the home-court advantage in its truest sense.”

“Seeing the athletes in the Village environment was an eye-opening opportunity,” added Margot Jackson, volunteer at the Olympic Village in Bardonecchia for the Torino 2006 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. “I learned first hand from volunteering in Torino that the Olympic Games are truly special. Playing a part as a volunteer is an uplifting and unique opportunity that I will never forget.”

Volunteering is also a great way to strengthen career skills. Although a recent study by Workopolis shows that over half (51 per cent) of respondents indicated they haven’t recently volunteered any of their time to a charitable organization, Workopolis encourages everyone to consider the benefits of gaining career and life skills from being involved in a project like the Games.

“Volunteering at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games is a great career move and an opportunity to participate in an event that is synonymous with passion, dedication and inspiration,” added Sullivan. “We’re showing Canadians how they can get ahead in their careers through volunteer experiences at the 2010 Games – an experience that will undoubtedly showcase quality career characteristics like leadership, time management and altruism. We’ve got tips on our site for how Canadians can start this discussion with their employers as well as a readiness quiz.”

The Call for Volunteers is open to anyone who will be over the age of 19 on September 1, 2008. Interested candidates can visit www.volunteer.workopolis.com or www.vancouver2010.com to learn more about how they can become a volunteer at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

OnTargetjobs is the parent company of BioSpace.com, Hcareers.com, HEALTHeCAREERS.com, MedHunters.com, JobLoft.com and CareerBank.com, providing online career services to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, hospitality, restaurant, healthcare, accounting and finance markets. RegionalHelpWanted offers the next wave of local advertising opportunities for employers through geo-specific Web portals heavily promoted through partnerships with over 2,000 local radio stations throughout North America. RegionalHelpWanted.com was represented by RBC Daniels in the transaction.

The acquisition of RegionalHelpWanted.com strengthens onTargetjobs’ position in the niche industry Web-based employment market, as Web-based “local” markets continue to grow in popularity as viable communities of job candidates. onTargetjobs offers staffing professionals and hiring managers the unique ability to reach with a high degree of specificity communities of industry and geographically-based candidates through a “1-Stop Contract” covering job postings, candidate databases, Web banners, electronic newsletters, career fairs, and other efficient and effective mediums.

“OnTargetjobs is pleased to announce the acquisition of RegionalHelpWanted.com, as it helps to deliver with increased precision qualified candidates to businesses of all sizes,” said Allen Paschal, CEO of onTargetjobs. “As the effectiveness and popularity of niche Internet communities and employment sites grow to rival the larger horizontal job boards, the addition of RegionalHelpWanted.com’s geo-targeted audience diversifies and strengthens onTargetjobs’ value proposition to its existing industry-focused client base.”

Eric Straus, CEO of RegionalHelpWanted.com offered, “onTargetjobs was the partner of choice for us as they understand the niche job industry as well or better than any other company, and the complementary fit between both organizations is what set them apart. They are leaders in their field and the localization that we bring to them will allow for best of breed advertising solutions for the entire recruitment industry.”