Itzbig

I thought this might interest my IT friends, esp. those who intend to look for jobs discreetly!

After being laid off from his job as a software development manager, Asad Khan turned to job recruitment Web sites. But his searches went nowhere. "It was like entering a black hole. You'd get back about 5,000 job matches, but once you started clicking on them, it was clear there weren't any real fits," says Khan, who oversaw a 40-person development team at i2 Technologies Inc. in Dallas before being let go in 2003. "When you did apply for something, you would get no feedback."

A recruiter told Khan that employers were equally fed up with the process, which often inundated them with hundreds of irrelevant résumés for every job they posted. "I still had some money left over from i2, so I got a group of three developers and said, 'There's a problem out there, so let's try to solve it,' " says Khan, who turned his study into a software development shop and tapped into his 401(k) when money ran out. The result is Itzbig Inc.

Itzbig focuses on information technology workers whom it calls "quiet working professionals" — those who already have jobs and don't want to post their résumés online for all to see but want to keep tabs on the job market and build relationships with prospective employers. The service uses online surveys, not résumés, to match job seekers with employers.

"Everything in the past has focused on quantity, not quality," says Hammock, the CEO. He cited Monster.com's boast that it lists more than a million job openings at any time and has a database of 41 million résumés. "In reality, the best candidates are often already employed. We offer them a way to explore opportunities in a private and secure way that provides immediate feedback."

Itzbig's service acts like a matchmaker. Instead of relying on résumés, which are rarely updated by workers who aren't actively looking for jobs, users fill out an online survey. Based on their responses, they are matched with jobs, and the matches are rated according to how closely users fit the job requirements. Recruiters can chat online instantly with top-rated candidates.